환멸의 전쟁과 관찰자의 시선 = 박영한의 베트남 전쟁 소설

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Park Yeonghan’s debut as a writer in the mid-1970s is an event that is significant in many ways in the history of Korean literature. First of all, before he debuted into a literary career, Park, on entering college, volunteered as a reporter-soldier to the Vietnam War, where he spent his youthful years. The military life that he experienced during the tour would provide the subject matter for The Distant Song Ba River (Meonameon ssongbagang). In other words, his ability as a writer formed through practice during his participation in the Vietnam War. His The Distant Song Ba River, written about the Vietnam War, served to broaden the scope of Korean literature to encompass the Vietnam War, a significant event in world history. The writer wrote the novel because he experienced the Vietnam War and thus, he knew the war well. And it was a significant work in that the writer adopted as a literary subject matter the Vietnam War, which constitutes an important event in the history of modern Korea, and that, relatively early. Park Yeonghan’s novels about the Vietnam War are spearheaded by two titles of The Distant Song Ba River and its sequel, The Human Daybreak. And the writer’s description of the Vietnam War does not go too far out of the commitment to creating a truthful record of facts. And this should be in step with the role that he faithfully performed in Vietnam as a soldier reporting for Comrade’s Newspaper (precursor of The Korea Defense Daily). Furthermore, the fact that the writer includes in the sequel The Human Daybreak Michael, a UPI correspondent, demonstrates that the writer is basically committed to delivering to readers in Korea information on the war in a foreign country through recording facts, and that the novel is a record of those four-month frame that surrounded the fall of Saigon. On the other hand, there is a little differentiation with regard to the writer’s perception of the actualities of Vietnam and the nature of the Vietnam War, which are described in the two novels, respectively. To begin with, the theme of The Distant Song Ba River can be summarized in the statement that “The Vietnam War taught me that the world is ridiculous.” This suggests that the Vietnam War and love forming out of it, which the writer treated as his subject matter, are nothing but accessory events that explain the unreason in reality. In this light, it should be reasonable to take The Distant Song Ba River, not as a war novel, but as a Bildungsroman that portrays progress in a youth’s life and relevant rites of passage or a romantic fiction of disillusionment that depicts the inner awakening of Sergeant Hwang Il-cheon. At this point, I cannot but point out the vulnerable perspective entrusted in a mere rifleman named Hwang Il-cheon, with regard to the task of getting at the whole picture of the Vietnam War. I can only guess the general character of the war through several events in which a soldier was involved and the relationship and conversations with a Vietnamese girl. In contrast, the sequel The Human Daybreak, which stands on the statement that “Ideology is a variable, whereas human is a constant,” delineates the volatile situation in Vietnam by describing the behaviors of the three types of human figures who are related to Bik Tui, the main character. First of all, when Park Yeonghan says, “The Vietnam War is closely related to our own experience in that it involves division between North and South, internecine slaying of one single national people, and ideological opposition,” such characterization of the Vietnam War is best represented by the type of Trin. Fighting for the national liberation as an intelligence officer of the North Vietnamese forces, Trin, the revolutionary, understands the Vietnam War as an extension of the Vietnamese independence struggle against the French. Further significance of the Vietnam War could be found in the fact that it was an ideological conflict between North and South, and that it was a fi

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