제국을 넘나든 새벽바람, 『효풍』의 미학과 주체의 포이에시스

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze Yeom Sang-seop’s novel Hyopung. After migrating to Manchuria early in the 1930s, Yeom underwent a dense period of writerly inactivity. It is known that he serialized the novel Gaedong in the Manseon-ilbo, where he worked as editor in chief at this time, but no manuscript has been found, and only a few fragmentary drafts of an introduction remain as traces of this time. It seems that during his time in Manchukuo, Yeom sought recognition for ‘Joseon Literature’ from the Manchurian literary world and ‘Il-Man,’ opting for a sort of lesser evil by attempting to preserve ‘Joseon’ as a nationalistic label. Only after the end of the Pacific War, meeting the liberation abruptly in his Manchukuo home, was Yeom able to shake off the label ‘Man-Seon’ and return to ‘Joseon.’ Here it is necessary to consider that the ‘Liberation Space’ to which Yeom returned was a place of unprecedented integration of the literary and political spheres, where right and left literary organizations struggled for ownership of the word ‘nation.’ Moreover, it is at this time that the postwar system of the Pacific War, with the emergence of new forces to replace the fallen Japanese Empire, resulted in the division of the Korean Peninsula. Serialized in Jayu Sinmun in 1948, Yeom’s Hyopung is noteworthy in that it traverses all of these contexts, from the remnants of the fallen Japanese empire, to the new American and Soviet Cold War empires of the postwar system, and beyond to the ideologies associated with this and the establishment of national labels like ‘Joseon.’ It is especially significant that the logic of ‘center’ for which Yeom argued in the liberation space is marked in Hyopung as a ‘Joseonhak,’ or ‘Joseon Studies,’ free from the influence of politics and empire. Thus, in this essay I employ the perspective of trans-war history in order to show that Hyopung is a penetrating look at this ‘transition period of empire.’