• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
• /
• no.82
• /
• pp.47-86
• /
• 2024

The role of the archive providing the service is crucial for making records more widely known and utilized. The personal letters exchanged between Moon Ik-hwan and Park Yong-gil are unique personal records that fill the gaps left by public records during the politically tumultuous period of the early 1980s in Korea. This paper aims to shed light on the context of record management by comprehensively analyzing these letters in terms of their interrelationships. To achieve this, the study analyzes the context of 694 letters exchanged between the two during Moon Ik-hwan's imprisonment in the third prison following the Kim Dae-jung Conspiracy Case. The research methodology involved reviewing literature and records to summarize the historical context and personal backgrounds, and a comparative analysis was conducted to reveal the interrelationships and meanings within the texts of the letters. The findings of this study can be summarized into three key points. First, the paper outlines the shared context of the letters by summarizing the political and social circumstances of the time, particularly focusing on the Kim Dae-jung Conspiracy Case, and the characteristics of individual relationships. Second, it distinguishes the direct methods of letter exchange, categorizing them into routine and atypical methods, and identifies the relationships between the letters, the flow of dialogue within them, and their distinctive features. Third, it explores the interrelations and meanings between the contents of the letters. Through this analysis, it was confirmed that the two sets of letters, as a unified and expansive text, display characteristics of integration, competition, and expansion in their content. This analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding the context of letters in record management and demonstrates the need for archives to provide rich contextual information when offering access to letters.