The research of this thesis aims to present a diachronic investigation of the 'writing' process that has been formulated in the works of the Korean writers in Japan (the Korean writers, henceforth), in distinction from other groups of writers, who wer...
The research of this thesis aims to present a diachronic investigation of the 'writing' process that has been formulated in the works of the Korean writers in Japan (the Korean writers, henceforth), in distinction from other groups of writers, who were forced to move under 'diaspora' after the Liberation, and to define the identity of the Korean writers in Japan which has been shaped during the progress. This research basically concerns 'others' who were isolated and excluded both from their own country and the country where they stay, in that the historical incident of Liberation did not give them a chance of returning to the homeland, but rather reinforced the status of being the 'diaspora' refugees.
The research hypothesis is that it should provide another significant momentum in defining the identity of the Korean writers to examine changes in the writing process in which the writers of each generation choose their forms of works, as well as to provide a diachronic study of the writings from the first to the third generation. On the other hand, the writers' intention to explain their migrational identity is expected to reconfirm itself via the relational reading with the writing forms in which the Korean writers narrate through recollection of exclusion and discrimination in the past and present spaces.
In terms of the writing act by the Korean writers in Japan, 'diaspora' serves as a principle which can account for an identity of minority who cannot settle and cannot but float. 'Diaspora' is the most appropriate methodology that can explore the consciousness of the Korean writers who were separated by the forced migration, through the characters' acts and perception of space in the literary works.
Chapter Ⅰ of this thesis looks into the methodological validity of approaching the Korean writers' works from a perspective of 'diasporan consciousness.' Furthermore, it explicates the methodological intention to analyze the literature of the separated people, who have not broken from the continuum of the colonialism but stayed in the periphery, in association with the theory of decolonization. The Korean writers' writing process presents a narration in correspondence to the way the past and present are remembered
Chapter Ⅱ deals with the first generation of the Korean writers, who produced works to confront the discriminating naming by the country where they lived, Japan, and were called 'Josenjing in Japan.' The chapter focuses on the full-length historical novels, The Taebaek Mountains, The Volcanic Island (Jejudo), Murky Waters, by Dalsoo Kim, Sukbum Kim, and Eunjik Lee, respectively. The first generation of the Korean writers restore by virtue of writing their own identity as a historical and national subject, in order to overcome the autophobia due to the internalized colonialism. The constructed subject is realized as a character who struggles and revolutionizes for the native land in a space of a historical novel that was imagined with the shared memory. The diasporan subject created in a historical novel takes a job of recording the history of his country as a proper responsibility, and produces biographies of heroic characters so that he can escape from the interiorized discrimination. In Search of the Korean Historic Sites in Japan by Dalsoo Kim and A People's History of Korea by Eunjik Lee can be re-appreciated in terms of this intention of writing with responsibility. This type of format and contents must emerge by the necessity of restructuring an 'imperfect' identity, which has been internalized in the place of settlement by discrimination, into an idealized one.
Chapter Ⅲ argues that the imposed national identity creates double conflict for the second generation of the Korean writers as another exclusion, by examining the works in the 1970s through 80s, Hoisung Lee's A Woman Smoothing Clothes with Wooden Sticks, On the Street Corner of our Youth, Half Cloven-Foot, A Human-Faced Rock, and What the Dead Left, Hakyoung Kim's The Sealed Lips, Labyrinth, A House without a Porch Light and The Alcohol Lamp, and Seungbak Jung's A Serial Stories of a Naked Captive. The discord that the second generation generally experienced with the national identity 'imprisons' and 'restrains' them with 'stutter' in terms of language. The Korean writers represent themselves as a 'fugitive' or a 'captive' when they run away from the reality. The second generation of the Korean writers composes a narration to go back to the past, rather than think of the present, due to the internal suppression from Koreans in addition to the external oppression of Japanese, in opposition to whose discriminating nomenclature the first generation established the national identity. The situation in which the spaces between outsiders and insiders create an incomplete being is portrayed as a name, 'half cloven-foot' by others.
The 'half cloven-foot,' the incomplete agent in the reality, returns to the home in reminiscence, reconfirms the relationship with his family, and verifies the common pain in relations with pseudo family including friends and colleagues, in which he finds consolation. The second generation of the Korean writers recall their memories of the past into the present in the autobiographical novels, a hybrid genre of the truth and fictional past, by virtue of which they seek reconciliation with the old generation and recover a sense of solidarity.
Chapter Ⅳ examines the works published in 1800s through 2000s, Blood and Bone, Where is the Moon Hanging (Taxi Driver's Stories), The Lost City, A Ballad of a Butterfly, The Portrait of Y, A Female Diver, Angle and Time, Yuhee, A Landscape without Shadows, Midsummer, A Festival of Fish, A Funeral of a Sun Flower, The Family Cinema, A House of Shade, and The Bad Rumor, by Sukil Yang, Kiseung Lee, Yangji Lee, Miri Yoo, and Weol Hyun
First of all, they refuse the signifiers of 'Josenjing' and 'Korean,' which both camps of the host land and homeland use as a 'national appellation' to define them. Their works are rid of names of race or nationality; rather, their distinct identity is represented variously with borderline names which reveal the hybridity of migrational places. They do not flee from the reality, but they attest the diasporan life, by facing agony and having repetitive thoughts of denying distressful memories. The recognition which they reached is that to prove one's existence as a stranger by surviving, without vanishing, is the best resistance.
The third generation of the Korean writers learn by 'experience of the mother land' that the' recollection' of the old generations is unrealistic. They crystallize this into a novel, and further move into the autobiographical novels of the old generations based on their raw experiences. Besides, they attempt at writing with diverse forms and prove their status as strangers beyond the barrier of literature. They manifest themselves omnidirectionally in and out of plays and scenarios for dramas and films, among other existing genres. The writing of this generation focuses on expanding the field of producing themselves, by experimenting on various genres in formats as well as in contents.
The negative circumstance of 'diaspora' is not passively accepted as a simply negative phenomenon in the third generation, but it affirmatively turns into a new dimension of 'diaspora' which seeks a new identity. By means of demonstrating and proving in the face of the utmost goal of survival by writing, a performative act, the Korean residents in Japan are born again as a third race freshly generated on the boundary of the inside and outside, not as an existence who is absent from the outside. The selective act of writing across the borders of different genres is also associated with the process of consciousness that searches for a new self.
Chapter V discusses the import of remapping the Korean writers into the Korean literature, that is, putting them within the circle not without. To research their stance as strangers provides a point of investigating a myriad of strangers that are predicted to be produced in Korea, everchanging into a multicultural, mixed-race society.
In conclusion, the Korean writers' writing is a condensing process of expressing a subject, moving from race to family and from family to individual. This is not a process of withdrawal and internalization, but it is found out to be a productive act of establishing an identity of new individuals, the 'Koreans who live in Japan.' This process of looking for a new identity is in tandem with changes in writing formats.
Currently, the Korean writers, in their writing, do not cover up or disguise themselves under an absolute cause of survival; rather, they positively announce no boundary of theirs. The Korean writers are standing at a point where they confirm and resist their destiny as 'diasporan subjects.' They are fulfilling a progressional writing to become truly free from all the repressive internalization of diaspora imposed by the colonial rule.