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KMID : 0897520000050020179
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Journal of Korean Association of Social Psychiatry
2000 Volume.5 No. 2 p.179 ~ p.196
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Collective Memory and Understanding of North Korean Society
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Jeon Woo-Taek
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Abstract
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Until the late 1970s, memory was viewed as an essentially biological and individual process which is context-free, and isolated psychological phenomenon. A significant turning point in this way of thinking was advanced that memory, as it occurs in everyday life, was powerfully influenced by social factors. Indeed, social process have now been demonstrated to affect encoding, retrieval, and the maintenance of memories. Memory, then, may be considered a social rather than an individual phenomenon. The social or collective aspects of memory can be thought as follows. First, memory has a social aspect in the perception level. Second, memory is“socialized” by the process of telling the story to the others. Third,“individual memory” becomes the group’s“collective memory” because when a group listens the story about one group member’s experience, the group makes the content of the story a part of their own in the form of religion, politics, art, and social activity. Examples of collective memory can be seen in Flash Bulb Memory phenomenon, Commemorative ceremonies, and Religion. Collective memory has these social functions. First, it justifies current social order. Second, it makes the identity of one group. Third, collective memory helps to maintain and reproduce the group. Since collective memory has a tangible role in a society or group, it has a close relationship with real situations and needs of the group. Collective memory includes not only the objective historical facts, but also“presumed” memory which the group wants to have for the group’s positive self-image. Mechanisms for the formation of collective memory are as follows. Leveling-Simplification and Condensation, Accentuation and assimilation, Elaboration, Convention-alization And the Mechanism of distortion of collective memory such as Selective omission, Fabrication, Exaggeration and Embellishment, Linking and Detaching, Blaming the enemy, Blaming Circumstances, Contextual Framing was discussed. In the understanding of North Korea, the collective memory phenomenon seems to be important for several reasons. First, all communist countries tried to make their people have way of collective thinking for their economical principle, and this collective memory have a close relationship with way of collective thinking. Second, leadership of North Korea involving Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jung-Il have used this collective memory as a main tool of their ruling North Korean people in various ways. Third, to understanding North Korea people’s way of thinking and behavior pattern, collective memory phenomenon in North Korea gives a lot of cues. So in this study North Korea’s national annual of 1993-1996 was analyzed critically and searched the example of collective memory in North Korea.
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KEYWORD
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Memory, Collective memory, North Korea
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