남북 문학의 이상과 현실 - 시에 대한 논의가 주는 시사 = Ideal and Reality of South Korean and North Korean Literature - Significance of a Poetry Discussion

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The thesis, examining the reality of South Korean and North Korean literature, attempts to look into the ideal which literature in the coming age of unification should pursue. As for this, the thesis tries to suggest an ideal, which should be desirable to seek for both South Korean and North Korean literature, by carefully investigating the way South Korean and North Korean works of literature are produced and accepted nowadays. Seen from this perspective, three elements appear to be working in the process of producing and accepting South Korean and North Korean literature.
The first element would be the reality of Korean peninsula: the state of partition of a nation. This gives us a big task of probing the reality and providing ultimate solutions for the present state. This state also justifies our discussion of the ideal and reality of South Korean and North Korean literature. In other words, the gap between the fact that we are living in a period of transition and the ideal of becoming one nation in the long run inevitably gives os such task at the level of principle.
The second fact would be that the national ideologies of each nation deriving from a different system and reality have, in fact, operated largely on the production and acceptance of literature. For example, in South Korea, the liberal democracy has acted upon the process of production, whereby literature produced in this way has been accepted and taught to the audience at large. In a similar way, the socialist juche(주체)-ideology of North Korea has had a great influence on the production and acceptance of literature. Moreover, the three years Korean War, which is usually termed the tragedy of a fratricidal war has even more deepened the differences and gaps that lie between these two ideologies.
As for the last, the reality of the nation and the national ideologies as such have locked both the writer and the reader, each of whom is in charge of production and acceptance, respectively, in a cell within which only certain ways of thinking and living can be accepted. This, furthermore, is reproduced in the name of education, which has not only acted as legacy of the past but as something meaningful that fully influences the nations present and future. In addition, the power of such influence was not only an individual matter of a person as a writer or a reader; rather, it was perceived in a wider spectrum as a matter of consciousness of a community at the level of a nation.
Bearing this problem in mind, I try to look into the reality South Korean and North Korean literature is facing and the ideal it should be pursuing. As for this, I have chosen two poets that are discussed both in history of North Korean and South Korean literature. To be concrete, I will trace the changes in the critiques of Kim, So-Wol's poetry in North Korea and of Lee, Young-Ak's 「Pyungnam Gyangye Sicho(평남 관개 시초)」 by a South Korean critique. Md extending this discussion, I will also examine and discuss the lyrical poetry, which is regarded to be significant in recent history of South Korean and North Korean literature. In this way, I will suggest the way South Korean and North Korean literature should go and ultimately, a direction which literature in the coming age of unification should take.