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Literary Rendering of 3⋅1 Movement in Yeom Sang-seop's Mansejeon and Hyun Jin-keon’s Hometown

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2019, (110), pp.143-174
  • DOI : 10.21793/koreall.2019.110.143
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Received : August 14, 2019
  • Accepted : September 16, 2019
  • Published : September 30, 2019

Lim Hwan Mo 1

1전남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study contemplates the spirit of the 3⋅1 Movement as a significant event of human kind in the scale of world history and its lasting legacy passed down to Korean novels of 1920s, such as Yeom Sang-seop's Mansejeon and Hyun Jin-keon’s Hometown. This investigation will be followed by a modest proposal on the direction the contemporary Korean literature is obliged to pursue. The 3⋅1 Movement was a series of nationwide resistance, which started in March 1919 and continued the year around to achieve independence from Japanese occupation. It was essentially a process to establish Korean nationality and identity as an imagined communities by solidarity of multiple subjects from all stages of life and social strata. It marked a watershed in the modernization process of national subjectivity, separated from the colonial civilization governed by Japanese imperialist. Yeom Sang-seop's Mansejeon delineates the absurd and deserted reality of colonized Joseon, derived from the intrinsic contradiction, and the servility that degraded the life of people into that of the living dead. This medium-length narrative conjures up an aspiration towards certain 'event' in the literary form of novel and describe its capability to break through the 'reality of Joseon' and what inevitably led the 3⋅1 Movement with the circumstances. Hyun Jin-keon’s short novel, Hometown, by the way, depicts 'the face of Joseon' to explain how the individuals as unclad existence are expelled from their hometowns and become refugees in Joseon where the intrinsic contradiction seized the power. Then what would be the capability and responsibility of Korean literature after 100 years from the 3⋅1 Movement? It would be achieving complete autonomy and independence from invasive oppressions as Mansejeon exemplifies. It also would be the efforts to protect rights and interests of minority groups and enhance the life condition of those who have been the victimized others under social hierarchy and ended up being homo sacers with abject lives as displayed in Hometown. This endeavor can only be rightfully valid when it achieves the universality in the context of human history.

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