Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

As the colonial period finally ended on August 15, 1945, stirrings in preparation for a new society were seen throughout the Korean Peninsula. The effort to establish a proper national framework was not confined to independence fighters or political leaders. Journalists, publishers and intellectuals, whose freedom of expression was denied during under the Japanese imperial regime, began to raise their voices over the path in which the country should proceed. Laborers and farmers strove to protect their production sites. They struggled to gain their social rights in the face of copious restrictions. The three years needed to establish a government formally after Liberation was a time of political chaos. Ideology is neither simply an issue for social leaders alone nor something dichotomously split into left and right political camps. Voices on all sides of the dense ideological spectrum were raised until the social leadership had emerged from the people, and the Korean people had finally become the principle movers of their own society. The establishment of the Republic of Korea government in August 1948 was made possible by this collective energy. The exhibition titled The Country They Have All Dreamed Of, explored in this paper, covers the period between Liberation from Japanese colonial rule in August 1945 to the establishment of the government in August 1948, focusing on the new social vision for which diverse sectors of Korean society yearned as well as on the determination and exertion put forth realize that vision.