Abstract

In this paper, I searched the historical changes of the meaning of ‘youth’ in Korea from the Korean enlightenment period to the colonial period. Especially, I focused on the meaning of the word ‘cheongchun’, which indicated ‘the youth’ together with such words as ‘cheongnyon’, ‘sonyon’, and ‘nyonso’ during the premodern time in Korea. The word ‘cheongchun’ was modernized when it started to indicate passion of the youth and to justify passion of young generation as a proper part of a natural being, wheres, the word ‘cheongnyon’ was modernized when it became a word that indicated the youth as to be the leader of Korean modernization and signified the young generation as a leading worker for Korean future against their elders who adhered to the traditional custom. ‘Cheongchun’ symbol- ized the youth in the relationship with inner emotion of a being, wheres ‘cheongnyon’ symbolized the youth as a being who was related with the nation. Giving the young generation a privilege of national modernization, ‘cheongnyon’ worked as a signifer which converged interests and power of the youth into Korean modernization, while excluding women and the old out of the privileged signifier. However, the word ‘cheongchun’ made a fissure on the representation of ‘cheongnyon’ by making the inner passion of young generation public and gathering public focus on individuals and human desire rather than the nation and people. However, the representative meaning of ‘cheognyon’ and ‘chengchun’ had changed in the middle of the Korean colonial period. When the modernized culture of the colonial popular industry grew up, Korean young students and intellectuals were easily related with secular and crude urban culture, since they had the ability to enjoy the new culture and their possi- bility to contribute to nation was getting seriously rare. In this vein, the meaning of ‘cheongnyon’ and ‘cheongchun’ changed. ‘Cheongnyon’ became to indicate the young generation who need more training and discipline, and ‘cheongchun’ became to indicate the tendency to fall into decadent pleasure or the sorrow of a deprived youngster of the period. The changing process of the meaning of ‘cheongnyon’ and ‘cheongchun’ make us to introspect the condition which can make a creative concord between individual emotion and the social prospect.