소수자로서의 개인적 체험과 사회적 정체성 - 손창섭의 『유맹』을 중심으로

Abstract

This study analyses the social identity of migrants which described in a novel, Yumaeng written by Son Chang-seop. This novel restructured and reorganized the experiences and memories of Korean-Japanese in terms of minorities. And this novel reflects the life history of the author, Son Chang-seop, who is also a Korean-Japanese. In the novel the life of Korean-Japanese is well described historically and socially. Through his own experiences and those of other Korean-Japanese, in Yomaegn, the author implicates that the personal identity is ruled and formed by social force not by individual's own will. For inspecting closely the identity of Korean- Japanese which ruled and formed by social environment, he analysed the life of 2nd generation of ‘Jainichi’, who are living as a ‘between’ and different compare to their father generation. By analysing those of 2nd generation's life, he can approach the problem of ‘Jainichi’ as well as those of minorities. The identity of Jainichi as a minority who depicted by ‘me’, new comer in the novel, is fixed and forcibly formed within the frame of nation state. But, he insisted in the novel, finally the identity of ‘Jainichi’ is decided or settled within several relations/relationships between the majority and the minority, the Japanese and the Koreans, the one minority and the other minority, and etc. As minority the ‘Jainichi’ can not be distinguished in terms of binominal concept of ‘we’ and ‘other’. They are located somewhere between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the boundary. So, they are not ‘others’ who excluded or distinguished from ‘we’, but the people within the category of ‘we’.