난민의 언어적 조건과 ‘증인’의 시선: 월남작가의 수기(手記)를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper discusses the cases of two memoirs which were written by writers who came from North Korea. They published their memoirs after coming to the South. Especially this paper focuses on the linguistic restrictions in the spatial condition of South Korea. In a one instance, Poet Park, Nam-su wrote a memoir criticizing the literary circles in the North. However, Park only used a pen name and did not reveal that he had written it. That led to a long-time confusion about who the real writer was. His memoirs recorded many reports about their experiences under the Communist Party, but it didn’t reveal facts what he want to conceal. This paper calls that concealment as a concept of ‘linguistic vacuum’. Reviewing the cases, this paper focuses on the fact that his political involvement in the Communist Party was already recognized by politicians as well as peers in the South. This differentiates this paper from the existing studies, which focus in a black and white way of thinking whether his participation was voluntary or not. As his service to the North Korean government was already known in literary circles in the South, the fact was an open secret. Since a secret is only valid when it is not publicized, the writers’ past action of serving the North was essentially no longer a secret, even though they wanted to keep it hidden and his peers did not make his pasts widely known. He could not help but still feel psychological pressure because his secret became widely known, despite the assumption that his peers would protect him from fierce anticommunist policies at that time. In the point that many individuals already know the secret and that the secret is owned by others, the secret has a contradictory position. This paper demonstrates that the writers who came from the North were under political pressure that, thus, affected their works. Namely, the pressure fundamentally restricted them when choosing language and projecting society in their works.