Abstract

This study examines Choi Jeong-hee’s liberation-period fiction as a transitional field prior to the full institutionalization of nation-state norms, analyzing the multiple con- figurations of masculinity that emerge therein. It argues that masculinity in Choi’s nar- ratives is not a naturalized attribute, but a performative norm articulated through lack, anxiety, and affective excess. Focusing on Jeomnye and Baby Star, the study first analyzes how the instability of the rural economy represented by Deokso and the reorganization of class relations undermine the material foundations of male authority, thereby producing anxious masculinity. It then examines A Scene of Cleaning a Well and The Rooster to show how masculinity is fractured at the level of the body. Male characters attempt to sustain masculinity through youth and physical capacity, yet hunger, aging, infertility, and emotional volatility expose its vulnerability. Finally, through Spring, the study consid- ers masculinity performed by female characters, demonstrating that masculinity is not an essence anchored in the cisgender male body but a norm enacted through relations and desire. The liberation period thus appears as a moment of oscillation before gender norms were fully naturalized. In Choi Jeong-hee’s fiction, masculinity does not assume a single stable model; rather, it emerges as a normative effect continually reconfig- ured through class instability, bodily vulnerability, and female performance. This study reads Choi’s liberation-period fiction as a site where the fracture and reconfiguration of gender norms intersect.