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Later stories and women - Gendered literary circles in the 1990s and Choi Yoon's novels

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2023, 29(1), pp.177-215
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2023.29.1.006
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : January 6, 2023
  • Accepted : February 6, 2023
  • Published : February 28, 2023

Yeonjung Cho 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Choi Yoon's first novel collection There's a silent petal falling is a collection of works that played a great role in connecting the 80s and 90s. Reading Choi Yoon's early short story as a female ‘later story,’ this article confirmed her novel's achievement as a feminist narrative in the 90s and revealed how this achievement overcomes the limitations of Korean literature in the 90s. The part that should be read carefully in Choi Yoon's first work should be the meaning of the monologue of ‘girl,’ rather than the ethics of ‘man’ and ‘us’ chasing the missing ‘girl.’ In the first-person monologue directly delivered to the reader, she has become an active ethical subject that actively reveals the guilt of the survivor. If we pay attention to this point, this novel cannot simply be evaluated as a work that reveals the tragedy of Gwangju as an narrative of women's suffering. Watching the Father is a novel that shows that there is still a strong mind in the 90s that does not easily give up ideology and does not regret one's choice until the end. And what most clearly shows such a firm mind in the novel is the sudden death of a mother who did not attribute her life's misfortune to her husband who defected to North Korea and finally refused to meet him. Watching the Father is an example of the fact that later novels, written in the early 1990s, do not represent only the minds of certain generations and certain genders. Grey Snowman shows that women did not exist only as assistants of male activists in the scene of the movement in the 70 and 80s, and in the narrative of later stories written after the incident. In particular, what should be read meaningfully in this novel is the fact that women are the subject of writing later stories by tracing their memories and recording the past. It is also a special achievement of the novel to show that women's solidarity becomes powerful by sharing the experience of writing and further sharing a same ‘name’. Reading Choi Yoon's first novel again is a process of reaffirming the achievements of ‘female’ ‘later stories’. At the same time, it is an opportunity to know that Korean literature from the 1990s to a specific period has been represented only through the voice of a certain generation and a gender.

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