1950, 60년대 한국소설에 나타난 한국인과 미국인의 관계성

Abstract

An ironic phenomenon observed in the 1950s and 1960s was American culture the mainstream and Korean culture, non-mainstream. Compressed national modernization promoted by the military regime of Junghee Park was the process of internalization of west-centrism or Americanization. Anti-communism and nationalism were used as an ideological foundation for national modernization at that time. Prostitutes patronized by foreigners and persons of mixed race after the war were labeled as risk factors destroying the myth of a homeogenous nation-state and were excluded from the Korean people, nation, and race. The United States of America, in Korean novels in the 1950s, was a dual subject of yearning and fear, a savior and a ruler. The US Armed Forces stationed in Korea or American people appear as superficial or fragmentary forms in these novels. They escape from being subjects of one-sided yearning or mystery in Korean novels in the 1960s and emerge as those of criticism and reflection. Both frequently appeared in the dual epic structure and they opposed to each other in the perspective of nationalism. Forcing the multi-cultural perspective under the special circumstances in which Korean subjectivity has not been secured can be interpreted as a mistake of universalism which does not consider particularity of the third world or underdeveloped countries. While nationalism conflicts with multiculturalism in the first world, both form a mutually complementary relation in the third world and underdeveloped countries temporarily. The nationalistic perspective in the 1960s has provided a foundation to move toward multiculturalism by forming resistant subjects while taking a critical stance against American cultures. Novels by Youngwoo Lee, Dongyip Kim, and Yongik Kim present multi-cultural potentials.