한말 기독교 신문의 문명개화론|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Christian News(Presbyterian) and the Korean Christian Advocate(Methodist) were among the very first newspapers published in Late Joseon Korea. The two weekly newspapers were missionary organs as founded and edited by American Protestant missionaries. Nevertheless, they aimed not only to promote missionary causes but also to enlighten and civilize the general Korean readers. They were printed in the Korean language and in that sense, at least, were different from other missionary publications that were usually printed in English. Missionaries undertook a sustained and systematic movement to "enlighten" the Korean people, and these Korean-language newspapers were a powerful tool for the endeavor.
The two newspapers reveal a certain philosophy or theory of missionaries’ civilizing activities. A fundamental presupposition of their theory was that there were four different levels of civilizations-“savages,” and “uncivilized,” “half-civilized,” and “civilized” peoples. Closely related to this was a perspective of social evolutionthat is, the highest civilization of the white westerners was the winner of the survival of the fittest, and hence in order for the less civilized to survive among the global competition for supremacy, they should be civilized in the fashion of the westerners. According to the newspaper articles, Korea, together with China, belonged to the “half-civilized” races. The missionaries’ theory of enlightenment was, in this sense, heavily dependent upon race prejudices and imperialist, evolutionary world-view.
The two newspapers showed a sincere interest in enlightenment and advancement of the Korean people in all three dimensions of civilization-material, legal-political, and mental-ethical. Their civilizing endeavors culminated when Korean reformers led by prominent Christian leaders were making reform efforts around the Independence Club in the latter part of the 1890s. But these efforts eventually failed, and missionaries, dropping their civilizing concerns, were ready to welcome Japan, which they regarded to be the only civilized nation in Asia, as the new ruler of Korea. This supports the suspicion that missionaries’ civilization-enlightenment theories, after all, reflected the imperial mind of the westerners at that time.

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