“혀가 없는 인간”의 노동 - 1900-1910년대 한일 문학에 나타난 조선인의 (임금)노동 관련 표상 및 의미 고찰 -

Abstract

This paper examines the texts of literature in Korea and Japan, referring to the monetary economy and workers in Korea between 1906 and 1917, based on the premise of the international operation of capital and labor. Through this consideration, we sought to reconstruct the genealogy of cases in which wage labor under the global market and monetary system was called as a specifiable object in relation to economic human problems. In modern Korea, changes related to the formation of wage labor under the monetary system were made after the open ports, especially around 1900-10s. Various institutional experiments and maintenance were made due to the connection with the world market. In the meantime, people who make wage labor as a means of livelihood have emerged and have appeared in articles in newspapers and magazines. At this time, the concept of 'labor' and related terms were also established as a meaning consistent with the ideology of forming a diligent people faithful to the ideals of enlightenment called the national prosperity and military power. It had been using in the context of the class differentiation by capitalism in the context of indigenous capitalist-intellectual strata targeting the lower class. In the case of Sinsoseol, the term "worker" has been used since the first work, Tears of Blood. However, labor was treated only as a matter limited to the lower classes. The main characters of Sinsoseol tried to break through various problems based on the form of the bestowal. It came from the fact that traditional thinking, which regarded money as a result of immoral vigor, was in operation. They did not realize the exchange of labor and commodity by money as the main principle that moves the world and daily life. However, there was a vague perception and a sense of incongruity that the economy of money was operating realistically and there were a lot of human beings who motivated it. It was partly revealed in the description of the behavior and physiology of the surrounding characters and wicked people of the lower classes (of other countries). On the other hand, 'labor' was used as a relatively meaningful term in relation to the context of modifying the poverty and hardship of the lower class of the Korean people who flowed out of the country. In Manchuria-Korea travel records of Natsume Soseki, coolies were regarded as a homogeneous class with the Koreans in that it was a Japanese colonizer and a lower class worker. It is significant that the impressive description of them indirectly confirms the way of objectifying Korean workers who migrated abroad. Coolies who are attracted to the high wages of Dalian are described as dirty and oppressive by Soseki. At the same time, it is said that the value of labor can be converted by the yen. Such 'conversion' defines coolies as labor machines or "Humans without a Tongue" according to nature, not as an individual with inner and respective circumstances. Through Soseki’s sketching of skilled movements they become homogeneous and subject to wages. Soseki who is gazing at them is also privileged as non-worker. In The Heartless, Yi, Hyeong-Sik wanted '1,000 won' for the rescue of Park, Young-Chae. In the meantime, he realized his status as a salaried/wage worker, an identity as an economic person, and the power of a "mammonism ". However, there was also the aspect of sticking to the form of life as a patriot, which aimed to solve the difficulties of life through sponsorship. Also, Hyeong- Sik guessed that the boy who was encountered in the train was a mine worker. However, we can not confirm what kind of personal circumstances the sleeping boy has. The fact that the lower class boy was a worker could not be confirmed and was not actually working. However, the boy was being homogenized and targeted as "human without tongue" in that he was positioned as a worker through observation and description of the appearance. The narrator's belief that such objectification could be widely accepted by the reader as a whole had operated. To that extent, the image of the wage worker was forming a broad base. Through such objectification, Hyeong-Sik, who was the subject of gazing, became the non-worker. Wage labor under the monetary economy is related to the highly developed capitalist system and its connection to the international market. In other words, it is related to the problem of movement of capital and labor force, exchange rate and so on. And cultural objectification is necessary to determine some people as workers or as an object of employment for wage labor. Soseki and Yi, Kwang-Su are the same in their position to carry out objectification as a bourgeois intellectual that illuminates the prototypes of labor and workers under the monetary economy, despite the differences in race, space-time and object. This marvelous homology confirms that the question of the objectification of labor and workers in the early 20th century is not confined to the national level.