- Title : Comparative Study of North Korean Archaeology in the Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un Eras: A ‘Distant Reading’ of Joseon Gogo Yeongu
- Author : Ko Ilhong(HK Research preogram)
- Journal : Journal of Peace and Unification Studies 15(1)
- Publication Date : 2023.06.30
- Abstract
Joseon Gogo Yeongu is the representative academic journal on North Korean archeology, published quarterly by the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Social Sciences since 1986, and can be said to be the most important primary source for tracing the history of North Korean archeology. By analyzing the titles of the texts included in Joseon Gogo Yeongu, thispaper examines the changing ways in which the regimes of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un have utilized archaeololgy. Due to the vast nature of the text to be analyzed, the ‘distant reading’ method of ‘digital humanities’ was adopted. A total of three different ‘distant reading’ techniques were used in this analysis. First of all, text analysis was conducted on all papers published in the Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un Eras, and the key words of each era were visualized using ‘word clouds.’ 5 representative themes and related key words were also identified through ‘topic modeling,’ As a result, it was confirmed that the importance of ‘our country’ gradually decreased over the three eras, and the importance of ‘culture’ gradually increased instead. In addition, it was confirmed that in the Kim Jong Un era, the importance of ‘royal tomb,’ ‘gaeseong,’ and ‘culture’ increased and ‘Manwoldae’ appeared as a new key word. This result stems from the fact that the superiority of the Joseon people and the Daedonggang Culture theory continued to be important research topics in North Korean archaeology even in the Kim Jong Un era. On the other hand, the government also had great interest in the development of North Korea’s cultural heritage through archaeology. Keyword analysis and semantic network analysis were also conducted on the titles of the ‘doctrine’ articles included in Joseon Gogo Yeongu. It was found that the most important term of the previous era, ‘minjok’, disappeared in the titles during the Kim Jong Un era. However, analysis on the contents of the teachings of the ‘doctrine’ articles revealed that the most important keyword had changed from ‘history’ to ‘minjok.’ The centrality of ‘cultural heritage’ in the semantic network was found to be high, following ‘minjok.’ This was judged to be the result of a new understanding of the concept of ‘minjok’ in the Kim Jong Un era, as well as changes in North Korean regime’s pursuit as to what is to be achieved from the archaeological findings.
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