Abstract
This paper is premised on the idea that a different meaning or a different set of hermeneutic codes are detectable in Park Yong-han’s The Songba River Far Away than those attributed from a realistic perspective to the novel. It starts with charting the similarities and differences between Park’s novel and the so-called “victim discourse” commonly found in the American Vietnam War fiction, which is reputedly employed in order to exempt American GIs from the responsibilities for the horrendous war crimes. This paper then proceeds to focus on what it deems to be two crucial episodes in the novel in order to tease out alternative meanings from the text. One such episode is found in the relationship between the South Korean patient soldiers and master sergeant Oh, the virtual ruler of the army clinic camp in Vietnam, which this research approaches as an allegory. The other is the Christmas party held at Lang’s mansion in Nha Trang. This paper recovers a critique of the US-led world order or a critical consciousness within the novel by reading the two episodes in relation to the South Korean politics of the time and the postwar international relations.
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