日帝末 暗黑期 文學의 抵抗

Resistance Reflected in Korea Literature of the Dark Period during the Closing Years of Japanese Imperialism

The present work is an attempt to survey some aspects of resistance reflected in Korean literary works produced during the Dark Pericd from around 1939 until the Liberation of 1945. Had it not been for these literary activities the preservation of national literature would have been impossible in that crucial time when the militalistic Japanese oppression had reached its peak in the effort to obliterate Korean national literature. In the first chapter we observe that as the aggressive war became fiercer the Korean literary circles were split roughly into two groups, and that, as a result, a group of men of letters organized the Association of Korean Writers to serve the cause of the Japanese imperialism. Through their organ, National Literature, these pro-Japanese writers published works eulogizing the Japanese military achievements. The general trend of literary activities in Korea during the war time and the policy, disclosed in National Literature, to exterminate the Korean language are also examined in this chapter. The second chapter deals with another literary group which stood in opposition to that mentioned in the preceding chapter. The writers belonging to this group became standard-bearers of resistance literature at the risk of their lives. This group is subdivided into two: one composed of those whose way of resistance was negative and the other of those who chose a positive way. Those who could not help taking a negative direction dy narrowly escaping the suppressive censorship managed to maintain the thread of life of traditional literature. They avoided a frontal conflict with the authorities and used subtle symbolic ways of expression. The third chapter takes up those writers who have undertaken strong resistance. Among these are Yuk·sa Lee and Dong·joo Yoon, both of them arrested by the Japanese authorities because of their activities. Both of them died in prison. Kwang-sup Kim, another poet, was in prison until the Liberation Day for the same reason. The works of these three poets is categorized into the following three types: 1) those which resisted implicitly the Japanese imperialism by expressing outrage at the Japanese treatment of the Korean people; 2) those which inspired their fellow countrymen with the spirit of independence by composing elegies for those who possess no motherland; 3) those which defied the Japanese imperialism by manifesting courageously their desire to denounce the aggressive nation.