• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.66
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• pp.317-355
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• 2020

Moon Ik-hwan's prison letters are valuable historical materials managed by the Moon Ik-hwan House of Unification, reflecting an aspect of modern and contemporary South Korea. He wrote these prison letters during a period of approximately 11 years and three months. Today about 800 of them remain and are in an urgent need for measures to ensure their long-term preservation and Use. This study set out to introduce their current state that had been made to the public only in fragments, analyze their characteristics as objects of records management, and propose directions and strategies to provide them as part of online service. For these purposes, the investigator analyzed Moon's personal life and life in prison as the backgrounds of their creation and examined their unique characteristics as prison letters according to the scope and size, recipients, reproduction and circulation process, and the medium of lettercards. Based on these efforts, the study shed new light on the significance of use in private archives and provided a case of online utilization tasks and strategies based on the characteristics of letters as one of the representative types of personal records.