Oriental World and the Time of “Joseon”(Korea)

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The goal of this study is to review how “things Korean” (Joseonjeogin geot) became important when the significant, the “Orient,” was connected with a new signifie by emphasizing a traditional literary magazine, Munjang (Literature), published in the late Japanese colonial period.
Munjang, published under the influence of “the movement for Korean studies” that tried to newly find and emphasize the cultural tradition of Joseon, was often evaluated as a typical example of preserving the cultural identity of Joseon in the history of Korean literature during the late period of Japanese colonial rule. But the period between February 1939 and April 1941 when Munjang was published was also the time a narrative about the collapse of the Occidental and the rise of the Orient was very popular in public cultural discourse. Of course, this narrative was closely connected with the political ideology of Japanese imperialism that tried to justify rule over East Asia, rejecting the Occident and emphasizing “the sameness of the Orient.” However, without doubt “the inversion of modern values” and “the rise of Oriental values” resulting from this narrative placed the inquiry and revival of “things Korean” in a different context from erstwhile ones.
The leaders of Munjang, Lee Byung-gi, Chung Ji-yong, and Lee Tae-joon made it a traditional magazine, putting “things Korean” on an equal semantic value to “things of the past” and “typical natural things.” They not only took a traditional attitude to “things Korean = the past = nature,” but raised the attitude up to the creative mind. The difference of how to revive “things Korean = the past = nature” was basically related to their differences of time consciousness. This study shows that their differences of time consciousness and revival are classified by “the epiphany” and “the nostalgia.” While “the epiphany” tries to realize the potentiality of forgotten and extinct things of the past by repeating past lives, “the nostalgia” tries to stand aloof from modern daily lives, participating in the aesthetic aura through an irresistible yearning for the past.
But in the attitude of Munjang toward “things Korean = the past = nature,” there appears in particular an ironical inversion to substitute superiority for incompetence. Not to speak of “the nostalgia” coming from the completion of ruling over nature, even “the epiphany” that the oppressed past intrudes upon the present can result in enlarging the scope of its identity in case it repeats in defense mechanism provided by self-duplication. Thus, such an enlargement of identity will serve as momentum to integrate “things Korean” into a larger scope, “Oriental culture.”