CIS 지역 디아스포라 한인 소설에서 젠더 가면의 의미- 『레닌 기치』 수록작 소설집 『행복의 고향』의 “콜호스” 서사를 중심으로

Abstract

This research analyzes the representations of gender masks in three short stories from The Hometown of Happiness—Kim Gwang-hyeon’s “Ms. Myeongsuk,” Kang Tae-su’s “While Dinging up Memories,” and Ri Jeong-hee’s “Pine Tree”—to illuminate the significance of gender masking in Korean diaspora literature from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region. In Chapter 2, the narrative modes of these texts are examined to reveal the performativity of gender masks manifested through idolization at the same time alienation, and isolated internal division. In “Ms. Myeongsuk,” the titular character embodies the idealized female hero constructed by Soviet ideology, while Asha in “While Dinging up Memories” represents a critical stance toward communist ideals. Both characters are idealized and idolized through the male narrator’s gaze, rendering the female subject othered and alienated. In contrast, the gender mask worn by Boksun in “Pine Tree” is fragmented between traditional femininity and socialist womanhood, and this fragmentation is expressed as her inner suffering and existential conflict. Chapter 3 focuses on the poetic language in the stories, revealing how fractures in the idealized gender masks point to male anxiety and how the intersections of gender performance expose the performative nature of unmasking. In “Ms. Myeongsuk,” the narrator’s disjointed affect toward Myeongsuk, in “While Dinging up Memories,” the narrator’s discontinuous reaction to Asha’s death, and in “Pine Tree,” Boksun’s impulsive passion—each disrupts the appearance of a fixed gender identity. These moments of poetic dissonance reveal that idealized gender masks simultaneously reflect male desires and anxieties, while also suppressing or concealing the female subject’s inner drives and desires. The study argues that gender masks are not simply products of social or ideological demands, but are performatively constructed at the intersection of individual desire, economic conditions, and communal norms, with the potential to fracture dominant ideologies. Gender masks in CIS-region literature are not static social roles or ideological symbols; rather, they are dynamic aesthetic devices that are continually constructed and dismantled at the crossroads of shifting historical eras, inner subjectivity, and socio-economic and ethnic contingencies. Through this lens, the study uncovers the aesthetic implications of gender, identity, ideology, and economy, and the relational tensions between self and other in Soviet Korean diaspora literature. This analysis demonstrates that gender in diaspora literature must be examined not solely through identity politics, but through multilayered intersections of social norms, inner subjectivity, and aesthetic language.