해방기 시문학과 민족 담론의 재배치

Abstract

The period of Independence is a transitional period connecting the colonial era and the era of Division. The first and foremost agenda of this period, therefore, was to put an end to Japanese colonial rule and to perfect the national Independence. Left-wing politicians took the hegemony by leading the atmosphere of self-criticism for pro-Japanese activities. However, when Rhee Seung-Man, the pro-American politician, seized power, it put a stormy halt to the left-wing elit's post-colonial project of the perfection of Independence through the elimination of pro-Japanese groups. The pro-American parties tied to ignore people's call for the liquidation of colonial past, while proposing "anti-communism" as a new national ideology in accordance with the U.S.'s anti-communist policy. Rhee's turning to anti-communism resulted in not only perpetuating the division of Korea, but also completing the internal logic of the Korean right wing, which is pro-Japan, pro-America, and anti-communism. This process is repeated in an exactly same way in Korean poetic history. Immediately after the Indepedence, left-wing literary people took the hegemony by creating a discursive framework of nation/anti-nation. This tendency was reinforced by a number of poet's self-criticism and many returned student-soldiers' testimonies. Korean people, however, came to awaken into the imperialistic desire of the US through the decision of putting Korea under UN trusteeship and the following political events such as Student-Soldiers' Alliance. This awakening changed the mainstream national discourse from nationalism/ anti-nationalism to nationalism/imperialism. In the meantime, the right-wing writers, who were supported from the US government, began to develop a new logic of the national literature, that is, a triangular logic of "purity," "tradition," and "nation"--a logic that actually originated in Munjang, a literary journal in the late colonial era. The problem is that this logic is indeed predicated on the Japanese imperial discourse of New East Asian Order or the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere whose basic principle was the confrontation between East and West