미결정의 공포에서 숭고한 공포로―식민지 조선 공포 서사의 분화과정 연구―

Abstract

This article attempted to examine the search of colonial Korean pop culture for he- donistic fear through the process of differentiation between ghost stories and grotesque novels. Korea’s recreational horror genre started with the ghost stories in the Daily Maeil in the 1927-1930. The ghost story of the Daily Maeil was constructed with attemped horror which was based on surreal objects such as ghosts and goblins, and the media juxtaposed traditional ghost stories with contemporary surreal experiences together. The ghost stories of the Daily Maeil in the 1927-1930 promoted an undecided fear that neither witchcraft nor science could approve, since it was not easy to secure narrative stability by grafting the cultural request for grotesque taste with reality in Colonial Korea. As intended horror depended on the oddities of the objects of stories such as ghosts and goblins, the publishing subjects of the media who composed the ghost story had to establish a logical basis for the reality of ghosts and goblins. The desire to streetize the surreal experience that was difficult to explain resulted in fossilizing a ghost story into a story of the past, which was a consequence of securing a sense of rationality of the present. It could be said that the fact that the ghost story adhered to the temporality of the premodern era was the result of the self-rationalization of modern knowledge, which appropriated the logical and ideal as the present and projected the irrational and irrationality into the past. The comprehensive magazine Cho-kwang, which pursued popularity, launched a new style of horror narrative called ‘grotesque novels’ in a hierarchical perspective, which was clearly distinguished from the past ‘monster stories.’ In the ‘grotesque novel’, the colonial horror narrative focused on the abyss that caused a crack in the stability of existence within humans, which was hardly found in the old ghost stories of the past. Through this, the colonial horror narrative was able to lay the foundation for a narrative that could respond to the de- mands of popular culture for hedonistic horror without relying on a magical external existence. Contrary to the fact that the ghost stories pointed to the fossilized past, the grotesque novels aimed at the ideology of the absolute totality of modernity assumed as a time of infinite possibility, but exposed a sense of lack and anxiety hidden in the longing of the colonial youth for the modern era.