‘연안(延安)’으로 본 김사량의 <노마만리>

Abstract

Previous researchers incline to classify Kim Saryang’s Nomamanri into the category of “resistant literature” and “Anti-Japanese literature”. This paper intends to study Nomamanri by paying close attention to “Yan’an influence”; tries to explore how Nomamanri is accepted among the Yan’an stories after the liberation of China and attempts to trail the Yan’an influence in this work as the supplement and enrichment to the study of it. Yan’an, the place of origin of the regime of the Chinese Communist Party, was introduced to the whole world through the report of an American journalist, Edgar Snow and quickly became the sacred place of the resistance against Japan. After that, in addition to the Chinese intellectuals and people of resolve, many Korean patriots who launched the anti-Japanese movement in China streamed into Yan’an with their anti-Japanese dreams and set up the “Korean Volunteer Army” and their own political organizations to fight side by side with the Chinese Communist Party. In consequence of Japan’s defeat, the Korean Volunteer Army returned to Korea in succession. They associated “Yan’an” with the spirit of resistance against Japan and spread it far and wide. In the ethos, Kim Saryang and his Nomamanri were simply regarded as anti-Japanese stories of Korean Volunteer Army. However, with the thorough analysis of Nomamanri, people can discover that the place Yan’an is not only considered the sacred place of resistance against Japan, but is deemed as Utopia of that time and evokes the author’s memories of his hometown that was devastated by the Japanese invaders. Yan’an spirit showed a new way for the Koreans who have just broken away from the colonization of Japan and is destined to have great influence on the future and national development of Korea. What’s more, it gives the author hope that his hometown could be rebuilt. Considering that Kim Saryang had escaped from the colonized Korea and fled to Taihang Mountain, one of the resistance bases in China, the study of Nomamanri should be connected with the Rectification Movement. The Rectification Movement rendered the ideological remoulding and self-criticism as the daily routine and made them the trend of artistic creation in those base areas. The hero’s repeated self-denial and self-criticism of his petty bourgeois class in Nomamanri indicates that it’s not only a typical Yan’an story about the Korean Volunteer Army, but also a story in which the author projects himself onto the hero implying his own ideological transformation.