일제하 한국 YMCA의 체육사상에 관한 연구

Abstract

This study attempted to investigate physical education thought of Korean YMCA under the Japanese imperialism with a focus on the physical education theory of those concerned with YMCA. The Korean YMCA had the holistic theory on man expounded by Gulick of the American YMCA, namely, the theory on man of viewing the human being as one unity of the body and the mind and spirit and the body-mind monistic physical view. Among other things, the holistic theory on man led to the national educational save-the-nation thought of strenuous efforts and developed into the drift of thought shaping social sports at the late old Korean Empire with such advanced new cultures as the Enlightenment thought, the theory of social-evolution strenuous efforts and the theory of military-valuing strenuous efforts. Korean YMCA thought of physical education as the absolute condition for becoming a wealthy nation, the means for surviving the international community of intense struggle for survival and the means for remedying the shortcomings of Korean people, but also highlighted it in terms of sanitation and amusement. Especially, Korean YMCA's encouragement of national physical education was conducted in the situation of the specific times when the Korean peninsula was placed as a colonial country under Japanese imperialism at that time, which could be said to be the distinctive characteristics of physical education in Korean YMCA that could be found in YMCA in other countries. On the one hand, Korean YMCA encouraged the martial arts and chivalry of Japan different from the conventional theory of physical education in the period of national annihilation, the period of colonial rule by the Japanese imperialism. And it required people to conduct 'the improvement of national physical fitness', 'radio gymnastics', 'national gymnastics' and the like, the militaristic physical education policy that Japan emphasized as part of strengthening the potential of war. Of course, the encouragement of militaristic physical education by the Korean YMCA was conducted by the Japanese high-handed colonial policy. But seen in terms of outcome, this encouragement of militaristic physical education left the historical blot that the Korean YMCA sympathized with the militaristic physical education policy advocated by Japan and performed a role as the window for implementing the Japanese policy.