‘항일혁명문학(예술)’ 담론의 기원과 주체문예의 문화정치

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore historic background and literary history of ‘Anti-Japanese Revolutionary literary arts’, the origin and tradition of the North Korea’s Juche literature. Specifically, we identified the origin of discourse of anti-Japanese revolutionary literary arts published in literary magazine between 1950s and 1960s, on that basis, considered cultural and political influence of Juche literature theory reflected in the North Korean literature art field. We looked into literary materials related to the North Korean partisan diachronically and found that only folk songs, political speeches, and short plays which had been passed down orally during the guerilla warfare against Japanese imperial army were retained in memory. They were called revolutionary folk songs, revolutionary reasonable arguments, and revolutionary plays and went through ideological interpellation from 1959, and elevated gradually to the status of fountain and orthodoxy of the North Korean literary art. Writers who were in danger of being purged in this process resorted to praising anti-Japanese partisan to escape local labor experience and seek political reinstatement. As a result, anti-Japanese revolutionary literary arts took root as sole tradition of literary theory based on Juche Idea after 1967 when Juche ideology became absolute ruling ideology. Consequently, anti-Japanese revolutionary literary arts, epitomized by <Pibada(Sea of Blood)>, can be said to represent the manipulated birth myth based on the storytelling created in the wake of political winning of the ruling class led by Kim Il-sung. For a while, the North Korean literary history revealed hierarchic approach towards the tradition of anti-Japanese revolutionary literary arts and legacy of progressive modern literature and denigrate the latter. The anti-Japanese revolutionary literary arts, the fountain of today’s North Korean literature, still remains legitimate. However, the existence of proletarian literature, represented by KAPF, is not disregarded any more. Wisdom would be needed to incorporate both into literary history of future reunited Korea which will be delineated someday in the period ahead.