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English(English) Article

The Postmodern City and Its Discontents | LIST

About the Article

Article: http://list.or.kr/content/postmodern-city-and-its-discontents
Journal: list_Books from Korea
Issued Date: -
Page: -
Language: English(English)
Country: SOUTH KOREA
City: Seoul
Book: -
Writer: Jeong Yi Hyun , Pyun Hye Young , Kim Kyung-uk , Kim Jeonghyeok

About the Author

Jeong Yi Hyun
Birth : Unknown ~ Unknown
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Yi Hyun
Family Name : Jeong
Korean Name : 정이현
ISNI : 0000000073307071
Works : 18

PYUN HYE YOUNG
Birth : 1972 ~ -
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Hye Young
Family Name : Pyun
Korean Name : 편혜영
ISNI : 0000000380038967
Works : 37

Kim Kyung-uk
Birth : 1971 ~ -
Occupation : Novelist
First Name : Kyung-uk
Family Name : Kim
Korean Name : 김경욱
ISNI : 0000000050172549
Works : 14

Kim Jeonghyeok
Birth : 1915 ~ -
Occupation : -
First Name : -
Family Name : -
Korean Name : 김정혁
ISNI : -
Works : 0

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Descriptions - 1 Languages

English(English)

The Postmodern City and Its Discontents By Shin Hyoung Cheol on Oct 22 2014 08:36:27 Vol.1 Autumn 2008 As a result of Korea’s dizzying urbanization and modernization that have few precedents, Korea developed two radically different faces. One is an efficient and radiant modernity; the other, a heartless, dangerous modernity. In the 21st century, what shape will the city take for Korea’s next generation of writers? Every city has two faces: that of an angel and that of a devil. These double aspects of a city result from the fact that the city is a child of modernity: simultaneously an angel and a devil. As Cho Myung-Rae clearly demonstrates in his book The Modern Society and City-theory and Reality (2002), the “city is not only a mold with which modernity is formed, but also an obvious medium that can represent modernity.” In short, the two faces of a city are those of modernity. Since urbanization and modernization in Korea have been achieved so rapidly, the mark of these two faces was carved very sharply in history. Koreans have experienced modernities of both efficiency and cruelty. What the authors have kept their eyes on was, of course, the latter. The efforts to overthrow the dangerous modernity of cruelty have advanced through the 70s and 80s and ignited the fire of revolution. During the 1980s, which can be recalled as a time of revolution, Korea had achieved democratization but failed to further the revolution. Korean literature had to accept the new frame of the so-called confusion of postmodernism. In When Adam Becomes Awake by Jang Jeong-il (once considered enfant terrible of the day), the main character Adam wakes up in a fake paradise named Seoul and sheds tears while watching the neon-lit cross of a church. In this novel, the passion and prospect, apparently the signs of the modern project of liberation, can hardly be found. This work is an apocalypse of postmodern consumer society..

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