표류와 표착 사이의 삶: 윤금숙의 『여인들』을 중심으로

Abstract

Although Yoon Keum-Sook was a writer who actively wrote her works in the 1950s and 1960s, her works have not been studied solely so far. Also, Yoon is known only as a Korean War women writer in the history of Korean literature. The purpose of this article is to recapitulate the life of Yoon Keum-Sook, and to illuminate the author’s work focusing on her collection of works, The Women. Yoon Keum-Sook is known only as a Korean War women writer, but she had joined Authors Under the Service of the Navy but rejected because she is ‘a woman.’ It is my assertion that previous studies, which have been defined Yoon as author of Authors Under the Service of the Army, should be reconsidered because there is no record indicating Yoon had joined or worked in Authors Under the Service of the Army. Focusing on The Women, the characteristics of the Yoon Keum-Sook’s novel can be summarized roughly into three facts. Firstly, the reality of the time such as the liberation of the motherland or the war is presented in a very concrete way, and the hard life of the characters living in the reality is the subject of the work. Secondly, types of character in Yoon’s novel are highly schematic: woman/man, victim/perpetrator, good/evil, sacrifice/violence. Women characters in Yoon’s novel mostly live miserable lives, which comes from a premodern view of women based on ‘masculine’ patriarchal ideology. Lastly, Yoon’s The Women reveals the anti-communism that is the ruling ideology of the time, in that it deals with the problems of the people who collaborate with the North Korean People’s Army during the Korean War. Also, the novel contains stories that encourage war and imbue people with will to fight against their enemy.