황석영 『심청』의 근대성과 탈근대성

A Study on Soggyung Hwang"s Shim Chong"s modernity and post-modernity

&nbsp;&nbsp;Soggyung Hwang&quot;s Shim Chong gives birth to a new Shim Chong by reinterpreting the sacrificial rite of the original Shim Chong Jon (The Tale of Shim Chong). The new Shim Chong wanders from Shanghai, Jinjiang, Nanjing, and Fuzhou of China, to Keelung and Tamshui of Taiwan, then to Singapore, and later to Ryukuy, Kagoshima, and Nagasaki in Japan to finally finishher life in Yonhwa-ahm in Jemulpo, Korea.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In the book, Shim Chong dies a ritual death and is sold as a commodity, from which point she begins to be called “Renhua”- “Lotus”. This manner of addressing places Shim Chong, once again, in the space of forced homogenization. Consequently, she becomes a concubine, a prostitute, and then the illegitimate wife of elderly man. Moving through a space where sex is commoditized, her soul becomes etched with violence and the gaze of surveillance. Caught in the gaze, instead of obediently answering to the call of her name, she manages to create a conversational space of the past and the present through evoking her inner voice and build a space of care and consideration through camaraderie based on sororal love, which acts as the force of change that disturbs the modern perspective. From this, we realize that the author is deploying the narrative strategy of duality Shim Chong&quot;s body trapped in modern times on the one hand and using it as the mirror reflecting the various aspects of the times on the other. Instead of showing the narrative in a sequential order as a journey that starts with the heroine leaving her home and ends when she returns home at which point the heroine achieves happiness after experiencing certain difficulties en route, the story is presented in an overlapping narrative structure that reveals the chasms from the very beginning. This amply testifies to the fact Shim Chong is intended to think outside the East Asia of the 19&lt;SUP&gt;th&lt;/SUP&gt; century.