오월 광주항쟁의 송백회운동에 관한 연구 : 참여와 연대의 동학을 중심으로

Abstract

A Study on The Songbaekhoi Movement in the May 18 Gwangju Uprising : Focused on the Dynamics of Participation and Solidarity

Lee, Youn Jung

Advisor : Prof. Oh, Soo Yol

Department of Political Science and Diplomacy

The Graduate School of Chosun University

The studies on the social movement including the May 18 Gwangju Uprising were mostly based on the Collective Behavior theory or structuralism which mainly attempts to explain the reason and significance of the movement in view of structural determinism. Although the perspective of these theories contributed to establish a far-reaching historical meanings of the movement in Korea. However these perspectives have limitations to explain the dynamics of the movement as shown in various participants including social groups as well as individual actors, patterns of social participation, and the discourses of counter hegemony in social movements since 1980s. These studies ignored the beliefs and value, feeling, ideology, and identity of the agents, and had a tendency to simplify the movement in the deterministic framework. Under the critical considerations, this study attempts to explain what kind of factors effected to the micro-feelings and identities of the agents in the process of movement formation and decline among the large-scale social movement, focused on the Songbaekhoi movement in the May 18 Gwangju uprising.

This paper aims at reinterpreting the May 18 Gwangju uprising and the Songbaekhoi movement from the perspective of New social movements including Resource Mobilization theory. The author insists that the movement was not simple events but was vivid dynamic movements successively embedded in and caused by the regional social and cultural contexts. Meanwhile this study also tries to reveal that the May 18 Gwangju uprising was not only a movement with political and social significance, especially the solidarity of Songbaekhoi’s participation makes the uprising full of cultural dynamic. Contrary to the previous structural approaches, this paper seeks to revive the historical memory of participation and resistance of Songbakhoi activists with a dynamic reinterpretation and further to reveal the structural, cognitive and relationship characteristics of Songbaekhoi movement as well as the important role of in the history of Korean social movements.

Base on the vivid oral testimony materials of the Songbaekhoi activists in the May 18 Uprising, this study analyses the various social, cultural experiences as well as their interaction from the social constructivism and mobilization theory perspectives. The values, preferences, identities, norms, beliefs, political attitudes, and ideologies of Songbaekhoi members were not fixed at the beginning of the movement but rather constructed under the certain social, historical, and cultural contexts. This paper exhibits the Songbaekhoi movement dynamically through the analyzing terms such as the shared mentality, frame, identity, and micro mobilization contexts etc.

This study can be summarized as follows: Firstly, the participation of Songbaekhoi members in the Kwangju Uprising is autonomous. At the beginning stage, the identity of Songbaekhoi members could be regarded as pro-female activists, however, as the uprising had intensified and the members had deeply involved, their identities gradually changed as pro-democracy fighters. The causes that made their identity changed were the repression of new military power, emergency rescue, the expectation to the uprising leaders and activists and the awareness of the civilian, the social and cultural environments of Gwangju, etc. so the cultural factors had taken an important role in the process of identity reconstruction. Secondly, the micro-mobilizors had taken a central role in the May18 uprising and Songbaekhoi movement, and they were also the basic resource of the informal organizations such as the progressive pastors and priests in the Christian groups, the culture (missionary) activists groups in Gwangju universities, female activist groups, etc. Meanwhile, through utilizing the close relationship between Songbaekhoi and some other organizations such as the youth movement, cultural movement, night school movement, it further assured the autonomous power of regional movement and enlarged the civil community. Democratization frame such as abolishing martial law and overthrowing the dictatorship had taken an important role in micro-mobilizing context. Thirdly, it can investigate the status and role of Songbaekhoi in the May 18 Uprising from the term of mesomobilization. Songbaekhoi constructed the Gwangju uprising community through its central linkage role with various organizations in Gwangju. Furthermore, it proposed the slogan ‘liberate Gwangju’ which made it more normative and cultural.

We can say that Songbaekhoi movement as a part of Gwangju May 18 uprising was one model case which took an integrated role in the whole social movement, which also meant that the thousands of informal organizations in the regional social movement of Gwangju and Chonnam. Through utilizing the micro and mezo-mobilizing mechanism, Songbaekhoi as the medium prompter had ripened the integrated forces of the uprising. The mobilizing force made Songbaekhoi not only a simple organization, but also the key force of the movement mechanism. The most important factor in assessing Songbaekhoi as a new social movement was its strong activist norms and cultural bases including cognitive frame. This factor was one combination of the devotion to mankind and practical value of human based on the maternal love. In conclude, the Songbaekhoi movement shows new possibilities and perspectives to social movement model of regional society.

Key Words : Songbaekhoi, The May 18 Gwangju Uprising, Gwangju Democracy Movement, New Social Movement, Politics of Frame.