People: A Beautiful Country Is a Community of the Imagination | LIST | Digital Library of Korean Literature(LTI Korea)

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English(English) Article

People: A Beautiful Country Is a Community of the Imagination | LIST

About the Article

Article: http://list.or.kr/content/people-beautiful-country-community-imagination
Journal: list_Books from Korea
Issued Date: -
Page: -
Language: English(English)
Country: SOUTH KOREA
City: Seoul
Book: -
Writer: Pak Kyongni , Jo Jung-Rae , Hong Sung-won

About the Author

Pak Kyongni
Birth : 1926 ~ 2008
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Kyongni
Family Name : Pak
Korean Name : 박경리
ISNI : 0000000081196148
Works : 59

Jo Jung-Rae
Birth : 1943 ~ -
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Jung-Rae
Family Name : Jo
Korean Name : 조정래
ISNI : 0000000080867085
Works : 52

Hong Sung-won
Birth : 1937 ~ 2008
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Sung-won
Family Name : Hong
Korean Name : 홍성원
ISNI : 0000000081869664
Works : 4

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Descriptions - 1 Languages

English(English)

People: A Beautiful Country Is a Community of the Imagination By Ryoo Bo Sun on Nov 09 2014 07:38:44 Special Edition 2011 One of the great challenges that Korean literature faces in the postmodern period is how to invent a meaningful community of imagination that can satisfy the following equation: people = state (or capital). This paradigm is deeply related to the fact that Korean history in the postmodern era progressed under the people ≠ state (or capital) model. Around the time that Korea was independently forming the idea that people = state (= capital), the Japanese Empire forced Korea to pursue the people ≠ state paradigm. Even after Korea's liberation, this paradigm continued unchanged, with the Cold War unavoidably perpetuating it, leading to the division of the peninsula under two different nations and political ideologies. Another problem, however, was that the people ≠ state model caused Koreans to become obsessed with the people = state paradigm as an absolute good, which they espoused and idealized. Therefore the people ≠ state paradigm has been the biggest cause of unhappiness in modern Korea. That is why literature, which has the power to reconstruct new worlds in a manner different from that of politics, had to conceive of a people = state paradigm completely different from political incarnations of this idea. As a result, Korean literature has been unable to put to rest its interest in what form the people = state paradigm should take. The first representative work of Korean fiction that focused on a sincere reflection of the sense of a meaningful community was Park Kyung-Ri's novel, Land. This novel focused on Koreans' hardships from the country's colonization to liberation. However Land didn't focus solely on the ordeals of the people who learned through bitter experience what the people ≠ empire paradigm entailed. Park's novel reconstructed and reproduced the miserable people ≠ empire model from history, while at the same time uncovered a meaningful form of coexistence between the people, the state, and capital while also offering ideological roots to support this harmonious condition.

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