1991년 5월 투쟁에서 6월항쟁과 열사의 표상

초록

Participants in the May 1991 Struggle in South Korea consciously sought to reenact and transcend the June Uprising of 1987. The death of Kang Kyung-dae triggered large-scale mobilizations reminiscent of the June Uprising. Unlike the June Uprising, however, the May Struggle was experienced as a devastating defeat. While previous studies have focused on the formation of democratic coalitions, this article argues that the two movements also differed in their attitudes toward death. The May Struggle was driven by an “imagined causality” in which death was believed to produce collective mobilization and political victory. As anger and struggle dominated responses to death, grief and mourning were diminished, while death itself came to be understood as structurally inevitable. This obscured the individuality of each life lost and ultimately left participants with fear, guilt, and deep emotional wounds when the movement collapsed.

키워드