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Post-war Countryside and The Narrative of The Impossible Revolution

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2022, 28(2), pp.353-391
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2022.28.2.011
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : April 29, 2022
  • Accepted : June 15, 2022
  • Published : June 30, 2022

Lee Min Young 1

1국민대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the consisting process of the narrative of the revolution in the 1960s focusing on the narrative of the revolution in Oh Yu-gwon’s Bangatgol Revolution. It was the 1960s when various meanings of revolution reappeared and disappeared at once. However, there are not many works that actually deal with the contemporary meaning of the revolution. It is worth noting that Oh Yu-gwon deals with the problem of revolution in the background of rural society. Bangatgol Revolution, which explains the village’s feudal status system as the cause of division and conflict, makes the problem of class conflict visible and reveals the possibilities of a tabooed revolution. In addition, it visualizes the spectacle of the brutal violence of warfare contrasting peaceful rural landscapes, not battlefields. And through this, the novel reveals the will to pursue peace and solidarity beyond ideological conflicts. In this process, the love between Suntae and Geumsoon, the protagonists, emerges as a peaceful alternative to overcome the class conflict between Sangchon and Hachon. The revolutionary wills of the Bangatgol Revolution, driven by romantic love, are thwarted by the powerful anti-communist ideology. The protagonist, who has a career on the left, confirms the reality that there is no outside anti-communist party through war. And in a village where political speech is prohibited, they try to bond the town’s people by blood to resolve the conflict. The polygamous family system appears as the only way to close the anxiety of division and conflict that lies between the upper and lower villages. Ultimately, the revolutionary theory of peace, which forbids all violence and revenge, ends in the form of a regressive primitive community. The discourse of the revolution of Bangatgol Revolution could be considered as a mirror image of the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, which lost its prospects. Resolving the problem of deep-rooted inequality and abuse of the town becomes no longer the goal of the revolution. The regressed will of the revolution erases the historicity and locality of the town, transforming the town into a mythical space. And this imaginary space is precariously maintained by killing the young people of Sangchon who have returned. The revolutionary narrative of Bangatgol reveals the archetypal structure of a war narrative of a rural while mythizing the images of the nation. And it confirms how the spirit of revolution was distorted and appropriated in a divided society.

Citation status

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