선전물로서의 번역, 전쟁터로서의 여성 – 북한 대외홍보지 『새조선(新朝鮮)』에 게재된 여성영웅서사의 번역을 중심으로

Abstract

During the Korean War, a series of novels were translated through North Korea’s external publicity magazine New Korean, showing Chinese readers images of heroes fighting devotedly on the battlefield. Among these, Heroine occupy a unique position as a symbol that cleverly reveals the conflict between ideology and aesthetics and the antagonistic relationship between grand and individual discourses. This study selected Lim Sun-deuk’s Cho Ok-hee and Hwang Geon’s The Burning Island as research subjects and examined the adaptation and appropriation of female characters. Cho Ok-hee, created by female writer Im Sun-deuk, is a novel that tells the story of how Jo Ok-hee was captured, tortured, and shot while working as a guerrilla member through personal and group narratives. Through the rewriting of New Korea, Jo Ok-hee was transformed from a human being overflowing with femininity into a desexualize subject armed with love for her country, people, and leader. Burning Island, created by male writer Hwang Geon, is a novel that narrates the story of the coastal artillery company commander Lee Dae-hoon and the female operator Kim Myeong-hee spending their final time together during the battle to defend Wolmido. In New Korea the content expressing the ‘noble love’ of the male and female protagonists was clearly filtered out, and only the heroic images of the Wolmido Coastal Artillery crew, filled with ‘fiery patriotism’ and ‘noble revolutionary spirit’, were conveyed to Chinese readers. Cho Ok-hee and Burning Island are stories of sacrifice that recreate the death of Heroine. Although Jo Ok-hee and Kim Myeong-hee passed away in the text, through the translation of New Korea, Heroine from North Korean meet Chinese readers and are ‘reincarnated’ again in the Chinese literature. However, this ‘reincarnation’ comes with additional conditions. Only by abandoning the individual ego and joining the collective subject, that is, the desexualized subject, can the female hero obtain the ticket to enter the field of translation aimed at external propaganda. Through this, we can confirm the role that Heroine played in the grand discourse of external propaganda.