Global Korea and World Literature

Abstract

As Korean popular culture began to gain traction in the late 1990s and early 2000s in East Asia and then around the world through film, pop music, food trends, and dramas, “K-” became the go-to designation to draw productive comparisons to any commodifiable product of Korean culture. An outgrowth of the visibility of K-pop, “K-” became the global shorthand for a Korean aesthetic of highly polished appearances, conscientious dynamism, and intensity that reflected Korean culture(s) (Lee, 2015). How has the changing perception of Korean culture via South Korea’s globalization efforts affected the field of Korean literature? If we can pretend (and hope) that literature still has the authority to speak as the representative “high culture” form of an ethnic or national culture, then Korean literature in translation has come to be tasked with representing a diverse, but still holistically identified Korean culture that includes multiple geographic locations, nationalities, and traditions. While the suitability of “K-” to represent these multiple Korean cultures can and has been contested, there has been little argument about the referent of K- when it comes to Korean literature for several reasons, but primarily due to the strong historical tie to linguistic nationalism and the birth of modern Korean literature prior to national division (Cho, 2016). It should be noted, however, that the South Korean literary world initially resisted the K- designation at the beginning of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) era because of its blatantly commercial connotations. But as a medium that has waned in economic viability and reach, if not influence and prestige, it is an outlier in the fields of cultural promotion that constitute economic soft power like pop music, film, or television. This begs the question: what role does Korean literature play in the millennial conception of global Korean culture? This chapter explores the parameters of national literatures in the era of global cultures and the problem of representation in a conception of world literature largely determined by the nation state.