- KOREAN
- P-ISSN1229-4632
- E-ISSN2733-5925
- KCI
ISSN : 1229-4632
No.66
Abstract
This paper critically analyzes the ecological thought presented in Green Review, a maga- zine that has played a leading role in shaping ecological discourse in South Korea, from the perspective of gender theory. Since its early years, Green Review expressed interest in ecofeminism by publishing works by figures such as Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, both advocates of self-sufficiency. However, from the mid-2000s onward, the journal exhibited a noticeable decline in contributions by female writers, signaling a waning engagement with feminist perspectives. Although it shared many critical concerns with ecofeminists, this can be seen as the result of the influence of male ecologists who drew hierarchical boundaries between feminism and ecologism. This article critical- ly examines the limitations of the arguments put forward by male ecologists such as Wendell Berry, Choe Si-hyeong, and Ivan Illich, and explores why, despite their shared emphasis with ecofeminism on self-sufficiency, they failed to move beyond such di- chotomies. On the other hand, from the mid-2010s onward, noteworthy changes reemerge in Green Review. Through an analysis of roundtable discussions by ecofeminists pub- lished in Green Review and of translated serial works featured in the magazine, this arti- cle demonstrates that during this period there were renewed attempts to seek points of convergence between feminism and ecologism.
Abstract
This paper redefines the physical poetry that emerged in Korean poetry of the 1990s under the concept of a “material turn, ” and examines the role women’s poetry played in shaping and developing this shift. By adopting the term material turn rather than physical poetry, the study proposes a new methodological perspective through which attention to objects can be meaningfully interpreted. First, focusing on the case of Oh Kyu-won, the paper traces how the lineage of so-called “pure poetry” transitioned into an interest in object in the 1990s. In conjunction with readings of Lee Soo-myung’s poetry, this paper demonstrates that metonymy served as a principal poetic strategy in this material turn, and compares how anti-metaphorical methods were employed to reveal the agency and materiality of objects. These poems collectively illuminate the distinctive feature of the “material turn” in Korean poetry, in which the exploration of object is mediated through poetic language. The paper then turns to the works of Lee Sun-young, Kim Eon-hee, and Kim Hyesoon to show how women’s poetry produces a unique configuration of the material turn by intersecting femininity with objecthood. Through an analysis of scenes in which the female body enters both metonymic and metaphorical relations with objects—such as garments, waste, and trunks—the study reveals how women’s corporeality and the materiality of objects become jointly objectified and excluded within social discourse and power relations. In sum, the material turn in 1990s Korean poetry unfolded not only through the formal transformations associated with physical poetry but also through women poets’ explorations of materiality. Attending to the agency of objects while traversing the dichotomy between language and matter, these works collectively delineate the distinctive character of the material turn that took place in Korean poetry of the decade.
Abstract
This paper analyzed the writings of North Korean female defectors who experienced North Korea’s market economy, the Jangmadang. The period of extreme poverty in North Korea in the mid-1990s, known as the “March of Suffering, ” marked the beginning of a sanctioned market economy. Seol Song-ah, a North Korean defector and writer born in 1969, accumulated wealth in the Jangmadang during this time, becoming a wealthy North Korean “Donju.” After defecting and settling in South Korea, Seol Song- ah encountered feminism. She frames her process of becoming a Donju as a struggle against North Korea’s patriarchal society. This paper’s analysis of Seol Song-ah’s es- says and novels revealed a blend of feminist perception with a desire for power, with capital serving as the ultimate objective. The analysis focused on two main points: First, in Seol Song-ah’s writing, the desire for capital accumulation and patriarchal resistance are not separated. It takes on a hybrid of secular and spiritual growth narratives. Second, despite the author’s clear mention of feminist awareness, the novel ends with the heroine achieving patriarchal power that replaced men. This hybrid narrative and the emergence of female patriarchs suggest that patriarchy is not the sole target for critical feminism. Instead, the paper argues that a more critical feminist perspective should target the market system that creates hierarchies beneath the patriarchy. In the concluding section of this paper, it was described that the integration of a degrowth perspective, which fundamentally deconstructs the life conditions subordinated to the theory of economic development, with feminism is an inevitable necessity.
Abstract
This paper examines the trajectories of poetry after the feminism reboot by engaging Donna J. Haraway’s thought, with a focus on the modes and implications of “worlding-with” found in the poetry of Seong Da-young, Yu Gye-young, and Han Yeon- hee. In doing so, it explores how poetic engagements with non-human beings—one of the most salient developments in Korean poetry since the mid-to-late 2010s—have been meaningfully sustained and transformed. Across the works of these three poets, we encounter speakers who, grounded in a sense of guilt and critical reflection on a violent world, seek to build relationships with other beings and to practice world- ing-with. In Haraway’s terms, worlding-with becomes possible through the cultivation of “ response-ability” toward diverse critters on Earth, emerging from sympoietic entanglements. As the poetic speakers in the works of Seong Da-young, Yu Gye-young, and Han Yeon-hee attempt forms of becoming-with non-human others, they not only reflect critically on their own modes of existence but also enact ethical responsibility as a form of poetic practice. More specifically, Seong Da-young’s poetry foregrounds confessions and interrogations of anthropocentric violence; Yu Gye-young’s poetry portrays repeated, if often failed, attempts to become the other; and Han Yeon-hee’s poetry experiments with the possibility of commoning by sustaining the continuity of “ our” stories. The practices of worlding-with non-human others articulated in these poems are significant as forms of poetic practice after the feminism reboot, and they represent a meaningful current in Korean poetry since the mid-to-late 2010s.
Abstract
Jeon Byeong-sun’s “What Comes After Despair” is a women’s narrative that explores the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion and the Korean War, depicting the thwarting of women’s dreams of equality and freedom through liberation and war, and their subjugation to Cold War patriarchy. Kang Seo-kyung, a bold intellectual, experiences the Yeo- su-Suncheon Rebellion and the Korean War, experiences a failed love affair with Won Dong-hwi, and settles into a divided, anti-communist society by becoming the wife of Captain Lim Hyung-gyu, who, seemingly possessed by Stockholm Syndrome, attempted to humiliate her. Kang Seo-kyung’s marriage is characterized by “protection tax extortion, ” where a man who claims to provide protection exploits women in return. To Lim Hyung-gyu, Kang Seo-kyung is a spoil of war. The author realistically reconstructs the unfolding of the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion and the Korean War, drawing on women’s experiences to the point where historical events cannot be considered mere backdrops to a romantic narrative. “What Comes After Despair” can be read as a female narrative that asks women what liberation and war are.
Abstract
This paper examines Jeon Byeong-sun’s short fiction to reconstruct the literary-historical significance of women’s short fiction in the 1960s. Writing short fiction—a genre rarely associated with yeoryu (female writers)—meant engaging in literary practice outside the confined yet relatively safe boundaries of that label. Jeon Byeong-sun was among the few women writers who, by “writing from the outside, ” momentarily transcended the limits of yeoryu. This study does not seek to validate Jeon’s literary value through the evaluative framework of male writers who recognized her, but rather to rediscover her neglected work and reconsider its implications for the formation of women’s literature in modern Korean literary history. Ultimately, it aims to illuminate not the yeoryu literature defined and sanctioned by a male-centered literary field, but the women’s literature that lay beyond its horizon of recognition.
Abstract
1967년 조선일보 연재소설 전병순의 『또 하나의 고독』은 베스트셀러이자 제5회 한국여류문학상 수상작으로서 대중성과 문학성을 겸비한 작품이었으나 당시 문단의 관심도 이후 학술적 평가도 제대로 이루어지지 않았다. 1960년대의 신문연재라는 조건은 여성작가의 소설 쓰기에 있어서 제약이자 기회로 작용했는데, 신문소설은 상업적이고 통속적이라는 낙인에서 자유로울 수 없었지만 여성작가들에게 글 쓸 기회를 제공했고 대중들의 관심을 끌고 각성을 도모할 수 있었기 때문이었다. 『또 하나의 고독』은 대중 독자의 구미에 맞추기 위해 익숙한 연애소설 플롯에 불륜이라는 자극적 소재를 채택하면서도 당시 신가족주의가 정상성 규범으로 자리잡아가는 사회 분위기에서 불온한 사랑을 재배치하며 ‘낭만적 사랑’이라는 유일한 생애 각본에 불화하는 정치성을 보여준다. 인물의 삼각관계에 기반하는 이 소설에는 경옥의 결혼 이야기와 수진의 사랑 이야기라는 두 개의 서사가 영재를 공유하며 겹쳐 있다. 경옥은 ‘성–사랑–결혼’을 하나로 묶는 ‘낭만적 사랑’의 각본을 성실히 수행하지만, 정상 가족 규범의 충실한 이행은 경옥이 기대하던 행복을 담보하지 못한 채 여성의 의존성과 주체성의 결여를 초래한다. 가족제도 외부에 놓인 수진의 사랑은 정상성 규범을 다르게 살아내는 불편함을 감수해야 하지만 공적 영역에서 생활의 터전을 확보하고 경제적 자립이 가능하기에 남자와의 관계에서 자율성이 확보되고 그로 인해 진정한 사랑의 주체가 될 수 있음을 보여준다. 이와 같이 『또 하나의 고독』은 갇힌 주부의 삶을 통해 신가족주의 레짐의 실상을 드러내고 그를 대체하는 사랑의 재발명을 시도하는 공론장의 역할을 해낸다. 그리하여 가부장제와 결탁한 개발주의 근대화의 논리에 균열을 낼 수 있는 여성주의 윤리가 필요함을 제안한다. 살만한 삶을 위하여 여성을 사랑의 주체로 설정하고 ‘진정한 사랑’을 보편 윤리로 도입하고자 한 『또 하나의 고독』은 당시 여성 작가에게 지정된 ‘여류’ 문학장에서 거둘 수 있었던 중요한 성취에 해당한다.
Abstract
Despite receiving significant popular acclaim as a work by Jeon Byeong-sun, a representative female novelist of the 1960s and 1970s, Lady of the Mist (AngaeBuin) has been evaluated merely as a derivative of Jeong Bi-seok’s Madame Freedom (JayuBuin) and as a conventional work dealing with the infidelities of leisured women. However, Lady of the Mist captured readers’ interest through its narrative variation according to the circumstances of its era, which differed from the familiar conventional narratives de- rived from the social context of “Madame Freedom” as a synonym for leisured ladies or liberated women. Lady of the Mist is a narrative that invoked the liberation and awakening of the female subject as the Other before feminist discourse became established in Korean society. Through the portrayal of a transgressive female protagonist who possesses desires for liberation as the Other of the male subject, as well as the desires of a sexual subject within the socio-economic conditions of existence for women in the 1960s, the work reveals issues concerning sexual desire as an autonomous woman, female autonomy as a subject, and the problems of the modern family system and gen- der role ideology that position women in subordinate places. It holds particular significance in that it anticipated the issues of identity and awakening of the female subject as the Other of men raised in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, at a time in the 1960s when feminism and women’s literature had not yet been fully received in Korea.
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to introduce and reevaluate Jeon Byung-soon’s newspaper-linked novel “Dogsinnyeo”(A Single Woman, 1966). This novel is not well known because it is a popular novel in the 1960s and is a work of a female writer. However, if you read this work again from a feminist perspective, you can see that it is a unique work that questioned the family planning policy based on birth control and eugenics in the 1960s-1970s. Eugenics was a way of forming an authoritarian state, as representative of Nazi or Japanese imperial eugenics. Eugenics, which controls the quality of the population through racial discrimination and exclusion, tried to explain and naturalize the hierarchy of life in a scientific way. In Korea, eugenics, introduced during the colonial period, is summoned back to the core logic of population policy in the 1960s by family planning for industrialization and birth control policies. The story of the female protagonist’s choice of positive eugenics with this issue to the fore is “Doksinnyeo.” It consists of a unique narrative that says that she will choose superior genetic factors to have children and live as a single woman with a child. It emphasizes women’s right to self-determination by transforming the process of love and marriage, pregnancy and childbirth under a patriarchal system into a narrative of choice. In current terms, it corresponds to a non-marital birth narrative. Walla, the protagonist, realizes that the eugenic choice was foolish and ends up being reborn as a motherhood that embraces a child with love. However, it is important that popular novels are a place where the ruling and resistance ideologies compete and negotiate. This is because it reflects the popular desires of the time. This work also does not completely deviate from the conservative maternal ideology of the time and the patriarchal family ideology of the inheritance of bloodlines. Thus, in the superficial narrative, the patriarchal family ideology seems to be restored. However, the subversive of this work is to experiment with the possibility of a maternal ideology that emerges as a resistance ideology in the depths. The ending, in which the optimistic ending presents the future that the three children with different fathers, the main character Walla, and her adoptive mother will build together, suggests that this work raises fundamental problems with the patriarchal family system and reproduction control.
Abstract
This study aims to reconstruct the formation of Han Mal-sook’s literary world by integrating oral life-history materials with textual analysis. Multiple rounds of oral interviews were conducted to restore the biographical layers and creative contexts that earlier text-centered research did not fully capture. In the process of weaving together aspects of Han’s life and works that had previously been treated only fragmentarily, the study identifies materials and facts that have not been introduced to academia and newly illuminates dimensions of her literary career that have remained overlooked. In addition to textual analysis, the reconstruction of her formative years, her experiences and reading around the time of her debut, her literary encounters in Busan’s Geumgang Dabang during the refugee period and in Myeong-dong after repatriation, as well as her artistic experiences in traditional music and dance, provides a concrete foundation for understanding the development of her literary and aesthetic vision. This paper also demonstrates that Han Mal-sook possessed a clear feminist consciousness from the beginning of her career and consistently created distinctive female characters who transcended traditional moral norms and prescribed familial roles. By examining oral life-history materials in conjunction with her major works from the 1950s to the 1970s, the study offers an integrated perspective on the internal dynamics and sociohistorical contexts that earlier text-centered scholarship had insufficiently addressed. Ultimately, this research repositions Han Mal-sook as a significant figure in postwar Korean women’s literature and highlights the methodological value of employing oral life-history archives in author-centered literary studies.
Abstract
한국문학장이 한일협정을 전후하여 ‘일본’을 등장시키는 소설을 다수 생산했다는 점은 이미 하나의 경향으로서 지적되었으나, 이는 주로 남성 작가의 문학적 실천을 중심으로 논의되어 왔다. 하지만 제국주의 치하에서 황국‘소녀’ 혹은 황국‘처녀’로서 성장해야 했던 여성들이 ‘해방’을 기점으로 가부장적 공동체로부터 탈주하는 새로운 삶을 상상했다는 사실을 상기한다면, 여성 작가들의 식민지 기억은 젠더적 관점에서 교차적으로 읽힐 필요가 있다. 따라서 이 글에서는 식민지기에 유년을 보내고 해방 이후 등단하여 1960년대에 활발히 활동한 여성 작가들을 ‘해방세대’로 범주화하고, 이들이 식민지 경험을 호출하는 방식을 살펴본다. 해방세대 여성문학은 공통적으로 1960년대라는 시차(時差)를 두고 식민의 유년을 소환하면서도, 이를 서로 다른 시차(視差)를 지닌 기억으로 서사화한다. 손장순의 「다께다 선생」과 박순녀의 「아이 러브 유」는 학교를 식민지적 여성성의 훈육 공간으로 제시하는 동시에 일본인 교사와의 양가적인 친밀감을 통해 기억의(비)동일성을 드러낸다. 반면 강신재의 「점액질」과 전병순의 「인간의 운명」은 비규범적인 여성 섹슈얼리티에 부과되는 수치심을 형상화하면서도, 그 감정의 기원을 (불)확실하게 처리함으로써 여성 억압이 식민-해방-냉전으로 이어지는 현실에서 동일한 논리로 반복되고 있음을 보여준다. 이처럼 해방세대 여성문학은 여성(성)이 지속해서 (재)배치되는 과정을 환기함으로써 한국사회가 직면한 탈식민적 물음을 복합적 책임의 차원에서 사유하도록 요청한다.
Abstract
우리는 어떤 조직을 남성중심적 혹은 가부장적이라 판단할 때, 종종 감정 자원의 배분과 승인 구조라는 더 깊은 층위를 간과한다. 감정이 조직의 정당성을 어떻게 뒷받침하며, 감정 자원이 젠더에 따라 어떻게 배분되고 승인되는지는 여전히 충분히 조명되지 않았다. 감정은 사회적 승인 절차를 전제하는 구조, 곧 ‘감정 승인플롯’ 속에서 승인되거나 배제된다. 본고는 ‘감정 승인 플롯’이라는 개념을 통해, 1990년대 운동권 서사에 재현된 감정 승인 구조의 장치들, 특히 젠더화된 접속문턱을 분석한다. 이때 방현석의 『십 년 간』(1995)을 헌신 중심 감정 승인 플롯의 기본 모델로, 권여선의 『푸르른 틈새』(1996)를 그 모델을 비틀고 재조립하는 변형으로 읽되, 이를 남성/여성 작가 또는 남성성/여성성의 대비 구도로 환원하지 않는다. 『십 년 간』은 감정이 내면의 자연스러운 표현만이 아니라, 조직 내부에서 승인되는 방식으로 정동 위계를 형성하는 구조를 드러낸다. 핵심 인물들은 지하 써클 내에서 반복되는 절차와 압축된 시간 리듬 속에서, 슬픔이나 회한을 ‘헌신’이라는 이름으로 승인받는다. 이는 특정 감정만을 허용하는 반복 구조, 즉 감정 승인 플롯을 형성한다. 반면 여성 인물들의 돌봄과 정서 유지노동은 승인 바깥에 머무르며, 서사의 리듬을 유지하는 비가시적 장치로 기능한다. 이때 젠더는 고정된 정체성의 본질이 아니라, 감정 승인 구조에 접속할 수 있는지 여부를 가르는 장치적 문턱으로 작동한다. 『푸르른 틈새』(1996)는 이러한 승인 구조의 균열을 보다 명시적으로 드러내며, 『십 년 간』이 제시한 헌신 플롯을 내부에서 재조립하려는 서사적 실험을 수행한다. 실직한 아버지의 ‘치킨 수프’는, 남성 주체가 돌봄과 정서 유지노동을 수행하는 장면이며, ‘헌신’ 이외의 감정들이 승인될 수 있도록 감정 승인 구조를 전환시키는 장치로 작동한다. 손미옥의 레즈비언 욕망은 감정 승인 구조를 재배치하는 또 다른 수행적 경로다. 이 욕망은 ‘아버지–딸’ 구도를 중심으로 구축된 승인 체계를 벗어나 쾌락의 리듬을 재조정함으로써, 승인되지 않았던 감정과 욕망을 새롭게 접속한다. 이때 두 텍스트의 차이는 젠더의 차이보다, 동일한 감정승인 플롯이 서로 다른 물질적·표현적 장치 위에서 어떻게 다르게 배열되고 변형되는가의 차이로 이해된다. 결국 본고는 감정의 내용 자체보다, 감정 승인 여부를 결정하는 서사 구조와 수행 장치(장소─인프라, 절차, 시간층, 기호, 담론, 서사 등)의 설계에 주목한다. 『십 년 간』과 『푸르른 틈새』는 감정 승인 구조가 주체의 내면이나 윤리에 환원되지 않으며, 반복과 접속 규칙, 장치적 배치에 따라 감정의 위계가 형성됨을 보여준다. 이를 통해 본고는 감정 승인 플롯이 특정 감정을 승인하는 반복 구조이자, 그 구조를 어긋나게 할 수 있는 장치로도 기능함을 분석하며, 정체성 정치가 아닌, 수행 장치의 설계를 중심으로 한 장치 정치의 분석 틀을 제시하고, 그것이 문학 텍스트에서 어떻게 작동하는지를 구체적으로 보여준다.
Abstract
This paper examines the formation of the fandom surrounding the web novel Return of the Blossoming Blade and its performative practices through the lens of gender politics. Focusing on the martial arts genre, traditionally understood as male-oriented, the study explores how female readers form communities of taste and reconfigure genre discourse through textual interpretation and secondary creative practices. Drawing on discourse analysis of online communities such as Twitter, DC Inside, and Women’s Generation, as well as fan-produced works including fan fiction, the paper demonstrates how the fandom develops a distinctive interpretive framework centered on character analysis and narrative re-signification. Particular attention is given to the Naver boycott period, during which fans mobilized the text’s core value of hyeop as an ethical and political principle guiding collective action. Rather than suspending cultural engagement, fans sustained and expanded their practices through secondary creation and unofficial fan-organized events. These practices position the fandom as a performative subject that actively re-signifies the text and disrupts male- and heteronormative conventions embedded in the genre. By foregrounding fandom as a site of ethical and political practice, this study highlights the political and performative dimensions of fan engagement in contemporary web novel cultures.
Abstract
This study examines the affective dynamics of BL drama fandom through a feminist cultural criticism framework, focusing on the narrative formation of Semantic Error (2022), a Korean drama that gained mainstream popularity in the wake of the 2018 “Tal-BL” (Leaving BL) discourse in Korea. The affect surrounding Semantic Error emerged primarily in online spaces and was closely tied to practices of intense emotional immersion. While the drama’s success has often been attributed to its status as a “safe fantasy, ” this study situates such interpretations within the broader historical context shaped by the Tal-BL discourse. The adaptation of Semantic Error—which removed the original novel’s explicit sexual content and was reproduced as a ‘suitable-for-age-12’ drama—prompted conflicting explanations regarding its widespread appeal. Yet when attention is directed to the phenomenon of “ over-immersion affect, ” it becomes evident that the drama’s affective force operates beyond the boundaries of the “safe fantasy.” To analyze the cultural practices of Semantic Error’s fandom, this study proposes the concept of exmersion-affect, which highlights how affect is continually regenerated rather than simply delivered in a one-way narrative structure— from creator to reader/viewer—. Grounded in the new materialist feminist idea of entanglement, we argue that affect emerges through non-linear, ongoing relational processes rather than through a linear model of narrative transmission. By positioning Semantic Error within the tension between the Tal-BL discourse and the appeal of safe fantasy, this study diversifies the analytical frameworks of BL drama affect studies and suggests a non-linear, entangled understanding of text–audience relations through the lens of exmersion-affect.