KJC Korea
Journal Central

Currently, Korean literature is experiencing a success through the combination of science fiction and literary literature. Accordingly, in terms of sentience, this study traces the changing aspects of subjectivity through Seung-ok Kim's 1960s SF, Djuna's 1990s SF, and Seon-ran Cheon's 2020s SF. Seung-ok Kim announced the birth of the modern subject in Korean literature through the ‘revolution of sensibility,’ and the 4.19 generation signifies the individuals who appear in their literature as ‘subjects of authenticity.’ Based on this, his “One Day of the Dπ9 Reporter, 50 Years Later”(1970) has a SF prediction of technological development, but the othering of women and anthropocentrism remain the same. The narrative, dominated by anxiety over the loss of human(male) identity, cannot imagine social innovation even though it is science fiction. Djuna's SF in the 1990s was completely unrelated to literary literature that focused only on the inheritance of authenticity, so paradoxically, it was important in expanding the literary field of the 1990s. Djuna, who established Korean SF as genre literature in cyberspace, not only deconstructs the subject of liberal humanism by being indifferent to the subject itself, but is also characterized by an anti-humanist worldview that extremely abhors anthropocentrism. As a result, Djuna's SF secures a feminist perspective by dismantling the authenticity regime centered on male intellectuals and seeking the outside of modern humanism, without directly attacking patriarchy or raising women's issues. Meanwhile, if Seung-ok Kim in the 1960s brought about a ‘revolution of sensitivity’ through the discovery of the individual and the construction of his own world, in the 2020s, Seon-ran Cheon presents ‘post-sensitivity’ through a humanoid Collie that becomes happy by feeling the happiness of others. In A Thousand Blues(2020), she goes beyond anthropocentrism and confirms that both humans and machines are sentient beings, even if their sense methods are different. In this way, the ‘post-sensibility’ shown in recent Korean SF expands to the characteristics of all sensing entities, breaking away from the subject of authenticity that secured subjectivity by othering the object and distinguishing it from the self. And speculative feminism, where science fiction, general fiction, and feminism intersect, illustrates the possibility of world change through science and technology.

The severity of the climate crisis has led to the academic proliferation of Anthropocene discourse. The concept of “Anthropocene fiction” has also emerged as a response to climate change. The Anthropocene can be perceived as a nomenclature and a contest of narratives around understanding and responding to reality. In literary studies, the establishment and practice of “anthropocene criticism” is called for. This paper critically analyzes Korean science fiction narratives that address the issues of climate crisis and artificial intelligence together from the perspective of climate fiction (Cli-Fi). James Lovelock, a proponent of the Gaia theory, is optimistic that the climate crisis will be solved by AI and calls it “the Novacene.” Many movies and novels also depict AI solving the climate crisis. So-yeon Kim and Hae-yeon Yoon's science fiction short stories “Gaia's Choice” and “Capsule for One” are narratives that delegate political power to AI as a "Green Leviathan" in the face of climate disaster. Ji-hong Park's sf comic “HOTEL, SINCE 2079” is a retrospective of the restoration process after human extinction by a non-human narrator, AI. Samsung Electronics' web drama Whale Dust is optimistic that AI technology will save the day in an era of gloomy climate disasters. This paper critiques the dangers of such techno-solutionist imaginaries of the climate crisis. Climate crisis and AI narratives have strong narrative and rhetorical power (effect) because they allow us to imagine narratives of global catastrophe and salvation. This paper emphasizes that climate crisis and AI narratives are about the transformation of our future.

This study focused on the increase in self-care narratives based on multiverse imagination in children & young adult SF, examining the pattern and considering its significance and limitations. The target works deal with self-care events that they go through while meeting 'themselves' in another universe, featuring female adolescents who are obsessed with thoughts that bother them. The journey to the self-care process is similar, but the aspect of the relationship with themselves is different. In Day of Daku and Children at the End of Red Thread they recognize themselves through a confrontation with "I" that bothers myself', and they have the courage to embrace themselves based on their confidence in themselves in the future, as you can see from the expressions like Your universe is my universe and In fact, only one person was enough. The reason for the increase in self-care narratives in recent children & young adult novels seems to be related to the reality that everyday small trauma pressures adolescents and makes them have negative egos. In this situation, SF's multiverse imagination does not lock "me" and "my world" inside, but rather contributes to making self-care events exciting and dynamic by embodying another individual and universe, otherwise, they could be made static and ideological. It also provides the imagination enabling a more three-dimensional and objective insight into "I". These works suggest that SF can be used as a more diverse storytelling technique as well as a device that symbolizes a future society. However, there is a limitation that they represent the problems with teenagers superficially, and narrow the multiverse imagination to something more fantastic than scientific by solving situations difficult to explain scientifically with fantastic motifs.