본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

A Study on the Mobilization of Women at the End of the Japanese Colonial Period in the Novels of Ha Geun-chan and Park Wan-seo

  • Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • 2025, 82(3), pp.409~443
  • DOI : 10.17326/jhsnu.82.3.202508.409
  • Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : April 10, 2025
  • Accepted : May 8, 2025
  • Published : August 31, 2025

LEE JIEUN 1

1서울대학교 인문학연구원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article points out that the memories of the mobilization at the end of Japanese colonial period are reconstructed around men, and that the mobilization generation, a collective political entity, was also formed without women. It then focuses on the mobilization of women in Korean literature. It is very important that Ha Geun-chan and Park Wan-seo, who repeatedly dealt with the issue of women’s mobilization in Korean literature, are of the same generation as the victims. In particular, regarding the issue of women’s mobilization, they showed a sense of accountability for their testimony as those who avoided mobilization. Ha Geun-chan repeatedly wrote about the history of the nation’s suffering in the wake of the 1965 Korea-Japan Agreement, in which he shows that the fate of women in the 10s and 20s at the end of the Japanese colonial period was trapped between the empire’s mobilization and marriage for the reproduction of the nation. Ha Geun-chan’s novels reveal that marriage for the reproduction of the nation is also a form of violence that infringes on women’s right to self-determination. This is important in that it breaks away from the gendered system of representation between empire and colony. Meanwhile, When the issue of ‘comfort women’ came to the public eye in the 1990s, Park Wan-seo began to seriously address the issue of women mobilization. Park Wan-seo extended the damage of the Japanese Empire’s war crimes to the generational by showing that the damage of women’s mobilization should include not only the suffering of the victims but also the resentment of those who had to give up the precious things in their lives to avoid it. The “Women’s Mobilization Generation,” which was formed by those who were able to avoid mobilization, reveals a group subject that has been excluded from the concept of the male-centered war generation. Furthermore, this shows the possibility of forming a generation through solidarity based on a communal ethic, rather than forming a generation through political collectivization.

Statistics

  • 1 Viewed
  • 1 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2024 are currently being built.

Basic Search Advanced Search