ID :
46453
Thu, 02/19/2009 - 18:23
Auther :

(Yonhap Feature) 'Engagement literature' makes comeback amid hard times

By Shin Hae-in
SEOUL, Feb. 19 (Yonhap) -- When violent clashes erupted last month between police
and squatters in central Seoul, leaving six people dead in a blaze, the case
seemed hauntingly similar to the plot a Korean novel written in 1978.
Recollecting the fictional account of a desperate man and his impoverished family
fighting against redevelopment, readers of "Dwarf Launches a Little Ball"
expressed disgust at how the country appeared to have changed so little after
more than three decades.
"The story was not fiction. It was what had been going in the country then -- and
is what continues to happen today," Cho Se-hui, the author of "Dwarf," said while
visiting the scene of the violence in the capital's Yongsan district.
Cho is among the names that have led South Korea's "engagement literature," a
genre that focuses on exposing social and political absurdities and enlightening
readers.
The popularity of so-called "pure literature" and socially engaged literature has
alternated throughout Korea's turbulent history.
The "engagement" genre enjoyed its height in the post-war era and under the
authoritarian rule of the 1980s, but lost momentum as the country lurched towards
democracy and underwent rapid economic development. In its place, novels that
evinced more refined storytelling skills and artistic creativity saw a
renaissance.
"Engagement literature sees fictional work as a mirror that reflects the
distorted aspects of reality," said literary critic Kim Hyung-soo. "Therefore,
it's bound to gain more power and reason in gloomier times."
In recent months, more writers have been focusing on the Yongsan deaths and the
candlelight vigils that shook the fledgling Lee Myung-bak administration last
spring, signaling a comeback of the socioliterary trend.
A poem titled "Police did not see them as human" evoked stark imagery from the
recent violence:
"Protesters ran up to the roof, calling out for help surrounded by flames. The
incident left six scorched bodies, including that of one policeman. But squatters
were never considered human beings by the police and they, in return, never
deemed police as their protectors."
Lee Si-young, the poem's author and vice president of the literary magazine
"Weekly Changbi" in which it was published, said he wrote it out of "necessity."
"It was not my own will but the reality that led me to write the poem," he said.
"How can we not write about the incident when the government is silent after
causing the deaths of six innocent people?"
Lee is considered to be among the pioneers of the engagement literature scene in
the 1980s. In 1982, he was arrested for publishing poet Kim Ji-ha's "With a
Burning Thirst," then considered anti-government and pro-communist, in his
magazine and again in 1989 for printing Hwang Sok-yong's journal on his visit to
North Korea.
"Through history, practitioners of Korean fiction learned that literature is an
important means of bearing witness to events beyond their control and that it can
raise social and political consciousness," said Kim.
A number of young and emerging authors, who have often been criticized by their
seniors for lacking social awareness and writing only about their personal
interests, have also joined in on the trend.
But though their works are grounded in societal issues -- spanning from political
suppression, unemployment and the wealth gap -- these young authors focus more on
how individuals suffer from them and adapt, leaning away from the more direct
didacticism of their seniors.
"Times have changed and whichever trend the story pursues, it must have literary
value and artistic superiority to be well received by readers," said culture
critic Park Soo-yeon. "For this reason, contemporary authors avoid writing about
topics merely for the exposure. Rather, they use them to say something more,
something deeper."
Author Kim Yun-soo, who received this year's Yi Sang Literature Award for his
short story, "The Five Pleasures of Street Walkers," used the months-long
anti-U.S. beef candlelight vigils to illustrate miscommunication in modern
society.
"The clash between police and demonstrators effectively represented the
miscommunication and suppression our contemporaries suffer," said Kwon Young-min,
a literary critic and a member of the five-member jury for the Yi Sang awards.
"But it was merely a tool, not the main subject of the story."
In her novel "Metal," Kim Soom depicts the dark aspects of industrialization
through the lives of laborers at a South Korean dockyard. But rather than taking
a sociopolitical view on the issue, the author talks about vulnerable individuals
who fall in love and suffer losses in their demanding lives.
In "The Legend of Earth Hero," Park Min-gyu ridicules Koreans who are
pro-American -- dubbing them "Bananamen" for being yellow on the surface but
white on the inside -- but does not lose his characteristic humor and lightness.
There has always been a cacophony of voices during Korea's literary development:
"pure" versus socially engaged fiction, class-conscious as opposed to bourgeois
writing, and cultural nationalism against the accommodation of Western influence.

Critics of engagement literature say it lacks literary aesthetic or value, and
charge its authors use politics to make up for their lack of talent.
But new hopes have emerged, they say.
"The engagement literature in the past was locked in social concepts, often
overlooking individuals and their sentiments," said Park. "But younger authors
are free from such compulsion. They can write about the social issues and still
focus on what an individual might feel and suffer."
hayney@yna.co.kr
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