KJCKorea
Journal Central

In Lee Kangbeak’s early 1970s works, the situations that can infer the political realities of the time are continually described. The situations are mostly about the ruling classes that dominate violent power structure and the masses obedient to the ruling classes. The writer incarnated the times using allegory to avoid oppression such as Public Performing Act. Therefore, the studies on Lee Kangbeak’s works at this times are mostly dealt with in external angle. However, as the writer declared, allegory has the characteristic that can achieve the universal truth surpassing the time and the place. So the purpose of this study is to analyze what universal realities this work represents in an approach of internal angle. This study focuses on <Watchman> which shows remarkable political allegory among Lee KangBeak’s early works. The narrative draws the various aspects of the conflict across the fear of the attack of the wolves, the ignorance of the masses, and the question of the existence of the wolves posed by the ruling person of the power, the village chief. This study sees the three elements contribute to produce and firmly maintain the wrong form of ruling system. In other words, under the circumstance of the fact covered up, the masses swept away by the delusional ideology tend to be included in the control of the power voluntarily. And this phenomenon makes the ruling ideology, totalitarianism. The repetition of the people not progressing infers that the tragic situation will be caught in a vicious circle. To conclude, <Watchman> shows how violent power structure incarnates through various characters. Particularly, social structure descried as totalitarianism can be maintained by the masses of various classes as well as certain type of ruling class involving. This leads awakenings on the mechanism of the power which exists in the real world and provides an opportunity for readers to reconsider the social structure.

authority, crowd, politics of fear, totalitarianism, violence