@article{ART003263805},
author={CHOI HYUNSIK},
title={Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo},
journal={Journal of Manchurian Studies},
issn={1738-3668},
year={2025},
number={40},
pages={37-80}
TY - JOUR
AU - CHOI HYUNSIK
TI - Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo
JO - Journal of Manchurian Studies
PY - 2025
VL - null
IS - 40
PB - The Manchurian Studies Association
SP - 37
EP - 80
SN - 1738-3668
AB - This paper explores the literary work and critical vision of poet Lee Soohyung as published in the Manseon Ilbo, the daily newspaper of the Manchurian Publicity Association. While the Manseon Ilbo served as an instrument of colonial propaganda, it also functioned as a literary platform for Korean writers seeking to develop a distinctly Manchurian Korean literature. At the paper, Lee headed the Poem Realism fellowship and published poems that depicted Manchurian urban life as a site of military domination and commodified desire. Through surrealist imagery, he transformed figures like the city, the prostitute, and St. Mary into symbols that revealed both the violence of colonial modernity and the tenuous hope of Koreans in exile. Lee’s essays on surrealism emphasized the use of vivid imagery accompanied with rhythmic vitality as means of reconciling aesthetic modernism with moral responsibility. However, his later “local” poems in Chokwang reoriented his poetics toward the realm of memory and compassion, exposing elements of resistance through recollection rather than avant-garde experimentation. Taken together, these writings reveal the artistic contradictions of a poet seeking literary autonomy within a colonial system—an ambition that ultimately became constrained by the Manseon Ilbo platform and the politics of the time. Building on this tension, this research examines how Lee’s dual position as both participant and critic of colonial production complicates scholarly understandings of Korean literary modernism in Manchurian Korean literature.
KW - Lee Soohyung;Manseon Ilbo;Manchurian Korean literature;surrealism;Poem Realism fellowship;colonial modernism;resistance
DO -
UR -
ER -
CHOI HYUNSIK. (2025). Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo. Journal of Manchurian Studies, 40, 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. 2025, "Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo", Journal of Manchurian Studies, no.40, pp.37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK "Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo" Journal of Manchurian Studies 40 pp.37-80 (2025) : 37.
CHOI HYUNSIK. Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo. 2025; 40 : 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. "Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo" Journal of Manchurian Studies no.40(2025) : 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo. Journal of Manchurian Studies, 40, 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo. Journal of Manchurian Studies. 2025; 40 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo. 2025; 40 : 37-80.
CHOI HYUNSIK. "Surrealism and Resistance : Lee Soohyung’s Literary Practice in Manseon Ilbo" Journal of Manchurian Studies no.40(2025) : 37-80.
