This paper examines a writer’s consciousness of his mother tongue taking Lee Tae-jun’s novels after the national liberation in Korea as its subject. Liberated from the Japanese Imperialism, Korean writers actively revealed their will of founding a new ...
This paper examines a writer’s consciousness of his mother tongue taking Lee Tae-jun’s novels after the national liberation in Korea as its subject. Liberated from the Japanese Imperialism, Korean writers actively revealed their will of founding a new nation with their self-reflection. While interested in language through forms of novel and sentence composition in the 1930s, Lee Tae-jun, after the national liberation, reinforced his solid will of the foundation of the new nation, and became interested in the establishment of Gugeo "national language." After the Liberation, Lee revealed his particular consciousness of his mother tongue advocating the eradication of illiteracy and propagation of Hangeul "Korean alphabets rather than the completion of rhetorical completion of language. At that time, he was writing numerous plain articles to initiate the "reconstruction of Gugeo" while crying for the "" Such efforts by him were encompassed literally through works like Horangi Halmeoni "Tiger Grandmother," which was released after he crossed the border into North Korea. The ‘propagation of Hangeul’ has two meanings in this novel. It implies two kinds of efforts: clearing of leftovers from the Japanese Imperialist ruling and the will of national foundation, on one hand; and Anti-outside and the construction of the cultural front at the rear. Those novels by Lee Tae-jun released after his movement into North Korea have positively reflected North Korea’s language policy.
The present study made an inquiry into the meanings of heroes appearing in Park Tae-won's works written in the space of the liberation during 1946~1947. Park Tae-won tried to recall national heroes in three dimensions. First, he paid attention to heroes who rescued the country in order to cleanse his mistakes in the past and to find a new way out after the liberation. Second, he wanted to present models of leaders who could lead people through the chaotic situation after the liberation. Third, as a series of works were published as separate volumes instead of serialization, his works reflect Park Tae-won's will for the enlightenment of readers. Heroes in Park Tae-won's works written in the space of the liberation represent contemporary writers' political position, which is the construction of a national community uniting South and North Korea after the liberation.
This study examined the nature of familism observed in Park Tae-won’s self-portrait novel. We can say that familism is an attitude to put the center of value not in individuals but in the whole family and to extend the application of family-like human relationship to social areas fictitiously. In his early novels, Park Tae-won shows his stance more family-centered than individual-centered, and in the novels written after going to the North Korea, he exhibits fictitious familism that applies family relationship to all people. In a series of novels, the family head realizes that he has to confront the realities and endure humiliations in order to protect his family from dangers and anxieties. Under the shadow of Japanese militaristic fascism in the 1940s, ‘family’ is the only refuge, so he struggles to defend his one and only comfort.
During the period around the Liberation, Park Tae-won does not write works based on family. He introduces the achievement of Kim Won-bong, an independent movement leader, and creates a long story on Hong Gil-dong, a chivalrous robber in the Chosun Dynasty. In this period, his thought breaks away from ‘immediate blood relatives’ and keeps a distance from ‘family.’ The trend of familism observed in Park Tae-won’s novels is as follows. In 1930s: Love for ‘immediate blood relatives’ → In 1940s: ‘Familism’ → Around the Liberation: Search for national discourses → In 1950s after going to North Korea: Fictitious familism (love for people)