Comparative analysis of descriptions of Lee Ki-baek’s the Discussion of Korean social development history in Korean History(1977) and the Unfolding of korean history in New Korean History(2002)

Lee Ki-bak emphasized understanding Korea's social development patterns in “the Discussion of Korean social development history” (1977). Later, in 1983, he further proposed “the theory of the intrinsic development of the nation throughout the past,” which he himself included in the What is History as one of his co-editors by acquiring knowledge of Western history through Mandelbaum's thesis, which he seems to have emphasized that the Korean people have a history of intrinsic development, especially in any civilization. In addition, as clearly revealed in Vico's view, it is believed that the Korean people also thought that just as each nation in the world developed independently, the Korean people also did. In “the Unfolding of Korean History” (2002), he saw that the social foundation of the ruling power was gradually expanded as the lower class of the ruling power used to appear as a new ruling power. He went further here and stated that history has not developed in a straight line at each period, but has been developed through several leaps in a stepwise manner, and each step has an important meaning. The biggest feature of the descriptions of “the Discussion of Korean social development history” and “the Unfolding of Korean history” is that they value “dominant power” and exclude “people.” In particular, in the latter case, this was closely related to the situation in which a series of criticisms about the so-called theory of people's history, which some of the academic circles argued at that time, were being intensively raised. It was also because he himself was very critical of the theory of people's history in that it was based on the Marx's theory of historical materialism. Another characteristic of the description of “the Unfolding of Korean history” is the arrangement based on the view of new people's nationalism. It was the first time that he specifically advocated the view of new people's nationalism based on the standard of change in the human group that took the lead in the development of Korean history. Therefore, his clarification of the view of new people's nationalism and his description of the development of Korean history from that point of view was influenced by Son Jin-tae, who himself defined the view of new people's nationalism as a representative scholar.