This article follows the development of discussions over the "Cheong"gye?cheon Stream" issue in the local council of Gyeong"seong, the colonial capital of Korea. The activities of the local council during the colonial era is analyzed here as activities conducted in a limited public sphere.
The colonial local council was established by the colonial government as a "pseudo" public sphere to mobilize the pro?Japanese Korean leaders and boost their desire to participate in politics, with an aim of permanently stabilizing colonial governance. However, local councilors were elected by residents as their representatives and therefore had to speak for the constituents to some extent. This activity by Korean councilors often led to conflicts with their Japanese counterparts over the issue of distribution of limited social resources.
During the Japanese occupation period, Cheong"gye?cheon served as a dividing line between main Korean residential area and the Japanese area, and emerged as a delicate issue in terms of sanitation and transportation. As the local council started to play a meaningful role in colonial politics in the mid 1920’s, surfaced was the conflict over refurbishing the main stream in Gyeong"seong. In almost all of the annual sessions of the council, Korean representatives’ requests of reorganizing the stream were faced with opposition by the municipal officials, who cited the shortage of its budget. With limited resources for that kind of public facility, such disputes continued every year, producing very little changes. That changed in the mid 1930’s, when the institutional basis was introduced for executing urban planning. However, the local government planned to put excessive resources into the construction of the Namsan Ring Road, which would cater to the interests of the leading Japanese settlers, causing greater confrontation between the two nationals. The confrontation resulted in Cheong"gye?cheon’s inclusion in the local government’s urban planning as a high priority, a limited but not so meaningless outcome.
Korean local representatives in the colonial council could be counted as collaborators to the imperialist government, and their constituency was in fact the rich and powerful class among colonial Koreans. However, their “political activities” were not totally free from the pressure of the Korean people and their opinions, which was mainly led by Korean newspapers. Therefore, regardless of their own intention, they found themselves on the front of “politics of national conflict” with Japanese colonialists.