버마 전선 학병의 자기서사와 기억의 정치 — 박순동, 이가형을 통해 본 학병 서사와 ‘위안부’ 서사의 교차

Abstract

In the self-narratives of student soldiers, there is a politics of memory that resembles the oral testimony of women who were victims of Japanese military sexual slavery. The agency of self-narratives can be found in what is and what is not described. In particular, encounters with Japanese military sexual slavery are not an important element of student soldiers’ narratives. In this regard, it is important to identify traces of the Japanese military sexual slavery system in the memories of those who returned. This paper attempts to expand the narrative surrounding Japanese military sexual slavery by rereading texts that have hitherto not been included in the narrative of Japanese military sexual slavery while discussing the representation of this system. Park Soon-dong’s memoir, The Age of Despair, is a prototypical story of an anti-Japanese hero who escaped from the Japanese army and received OSS training. He said that Korean Japanese military sexual slavery was commonly observed on the front; however, he only observed it from a distance while objectifying it as a flower. Lee Ga-hyung, an abandoned Korean who was left alone because his body had been weakened by malaria, narrates the memory of the Burmese Front in his memoir The Defeat of the Burmese Front and novel River of Fury. He details his encounters with the Japanese military sexual slavery system in his memoir and novels. He regards Japanese military sexual slavery, prisoner guards, and student soldiers as scapegoats for the war. In particular, he forgoes becoming a hegemonic soldier by not having sex with the women held in sexual slavery. This is linked to his refusal to grow up by willingly accepting symbolic castration as a member of the colonial elite. Although Park Soon-dong and Lee Ga-hyung employ different methods, they both objectify Japanese military sexual slavery. This is because they failed to understand the performativity of Japanese military sexual slavery and did not understand their language. This remains an important problem for archiving the narrative of Japanese military sexual slavery.