강간당한 조선여자 거세당한 조선남자

Raped women and castrated men: Sexuality and colonialism in a colonial novel Mujong

This is a study which investigates a sexually symbolized history of colonial Korea through the novel Mujong (Heartless, 1917). Mujong is a monumental novel in the history of modern Korean literature. Given its literary importance, this novel has been read by many and studied extensively. Hence, Mujong as a subject of literary studies might be obsolete today, but as a cultural product it becomes an exciting turning point to draw a complex matrix of colonial history. Recent studies such as Sheila Miyoshi Jagers pay great attention to women and love and demonstrate how the author, Yi Kwangsu (1892-1950), effectively used them for nation-building efforts. In a similar fashion, I took sexuality as a reading microscope to disclose untold colonial stories whlch the author wove into the novel. The first sexual motif I examined in this novel is the rape of heroine Yongchae. Her body represents womanized Choson Korea. Her downfall from a daughter of a respectable yangban family to a kisaeng and then a rape victim shows Chosons colonization from a sovereign state to a protectorate and then a colony of Japan. The view of all kinds of men on her body as sensual, voluptuous and seductive discloses the uncontrolled desire of masculine colonizers. Her raped body demonstrates how the womanized Chosons body becomes an object to release the passion and lust of the Japanese colonists on. The colonial novel Mujong suggests that the political colonization of Korea is fictionally imagined as a rape which masculine superiority committed in the context of power asymmetry. The second sexual motif is homosexuality between women. The feelings of loss, self-destruction, and fear Yongchae suffers after being raped reflect the psychic landscape of the colonial subjects. But she is reborn as an autonomous woman by forming solidarity with the kisaeng Wolhwa and with the female student Pyonguk. These homosexual women are awakened to their own sexuality and autonomy and from sexual object became subject. In this way, homosexuality subverts the regulated sexual relationship and through it, ultimately defies the power relationship between colonizers and the colonized. The third sexual motif is the emasculation of Korean men. If Korean women are symbolically raped by masculine colonists, Korean men are figuratively emasculated in the process of womanization of colonial Korea. Male figures in this novel such as Yongchaes father and brother, the protagonist Hyongsik, Sin Uson, an artist in the kisaeng house all are incompetent and effeminate. These wavering, indecisive, precarious men rely upon womens decisiveness and support. Their lives show the presence of Korean men in colonial Korea whose work and role are stolen by the Japanese male and who even prey on the money their wife and daughter sold themselves and earned. The fourth sexual motif is the desire for Western masculinity. The Presbyterian Kim and the protagonist Hyongsik yearn for Western clothes, a Western house, a Western bed, Western books, English, Christianity, and Western knowledge. By imitating and acquiring American culture, they recover their masculine superiority over Koreans and escape from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis Japanese colonial rulers. Such Americanism is an expression of Western masculinity which looked to Korean men more powerful than Japanese masculinity. If Korean women challenge the Japanese colonists by means of homosexuality, Korean men armed with Western masculinity try to confront and overcome Japanese colonialism. The colonial novel Mujong, likewise, tells colonial stories through a medium of sexuality. Discourses and sexuality are controlled by the colonial power. However, the power relationship of colonialism conversely can be unmasked and overturned by the very sexuality.