「만무방」에 나타난 ‘불안’과 ‘유랑’의 서사

Abstract

This article, focusing on Kim You-Jeong’s Manmubang, examined Eung-Chil’s process of searching for the meaning of his own existence in the past and the present. Eung-Chil, the protagonist, was created as a character successfully gaining awareness of his own existence after searching, on the road, for his own existence through narrative of ‘wandering.’ In semiotics, modality undergoes serial changes according to the relationship between the subject and the object. The subject experiences disjunction with value objects while passing through narrative of the sentiment of Anxiety with the modality, resulting in ‘inability to exist’, continuing to bother the protagonist and lingering as resentment. This in turn is combined with the three episodes, functioning as the occasion for the subject to search for his existence or being. Eung-Chil witnesses that Eung-Oh is the person stealing the rice plant and becomes certain that it was due to forces of external coercion that he ended up being a Manmubang. It triggered the feeling of resentment, which he could not acknowledge, to transition into the feeling of Anxiety in the conclusion, presents it through an open ending. Kim You-Jeong, having Eung-Chil gain awareness of his own existence on the road, is talking about the need for recognition that life as a Manmubang is not just a problem or issue for Korean farmers under the Japanese colonial rule but for everyone.