Lee Chan, known as poet, was also a dramaturge who left 4 plays in the late Japanese imperialism (1943-1945). Among his works <Sewol> (Jogwang, May-June 1943), <The People Who Send> (Shinsidai, Aug. 1944), and <The Winning Village> (Choonchoo, Oct. 19 ...
Lee Chan, known as poet, was also a dramaturge who left 4 plays in the late Japanese imperialism (1943-1945). Among his works <Sewol> (Jogwang, May-June 1943), <The People Who Send> (Shinsidai, Aug. 1944), and <The Winning Village> (Choonchoo, Oct. 1944) were already known to public. He also produced the recently publicized bilingual work <Across The Frontline Of Love (愛線を越へて)> included in the combined issue of Jogwang (the May and June issues) published in June 1645 - Japanese and Korean. This is his play released under his Japanese family name Aoba Kaori(靑葉薰), the work has not been known in the academic world so far. It seems that he used his Japanese family name as a kind of his second pen name by using the name only in the 3 plays <Sewol>, <The People Who Send>, <Across The Frontline Of Love> - not making him particularly look like a pro-Japanese person. He was going to release the Sprechchor play <Harvest> before being imprisoned with Shin Go Song, etc. for 'Wooridongmoo Case' (for publishing and distributing the house organ 'Wooridongmoo' to his comrades or secretly ordering and reading banned seditious books). His plan to use his plays in propaganda influenced creative intents of <The People Who Send> and <The Winning People> - the itinerant performance troupe wrote the scripts.
This piece of writing intended to look into ideologies described in his works and skepticism and questions behind the ideology rather than discuss the pro-Japanese characteristic his plays have. Above all, although <Sewol> was released in 1943 (the second period of the war between Japan and China) he actually formed ideas of the work based on the first period. Considering this fact, the thesis discussed what Chosun people benefitted from the war and tracked the context of formulation of the gist of the Japanization policy - the gist was forcing them to learn the national language (Japanese).
The thesis could verify that in <The People Who Send> and <The Winning Village> the enemy forces were viewed in a remote way; but the lower class characters' activeness and spontaneity, solidarity and friendship were expanded - they were central figures. Judging by this, it could be verified that Lee Chan noted the lower class people's wisdom for overcoming crisis, rather than hostility towards the faraway enemy forces in the war. It is possible to say his attitude like this shows that there is an unbroken continuity between professional literature's popularity and his life after the war - he remained in North Korea. In addition, the continuity makes us know that there is room for reconsideration on the origin of Lee Chan's pro-Japanese literary works from a new angle.
The thesis verified that amid a great conflict between the incendiary words for war mobilization and a tragedy of family loss <Across The Frontline Of Love> criticizes the former through the protagonist's dual expression. It is possible to say that what he intended to express through plays before the liberation was finally completed through this work. In addition, with the work we can look into how the work that seemed to simply follow Japanese national policies is concatenated with the logic for the national mobilization system after the liberation.