선우휘 소설에 나타난 ‘아시아․태평양 전쟁’ 인식- 「불꽃」과 「묵시」를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper was written to examine the perception of the Asia-Pacific War in Sun Woo-hwi's short stories. Sun Woo-hwi experienced the Asia-Pacific War at the end of the Japanese colonial period in korea as he passed through his youth, but his experiences and perceptions of the war are not being published in earnest in his novels. The main issues surrounding Sun Woo-hwi's novels have been discussed, especially in relation to his anti-communist aspect, focusing on the conflict between the left and right sides of the liberation period or the tragedy of national conflict. This paper attempted to analyze Sun Woo-hwi's experience of war at the end of the Japanese colonial period, which has been alienated from the subject of intensive lighting in his research on literature, through 「Fireworks」(1956) and 「Apocalypse」(1971). In the case of Fireworks, Sun Woo-hwi's success story is a chronological reminder of the national historical events from the March 1st Movement in 1919 to the Korean War from the perspective of Gohyeon, a former student soldier. In the case of Implicit Poetry, it is a novel that sheds light on the issue of pro-Japanese cooperation by novelist Lee Kwang-soo during the Asia-Pacific War through the recollection of the narrator “I” and asks the question of how to evaluate the pro-Japanese issue under Japanese colonial rule. In the case of 「Fireworks」, I analyzed that although Gohyeon, the main character, was set as a student soldier, Japan's perception of imperialism and colonialism as well as the Asia-Pacific War was superficially recognized, hindering the completeness of the novel. Sun Woo-hwi's characters, who sought stability in life from the continuation of daily life, show an attitude in which it accepts and acts with the sense of “confusion,” “horror,” and “absurd” in the development of historical situations such as the Asia-Pacific War or the liberation of korea. This was seen as a problem arising from the lack of sophisticated awareness of ‘structural violence’ of colonialism and imperialism. In the case of 「Apocalypse」, it is a work that sheds light on the problem of Lee Kwang-soo's pro-Japanese cooperation in the process of intensifying the Asia-Pacific War at the end of the Japanese colonial period. What is intensively highlighted in this work is the interpretation surrounding the authenticity of Lee Kwang-soo's claim that he is pro-Japanese for the people, which he emphasized in his discourse on war cooperation. The novel's character, “I,” argues that Lee Kwang-soo's active pro-Japanese acceptance of Japanese colonial rule is problematic, but through this argument, it is an act that stems from the strategy to expand korea's autonomy after the end of the Asia-Pacific War. The main character of the novel, “I,” plans terrorism with blatant anger over Lee Kwang-soo's pro-Japanese activities, but gives up after hearing the story of such a teacher. The author analyzed that Sun Woo-hwi's memory of the Asia-Pacific War at the end of the Japanese colonial period was suppressed for a considerable period of time in the process of reproducing his experience as the main subject of the novel. The 1965 Korea-Japan Agreement raised the issue of historical perception of the nature of Japanese imperialism and colonialism and how to view Korean pro-Japanese cooperation, which raised the issue of Sun Woo-hwi's perception and evaluation of the Asia-Pacific War and pro-Japanese cooperation, which was only borrowed from Fireworks. However, to conclude, it can be said that Sun Woo-hwi avoided the issue of historical evaluation of the historical significance of the Asia-Pacific War and the issue of active pro-Japanese cooperation among Korean intellectuals such as Lee Kwang-soo. This is because I thought that anti-communism in the Cold War system, which was more firmly established after the Korean War, was a stronger realist regulation than the problems of imperialism and colonialism in Japan.