(임)모빌리티로 살펴보는 한국전쟁과 개인의 몸:『전쟁 쓰레기』를 중심으로

Abstract

This study aims to review the novel War Trash (2004) by Chinese-American author, Ha Jin. The novel is an account of the Korean War that took place in the Korean Peninsula, which, due to its geopolitical position, lies in the context of the ideological clash between the US and the Soviet Union as a international war. This article looks at the Korean War in the novel as an ‘ideology that moves,’ as it is engraved on the bodies and memories of prisoners of war and veterans. Also, it tries to examine the novel using the concept of ‘(im)mobility,’ a recently transformed paradigm of thinking that seeks to go beyond the limited concepts related to physical movement and transportation and toward interdisciplinary study. War Trash makes us contemplate various aspects of the Korean War, such as the participation of foreign war veterans and their position as outsiders. Mobility is a universal right granted to everyone. Although individuals can move wherever they will, their mobility could sometimes be limited by politically controlling individuals or by ideologies. Mobility that starts from movement is connected to ideology concentrated upon various layers of the body, then tattoos, read with abjection, and flyers in a war situation. Also, it could be an individual’s ways of relating or interacting with the world. In addition, the records of the lives of the veterans at various layers are illuminated again as individual micro-narratives, allowing us to look back on the meaning of individual lives and individual bodies. War Trash is a case in which (im)mobility of movement is extended to the mobility of thought because it reproduces the social dimension of the Korean War and affect especially in terms of individuals and their bodies.