김정은 시대의 멘탈리티 위반의 서사 - 단편소설 「정든 곳」의 국가 윤리와 개인의 욕망 사이

Abstract

Park Kwang’s “A Lovely Place”(2019) is the short story in which a female teacher who comes to an island branch school with a sense of responsibility in teaching students edifies ‘me’. Cho-hyang, a female teacher, represents national ethics and social pressure, but ‘I’ is a problematic character delved obsessed with loneliness and solitude. The story reveals the gap between ideal and reality, the sense of alienation not belonging to the socialist great family, and individualistic and erosive desire away from collectivism through psychological conflicts and emotional change of ‘I’. The inner side of ‘I’, described with real mind and fickle emotion, has not been uttered by voice. In general, North Korean literature has propagated the state discourse and party goals through people who passionately carry out the mission given by the state. However, “A Lovely Place” features a formerly secondary character as the protagonist, revealing the vivid inner conflicts of the character that needs to be corrected. The psychologically unstable protagonist is different from the existing protagonists who have internalized and practiced national policies and discourses. On the other hand, the story uses the first-person narrative to describe the psychological conflicts and emotions of ‘I’, and an omniscient viewpoint to convey the social expectations and ethics of the state. The shift of viewpoints is a strategy to control the narrative of the violation with a public voice. The stories of an individual in the living world conflicting with the discourse of the state proves that North Korea’s social pressure is not being uniformly exercised as before. In particular, the uncontrolled loneliness, solitude, ambitions for success and desire for recognition of ‘I’ indirectly express the other side of North Korean society that is not satisfied with the present life. This is a violation of the mentality that has been firmly established in North Korea for a long time.