Our people and territory have lived divided for over half a century because of East-West ideological confrontations. In the meantime, we have been placed in a contradictory situation which we considered ourselves not a same race and a partner that mus...
Our people and territory have lived divided for over half a century because of East-West ideological confrontations. In the meantime, we have been placed in a contradictory situation which we considered ourselves not a same race and a partner that must be accomplished, but an enemy. We have also treated an evaluation for humane learning reflecting our ancestor’s experiences and ideas from a different viewpoint in the literary history. Humane learning will be fine as a joint heritage because it came out when we were the unified race.
Above all the rest, Yeun-am (燕巖) Park, Ji-won (朴趾源)’s literature is the representative of the positive school literature. While it is valued highly both Koreas, it is also estimated different perspectives due to the difference of ideological format. Therefore, this manuscript expects to narrow the gap between their mutual ideas by making the comparison.
First of all, South Korea has treated that the positive school literature had a realistic sense of beauty and it expressed national awareness literarily by using a proverb and a historical fact.
His major work 『Yangbanjeon (兩班田)』 is estimated that it is unique because it criticizes contradiction of the social structure and discloses the corruption in the ruling class. In『Hojil (虎叱)』, it overemphasizes confucian ethics by authorizing tiger to control absolute power and criticizes atrocity and prestige of human beings. In『Heosaengjeon (許生傳)』, it is reflected Yeun-am’spractical sense of economy and its case develops closely. Lastly, his literature is evaluated it is founded on idea of Bubgochangsin (法古創新), negation of Zhu Xi ideology, and modern realism.
On the contrary to South Korea, North Korean literary history has developed based on a specific ideology and a historical view due to several faculties’ collective and common writing process. They also have a high opinion of the Positive School Literature and Yeun-am’s literature because it contained resolution for reform about contradictory reality. However, they criticize that it couldn't get over limitation of yangban nobles and represent the people’s intention and ideal because comment was not communicated properly. This fact is enough to know that North Korean literary history is looking into Yeun-am’s literature on socialistic Juche ideology.
Whereas worth of novel in North Korea is concentrated on examination and evaluation about a progressive novel, study on novel in South Korea is going from a radical investigation of theory to new tryout applying diverse methodology. It seems that ideological difference is hard to unify, but it will be the important clue for description of Unification literary history by looking at common perspective in the name of realism.