KJCKorea
Journal Central

In order to make the voice of Korean literature strong and influential enough in the dynamic field of world literature, any relevant fields and authors should keep working hard to figure out what and how they write. The reason for such argument is that in terms of world literature, it has been built upon this dynamic concept of introducing any diverse pieces of literature of their own originalities to as many readers as possible around the world. Referring to how 『Please Look After Mom』 written by SHIN Kyung-sook entered English and American publishing markets, this study looked into a narrative strategy and a translational strategy as well which Korean literature should work on to get itself introduced to the market of world literature. Since the novel of SHIN Kyung-sook had creative reasons in relation to the narrative strategy, it was able to make use of these new differences to knock on a door beyond the world of Korean literature. ‘Mom’ as the original form which had become familiar after being repeated via the narrative strategy of the novel by SHIN Kyung-sook develops into not only some stranger whom no one would know but also a subject that we should see with a sense of guilty. The narrative strategy of Author SHIN Kyung-sook made ‘mom’, the being of the original form, another ‘mom’, the boundary being. Not only that, 『Please Look After Mom』 by SHIN Kyung-sook passed through a prism of Translator KIM Ji-young, a boundary individual, and it became a whole new creation that the boundary individual had written on the boundary in collaboration with the main agent who created the piece from the beginning. She first interpreted the Korean literature which was trying to respond to demands of US market and afterwards, as far as the study understands, the tension of the boundary that the translator came to experience through the process of reproduction to ‘re-write’ the piece from the angle of this culture that had been growing her must have been a driving force to help her make distinguishable differences in comparison with other translators. The communication that the novel written by SHIN Kyung-sook had as world literature and that both the author and Translator KIM Ji-young had accomplished is believed to be something that could not have been realized without this process that the non-western world and the western world were engaged in to accept each other through production and translation of literature.

World literature, SHIN Kyung-sook, KIM Ji-young, Original form, Re-write, Translation, Narrative strategy