우리는 이방인-이웃을 사랑할 수 있을까? - 최근 한국소설 속의 이방인-이웃들 -

Abstract

We are in the midst of a global era. Korea, too, has entered a multicultural and multinational age, with several new foreign-neighbors appearing in Korean society today. However, the attitude of Koreans toward these foreigners, who have immigrated with longing and expectation for Korea, is far from hospitable. The Korean people’s hostility and orientalistic prejudice are manifested as epistemological and structural violence aimed at these foreign-neighbors. Discrimination and violence aimed at stranger-neighbors has become a core issue in Korean society today and Korean literature, too, has begun to show interest in this problem. The stranger-neighbors who have come into the spotlight in Korean literature are North Korean defectors, and migrant workers and wives from Southeast Asia. These two groups of people overcame all sorts of tribulations to come to Korea because they aspired for a Korean dream but experienced extremely inhuman and hostile prejudice after arriving here. Korean literature shows interest in these groups in two ways. The first focuses on showing how violent the prejudice toward these groups is and on discovering the source of this prejudice. Jeong Do-sang’s Wild Rose, Kang Young-sook’s Rina are representative examples that expose the fetishistic values that rate the exchangeable value of humans and the orientalistic pride and prejudice latent in Korean people’s consciousness. The second way actively explores ethics of the real that can overcome such irrational prejudices. Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari and Park Bum-shin’s Namaste suggest the ethics of hospitality and the recovery of motherhood as ways of overcoming prejudices.