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‘Demolition Order’ Notifications Appearing in Korean Literature under the Rule of Japanese Imperialism

  • Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • 2019, 76(2), pp.237-269
  • DOI : 10.17326/jhsnu.76.2.201905.237
  • Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : January 10, 2019
  • Accepted : February 9, 2019
  • Published : May 31, 2019

PARK JUNG-HEE 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study considers how literary works responded to the ‘demolition of the poor’ according to city planning near the end of the period of Japanese colonization and what they meant. Confirmation and advancement of town planning in Gyengseong in the middle and late 1930s led to the massive demolition of the poor, which went beyond the previous intermittent level, and became a social problem. The colonial authority notified shanty town inhabitants of ‘demolition orders’ in order to build ‘Great Gyeongseong’ by widening up the area and cleaning up the city. The inhabitants were forced out to be ‘la nuda vita’ by the demolition order, via deportation and exclusion. They resisted the ‘official demolition orders’ by submitting ‘petitions’ and by holding demonstrations, but they could not stop the demolition since they were ‘illegal occupants’. Among literary works dealing with the life of the poor in a colonial city, it is not easy to identify works that either focus on or inquire into the ‘demolition’ problem. The central subject of the works that this study pays attention to is the massive ‘demolition of the poor’ due to the urbanization of Gyeongseong at the end of Japanese colonization era. ‘Demolition order’ notifications appearing in literature at this time make a point beyond revealing the shanty town inhabitants’ lives in poverty or dealing with collective resistance. Before This Spring is Over (1937), which approaches the ‘demolition order’ situation of the shanty towns as an allegory situation of the intellectual’s ‘ideology demolition’, is particularly a representative work that demonstrates the literary developments that came out of the ‘demolition orders’ of this period. In addition, Summer (1940) symptomatically captures the violence which emerged out of the combination of the ’construction of the city as a logistics base’ and ‘demolition orders’, and Foolish People (1940) symbolizes exitlessness of ‘the naked life’ through the fall of characters who maximize personal gains using the displaced people’s anxiety. This is the first study to have covered the demolition problem and literary works of the Japanese colonial period dealing with this issue. It is a meaningful investigation of the distinctiveness of the demolition of colonial housing that could not be turned into a universal problem of colonial modernity or urbanization at the literary level. It is expected that interest in ‘demolition and literature’ will be increased in relation to the history of Korean modern literature as a result of this study.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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