Since the 1945 Liberation of Korea, South Korea and North Korea have proceeded on distinctive ways in the structure of a society and ideology. Their different society systems have caused each of them to create their own unique literature history. Thes...
Since the 1945 Liberation of Korea, South Korea and North Korea have proceeded on distinctive ways in the structure of a society and ideology. Their different society systems have caused each of them to create their own unique literature history. These days, South Korea's interest in North Korea has been increasing and the studies of North Korea literature are making a steady progress. However, most of the studies have dealt mainly with the literature history, particular literary works, certain writers, specific periods, and theory of literary art, which makes the literary difference between South and North Korea greater.
This thesis focuses on the historical novels of North Korea. What is called the historical novel is the documentation of a people's life and constitutes the past events, popular morals, and various people's lives, and views of the world, with a speculative and artistic method. This thesis intends to propose the possibility to recover national homogeneity which South Korea and North Korea can share in literature.
Since the Liberation, the literary world of North Korea has proceeded to the transformation of 1930' social realism. North Korea's historical novel has created standardization of a type of historical truth and dealt with human and society on the whole in the points of party, class, and people. The novel has consistently maintained the trend of pursuit of realism and nationalism.
The establishment of a sole idea system in 1967 caused the creation method of the historical novel in North Korea to be divided into the previous social realism and the subsequent transformed social realism. The Social realism is a revolutionary and militant creation method that reflects the working classes' requests. The social realism prior to 1967 in North Korea was based on the dialectical material view of the world from Marx's and Lenin's ideas. In the North Korea's historical novel based on such creation method, the detailed description of classes' ideas, feelings, and social conditions plays a significant role.
The North Korea's historical novel after 1967 shows the nature of the social realism and sovereign realism which the North Korea claims as its own social realism. The sovereign realism places a great emphasis on the fact that the pressed and exploited class is the primary character in history. Since a type of an autonomous human is requested in the society, that of an independent communist is emphasized in this period's historical novel. The previous emphasis on party, people and class is transformed into the stress on unity of chief, party, and public. The national form of literature and art is emphasized and the form technique, which meets North Korean's esthetic sense and demand, is also stressed. The historical novel uses modern Chosun culture language and stresses that its vocabulary and manner of speech agree with the actual language usage of the contemporary period.
The significant historical periods in North Korea literature are that of nation formation based on anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, that of the armed antiJapan struggle in 1930s, that of the democratic reform after the liberation, and that of nation liberation war, the Korean War. Based on such historical background, this thesis intends to deal with the subjects of North Korea historical novel by discovering a typical type of communism and discord factors. This thesis focuses on "A great Buddhist priest Susan", "Duman River", "The large river flows through it" and "The birth of the new times" which are the historical novels and belong to the social realism. This thesis also focuses on "The peasants' war of the 31st binary term of the sexagenary cycle" and "A northeast wind". They are the historical novels based on the social realism in the sovereign literature period.
In "A great Buddhist priest Susan", Pyeongyang centered-patriotism is represented and the justification of North Korea's foundation is proposed. Susan and the other heretical characters appear. Susan is described as the character who exerts a significant influence on people. In the novel, people's patriotism and courage is represented through Botongbeol harvest, Botongbeol battle, and Pyeongyang castle battle, which occurred in Pyeongyang in those days. While this novel depicts the stories of real people and Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592, it shows the author's idea superfluously rather than being faithful to the historical records.
"Duman River" intends to criticize the problems in the colony capitalism period and represent the intrinsic nature of the national life. Its subject is on the anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism struggle of people who made an effort to resolve society discrepancy conflicts based on people- and class-consciousness. The affluent and vivid word presentation is made a good use of to describe the historical concreteness and the life process on the whole. It represents the national emotion with the abundant vocabulary and the local, traditional, and national subjects. Such usage of vocabulary makes it possible to include both the awareness of reality and the artistic nature to acquire esthetic structure. The conclusion part predicts the hero's appearance in national liberation narration and demonstrates the teleology to sanctify antiJapan struggle. The optimistic utopia pursuit is coincident with the subjective intent to obtain the actual lesson from history and leads to the distortion of the historical facts.
"The large river flows through it" and "The birth of the new times" were written in the time when the social construction was emphasized in North Korea literature history and the discussion on "revolution literature" and "masterpiece long novel creation" progressed vigorously. These novels belong to the revolutionary masterpieces written after Kim Il Sung's instruction, "Write more revolutionary masterpieces", was made.
"The large river flows through it"describes the land reform, which occurred in North Korea after the Liberation. It deals with the class strife and democracy reform representing properly the problems on religion, landlord and sect through various classes' conflicts and the detailed life description. This novel seeks for the meaning of land reform in the feudal extraction settlement, capitalistic exploitation elimination, redistribution of production means, and subject establishment for a new demand class. It describes records on historical facts.
"The birth of the new times"describes the Korean National War dealing with the revolutionary subject, the fatherland liberation war history. In this novel, it is emphasized that The Korean War didn't start in 1950s but originated under the rule of Japanese imperialism and that it was planed as America was ambitious with imperialism in Chosun. In North Korea's literary world, this novel is appreciated not only as the praise for North Korean's heroic nature but also as the confirmation on the historical achievement that they defeated the Imperialistic American invader and opened new time. In the novel, a revolutionist is described as a type of an intellectual with revolutionary optimism and popular heroism is represented. On the whole, it shows the history of the fatherland's liberation war.
"The peasants' war of the 31st binary term of the sexagenary cycle" and "A northeast wind" exhibit the sovereign realism, the transformed social realism created after the establishment of the sole idea system. They demonstrate both the social realism and sovereign realism. They realize the process of characters' change into communists with Chosun people superiority.
"The peasants' war of the 31st binary term of the sexagenary cycle" is an ideology-oriented novel and demonstrates the aesthetic features. It illustrates the basic type of a communist stressed through its characters in the sovereign times. It represents North Korean's aspiration for the material civilization, sense of alienation, and distorted desire in its distorted modernization process. The form of the novel assists to develop and highlight the subject beyond playing a supplementary role in the novel.
In "A northeast wind", the writer exerts his historical imagination and inspires the anonymous people's spirit with life. Especially sex discussion and language form is different from those of the previous historical novels. It has a command of local and plain vocabulary. It describes people vividly and acquires the truthful and artistic attribute. In the first half of the novel, the intimate presentation of conflict, strained incidents' flow, and psychological description through beauty of nature representation and native language create the aesthetics of novel. However it becomes loose and vague in the latter half. Compared to other historical novels in North Korea, sex discussion is bold but used to display Chosun people superiority. While Japan's sex customs is represented uncivilized and abnormal, Chosun's sex customs is described refined and mature. Occasionally author's narration is enlightening and instructive, which decreases the reader's interest in the novel.
From the above studies it proves that North Korea's historical novel doesn't simply imitate its own history. In the novel, its history becomes the subject and fictitiously transformed. The transformation is based on the present view and plays significant roles in the historical novel. The national form and feature are also stressed in the way the social factors are applied in the novel on its own initiative. The historical novel is written based on the historical principle. The artistic formation unites with the pursuit of national feature revelation and the ideological formation realizes through the authoritative discussion and creation method. Since 1990s, the historical novel has demonstrated a new trend to be different from the previous emphasis on the sovereign realism. The historical novel succeeds to its tradition of the people history centered realism. It occupies a part of Korea literature history with new meaning and is essential to understand South and North Korea literature with integration. This thesis intends to depart from the previous general studies of North Korea literature and focus on the category of the historical novel. Through the studies on the features of North Korea literature, this thesis anticipates to assist people to appreciate the significance of the united literature history in South and North Korea.