재일(在日) 제주인 김태생의 문학 연구 - 작품 「뼛조각(骨片)」에 나타난 재일제주인의 삶의 공간과 아버지상(アボジの像) -

Abstract

This paper is a study on the ‘life space and image of father’ in 「Bone Fragment」 by Kim Tae-saeng, a Jeju Island local and expatriate in Japan. First, the space of a Jeju islander living in Japan presented in 「Bone Fragment」 is not a place confined solely to the artist's personal experience, but is a realm existing within the relationship between the awareness and identity of a group, that is, the Jeju population living in Japan. They were unable to secure a relationship with Japanese society due to discrimination and contempt, and thus instead chose to ensure their existence through spatial alienation by selecting the ‘periphery’ that was alienated from the ‘center’. While it is a place where ‘Jeju’ is accepted without heterogeneity in the society of ‘Japan’, it also implies the irony of incorporating ‘Jeju’ into Japanese society and the society of Koreans in Japan based on the heterogeneity. The father who appears in the plot shows colonial neurosis with a displaced attack. This is a depiction of a Jeju expatriate in Japan suffering from colonial neurosis in Japanese society, living in a detached position, unable to adapt himself to anywhere, including the society and home. However, the author’s contempt for the father turns into sympathy and sadness as the father epitomizes a male Jeju expatriate in Japan. The perception was expressed first as hatred and rejection of the father stemming from a sense of betrayal and abandonment due to the father’s absence, but then shifted to understanding and sympathy. Upon his father's death, he came to understand him, feeling a sense of unity with his father, and ultimately recognized his existence as a Jeju expatriate living in Japan. In the end, the father’ character in 「Bone Fragment」 is a double-sided existence who is both a villain who made his family’s life miserable and a victim of history. It was the very image of the Jeju people in Japan facing Japanese society.