Expressing Vengeance and Being Humane in 1950s North Korean literature

• In Event: Colonial legacies and Cold War Trajectories: Contact Zones and Boundaries in Japanese and Korean Literature

Abstract

This study examines the prevalent expression of vengeance in North Korean literature in the 1950s, a phenomenon primarily caused by the experience of the Korean War.
The prominent critics at the time like An Ham-gwang and Om Ho-seok encouraged writers to produce revenge stories against American imperialism and the South Korean puppet government. At the same time as they considered such an activity of expressing vengeance in literary works as a humanistic/humanitarian, therefore socialistic practice, they simultaneously compared their enemies to beasts.
Along with this contemporary context, early proletarian literature in the colonial period, which expressed ‘the socialistic’ in narratives of personal revenge on oppressors, also influenced expression in the 1950s. In Korean literature an original image of vengeance overlapped with ‘the socialistic’ actually formed in the colonial period under the influence of global (and especially Japanese) leftism. Most of the writers and critics in the 1950s regarded the legacy of proletarian literature as part of the identity of North Korean literature. Thus we can assume that the image of ‘the socialistic’ as vengeance in the colonial period flowed into the expression of vengeance in the 1950s.
Keeping these contexts in mind, this study analyzes literary works by three writers, Han Seol-ya, Jo Gi-cheon and Kim Sang-o who expressed vengeance, along with criticism at the time of their works. Through analysis, this study aims to inquire into the logic of vengeance considered as the humanistic, humanitarian and socialistic mind and practice.

Author

• Yoshihiro Wada, Yonsei University