1950년대 한국 펜클럽과 아시아재단의 문화원조－세계작가회의 참관기를 중심으로－

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contemplate the merits and demerits of cultural support for the Korean literature in 1950s by organizing the reports of the Asia Foundation which have been housed in the Hoover Institution Archives in Stanford University. As a non-governmental aid organization in America which gave support to individuals and groups in Asian region after the war, the Asia Foundation was closely involved with the establishment of the Korean headquarters of the International PEN. The effect of the cultural support of the Asia Foundation was maximized within the rapidly changing international situation and, going hand in hand, the new formation of literary power in Korea. However, the Korean PEN Club had justified the schema that equated the Korean literature with world literature through the medium of the Korean War not borrowing the representation of free Asia from America. This self-recognition was impossible without a dramatically new experience which enabled the Korean writers to reverse the subordinating or dependent status as marginal and its backwardness of Korean literary circle by participating international and cultural diplomacy like the World Writers’ Congress.