KJCKorea
Journal Central

When it comes to a general characteristic of poems written in North Korea in the 1990’s, how the poems metaphorically recognized the country as a father was the prominent feature of all. In the 1990’s, North Korea published poems written in South Korea, and the purpose of this act was considered a way to express a particular frame which the North Korean system was pursuing back then. A frame would be described in a form of metaphor which would understand and experience one individual object from an angle of another individual object, and because of that, all those frames developed from one single frame would have to go through a process of metaphor. In that regard, in terms of poems written in North Korea in the 1990’s, a frame of ‘suppression’ produced by a process of metaphor was regarded to create another frame of ‘liberation’. A total of 19 poems were included in 『Joseon Literature』 under a name of <South Joseon>, and all those poems were using the same frame, ‘suppression’. The poems, written in South Korea but included in 『Joseon Literature』 in the 1990’s, criticized the imperialism, which was working as a politically external pressure in North Korea, and found a cause of the division from the imperialism. The critical review on the imperialism and the frame of suppression internalized in the awareness of division produced frames of suppressed individuals, pains and liberation from pains as well as other frames of freedom, hope and will. In the poems speaking of contradictions of the society in South Korea, such will to liberation implicitly described a frame of how necessary it is to have a leader. The security of the justice of the system was found collectively in songs for KIM Jeong-il after the death of KIM Il-sung. While presenting the songs for KIM Jeong-il in a frame of <South Joseon>, this led people in North Korea to form a bond of ideological sympathy. The poems written in South Korea but included in 『Joseon Literature』 in the 1990’s spoke for domestic and foreign political issues even though they were based on the self-reliance. This feature of the poems written in South Korea but included in 『Joseon Literature』, therefore, acted as a way for North Korea to make its people understand the appropriateness of the presence of a leader during the transfer of power.

North Korea, 『Joseon Literature』, Poems written in South Korea but included in 『Joseon Literature』, Poems in South Korea, Frame, Metaphor, Political metaphor, G. Lakoff