Yoon Dong-Ju as a Diasporic Poet

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the aspects and characteristics of the diasporic experiences in the poems of Yoon Dong-Ju (1917-1945). Few Koreans would hesitate to call Yoon a representative Korean lyric poet as well as a resistance poet against Japanese imperialism. His sensitive awareness of a lost hometown and his scapegoat mentality, deriving from his sense of shame of living as a colonial subject, earned him the recognition and led to people in Korean, China, and Japan commemorating Yoon’s life and his works. Yoon was born in Manchuria China, spent his youth in Korea’s Pyongyang and Kyungsung under Japanese colonial rule, and spent his late 20s in Japan’s Tokyo and Kyoto. He was arrested by the Japanese police on the charge of participating in the Korean independence movement and died at the age of 27 in 1945. Considering Yoon’s life experiences in different countries and his acute sense of identity as a colonial subject, it can be assumed that an in-depth understanding of his works is inseparable form understanding the diaspora experience. As this is the 100th anniversary of his birth, this study will re-examine the life of Yoon as a diaspora and his works as diasporic literature in the context of East Asia. Yoon’s works have been largely categorized in three perspectives : works of expressing the agony of intellectuals, nationalistic works expressing the sadness of a colonized subject under Japanese imperialism, and ethical and religious works exposing scapegoating and salvation faith. Recently, scholars of Yoon’s works are widening their horizons of interpretation by understanding his works as cosmopolitan literary works. By overviewing the current research trends regarding Yoon’s works and studying the similarities and differences in the ways that three East Asians countries read and interpret Yoon’s works, this paper will reveal the unique features of Yoon’s diasporic experience that are reflected in his works.