고려대학교

초록/요약

Lee Yeo-seong was a nationalist who served time in prison for participating in the March 1st Movement and was a socialist who developed communism theoretical movement with Il-Wol-Hoe, a political organization operated in 1920 in Tokyo, Japan. Lee became a man of uncommon acquirement in his work on the Minor’s Independence Movement that happened around 1930, which led to 3 books and quite a number of theses and much criticism. Lee’s opus magnum draws attention to 15 different minorities. Through Lee’s work, this thesis examines Lee’s understanding of the Minor’s Independence Movement and the National Independence Movement around 1930. Although Lee was a socialist, he approved of the concept of ethnicity, and considered it a driving force for the Nationalism Movement, and as well as the influence on the direction of an independent Korea. Being against autonomism, Lee’s ultimate goal was to achieve the uncompromising independence by the Minor’s Independence Movement. Lee’s Minor’s Independence Movement largely adopted the strategy of United Front from Comintern, although his view of ethnicity and the National Independence Movement, as well as the initiative of the strategy of the United Front was different than that of the Comintern. Especially, Lee’s turnover regarding the latter took place in 1930. In 1929, he asserted the theory of Proletarian Hegemony after having evaluated India’s Nationalism Movement. However, in 1930, when the Nationalism Movement in India and Vietnam bore some fruits under the initiative of the nationalists, Lee came to express his position. That is, in 1931 at the National United Front, Lee approved of the validity of Nationalism and the leadership of the Nationalists. Such modification was the opposite of Comintern’s December These of 1928. Lee upheld the Line of the National United Front, not accepting the change of the strategic adaptation of the Comintern. Lee also acted as a socialist intellectual in a legitimate capacity without supporting the re-establishment of the Korean Communist Party. Lee can be classified as a Nationalism-socialist in the differentiation of socialism in the 1930s. Lee’s National Independence Theory became the theoretical foundation of the Center-Left for rebuilding the nation after Korea’s independence from Japanese Imperialism.