The reorganization of space and literary representation of Seoul during the liberation period, 1945–1950

Abstract

ABSTRACT Liberated on August 15, 1945, Seoul was reorganized as the “capital” of the nation-state instead of a “colonial dual city.” Public spaces and buildings in Gyeongseong that were built under Imperial Japan’s assimilation policy were dismantled. During the national construction period, national monuments were built, and spaces for national ceremonies were established. Seoul was reshuffled into an ideological space based on the anti-communist ideology of U.S. military rule, the blockade of the 38th Parallel, and the establishment of respective governments of the two Koreas. With the formation of the global Cold War order, the aim was to unify Seoul’s spatial power and compete for an inter-Korean regime. Seoul established a spatial order for right-wing nationalism through the U.S. military government and the Rhee Syng-man regime, as confirmed in the Korean literature’s spatial representation during the liberation period. However, the literature of Yi Gwang-su and Yeom Sang-seop showed that Seoul functioned as a cultural contact zone during the liberation period through the spatial practice of diverse and heterogeneous subjects who did not move according to the spatial order of such right-wing nationalism. This confirms Seoul’s multi-layered spatiality, where cultures, such as modern and pre-modern, Western and Eastern, empires and colonies, and leftists and rightists, are mixed and overlapped. Its spatial representation as a cultural contact zone created a rift in its spatial order, reorganized it as the capital of a nation-state and activated the literary imagination for producing diverse and heterogeneous social spaces.