Translational Discursive Spaces in Immediate Post-Liberation Korea: Hearsay, Reportage, and Roundtables

Abstract

What did the postcolonial mean in Korea? Focusing on the transitional period between the end of the Japanese colonial period and the establishment of the Cold War system, this paper explores a variety of discursive and media spaces—hearsay, rumors, leaflets, rallies, reportage, and roundtable talks—through which Koreans attempted to translate and transform colonial forms of language and interaction into new postcolonial entities. By examining immediate post-Liberation publications like Baengmin, Munhwa Joseon, Joseon munhak, Munhak yesul, Sincheonji, Minseong, and others, I ask the following questions. First, how were Japanese forms of language and interaction translated into Korean within this intermediate historical space? Second, how did this process of translation intersect with the rapid postcolonial proliferation of alternative media and discursive spaces like hearsay, rumors, leaflets, rallies, reportage, and roundtable talks? Third, to what extent did these new forms of interaction and address operate within the temporal (past vs. future), spatial (south vs. north), and ideological (left vs. right or our side vs. their side) frameworks and clashes? By asking these questions, I hope to show how the meaning of the postcolonial in Korea was formed through a dynamic process of translation where the boundaries of the new and the old, the true and the false, and the political left and right crisscross.