Dreaming to Be Free from the Periphery: About Yi Mun-yol’s Novels   By Ryu Bo-seon on Feb 16 2015 14:06:07 Vol.26 Winter 2014   Yi Mun-yol is an “author of the periphery” who has been attracting more international acclaim with the publication of his short story in translation, “An Anonymous Island” in The New Yorker. The reason why Yi is an “author of the periphery” is that in his novel, The In-between Periphery, he has clearly contextualized the history of Korea in the post-liberation period within the geopolitical boundary of the two empires, namely the U.S. and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. Yi Mun-yol can also be considered a writer of freedom; in a totalitarian society in which the government has declared the divided country to be in a quasi-state of war and consequently dictates that its people need to live a prescribed life, Yi is one of few writers who urges such a society’s members to exercise their free will. In short, he is a “writer who dreamt of true freedom from the periphery.” However, Yi was not always like that from the start. In the beginning, he was just “a free writer.” In his early works, he presented the fundamental issue in South Korean society as the problem of an individual death that was triggered by the totalitarian order. In his debut work, “Saehagok,” he gives a detailed account of a few days in simulated wartime training and shows how South Korean society ceaselessly coerces the lives of its members into a war machine, thereby alluding to the nature of control in South Korea. And in “Pilon’s Pig,” he delineates a group of individuals whose memories have been subject to thought control and take on a mob quality to collectively execute a violent act. However, some of his earlier works also tell stories of searching as well as adventures of characters that long to be free from surveillance and restriction. In The Son of Man and A Portrait of Youthful Days, the author epitomizes the searching and fervor of youth who reject the injustice of the world as the peak moment of one’s life. That is because he glimpses hope in the struggles of the young as a gateway to a more open society. The author’s exploration of the possibility of the autonomous existence of the youth, relentlessly struggling against an outdated system, goes through another transformation. He despairs over the forces of the democracy movement, who had rejected the totalitarian order, only to espouse an “iron discipline.” Declaring that there exist two types of censors—the totalitarian government and the totalitarian forces of the democracy movement, he wages a fight against both. He does this in two ways. The first approach is to criticize the superego of the two ideologies that do not allow members of their society to live a subjective existence; examples of these kinds of works are The Age of Heroes, Miro Ilji, Our Twisted Hero, and Guro Arirang. In The Age of Heroes, the author zeroes in on the life of a man who strives to topple the existing outmoded system. He shows how a man who started out with good intentions to innovate an archaic order ended up as a person who forces everyone to become an obedient entity, and intricately delineates how good intentions can inevitably result in the oppression of people’s freedom. Furthermore, Our Twisted Hero presents a persuasive description of people who are endlessly fleeing from freedom, going back and forth between the two censors, and how these powerful censors turn everyone into shamelessly servile human beings. The second approach Yi Mun-yol takes in his fight against the two censors of South Korean society, is his quest for a subjective existential form that can deconstruct the double oppression. Hail to the Emperor!, The Poet, and The Golden Phoenix exemplify such an approach. Through the works, The Poet and The Golden Phoenix, Yi discovers the possibility of this subjective existence in the “portrait of an aged artist.” In the aforementioned two novels, he ascribes great importance to the existential ethos of the artists who cannot but drift and wander until the very last moment of their lives. In particular, the author majestically describes the final moment when the souls of the artist protagonists reach fruition. This is what Yi Mun-yol believes: that in order to become a truly free subject, one must not be part of any order and that one should forever wander like a nomad and live the life of an aged artist searching until the moment of death. After The Golden Phoenix and The Poet, Yi evolved once more as a writer. He finally completed The In-between Periphery and became a “writer who dreamt of true freedom from the periphery.” The In-between Periphery extensively depicts the unique circumstances of neo-liberalism that was introduced to South Korea (perhaps earlier than other countries) as a result of geopolitical factors in that Korea is a peripheral country to the two extant empires. According to The In-between Periphery, in order to secure South Korea, which is its crucial border, the U.S. persistently imposes Western capitalism. The South Korean government, which is in pursuit of absolute authority, implements American capitalism as the sole socio-economic system. As a result, South Korea becomes a society where the only “freedom” allowed is the pursuit of money; and the dreaming of a better society or individual life is banned. Thus, various entities, which want to be freed from this evil axiom, spring forth. However, their good intentions are soon distorted. They turn antagonistic toward those who do not have faith in their good intentions, while demanding absolute obedience from those who believe in their good intentions. Hence, The In-between Periphery contextualizes South Korea where neo-liberalism, which arrived too prematurely during the Cold War, is at odds with the socialist forces it triggered shortly thereafter. And it does not stop short here. The novel is in search of a path where one can become an authentically free self under these circumstances. The In-between Periphery discloses a path of a subjective existence that is the “freely-floating intellectual,” which is found between the spaces of neo-liberalist totalitarianism and repressive socialism, as suggested by Karl Mannheim. The In-between Periphery tells one to wander between the ruler and the ruled, the old and the new order, and the desires of the masses and the individual. That is how one can be free and at the same time rupture the neo-liberalist totalitarianism. In short, The In-between Periphery is a work that comprehensively re-enacted Korean history in the Cold War after its liberation from Japan, yet remains within the framework of world history. Moreover, at a time when neo-liberalist totalitarianism is oppressing the lives of South Koreans in many aspects, the book points to a direction where “I” should stand in the world and points to the path where one can become a truly free person. The writer, Yi Mun-yol, who has given Korean readers greatly moving and ecstatic experiences, is now going to engage in dialogue with readers from around the world. As a reader who has been deeply moved by his writing, I have high expectations for such an encounter.   by Ryu Bo-seon Literary Critic and Professor of Korean Literature Kunsan National University   Twitter Facebook Google Email .