강요된 협력, 분열된 텍스트 : 일제 말기 방송소설을 읽는 하나의 독법

Abstract

Although the policy of colonial authority on language in the late Japanese colonial period seemed to stand for Japanese monolingualism 國語常用, both the hierarchy and the differentiation in terms of the class, gender and locality were evident in the colonial linguistic situation. Having been disqualified as a possible modern national language, and then degraded to a functional language suitable only for information delivery, the Korean language was appropriated as the signifier eonmun 諺文. According to the compelled discontinuance of several Korean language newspapers and journals and the growing use of Japanese language in the print journalism, only a limited role was assigned to the Korean language: as a language for the colonial illiterature, who could not understand kokugo 國語, the imperial language. Under this circumstance, except for some special cases, all literary efforts were possible only with the use of Japanese kokugo. The role of the Korean language became limited to ancillary records for oral reports. The representative literary materials of this condition are the literary texts published in the monthly broadcast journal Bangsongjiwoo 放送之友. “The Dugout 防空壕, ” a radio short story by Koyama Mitsuro 香山光郞 (Yi Kwangsu 李光洙), describes the conflict surrounding the collaboration between a father and his children during an air raid in wartime. The hero, Mr. Kim, portrayed as the representative of the traditional Korean generation, evolves into an imperial subject in the process of coming to terms with the differences between himself and his children. A disabled hero also becomes an imperial subject after being drafted into a war of his own making in “Going to the War Walking Lame 片脚出陣” by Om Heungseop 嚴興燮. In “Keeping on Increasing Output 增産一路” by Yi Kiyoung 李箕永, two young intellects settle in a mountain village after growing sick and tired of urban life, and follow the national policy by increasing output. In “A Cock-pheasant 장끼” by the same author, a desirable female subject is described as keeping the pot boiling in place of her husband, who had been conscripted into the war. Although these newly introduced texts are similar in that they were produced in line with the national policy, each text has its own hermeneutical layer that cannot be interpreted on a singular level, and that exposes blanks or excesses of the meaning, despite being enforced collaborative writings.