Korean Writing Takes On theModern World

Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom has recently captured the hearts of American readers.This is a good example of Korean literature’s progress within the context of world literature throughstories that move the general reader. Understanding the new currents in Korean literature that arerepresented by Shin’s success calls for some background on the radical adventure of the Koreanliterary imagination since the 1990s. Shin and other writers whose writing careers took off in the90s show us a literary world distinct from the one we saw in the previous generation. This issue oflist_Books from Korea focuses on writers with a new imaginative power who have already found aplace for themselves in world literature or will likely do so in the future.This new, radical imagination we see in Korean literature since the 90s has a close relationshipto the 1997 financial crisis as well as Korean society’s rapid absorption into the world marketeconomy in the aftermath. The winds of globalization that swept over all sectors of society in thelatter part of the 90s became an indomitable force that contributed to the continuing quantitativegrowth in the 2000s and put the Korean economy in the top 10 worldwide. When it comes tokeeping up to date with other developed societies and globalization, Korean society seems to havecome closer to the world standard than ever before. The dream of a modern society that Koreanshad in mind a hundred years ago as it embarked on a new phase of modernization seems morecomplete than ever. In this context, Korean literature, too, no longer limits itself to the confines ofrace and nation as it strives for the common ground of world literature.The new generation of writers deals with the lights and shadows of modernity—the poverty inthe abundance of Korean society—and creates a new narrative through a subversive imaginationand a re-examination of traditional narrative styles on the other. Writers in the 2000s have beenable to speak to their readers thanks to their unending, fierce re-examination of core ideas thatcomposed modern literature—national identity, modernity, class, masculinity, and reason. Thisled to a multifaceted deconstruction of narrative styles that Korean literature had traditionallymaintained. In other words, if literature as a product of modernity has its roots in reason and logic,Korean literature of the new century is shifting gears into an adventure of a radical imagination,taking a close look at the flip side of reason and logic.Commercial popular culture flourished in Korean in the late 1990s and the widespread useof the Internet brought digital culture to every home. The younger generation idolized the starsof pop culture, which in turn became a way of life. Computers and the Internet were installedin schools, at work, and in homes at a staggering rate. By the end of that decade, Korea had thehighest percentage of Internet users in the world. Koreans became active participants in cyberspace,learning new sensibilities and desires that brought new relationships and pleasures.While colonization, division of the peninsula, military autocracy, and other historicalexperiences formed a bond called historical guilt among the previous generation, political guilt nolonger functions as a common denominator for the current generation that grew up in the fertilesoil of consumer pop culture. Personal desires are held in higher regard than social awareness,and literature and the arts take a different form in a world where pop culture and the Internetreign. Writers who rose to prominence in the 2000s accelerate this trend and actively attempt toincorporate the imagination of popular culture and lowbrow style into their work. This functionsas an opportunity for Korean literature to move beyond the usual Korean topics of war anddivision, or race and nation. In this context, Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom emphasizesmotherhood as the common denominator. It is time for Korean literature to undertake an adventureof a new imagination. 

By Park Sungchang