월경(越境)의 위상학ㅡ월북 시인의 시에 호명된 10월 항쟁을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine how the struggles in South Korea at the Liberation period were represented and expressed in the works of the poets who went to North Korea across 38th parallel line. Especially, I focused on the representation and signification of the October Uprising. The left-wing groups have been opressed obviously since May 1946 in South Korea under U. S. military regime. They were no longer in position when the half-goverment was established in South Korea at August 1948. The majority of them, including many writers, crossed the 38th parallel to North Korea. The poets who went to North put their work about the struggles of South Korea’s people in Under One Flag, an anthology published in Pyeongyang at March 1950. They put forward The October Uprising as a spiritual source the ongoing guerrilla struggle in South Korea, and emphasized the 2·7 Struggle, the 4·3 Resistance, the 5·10 Struggle, that is, the incidents involving the South-Korea Labor Party. This can be seen as an attempt to fill in the history of the struggle against the New Imperialism of the U.S. with activities centered around the South-Korea Labor Party, considering that the North Korea’s literature at that time began to be created on the basis of the "North Korea-Democratic Base Theory" with the leadership of General Kim Il-sung. The attempt couldn't last long as the Korean War broke out and the divisional system became solid. As a result, the October uprising was forgotten in North Korea. The forgotten "October" was re-called after more than 40 years, by Park San-woon, a poet who published three of his works in Under one Flag. In the lyric epic <The Flame of October> published in 1990, he embodied the experience of struggle in 1946 and current emotions and ideas. On the surface, this work takes a coherent direction toward the "anti-U.S." ideology of the North Korean regime. But what's behind it is the sense of debt and guilt of one who survived the October uprising. It shows how the struggle in South Korea can be placed in the North Korea's literature-history, by a poet crossed the 38th parallel, after a long period of division.