디아스포라의 몸에 재현된 한국전쟁 - 『생존자(The Surrendered)』를 중심으로

Abstract

Lee Chang-rae's The Surrendered has been studied as Korean diaspora literature with themes of the memory, identity and universality of the separated Korean people. In this essay I will focus on the body of a diasporic person containing the memories of the Korean War. This is because it is believed that the body showed its identity by performing true mourning with the death of the body while connecting physical pain and disease to the past. Here the body is the language of existence, which is the place of association in which consciousness is expressed. Unlike simple experiences, this is an addition of reflection to broaden the horizon of life. The 11-year-old June, who failed to protect his dying brother on the road south, goes to an orphanage, but she eats and vomits repeatedly due to hunger caused by the sense of survival and guilt. Also, as a woman, she can't stand other’s eyes and responds with violence because she recognizes her body negatively. Then, she meets Sylvie, wife of a pastor, who is likely to relieve her guilt and hunger as a family member and comrade. But Sylvie dies and Jun follows Hector to America. She gets cancer from living without a sense of settlement while trying to be completely alone. Jun is willing to accept the pain by identifying the tumor with her brother, son, and Sylvie. Since consciousness is revealed by the body, the attitude toward the past is for living together in one's body. Therefore, it becomes a body that rejects things that were perceived negatively in the past. June, hugging the past, finds Hector and talks about her memories. And in Solferino, Italy the contact point of shared memory, she begins her journey to die. It was a place of genuine mourning where one could mourn her death and past, which she accepted as punishment. Jun's indomitable will for the end and the relationship she formed during her journey serve as an opportunity for Hector to open a new path. In the final scene where death and life overlap to live like crazy, Jun's body means that the boundary between life and death disappears and the past and the future coexist. Han June's body, which means June in Korea, records the existence of pain. In addition, the first and last chapters, which mean the universality of war, return from Solferino to the Korean War and extend the Korean people's memory narrative to reflection on the nature of war.