일제하 공립보통학교의 일본인 교원 임용을 둘러싼 논란

초록

During the Japanese colonial rule, a large number of Japanese teachers worked for elementary and middle schools in Korea. In 1920s and 1930s, Korean journalists and Korean members of Council for School Expense opposed to the employment of Japanese teachers in public elementary schools. Why did they oppose to it? Firstly, the number of Japanese teachers in public elementary schools were too much. The number of elementary schools increased sharply as a result of ‘one elementary school per three myeons’ after 1919 and ‘one elementary school per myeon’ after 1929. As the number of classes significantly increased after 1939, the number of Japanese teachers working for the public elementary schools rose accordingly. Secondly, Japanese teachers received higher salary than Korean teachers, as most of them graduated from colleges of education in prefectures of Japanese main land, worked for elementary schools for 5 to 15 years in Japan, and then moved to Korea in the 1920s. Therefore they could get higher salary than Korean teachers. Thirdly, Japanese teachers who stayed in Korea were provided with benefits such as additional allowance, housing fare, and extra pay for working at an isolated area. Therefore Koreans demanded that the number of Japanese instructors and principals be reduced, arguing that personal expenses were exorbitantly paid due to additional allowance for the Japanese teachers, which put a heavy burden on the public elementary school finances. The reason why the Japanese Government-General of Korea provided Japanese teachers with additional allowance was that Government-General believed that education was vital in order to make all the Koreans assimilate with Japanese, the ultimate goal of the Japanese colonial rule, and Government-General considered Japanese teachers as the advance guards for the so-called ‘assimilation education.’ In spite of Korean’s opposition, the Japanese Government General of Korea continued to maintain the number of Japanese teachers at 27%~48% of the total public elementary school teachers until the closing days of the Japanese colonial rule.

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