• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.313-322
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• 2019

This study poses a question on whether the Jangmadang Generation, which has been the focus of the sociological interest, can form an actual generation by transcending the social classes, status of students, ethnicity, and gender, etc. Therefore, in this study, the author compared the consciousness of the Jangmadang Generation in terms of politics, education, society, compliance with law, and education with their preceding generations. The data used in this study were gathered from the North Korean defectors who defected within the past five years over the period from November to December 2016. A total of 200 questionnaires were used for data analysis, which was conducted using SPSS 20.0, in order to show differences between groups and perform frequency analysis. The analysis results showed that the consciousness of the Jangmadang Generation in politics, society, compliance, and education was lower, while the economic consciousness was significantly higher compared to earlier generations. As their objective generational status, the Jangmadang Generation had experienced the 'March of Ordeal' and 'Collapse of Public Education' while they were still teenagers. Such a difference in their generational status influenced the formation of different consciousness as a generation compared to the earlier generations. Compared to the earlier generations who received 'proper public education,' the Jangmadang Generation, who did not receive 'decent public education' shows a generally lower level of consciousness compared to the earlier generations. As such, the Jangmadang Generation has the potential to form a separate generation with a different generation consciousness from that of earlier generations.