염상섭의 『효풍』에 나타난 해방기 노동 인식 연구 - 애국과 노동 개념의 연동성을 중심으로 -

Abstract

Immediately after liberation, Korea suffered many conflicts due to ideological confrontations between the left and right and economic and political turmoil. In particular, the background of the times when the labor movement itself could not be supported made labor novels inevitably have a specific tendency or partisanship. Of course, during the liberation period, even if it was not a labor novel, there were many novels to guide workers and the public by putting forward the political ideology of the left and right. In this regard, it is difficult to say that problems such as tendency and partisanship are only problems of labor novels. In other words, it can be seen that novels at that time often did not deal with the lives and perceptions of actual workers. In this regard, Yeom Sang-seob's 『Hyopung』 is noteworthy. 『Hyopung』 is a political novel, but it has an intermediate tendency, and because it is a love novel, it also contains the characteristics of popular novels. This suggests the possibility that 『Hyopung』 will be relatively free from tendency because it is a work with a middle tendency, and that it will naturally reproduce the society and human group of the time in that it also shows the aspect of popular novels. In addition, given that Yeom Sang-seob is evaluated as an author who tried to capture historical reality through novels, Yeom Sang-seob's novel is likely to vividly capture the social reality of the time. In response, this paper analyzed the 『Hyopung』 to examine how the lives of workers at the time were revealed, and at the same time, newspaper articles were analyzed to study the perception of labor during the liberation period. 『Hyopung』 criticizes ideological confrontation and dollarism. In the midst of the ideological confrontation between the left and the right, those who want to rise on the ideology using the confusion of their country as an opportunity and Dollar-Hegemonie were viewed as opportunists. In this situation, what the author of 『Hyopung』 emphasizes is patriotism. He thought that only production activities conducted honestly in a legitimate way were patriotic acts that would change Korean society during the chaotic liberation period. The theme consciousness of 『Hyopung』 is similar to the appearance of society at the time when it tried to recover its economic power through labor to escape the U.S. military government and achieve true independence. To this end, the state at the time enacted labor laws, encouraged labor, and supported forced conscription and conscription compatriots to secure the working population. However, self-discipline and patriotism through labor presupposes an increase in workers’ working hours. It can be seen as forcing workers to sacrifice in the name of patriotism.