이용악과 러시아 연해주, 그리고 국경의 감각

Abstract

Lee Yong-ak has been known as 'a poet of northern district', because he was born at Kyung-sung, Ham-buk Province and gave consistent poetic attention to the drifting and emigrant persons in the north of his hometown. His poems embodied the sufferings of Korean people wandering around Manchuria and were evaluated as typical Korean poems. This paper aims to investigate Lee Yong-ak's life and the meaning of Yunhaju as a poetic place in his works. To Lee Yong-ak, Manchuria was an observing place over the human world, but Yunhaju was an actual living place where his family had to go and come for livelihood. Not only his grandfather but also his parents engaged in business here and there in Yunhaju. In his childhood Lee also wandered about Yunhaju, carried on his mother's back. His father ended his life in the course of business trip. Lee's relatives containing those on the maternal line also lived in Russia. Vladivostok, being so often remarked by Lee, was a leading international city which was called the center of commerce and industry in the Orient. The city also had other nick-names such as the Western city in the Eastern world and the mecca of modern culture and art. Because of such features, Vladivostok became an escaping place for romantic youths of colonial Korea. Lee's elder brother, one of the romantic youths, also lived a bohemian life wandering in the far eastern Russia. Yunhaju of Russia was closely related to the many stories and various memory of Lee's family history, which led him to write poems. Lee Yong-ak's parents made their living by smuggling, and unavoidably had to cross the border line secretly. So, to them, the border was a place of horror, dishonor and death. Carried on his mother's back, Lee also had to go and come across the border taking breaths, the experience of which left a trauma in his body. On the other hand, the languages and images stemmed from the adventures of breaking through the border became the prime motor of Lee's writing poems. His keen sensibilities on the border caused him to put an unusual focus on the 38th Parallel, and became a motive for his positive political and cultural activities like opposing the single government, supporting the establishment of a unified government and joining in the Group of Culture Craftsman. Josun and Manchuria were confined in the Japanese imperialism, but Yunhaju was a special place for the Korean literary field because it could help to imagine an another world outside the Japanese imperialism.