제국의 경계 공간과 전후 재일 조선인의디아스포라 정체성 연구- 양석일의 『밤을 걸고』를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper analyzed Yank Seok-il’s Through Night, which describes the lives of the Korean diaspora living in the Korean village in Osaka (also known as Apache village) against the backdrop of postwar Japan, and thereby analyzed the phase in which a concealed and distorted imperial space was tactically appropriated. The Korean-Japanese were people who lived in the boundary space of the empire, such as ‘Osaka Weapons-Manufacturing site’ and ‘Omura camp’, and recontextualized the space as their own living space, actively materializing their identity. The boundary space here refers to the points where the empire, colonists, culture and physical space collided with each other―those places that became deterritorialized or similar to ghettos despite being located inside the empire. This paper examined the process in which this imperial space appeared to be a savage anti-human space, and tried to cast light on the lives of Korean Japanese who strived to protect their civil rights and right to life in that process in postwar Japan. Through Night depicts the lives of Korean Japanese or Japanese who experienced the limits of their identity in the midst of the conflict with 'boundary space,' where arguments for the empire were internalized. ‘Stealing steel by the Korean village’ and ‘rescuing Kim Eui-bu by Hatsuco’ were positive interventions in postwar Japan society and aggressive actions of Korean Japanese seeking tactical solidarity. Only these diaspora can look into the changes in fluid spatiality and historical truths, and save themselves through ‘stealing acts,’ ‘remembering acts,’ and ‘writing acts’ that revealed fixed and concealed values―they expose very effectively the true nature of Japan, a postwar nation-state.