<論文>大量虐殺の過去清算における「合意」に関する研究 : 「済州4・3事件真相究明及び犠牲者名誉回復委員会」の「犠牲者審議・決定」を事例として

Abstract

The April 3rd Massacre of civilian people which constitutes the background of the present study took place in the Jeju Island, South Korea, between 1947 and 1953. As Jeju civilians started an armed uprising against the establishment of the two Koreas, the South Korean government dispatched a suppressing force to the Jeju Island, and in the process of subduing the uprising, about thirty thousand civilians were killed. For the following fifty years, the Jeju April 3rd Massacre was treated as a 'social taboo' in Korean society. However, at the end of the 1990s, when South Korea changed to a democratic system, the public became more and more open to talk about the April 3rd Massacre. In the year 2000, after the acceptance of the Jeju April 3rd Special Act in the National Assembly, the government initiated activities to promote a 'social agreement' concerning the past. With these historical facts in the background, I focus on how the government attempted to promote the necessary social agreement. Although there were definitely positive aspects in this attempt, I point out several problems in this process. The first problem pertains to the fact that the 'politics of agreement' is being operated by the government. Firstly, I analyze the 'social agreement' process involving both the work of the Committee itself and the social reaction to it in terms of deciding who can be regarded as a victim of the April 3rd Massacre. Secondly, I focus on the 'negotiation' between the government as an actor who once did harm, and the victim as a subject who suffered. 'The criteria used to identify 'victims' in these "negotiations" have in fact led to a distinction between recognized and unrecognized victims (a sort of screening of victims), selecting those who are eligible to the national memorial project, and among these, also 'specifying things to be investigated' concerning historical facts. The second problem refers to the fact that the (civilian) victims have actually been split by the government into so-called 'accepted' and 'denied' victims. This causes disharmony among people, and some of them returned to silence.