The purpose of this paper is to do diachronic research on the liberal and literary identity and the modern poetical autonomy that were revealed, after the Korean liberation, on the representative process of Korean nationality. The formation and develo...
The purpose of this paper is to do diachronic research on the liberal and literary identity and the modern poetical autonomy that were revealed, after the Korean liberation, on the representative process of Korean nationality. The formation and development of modern poetry are closely related to the flow of Korean politics ranging the ideological chaos of the liberation period to before and after the April 19th Revolution. Presuming that the period of Korean liberation is the one that the liberalism has surfaced, that period of 1950s is the one that the traditional symbol has been institutionalized, and the period of 1960s is the one that the liberal literature has hit its stride, this paper tries to study the development phase of the ideology of Korean tradition and freedom. After the Korean liberation, the norm of modern poetry was formed by the binary opposition between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernism’. The ideal type of the modern poetry, however, appeared on the more complex phrases than the simple structure of the binary opposition. Indeed, the modernism of the poetic literature after the liberation can be acknowledged through the structurally-layered meaning of ‘post-war’. While the concept of ‘post-war’ usually means the ‘after the Korean War’ literally, the term of ‘post-war’, in this case, has its vital meaning to direct and propagate the world-wide economical, political, and cultural upheaval as well as the existentialism. The ‘post-war’ acknowledge on the World War II emerged on the poetic expressions, in which the possibility of modernism literature during the liberation that freed the ideal type of binary opposition from can be found. Nonetheless, the acknowledge of the ‘post-war’ that had existed during the period of liberation lost its position in the national and historical narrative with passing through the Korean War.
In this sense, it is noticeable that Kim, Suyoung, through the poetic expressions that evoked the period of liberation after 1950s, tried to criticize and overcome the society of the post-Korean War. Like this, the project of the modernization and the post-colonialism took on the liberal character that supported the national autonomy and the international equality. The liberalism in Korea is hardly explained by means of the classical concept of Locke’s Two Treatises of Civil Governmentor the modern concept of Nozick’s Minimal State, that is, the basic ideology of democracy that guarantees the individual freedom by the restriction of the political power. The Korean liberalism was set in the term that used to be understood as the ideological product of the Cold War, including the anticommunism, or spoke for the radical progressivism, resisting the non-democratic society. In this reason, the liberal character of the literature was also clearly evident after the April 19th Revolution. That the modern poetry of the 1950s was developed as a kind of traditional poetics and as a part of nationalism is the process that the liberal values of the modernism poetry after the liberation were conservatized. The spirit of Silla and the symbol of modern poetry of Seo, Jeongju and Jo, Jihoo in 1950s were a mere representation of universal culture of ‘post-war’ nation. The traditional acknowledge of that time, like this, is similar to Jung, Byungwook’s move that while elevating the traditional values by the concept of broad Korean literature and seeking the new possibilities in the international culture, only have to focus on the nationalism in the end. Namely, in this period, the ideology and character of modern poetry was established by the privileged traditional theory rather than the new spirit of modernism and the problem of literary autonomy. The liberal character of modern poetry in the 1960s, on the contrary, faced the political crisis and then was advanced through the progressive literature (participation) and the autonomy problem of individual and literature. The advanced liberal acknowledge of modern poetry, overcoming the conservative nationalism of 1950s, appeared on the literature of Kim, Suyoung. The literature of Kim, Suyoung that understood the spirit of modernism as the source of overcoming non-democratic political situation and the divided society, vibrantly showed the liberal attitude resisting, so-called, chauvinistic nationalism. Kim, Suyoung, also, replaced the sense of loss ‘April 19th Revolution’with the problem of ‘love’, and sought new turning point of liberal acknowledge. ‘Love’, the criterion of liberal acknowledge, is closely associated with the formation of aesthetic subject in the 1960’s modern poetry.