이호철 소설과 일본 : 분단체제와 한일관계의 연속성

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the meanings of Japan appearing in Lee Ho-cheol's novels. Lee Ho-cheol, who made his debut in 1955 with the story Escaping Home, actively and continuously wrote novels for over 50 years. As a writer who had come from North Korea, he wrote his individual experiences on loss of his home. While participating in democracy movement from the 1970s, his world of artwork gradually changed. In particular, he was embroiled in the Writers Spy Case that occurred in 1974 and imprisoned. His major charge was that he had contributed an article criticising the government to a Jochongnyeon(the pro-North Korean Residents’ league in Japan) magazine. Such experience of his greatly affected his life as a writer. In particular, such experience led him to reflecting on the colonialization of Korea by Japan and the reality of division of Korea. That Lee Ho-cheol discussed the influence by Japan from the late 1970s in his world of artwork is very meaningful in estimating the division system of the Korean Peninsula and its history of colonization on the whole. His representative novels that reflect on the issues of the division system of the Korean Peninsula through relationship with Japan include Yeokryeo, Water Flows to Become a River, and The Door. In these works, Japan functions as a medium of memory and at the same time is where one faces the values of capital. In the works, the actual circumstances under which the establishment of a new relationship between Korea and Japan is attempted by the power of capital are sharply described. That the issue of the divided system of the Korean Peninsula reflected on through other of Japan was dealt with is a crucial achievement of Lee Ho-cheol's novels from the 1970s. Accordingly, this paper examined the continuity between the divided system of the Korean Peninsula and Korea-Japan Relationship appearing in Lee Ho-cheol's novels.