일제 말 조선인을 위한 차선의 모색과 그 한계 - 해방 전 이찬의 시와 희곡

Abstract

Lee Chan(李燦), known as a poet, was also a playwright who left 4 plays from 1943 to 1945, the end of the Japanese colonial period. His 3 works 'Sewol' ('Jogwang', from May to June in 1943), 'The People Sending' ('Shinsidae', Aug. in 1944), 'The Victorious Village' ('Chunchu', Oct. in 1944) are already known, and 'Beyond the Front Line of Love' (愛線 を越へて) written in both Korean and Japanese was included in the combined issue (the May 1945 issue and the June 1945 issue) of the magazine 'Jogwang'. The work 'Beyond the Front Line of Love' is his play published in his Japanese name Aoba Kaori(靑葉薰). The fact that the poet wrote a series of plays is rather unexpected; but he had been planning to publish the Sprechchor play 'Chusu(秋收)' before he was imprisoned with Shin Go Song, etc. for the Wooridongmu case. The play as a means of propaganda can be seen as the result of deliberation on genre, deliberation aiming to solve the undetectable real problems of the period through lyric representation. That is because his first work 'Sewol' was focused on judgement on the choices the People of Choseon had during the war and 'The People Sending' and 'The Victorious People' written as scripts for mobile musical troupes connoted critical alternatives to the Mobile Theatre that was on a tour of the whole Choseon. It goes without saying that these were pro-Japanese works in that they approved of the draft and conscription and encouraged participation in the war. But this thesis paid attention to the works' hidden side where survival methods as the second best survival plans in the period were presented, rather than discussing his pro-Japanese poems and plays published then. In addition, it intended to look at the doubts he had as a writer, the doubts causing a crack on the hidden side of the works. First, there is a difference between his poems classified into pro-Japanese poems written in the period and the poems with the same title written then by other poets : the poetic narrators and objects could not be unified. Such a crack stakes out in the hidden theme of a play, rather than being exposed clearly. The play 'Sewol' was published in 1943, during the 2nd period of the war. But it was contemplated based on the situation of the 2nd period, and deals with the advantages of the people of Choseon and with the choices they made on the assumption that Japan would gain supremacy. But as for 'learning the official language (Japanese language)', the gist of the Japanization policy, information distorting the actual military situation was in internal confrontation with the reality of the people of Choseon, which creates a crack in the consistent theme of the work. In 'The People Sending' and 'The Victorious Village', the antagonists look far away; instead, activeness, spontaneity, solidarity, friendship are placed on the front side, people from lower classes playing a main role in showing those, through which it can be seen that he is paying attention to the characters' wisdom in terms of overcoming crisis, rather than the feelings of hostility towards the warfare antagonists looking far away. But the romantic alternative for such active main agents ends up being destroyed completely in 'Beyond the Front Line of Love'. In the situation where the inflammatory logic of war mobilization is in an all-out confrontation with the tragedy of family loss, the former (the inflammatory logic) is criticized and a deviation from subjective romanticism is done through the protagonist's dual expression. To sum up, he chose the second best survival plan and then used the turnaround strategy, that is the maximization of the advantages of the people of Choseon, instead of resisting the Japanese Empire through his plays written at the end of the Japanese colonial period; but he finally failed, which means that it was impossible to achieve even such a strategy in the full-scale mobilization system then.