고은의『만인보』와 근대적 주체의 문제 - 『만인보』읽기의 방법론(1)

Abstract

Ko Un’s Ten Thousand Lives is a collection of poems comprised of 26 volumes in total, which was first published in 1986. In fact, Ten Thousand Lives is unprecedented in the history of Korean poetic literature with the largest volumes among the anthology of poems written under a single theme. Ten Thousand Lives was written in the process of remembering the characters that a writer met when he was detained in Special Cell #7 at an army prison charged with ‘Conspiracy of Rebellion and Violation of the Martial Law’during the military coup in 1980. What matters is the interest in Ten Thousand Lives itself. At the same time, it is important to bring a new point of view, exceeding the limitation of the previous studies. Characters in various social classes appear in Ten Thousand Lives including neighbors encountered in private space and time, those who have existed in the history and in reality and transcendent and religious beings. In fact, the characters in Ten Thousand Lives are specific and living beings, forming a single community and public ontology. Therefore, as a collection of sequential poems, which has stated the process of being the subject, Ten Thousand Lives can be understood as modern subjects that vividly describe their modern life styles. A question of whether or not Korean modernization has been successful is another question on how much Korean society has preserved the value of civil society. Therefore, the implementation of the value of civil society is still an incomplete project and needs to be carried out through continued interest and criticism. The virtue of Ko Un’s Ten Thousand Lives lies in an attempt to describe the various problems, conflicts, pain and frustrations that occurred during Korean modernization through each character. Ten Thousand Lives sees that an individual is not an isolated being but a subject that seeks for its identity in the process of continuous interrelationship with others. Therefore, Ten Thousand Lives is significant in that it has illustrated the forming process of a Korean civil society. A civil society is the place where an individual wants others to become a leading entity. In other words, it is the space in which mutual recognition and recognition struggle take place. Individual freedom means the freedom free from any disturbance from others. However, this freedom can exist with the existence of others. It is a process of the self? evolution of Korean civil society to witness a variety of social conflicts such as Korean War, the April Nineteenth Uprising and May 16 Military Coup being restored through an individual life. Considering the unique characteristics of a Korean society in which public value and ethics were emphasized and its destructive and sad history, the individual who has the true value of civil society was the character that has been continuously pursued in Korean literature. Therefore, it appears that Ko Un’s Ten Thousand Lives is a narrative picture on the common lifestyle before and after the Korean War and piece of work which is significant in the history of Korean literature with the‘ Discovery of Individual.’