The development of detective fiction in Korea

Abstract

Detective fiction reached Korean readers in the mid-1910s through translations of Western works via Japanese intermediary texts, and by the 1930s, a handful of Korean writers began to venture into the writing of this genre. Even though marginalized in the discussion of modern Korean literature, colonial Korean detective fiction requires serious scholarly attention since it represents the society’s fear and anxiety over colonial capitalism and Japanese imperialism by using crime as a metaphor. This chapter provides an overview of the detective fiction produced between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s while highlighting what makes colonial Korean literary detectives and criminals distinctive.