KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study examines the naebang-gasa texts <Jeonghwaga> and <Jeonghwadapga>, composed within the early twentieth century Manchurian exile community, to elucidate how their modes of affectionate communication sustained emotional bonds among women. Whereas earlier scholarship on Manchurian gasa has focused primarily on issues of authorship and bibliography, this study treats the two works as a paired exchange and analyzes the emotional architecture generated through calling, inviting, replying, and counter-speaking. In <Jeonghwaga>, Kim Wurak employs intimate address terms, gentle invitations, humor, and playful teasing to soothe her kin and reanimate relational ties. These gestures exemplify what Carol Gilligan terms the “ethics of care,” foregrounding responsiveness and relational responsibility as strategies for enduring hardship. In <Jeonghwadapga>, Yeongyang Namssi transforms such gestures into sentiments of solidarity and hope by offering explanations, counter-teasing, and promises of future reunion. Together, the two texts map a circulatory system of emotions—laughter, lament, comfort, and anticipation—that articulates a shared emotional community among exiled women. These interactive practices also demonstrate the continuity of the naebang-gasa tradition of Gyeongbuk, in which women historically sustained communal ties through reading, composing, performing, and exchanging gasa. The affectionate language and responsive structure of the two works reveal how this cultural repertoire operated as a vital “language of survival” in the unfamiliar conditions of exile. Ultimately, the study underscores the literary and cultural significance of naebang-gasa as a women’s record that maintained kinship cohesion through care, response, and affective solidarity.

Naebang-gasa, <Jeonghwaga>, <Jeonghwadapga>, Manchurian exile, affectionate communication, care ethics, emotional community, women’s, writing