A Postnational Turn in Contemporary Korean Literature

Abstract

ESSAY A Postnational Turn inContemporary Korean Literature JongyonHwang In her much-discussed book The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova pre sents a formulation ofworld literaryspace as a global hierarchical complex of national literatures,a space at once divided by competition on thepart of national literatures fordomination and unified by the transnational and translingual movements such competition unleashes. Casano va begins her narrative of the international literary orderwith the rise of French, rather thanLatin, as the language of culture and refinement, locating the complex's geocultural center in Paris. Her for mulation ofworld literaryspace has no room for an explanation of national literatures whose com mon objective was to achieve liberation from the authority of any other language, namely classical Chinese?an East Asian equivalent of Latin?or forthe theoreticalpossibility of another republic of letters independent fromher Eurocentric model. Literatures of East Asian nations would seem to her no more than an instance of what she calls the "Herder effect/'the claim topolitical and literary existence by small European nations made in the name ofpopular tradition. Almost by accident, she comments on Korean literature as she accounts for the politicization or nationalization of litera ture, a process that she claims is a characteristic phenomenon on the periphery ofworld literary space. For Casanova, Korean literature is reduced to an example of a "small literature" that, as a literature created to serve the cause of nation and people, occupies a dominated position in the international literary order.1 It is irrefutably true, of course, that nationalism has played a formative role in Korean vernacular literature: the majority of twentieth-century Korean writers believed their mission was to create a national language and to lay the foundation fora national culture. It isnot true, however, that a national consciousness can explain all the important periods and cycles of modern Korean literature. Canonical forms and styles of Korean national literature sometimes met with resistance from the anti-establishment writers,which generated significant changes. The first decade of twenty-first-century South Korean literature saw a rapid departure from national ism.No textgives a better demonstration of this thanKim Hun's Songs by a Sword (Kol ?i norae), one of the best-selling novels of the period. The hero of the novel, Yi Sun-sin, is a preeminent gen eralwhose biography formspart of thenational legend ofKorea. During Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea in the late sixteenth century, Yi frustrated Japanese ambitions by winning a series of naval battles despite ill preparation. For this reason, he has been revered as an immortal hero in a number of modern Korean narratives, both historical and fictional.General Yi is still heroic inKim Hun's fiction,yet his heroism derives not fromhis alle giance to his country nor from his extraordinary military command but from his act of acknowl edging thewretchedness and meaninglessness of his own life.Arguably, a general shift toward a more individualistic frame ofmind is providing Korean fiction today with ways to confront the ambiguities of the rapidly changing national soci ety of South Korea. Kim Y?ng-ha's Empire ofLight (Pit?i cheguk)focuses on theproblematic nature of individuals who have liberated themselves from themoral restraintsof family or nation and who depend on the market economy forthe fulfillment of their lives. The novel, probably themost thrill ingand provocative of theKorean works of fiction produced in the firstdecade of the twenty-first century,explores this theme through its twomain characters: Ki-yong, a North Korean resident spy Surveying a broad spectrum of contemporary Korean novels reveals how entrenched dichotomies (national/ cosmopolitan, realist/ modernist, high/low) central to earlier?more overtly nationalist?periods ofKorean national literatureare being challenged and dismantled. 501World Literature Today SPECIAL SECTION inSeoul who is suddenly driven toanxiety-ridden self-reflection, and Mari, his self-centered, self pitying, and sexually promiscuous wife. Covering the events of a single day inSeoul, itreveals how farthecharactershave departed fromtheiryouth fulbelief in a self-determiningand revolutionary subjectivity. Mari, a saleswoman of imported luxury cars, thinks that her engagement in a pro North Korean socialist student movement was a gravemistake, due toher injured feelingsof alien ation from Seoul's affluent society. Ki-yong, an owner of a film import company...