Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim

Abstract

Reviewed by: Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim David Krolikoski Su Yun Kim. Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2020. Pp. 204. US$49.95 hardcover, US$32.99 ebook. Imperial Romance: Fictions of Colonial Intimacy in Korea, 1905–1945 by Su Yun Kim explores the contentious relationship between Korea and Japan during the colonial period through the lens of intercultural romance. The monograph is primarily a work of literary scholarship that surveys representations of heterosexual relationships between Japanese and Koreans. Readers of colonial fiction will be familiar with this trope, but no English-language studies have tackled the subject in comparable depth. The choice to frame the book around intercultural romance enables Kim to reconsider canonical texts by the likes of Yi In-jik, Yi Kwang-su, Yom Sang-sŏb, and Yi Hyo-sŏk from a fresh perspective, illuminating strands of desire and apprehension related to assimilation through marriage. [End Page 565] As one might imagine, the topic of romance between a Japanese and Korean couple in the early twentieth century is a minefield. The legacy of colonial Korean literature itself has been stained by the history of collaboration. In South Korea, literature that was written in service of the Japanese empire has been labelled ch’inil, a term that innocuously means “intimacy with Japan” but bears the stigma of national betrayal. Decolonization efforts after liberation in 1945 were cut short in the chaos that resulted in the establishment of two separate states on the peninsula. Collaborators were not punished by the new South Korean government, a state that initially relied on largely the same police apparatus that was previously employed by Japan to maintain order. Due to this fraught history, collaboration remains a sensitive subject more than 75 years later. Kim explains that depictions of relationships between Japanese and Koreans in colonial literature have been read schematically through a nationalist framework: “Narratives that end with a successful marriage are considered to be ‘pro-Japanese,’ while those that depict an unsuccessful marriage are deemed ‘resistant-nationalist’” (12). Imperial Romance will be of interest to readers who want to learn more about collaboration and assimilation in the context of colonial Korea and the Japanese empire. In this respect, the monograph serves a useful companion piece to earlier English-language studies such as Intimate Empire by Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea by Mark Caprio, Primitive Selves by E. Taylor Atkins, and Romance, Family, and Nation in Japanese Colonial Literature by Kimberly K. Kono, among others. Caprio and Atkins both explore the Japanese perspective, analyzing top-down policy in addition to cultural products. Kono’s study, like Kim’s book, analyzes fictional depictions of intercultural relationships, but her focus is on Japanese literature. Meanwhile, Kwon investigates collaboration in the context of Korean literature, arguing for a more nuanced approach to this sensitive issue that rejects the binary of collaboration versus resistance adopted by numerous earlier studies. She too mostly uses Japanese-language sources. In Imperial Romance, Kim combines readings of Korean fiction (and a handful of films) with historical research based on the analysis of periodicals and government-general documents. In comparison to previous studies, her monograph is tighter in focus, allowing for a more thorough investigation of a single issue throughout the colonial period. Romance (yŏnae) is certainly a subject ripe for further discussion. In Korea, the term gained currency in the early 1920s as an import from abroad. As Kwon Boduerae has argued, the emergence of romance coincided with the transformation of gender relations in Korean society. The notion that an individual could choose their own partner signalled the dawn of a new era for women in particular. No longer restricted to the household, some women took on new roles in society: working in bars, studying at foreign universities, etc. The so-called “new women” (sin yŏsŏng) became a symbol of change for progressives, but were also stigmatized by others for their embrace of Western fashion and cultural norms. These women could also fall in love on their own accord, prioritizing their...