Kim Yu-Jǒng (The Camellias 1936, Spring 1935), Pak T’ae-Wǒn (Kubo 1934), Yi Sang (Wings 1936, Meetings and Farewells 1937) Presentation

The readings for today represent both a stylistic and a large temporal disconnect from the texts we have read to this point. They are published following the Japanese bombing of Shanghai, and the escalation of military tensions leading to the Pacific and Second World War when the Korean press was put under renewed scrutiny and once again heavily censored. These political events had wide-sweeping effects on writers and intellectuals, who were often forced to either collaborate with the Colonial Government, lose their livelihoods, or face jail time. In this light, the works for this week are impressive most of all in the fact that they were allowed to publish despite the censors. More than our other readings in this course, they focus on the doldrums of modern life — “modernology,” as per Kubo (143). The traumatic immediacy of the colonial environment has been discarded and is replaced by a situation that, without direct accusation, is mired in the anxieties of everyday life; in this case those are the fundamentals of humanity, love and money, in no particular order.

One recurring character in several of the works is that of the dispossessed intellectual. This character is all the more important because in many ways he represents the writer himself, a relationship that Yi Sang makes clearly explicit in Meetings and Farewells: “I, Yi Sang, the faithless son, had caused the ruin of this already declining home” (80). Similarly, the “stuffed genius” in Wings (140) is a perfect example of how the plight of the intellectual is characterized within these novels. Some have suggested that he is “decrepit” (Tyler) and that “society views him as a sort of animal” (Linda), he is “dim-witted” (Dan) or possibly “mentally retarded” (Lokchi), but the lucid feeling of his pathetic nature is constant. I would argue that although he suffers some defect, nevertheless it has little to do with his intrinsic mental state. The fact that he is the narrator, and his discussions of Russian and French literature (141) as well as his constant interiority and investigation lead us to identify with him strongly as a rational man, comparable maybe to the protagonist from “Letters from the Underground.” Kubo (in Kubo) and Yi Sang (in Meetings and Farewells) are similarly handicapped, although not as drastically. Kubo’s very senses, his eyesight and his hearing, are weak, and these physical weaknesses are directly related to his life as a literati: “the storybooks he used to read. The novels he spent his nights with. Kubo’s health must have suffered irreparable damage in his boyhood…” (144). Yi Sang depicts himself as an ailing writer in Meetings and Farewells, where already at the age of twenty-six, “writing several novels and a few lines of poetry aggravated [his] poor health” (80). But if it is not his, or Kubo’s, individual weakness that cripples them, is it the strength of women? Or the state of society?

On the one hand, the subjectivity of women has come to the forefront, with the complete control exercised by the wife in Wings, the constant back-and-forth made by Kum-hong in Meetings and Farewells, and the blatant shows of power in Kim Yu-Jǒng’s texts. Woman has come into her own, but at the same time she figures less as a central character when compared to the novels of Yi Kwang-Su. Women do not possess interiority in these texts, but are portrayed as a relatively constant base for the protagonists, missing is the development of modern consciousness — there is no process of enlightment delivered in these texts. Instead, we are treated with the fully modern man and his anxieties surrounded by fully modern women.

Kisaeng are not new characters in our experience of Korean literature, but the unvirtuous woman has, to this point, been of passing interest. In Mujǒng the loss of chastity is made up for through devotion to the nation. In this case, it is practically assumed; Kubo’s anxiety about the placement of the umbrella and the husband’s ignorance of his wife’s life as a kisaeng pre-suppose a world where such things are commonplace. At once, the sexual liberation of women is viewed as a threat (Stephen suggests this with the “cock fighting”) but at the same time, the imperturbability of women, and their sexual promiscuity also accesses alternate anxieties about women as the last bastion of traditional culture. Here, the male writers are powerless in the face of Japanese colonialism, and they suffer from intellectual ennui as a result of being stifled by the colonial government, but the hope for nation renewal also becomes lost with the “loss” of the motherly ideal. It is worth molding Dan’s point that women may represent the oppression of Japan over the Korean male, in this case. It may also be that the Japanese oppression of women, their conquering of the motherly ideal, becomes a direct oppression of the Korean male. Intentional ignorance is the result, as with a traumatic experience — the trauma of colonialism.

The position of love within these texts is also intriguing. Yi Sang’s love for Kum-Hong, which seems to temporarily cure him of his (colonial?) ailments. Kubo’s constant search for “happiness,” and the monetary associations that comes to hold, may be directly relatable to the characters in Wings, and the nihilism where selling her body leads to the wife’s comfortable relationship with her husband, how that money provides the basis for happiness in Wings.

Money: pleasure in giving money (wings) money buying happiness (kubo) monetary exchange with son-in-law (Spring, Spring) and the role of monetary sponsorship in Camellias.

Labels: Korean, Musings, Schoolwork

I finally figured out the name of a movie that's been haunting me for several years. It is undoubtedly the best shameless kung-fu flick I've ever seen (along with the one where the guy's thumb makes a loud swish noise in his motions). I remember watching Born Invincible at the Annex as a kid and one scene would always make me (figuratively) cream, where the Tai Chi master (the bad guy) is in the middle of fighting and still manages to draw a Tai Chi Ying/Yang symbol in the ground with his feet. OMG OMG OMG.

Here's the fight scene in all of it's glory while I go off searching for the full movie.

Labels: Mindless crap, Movies and Books, Musings

I know it gets old... I'm moving away from using HTML, towards using one or two templates and plugging into Web 2.0 applications for the rest.

I'm keeping current things under "frequency," audio-visual things under "sight and sound," and old blog material under "facades."

This will remain my blog for the forseeable future. Wordpress is great and open source, but the hosting just doesn't give me enough control over the presentation. So, I'll try to make Blogger tags work, but if it doesn't work, I'm gonna have to come to terms with it.

me2day is the Korean equivalent of twitter, blogging single-line comments. Really, it's sort of more like facebook-statuses than anything else.

I'm going to try and keep up with del.icio.us, but it's never been very convenient... not that I bookmark many things anyway...

Labels: News