This research seeks to examine in detail the discourses on liberalism in the fields of knowledge in the 1950s, a period when the awareness over the rights of freedom of citizens was being established, and to consider how liberalism has been appropriat ...
This research seeks to examine in detail the discourses on liberalism in the fields of knowledge in the 1950s, a period when the awareness over the rights of freedom of citizens was being established, and to consider how liberalism has been appropriated in poems.
Political liberalism in the 1950s has much to do with institutional and political aspects rather than theoretical ones. In the mid 1950s, while moral freedom, socialism, and political liberalism were competed against each other, liberalism discourse was formed. Among them, moral freedom theory, which is connected with humanism was preferred most. Lee Seung Man's dictatorship in the late 1950s created democratic aspirations of all people, leading to decline in moral liberalism. But political liberalism gained more strength. That means political and moral areas are separated. As political liberalism discourse gained strength, a concept of 'rights' to freedom was developed. That was the foundation for awareness of 'civil rights'. In another words, the freedom of the individual was regarded as civil rights of a democratic world. In the late 1950s, as political liberalism was established, democracy was considered 'popular sovereignty' rather than a concept opposed to socialism or dictatorship, meaning that democracy was understood from the perspective of realistic politics, rather than as universal or abstract value.
The modernist poets in the 1950s emphasized civil and political freedom. In particular, these poets internalized disillusion, and thus, expressed the pursuit towards political freedom based on this sense of disillusion. The reason why this research focuses on Park In-hwan and Song Wook is that their sense of disillusion is combined with the negative spirit, which is another spirit of the period in the 1950s. Song Wook and Park In-hwan were vigilant in utilizing death as a phenomenal and sensible matter, and thus, utilized such as a medium for perceiving historical reality. They presented the symbol of citizens called as ‘community of death’ based on such sense of disillusion, showing the pursuit towards liberalism within the suppressed structure of the Korean society.
Park In-hwan emphasized the freedom not to be interfered from the outside world, hence, autonomous thinking and acts. The ‘community of death’ in the poems of Park In-hwan appears as an ‘anonymous us.’ Park In-hwan sought to show the dignity of ‘anonymous us’ in the modern society. This was to draw a line from the project ‘Making the Nation’ related to national reconstruction and the spirit of escaping from backwardness, while implying a certain part of the pursuit towards socialism.
‘Community of death’ appears as a symbol of corrupt citizens in the poems of Song Wook. Song Wook does not regard the corrupted feature of citizens as the limits of the public, but re-positions it as a limit of the social system. Song Wook’s poems of the 1950s continuously emphasize political freedom. He established the feature of citizens within the reality where freedom was suppressed as the ‘community of death,’ and explicitly exposed the feature of corruption and degradation. However, this was not to wholly accept the criticism of the moral freedom idealists that branded the liberalism of the era as individualistic and unethical, but, on the other hand, was to criticize the non-liberalized condition that provided no other alternative. ,In other words, he criticized the capitalist system and suppressive governing system.
‘Us’ created by Park In-hwan and Song Wook shows the possibility of the combination of socialism and liberalism, and also reveals the critical perception over the moralism and rationalism inherent in the political liberalism discourses. This phenomenon can be seen as marking the limits of the political liberalism at the time and seeking the possibility of political liberalism within the reality of the Korean society from an empirical perspective.