This paper investigated awareness and meaning of Gyeongju described in Gyeongju travel essays from 1920 to 1938 on the aspect of "cultural memory." The researches on historical remains by Japan promoting the travel to Gyeongju was related to it effort to make the colony memory by the empire trying to form the identity of the public in the colony. The memory in such period is related to the formation of group identity. It is considered as "cultural memory." This paper doesn"t focus on the formation process of cultural memory, but the impact of cultural memory on the emotion of travellers as well as the relationship between travellers and places, and cultural memory.
First, "Gyeongju", the cluster of historic remains and relics, has the spatial features as "place of memory" and "anthropological place". The travellers in the colonial era had experience and awareness that Gyeongju was the historic and experiential place through such memory. In particular, the cultural memory of Gyeongju has strong impact on the travellers. Furthermore, it forms the tension relationship with desires of travellers who want to feel and record their own observation and feeling on Gyeongju as the object of travel. The contents and forms of travel essays on Gyeongju in that period were determined by such relationship. Next, the Gyeongju travel essay showed the strong tendency to be conventional due to the identification or homogenization of feeling even though a variety of personal experiences were exposed. It is also the result that the cultural memory exerted its impact on an individual. Thus, the Gyeongju travel during this period has the homogenized public emotion. In detail, the classical nostalgia is exposed. Such homogenized and conventional experience in Gyeongju is the result that cultural memory becomes absolute memory.
The fact that the Korean was attracted to the ancient capital Gyeongju during the colonial era was related to the classical nostalgia. In other words, the anthropological contemplation by nostalgia hides reality. At the same time, it causes false identity, fantasy. Gyeongju experienced by travellers are not the object of reality but absent existence. In this process, ethnic reality and personal feeling of travellers becomes also the objects of absence. As a result, Gyeongju itself disappears. As described above, the travellers to Gyeongju experienced the formation of identity by absence. It is caused from paradox, the attraction of Gyeongju.