李恢成 <砧をうつ女>論

A research regarding “The Woman who do the laundry” written by Lee Hwae-sung －Between “Daughter and Mother of Korea” and “Individual in mordern times”－

“The Woman who do the laundry” was highly praised by the Akutagawa Prize Selection Committee in Japan as a work to promote Korean literature in Japan. For him, winning the Akutagawa Prize was a chance to change his identity, how he live as a writer, and a declaration of living as himself. Decision to change his political color also express his depression from choosing one side of them, which he has to choose between “South” and “North” as living a Korean-Japanese writer. “The Woman who do the laundry” is starting point for Korean literature in Japan, which narrate the conflict between the standpoint of “organization” and “individual”, at the same time narrate recovery of humanity and argument of Ethnic equality by dispel his political ideology. In a chaotic situation that writer has been through the division of the motherland, the separate of families, it focuses on re-illuminating the “mother” in “The Smoothing Woman”, who lived in Japanese colonial rule. Previous studies in this work have focused on the “Korean literature in Japan is a national characteristics of Koreans living in Japan” and discussed [my] mother as the “daughter of the ethnic”, but in this paper, through the reconstructing of [my] mother’s memory, I try to describe how the individual life shapes between the binding of the national characteristics of Koreans living in Japan and being independent. This paper proves that Lee’s work is worthy Korean literature in Japan that narrate recovery of humanity and argument of Ethnic equality, which declares that he is a writer who transcends political ideology and lives in a gap between national character and individual character.