『중소연구(中蘇硏究)』를 통해 본 한국에서의 중국 정치 연구

Abstract

This article evaluates the study of contemporary China in Korea for the last two decades. For this purpose, a critical review was conducted on the articles that appeared in Sino-Soviet Affairs, a leading journal in the field. The assessment was carried out in the following three aspects. First, with regard to the subject of inquiry, most of the articles evaluated studied China in its own right or focused on China"s external relations with the Soviet Union and the Korean Peninsula. One important agenda for future research is to do comparative studies of China and other socialist states. Additionally, a predominant majority of the articles evaluated dealt mainly with political, economic and diplomatic issues, while largely neglecting other key themes of research. Furthermore, there is an acute need for more research on major events like the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Incident.

Second, the Korean community of contemporary China studies is best characterized by pluralism. In terms of backgrounds, scholars were trained mainly in the United States, Taiwan and Korea. And these differences contributed rather significantly to the variations in their approachese, use of source materials, and so on. How such a pluralistic approach will affect the process of knowledge accumulation in the field remains to be seen.

Third, Korean scholars of contemporary China still seem to lack sufficient interest in the methodological issue. Generally speaking, traditional Sinological methods (historical and descriptive) continue to dominate over more "scientific" methods. With the diplomatic normalization with China, however, there seems to have been a significant increase in the extent to which primary data and fieldwork are utilized.