강경애 문학의 간도와 디아스포라

Abstract

This paper was written on the purpose to clarify the matter of Gando and Diaspora in Kang, Kyung-Ae's literature. In Kang, Kyung-Ae's essays and novels which were written in 1930s, when she was concentrating on her works as writer, Gando was described as the place that included the tragic national history which was connected with the Koreans' Diaspora under Japanese imperialism. Kang, Kyung-Ae's essay vividly conveyed the unrestful situation of Gando from the Manchurian Incident to the Sino-Japanese War, and showed the fact that Gando was not the land of opportunities. The climate of Gando was too cold, and the economic conditions of Gando was so bad that the people suffered from the highness of prices and starvation. Gando was not a better land to live than Joseon. In addition, Gando became the land of fascism and war which got ready for killing and destruction after the 1937. Kang, Kyung-Ae described the political and social situation of Gando in the 1930s, and showed the self-criticism as intellectual and the feeling of helplessness, the doubt about her identity as writer. Kang, Kyung-Ae had Gando as background in more than half of her novels, which show how Gando, the only hope to the Korean immigrant, was contrary to their expectations with the sense of the real. In Gando, they suffer from starvation, the needy life, the crisis of the family disorganization. In addition, they are financially exploited by the Chinese employers, and the women of them are forced to prostitute themselves. They are placed in an unrestful situation like taking the pressure and threat from mounted bandits. Kang, Kyung-Ae described, especially, the hardship of the anti-Japanese activists and their families. In her works, the Korean immigrants suffer from the trobles with the Chinese employers and at the same time they suffer from the worse starvation and agony of survive because of the oppressive measure of Japan. She wrote the works which show the strict self-examination as intellectual. The Salt, Kang, Kyung-Ae's medium-length story with Gando for background, shows the women who suffer from the multitudinous pressure like national pressure, sexual pressure or class pressure and exploitation; this novel was very poorly described about the Korean immigrants' hard lives. Kang, Kyung-Ae did not pass the limit as Marxism writer, because The Salt shows just the class consciousness and anger without the pressure of a patriarchal system and the nation in the end of the story. This problem looks like her general limit because it also appears on her masterpiece, The Human Matters.