내 유령 형에 대한 기억반(半)주권국가의 만가

Abstract

Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother is backgrounded on Camptown Buchon which is the first Camptown in Korea and on Camptown Yongsan around United States’ Army Headquarters. This novel evokes the discomforting and unwelcoming reality which Koreans don’t want to admit and still cannot settle as we want. Insu’s tragic family life touches the troublesome issue of nation’s identity whether our country is dependent on America economically and is subordinated to America militarily. As soon as United States’ army came into Korea in 1945, the formation of camptown took place. Hyungbu shows the debilitated Korean patriarchy who barely survived through colony of Japanese imperialism and the 1950’s Korean War and poor evacuation lives. He deserted the patriarchy’s responsibility and handed it over women whom he despised and hated as U.S whores. We can see in Hyungbu’s psychology why Kijichon women are not regarded as victim of military prostitution but as sexually deviated fallen women. Mother who was prostitute in Kijichon and married to white American soldier with deserting her own child shows Kijichon women’s dream of marrying with American. Memories of My Ghost Brother grips the marriage life of an U.S soldier in Korea and an Kijichon woman and the sad fate of their Amerasian son in the background of the subordinated dependance of Korea on America, thereby the political relation of America and Korea eats into the personal relation. Even though mother’s status is ascending with marriage in Kijichon, she has not been recognized as wife by husband who is ashamed of her. The couple’s relation is man and wife only in name and is made by political situation of America and Korea rather than by personal man and wife. Father, U.S solider, is presented not as a harmer but a pitiable existence who has had no relation and sympathy in Korea and has the only identity as U.S Army. Insu, their Amerasian son, is full of dislike and sorrow and resignation toward mother and father who were in complicity in deserting his brother. He cannot blame them because he cannot put a distance to them. This book presents Insu’s sorrowful family life as the evidence of the half-sovereignty nation’s sorrow.