4월혁명과 북한 아동문학 - 남녘땅에 기’발 날린다를 중심으로

Abstract

North Korea defines the April Revolution as "the April People's Uprising", "the April 19 People's Uprising" or "the April 19 Uprising" and recognizes it as a massive struggle against the Unites States and the Lee Seung-man administration of South Korea and a historic expression by South Koreans of their desire for a national reunification. This paper aims to explore how the April Revolution is described in children's literature of North Korea by focusing on A Flag is Flying in the South(Children's Books Publishing Company, September 15, 1960), a collection of children's literature praising the April Revolution. First, the 1960s falls under the category of the Cheollima(Flying Horse) Movement in the history of North Korean literature. The main subject of the literary works during this time was to create an image of a leader, establish a system of socialism, reflect realistic aspects of the Cheollima Movement, embody people's revolutionary struggle and seek ideologies for national reunification. Distinctively, many works to describe the April Revolution of South Korea were created. Various types of literature regarding the Revolution including poems, political discussions, essays, plays, critics, and children's literature were produced as opposed to South Korea. Mass produced in North Korea through such official papers as Joseon Munhak and Munhak Sinmunor separate books, the literary works on the April Revolution focus on disclosing the anti-humanitarian aspect of the South Korean society and describing heroic behaviors and a fighting spirit of the public. In other words, the April Revolution was utilized by the North both as an opportunity to publicize the superiority of the North Korean regime and as an educational means to enhance revolutionary spirit of the residents, to criticize the United States and the Lee Seung-man administration. Second, it was effective for the North Korean regime to turn to children's literature, which served as a vehicle of political propaganda, in developing and internalizing its ideologies. Children's literature in North Korea faithfully followed these ideologies, so the anti- imperialism sentiment, the criticism of South Korea's Lee Seung-man administration and the laudation for socialism were prevalent in the literature during the first half of the 1960s. A case in point is A Flag is Flying in the South, which is North Korea's the only revolutionary literature collection describing the April Revolution in the 1960. This children's collection can be seen as a educational book meticulously prepared on the literary educational level unlike other literary works published in papers. Third, A Flag is Flying in the South contains eights poems for children, one ocherk, one play for children and one drama. These works mainly depict the tyranny and repression by the US imperialism, the exposure of the anti-humanitarian situation in South Korea and heroic struggles of the general public. It is consistent with the main subject of the Cheollima literature that the resistance and the anti-humanitarian aspects of the South Korean society should be revealed in contrast to North Korea's socialism. The Cheollima Movement is a part of efforts to preempt the revolution against the powerful class in South Korea and the United Stated in a wide range of areas including ideologies, technologies, culture as well as economy. In this context, the characters of South Korean protests in this collection can be considered "jockeys of Cheollima(Flying Horse)." Therefore, A Flag is Flying in the South served as children's literature textbook for political propaganda and was a result of meeting the demands of the North Korean literary circles to create literary works on the April Revolution of South Korea.