@article{ART003244317},
author={Jinyoung Seo},
title={The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam},
journal={Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University},
issn={1598-3021},
year={2025},
volume={82},
number={3},
pages={371-408},
doi={10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371}
TY - JOUR
AU - Jinyoung Seo
TI - The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam
JO - Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
PY - 2025
VL - 82
IS - 3
PB - Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
SP - 371
EP - 408
SN - 1598-3021
AB - This study explores the diasporic consciousness embedded in the poetry of Kim Jong-sam, focusing on the Stimmung of guilt and existential anxiety as a fundamental mode of world-relation. Kim’s poetic subject emerges as a diasporic subject, estranged from the sacred due to a fractured relationship with the divine, and confined to a fallen world marked by silence and suffering. The speaker’s sense of alienation is intensified by the historical experience of exile and physical pain, which foregrounds a deep confrontation with the perceived absence of God.
Caught between the affirmation of divine absence and a persistent yearning for sacred presence, the subject embodies a paradoxical condition: unable to fully reject the sacred, yet feeling unworthy of reentering it.
This tension is articulated through conflicting images such as “the God who is alive” versus “the God who does not hold my hand.” Within this framework, poetry and music are not simply aesthetic forms of selfsalvation, but symbolic gestures that express the interplay of contradictory desires: denial and longing, despair and hope.
Ultimately, Kim Jong-sam’s poetry becomes a site of unresolved tension, where the absence of redemption coexists with the persistent longing for divine presence. His work articulates the tragic condition of the diasporic self—one that seeks grace in the silence of God, suspended in the space between abandonment and hope.
KW - Diasporic Subject;Sense of Guilt;Divine Absence;Personal;Redemption;Ambivalent Liminality;Existential Anxiety
DO - 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
ER -
Jinyoung Seo. (2025). The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 82(3), 371-408.
Jinyoung Seo. 2025, "The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam", Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, vol.82, no.3 pp.371-408. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo "The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 82.3 pp.371-408 (2025) : 371.
Jinyoung Seo. The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam. 2025; 82(3), 371-408. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo. "The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 82, no.3 (2025) : 371-408.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo. The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 82(3), 371-408. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo. The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University. 2025; 82(3) 371-408. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo. The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam. 2025; 82(3), 371-408. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
Jinyoung Seo. "The Diasporic Subject and Ambivalent Liminality in the Poetry of Kim Jong-sam" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 82, no.3 (2025) : 371-408.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.371
