포로서사 독법에 대한 小考 -『금계일기(錦溪日記)』를 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper’s goal is not to read Geumgyeilgi(『錦溪日記』) as just a prisoner’s documentation, and instead to read it as a record of an individual who accomplished his desires towards a civilized world. During the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592, out of the people who came back from being a captive, there were very few who left a record of their captive life. Most of these POW records depict their journey returning home as a way to fulfill their unexercised loyalty, and this was an act to prove one’s innocence against the charge of ‘selling one’s integrity’ which was put on the captives. However, in the case of Geumgyeilgi where the old man escapes on his own and returns to Chosun through China’s southern regions, the descriptive follows the grammatical norm of a prisoner documentation, but there are also some distinctive characteristics that cannot be explained through the ‘self-defending rhetoric mechanism’ that most prisoner documentations possess. The old man’s plan of escaping Japan via China is the realization of a strong impulse towards the center of civilized life, which was the ‘Ming dynasty’. The wonder(驚異) from witnessing of the new world and the sense of superiority that came from the experience of directly interacting with Chinese intellects fills the whole text cutting out the narrative for self-defense. Geumgyeilgi is certainly a record with a strong motive for proving the writer’s innocence against the charge of ‘selling one’s integrity’ in the war by recomposing his journey returning home under the context of ‘loyalty’ and ‘filial duty’, but also it contains traces of desire towards a shut-off world through a gap that was opened by war. This indicates ‘textuality’ that wasn’t reclaimed through historical movements.