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아래의 영문 원고를 전해주시기 바랍니다. 문의 사항이 있으면 중간에서 연락하고. 조동일 Korean Literary History in the East Asian Context Cho Dong-il 1 From 1982 to 1988 I published the first edition of Hangugmunhaltonsa ( A Comprehensive History of Korean Literature, which covers the entire development of the history of Korean literature. This was revised and published in a second edition in 1989, and revised and published again as a third edition in 1994. Much time has passed since then, and the task of rewriting it once again cannot be put off. I published the fourth edition at the beginning of 2005, adopting newly discovered materials and integrating the results of the latest research. When I first wrote the history of Korean literature, I focused on the development of the history of Korean literature itself and did not deal with its relationship to foreign literature. After achieving my planned task, I then set about verifying in a variety of ways how the principles and facts I uncovered in my description of Korean literary history could be applied to East Asian literary history, and how much they contribute to a new understanding of world literary history. The results have been published in the following books. All books are written in Korean. Here I present the titles translated into English. A Comparative Theory of East Asian Literary History (1993) Fiction and Facts in Writing World Literary History (1996) Catharsis, Rasa, Sinmyeongpuri: Three Principles of Drama and Film (1997) Aspects and Changes in East Asian Oral Epics (1997) One and Many East Asian Literatures (1999) Common Written Language Literature and Ethnic Language Literature (1999) Similarities and Differences in Civilizations (1999) The History of Philosophy and the History of Literature: Two or One? (2000) A Comparative Study of the Social Histories of the Novel (2001) The Development of World Literary History (2002) Going as far as summarizing the development of world literary history, I was able to confirm that my history of Korean literature made a proper beginning in its inquiry into literary history. A good start made it possible to go a long way. I researched a proper understanding of the division of periods in literary history, the interrelation between oral literature, common written language literature, and national language literature, and the fact that the history of literature is tied up with the history of other fields, even correcting misconceptions concerning the history of world literature. I wrote the fourth edition with the results of these new researches. But I can not present all of them. What I can do in this paper is to explain some important items which are most vital to an understanding of the history of Korean literature in the East Asian context. 2 The first era of Korean literature was that of oral literature. The first important genre of oral literature, national founding epics showed typical characteristics of the ancient literature. When national foundation epics were no longer made and hanmun (classical written Chinese) appeared, there were great changes in the structure of the class responsible for writing literature. In order to write hanmun, one had to study writing as diligently. Being a writer was reason to boast. Yet it was not an age in which writers could express themselves in their writing. They were technicians, writing what their government ordered them to write. The adoption of hanmun and the creation of a hanmun literature was unfortunate in that it caused the egocentric literature expressed in the Korean language to be relegated to the province of lower-class culture, where it struggled against the dominance of hanmun literature. However, this transition from the ancient era to the medieval era, where the common written language and world religions of one's civilization sphere are adopted, is a common process that occurs in any developed nation. In this way humanity is able to share its wisdom, experience social changes that overcome the isolation, inequality, and illogic of the ancient era, and advance both ideologically and artistically. Common written languages did not destroy or overrun ethnic languages. As ethnic languages were unified, consolidated, and developed into written languages. they developed the ability to express high culture. The modern sorrow at the loss of many native words or grammatical forms due to this development is of no help in understanding the actual historical circumstances. No nation has been able to cultivate an ethnic language into a national language without accepting a common written language. We should not envy the Philippines or Sub-Saharan Africa. They suffered the aggression of modern Western powers without cultural background of national identity and were forced to use the language of their aggressors as their official language. We can argue over whose ancestors played the leading role in achieving the common written language and world religions of a particular civilization sphere. We can lament the fact that our Korean ancestors could not achieve these on their own, even though they were very active in scholarship. This way of thinking, though, is born of modern nationalism. Medieval universalism considered all the property of every world empire to be in the public domain. We should not be applying a modern nationalist concept in an attempt to determine the ethnicity or nationality of certain medieval world empires. It is an even greater mistake to deny the existence of civilization spheres and divide them into ethnic nations. We would be mistaken to view the medieval era in East Asia as a vast empire founded by the Han people of China. Even when the Han Empire emerged as the ruling order of a unified China, they had not yet reached the medieval era, but were still in the transitional period from the ancient era to the medieval era. This is because they were still preparing a common written language and universal religion. When different peoples from the north established their empires in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, there was a cooperative effort to realize medievalization by forces both within and without China. A turning point was the transformation of written Chinese into a common written language and the establishment of Buddhism, both of which were accomplished within China by Northern Wei and without China by Goguryeo. A number of dynasties followed in the north and south, and the countless peoples who participated in the process that led to the Sui and Tang Empires engaged in a cooperative effort to enrich medieval civilization. These fruits were adopted and developed further by various other nations, creating a East Asian civilization sphere. In terms of nations, the initial members of the East Asian civilization sphere were the various dynasties of China, Nanchao in southwestern China, the three kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje), and Japan. The family grew even larger with the addition of Vietnam, which freed itself from long domination by China, and the Ryukyu Islands, which underwent a late medievalization. The publicly owned properties of medieval civilization cannot be considered the private possessions of any one ethnic nation. This mistake is not made in other civilization spheres. Only in East Asia has the medieval world empire -- that is, China -- continued to the present day, so the medieval era and the modern era have become confused. The history of literature must actively help distinguish that which has been confused, making it clear that the medieval era is the medieval era, not the modern era. In the medieval era, there was a distinction between the "son of heaven" and the king. "Son of heaven" is a literal translation of the term used in the East Asian civilization sphere, cheonja in Korean, tianzi in Chinese, to refer to the earthly representative of the heavenly deity. The title is equivalent to the caliph of Islam and the pope of European Christianity. Because the son of heaven was the sole agent on earth of the highest deity worshipped by an entire civilization sphere, there could only be one son of heaven (or caliph, pope, etc.) in each civilization sphere. Only then could the son of heaven undertake the role of connecting heaven and earth, guaranteeing homogeneity within a civilization sphere and clearly establishing the foundation of political order or virtue, thus preventing chaos. The ancient custom of a king wielding the authority of the gods of heaven still remained in some places during the medieval era, but these cases are not convincing enough to negate medieval universalism. A king's sovereign power was only justified if he was invested with his title by the son of heaven. In places where a distinction was made between the son of heaven and the emperor, son of heaven invested the emperor with his title, who then in turn invested the king with his title. The relationship formed by such investiture of a title had religious and spiritual significance, but was not a political lord and vassal relationship. It would be a mistake to say that the land ruled by a king was not a sovereign nation. The emperor symbolized the spiritual sovereignty of the whole civilization area, while a king symbolized the political sovereignty of his country. The medieval era was an era of dual sovereignty. In cases where rulers below the king were autonomous, it was an era of triple sovereignty. The common written language played an indispensable role in firmly establishing this view of order. The diplomatic documents exchanged by the emperor and king were among the most high-toned and ornately embellished documents composed in the common written language. The form and style were standardized, verifying the homogeneity of members of the same civilized world, and superiority and inferiority within that world were determined by minute differences in the methods of composition. Every ruling class author within that civilization sphere's territory could write the same forms of poetry and prose. Even if they could not communicate verbally when meeting, they could still communicate through writing. Hanmun is not a spoken language, but a written one, and each country had a different way of pronouncing it, making it more heterogeneous than other common written languages. The differences in word order and grammar between hanmun and the Korean language was a constant cause for concern. When hanmun became the official written language, our ancestors did not express disapproval, but toiled long to devise a written language for Korean using hanmun. There were writing systems that wrote hanmun according to the Korean word order. There were also attempts to transcribe the Korean language using hanmun. The medieval era was the era of hanmun, but hanmun did not dominate every aspect of life. Another characteristic of medieval civilization was the dual structure of hanmun: the original structure and the structure used to express the Korean language. This dual structure was magnified with the appearance of the Korean writing system of hangeul, and was finally overcome with the advent of the modern era. 3 The civil service examination system tested the ability to compose hanmun literature. Hanmun was very hard to study. But that examination was open to anyone not of humble origin and chose personnel for government service based on a test of ability. The civil service examination system was put into practice in China in 589, Korea in 958, and Vietnam in 1075. It was not put into practice anywhere else, giving these three countries a lead in East Asian medieval civilization. Japan maintained their old custom of appointing personnel to government posts according to status, and thus they fell behind and were relegated to the periphery of the civilization sphere for quite some time. It is a mistake to criticize the civil service examination system, saying that it was improperly administered and gave rise to abuses. In those societies without a civil service examination system, government positions were decided by military struggles or hereditary status, and scholars and writers -- like those of Silla -- were relegated to the position of working level technician, no matter how skilled they were. As with all original ideas of history that have epochal significance, the positive contributions of the civil service examination system gradually decreased as its negative applications began to make themselves known. Only when demands for the dissolution of the civil service examination system had grown fierce did the Europeans arrive in East Asia. They were shocked to discover an idea that they had been unable to think of themselves, and used this in belatedly establishing a modern examination system. The countries of East Asia, with Japan in the lead, have adopted the European examination system and are criticizing the civil service examination (despite the fact that they still implement it), but this is putting the cart before the horse. The civil service examination system, which led to the modern examination system, is important evidence in proving the superiority of East Asian civilization. The most salient difference in the medieval East Asian civil service examination system and the modern examination system styled after the European model is in the subjects tested. Literature and law are the primary subjects, with the former being a literature examination and the latter being a law examination. In the literature examination, law was considered a secondary subject, used in selecting low-level personnel for administrative work. In the law examination, literature was considered to be of no use at all, and was excluded entirely. If asked which was more important in ruling a nation, literature or law, a modern person would say law without hesitation. The medieval East Asians, though, thought differently. One must know humanity in order to rule a nation, they would say, and literature is best suited to the task of understanding humanity. All peoples in the medieval era felt that literature was not an ornament on the margins of life, but the most valuable of all human endeavors, and in East Asia this common conception was most clearly expressed and systematized. The civil service examination was a literary examination because literature was valued over the practical affairs that moved society according to laws, and because it developed the mind, allowing people to comprehensively judge facts. If we discuss the issue again from the law aspect, using the terms "positive law" and "natural law," natural law was considered to be above positive law, and it was felt that a desirable society could only be achieved if literary figures, who were the best judges of natural law, guided the experts in positive law. The ideal that a philosopher should rule the nation was realized, with literary figures taking the place of philosophers. Literature, which was necessary to the civil service examination system, was not the literature of ethnic languages but of the common written language. The literature of the common written language was a means of communication used throughout the entire civilization sphere, and it offered a measure by which cultural levels could be compared. Based on the common scriptures, it also fostered a communal understanding of humanity and values, brought people closer together in terms of sensibilities, and offered the knowledge necessary in everyday life, such as knowledge of laws and institutions. In order to prevent the written language from being swept away by the spoken language and allow it to protect the common heritage, composition methods were strictly consolidated, individual differences were reduced, and the changes of the times were rejected. This was an amazing development at first, but gradually became conservative and led to abuses that became customary. 4 The literature of Korean language appeared with hyangga using hyangchal writing system borrowing Chinese characters. Hyangga had a long history that began in the Silla period, but with the end of the early Goryeo period it disappeared. In order to uncover the reason and meaning behind this fact, we must understand the greater current of literary history in relation to the tendencies of history in general. In the early Goryeo period, the lineage aristocracy that carried on the traditions of Silla were responsible for upper class literature while they reigned as the ruling power, so hyangga was perpetuated. With the Military Officers' Uprising in 1170, the ruling system of the lineage aristocracy collapsed, along with all support that would guarantee the survival of hyangga. The long period of early medieval literature had ended. In the late Goryeo period, powerful aristocratic families ruled the nation, and the new literati grew as a competing power. The powerful aristocratic families had survived the Military Officers' Uprising and the Mongol invasions, and during continued interference by Yuan China they seized an unusual opportunity to gain power and land, but they did not have the ability to rebuild upper class literature. They encouraged the king, who only sought pleasure and excitement, they relieved ideological tension, they cared nothing for dignity, and they enjoyed folk singing and dancing. The new literati realized that this would lead to the collapse of the nation, and so they sought to establish an ideology that would reform the ruling system. In order to correct the fundamental wrongs of the ruling class, who trampled on the lives of the people and abandoned themselves to hedonism, a fundamental change in the way of thinking was required. The new literati were originally local functionaries and thus had a close relationship with the common people and handled all sorts of affairs, but a new world view was required that went beyond their experience: a world view that properly understood reality, made moral principles clear, and understood these two, reality and moral principles, as a unified whole. This meant proposing an alternative to the early medieval philosophy of the mind that was established by highly advanced theoretical Buddhism, and this had to be carried out in a number of difficult steps. Reforms in the basic aspects of literature accompanied these changes in philosophical thinking. These changes in literature did not follow any precedent, but were wholly unique, and the basic task the new literati set for themselves was the creation of a new branch of literature. Only by understanding that the history of philosophy and the history of literature are at once separate histories and a unified whole can we understand this fact. Literary branches are the products of their ages and concrete realizations of ideology are vital to understanding the history of literature, and having confirmed this we must go beyond the scope of literary research. The hyangga had internalized the world by embodying the ideology of an age that placed importance only on the mind, but in the age when both the material and the way were considered important, a didactic poetry that globalized the self had to be newly established and a lyric poetry that internalized the world had to be recreated. For Korean language poetry, a unique creation that did not rely on foreign precedents, the early medieval era was the age of lyric poetry, while the late medieval period was the age when lyric poetry sijo and didactic poetry gasa sted. This is the clearest way of distinguishing between the early and late medieval periods. This was not only true for Korean literary history. Vietnam was also an intermediate nation in the hanmun civilization sphere, and so they created late medieval didactic poetry in almost the same way as Korea. If we broaden the scope of our inquiry, we can see that intermediate nations in a number of civilization spheres all developed ethnic language didactic poetry around the 13th century: the Tamil in the Sanskrit civilization sphere, the Persians in the Arabic civilization sphere, the French in the Latin civilization sphere, and so on. It is also widely confirmed that such central nations as China already had a didactic poetry, while peripheral nations like Japan either had no didactic poetry or did not deal with issues of philosophy in song and poetry. The form of thought that placed importance on both the mind and the material can be found in every civilization sphere, and it caused a simultaneous introduction of the late medieval period around the world. There were even basic similarities in division of responsibility concerning the methods of embodying this change. A great teacher, such as Zhu Xi of China, emerged in the center of the civilization sphere and completed a common written language text that revised and systematized the fundamental principles of the common religion (be it Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc.) to include a recognition of the material. In the intermediate areas, which were unable to do this and thus fell behind, the cultivation of an ethnic language didactic poetry that expressed a new understanding of reality was offered as an alternative, leading the development of literary history. Nations in the periphery were in no condition to enter the competition. The specific aspects of late medieval ethnic language didactic poetry are different for each country. In Korea, the didactic poetry of the late medieval period were Gyeonggi-style songs and gasa, and the lyrical poetry was sijo. Gyeonggi-style songs appeared first, and with their decline gasa become the dominant didactic poetry. Gyeonggi-style songs were short-lived, but gasa enjoyed a long life, playing an important role in the next era as well. Sijo are still around today. 5 The late Joseon period, after the Japanese Invasion of 1592, was the first stage of the transition between the medieval era and the modern era. The efforts to ensure the continuation medieval literature and the movement to establish a modern literature were intertwined in a relationship of conflict and harmony; it would be a mistake to call this period an extension of medieval literature, and it was would be unreasonable to call it the starting point of modern literature. The transitional period between the medieval era and the modern era was not merely a transition, but an era that had its own distinct characteristics. There were two such periods: the transitional period between the ancient and the medieval era, and the transitional period between the medieval and the modern era. The transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era cannot be given a concise, unique label, and we have no choice but to define its characteristics by referring to the dual character of medieval and modern literature, since the three-fold system of ancient, medieval, and modern is considered the starting point for the division of historical periods. We cannot, however, begin to describe the development of literary history by revising this three-fold system. It would be wiser to realize that reality is more important than terminology, and to view the revision of the three-fold system not as a prerequisite but a result of the task at hand. The Japanese Invasion of 1592, which lasted for seven years, was a severe trial that forced appalling suffering on the Korean people, shaking the nation to its foundations. "Righteous armies" rose up around the country and reinforcements arrived from Ming China to repel the invaders. About a generation later, another disturbance occurred, this time in the north. Having founded the Later Jin Empire in 1609, the Jurchen (Manchus) eventually established the Qing Dynasty in China in 1644. Along the way they invaded Korea twice, once in 1627 and once in 1636, forcing Korea to suffer the humiliation of defeat. The Jurchen and Japanese had been regarded as little more than inferior barbarians, and yet when they overran the civilized nation of Korea, the ruling class had no means of coping with them. Having exhausted their strength fighting in Korea, the government of Japan collapsed and was replaced by the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty as the ruler of China. The Joseon Dynasty, though, was already two hundred years old and showing its limitations, and although it suffered a decisive wound, it did not collapse but extended its lifespan for about another three hundred years. The excellency of the Joseon Dynasty, which was a model late medieval nation for not only East Asia but the entire world, acted as an impediment to historical development. It was very fortunate that Korea was able to overcome the trials of the Japanese and Mongol invasions, but opinions varied on why this was possible and what it means. Those who say that loyalty was absolute said that it was only by the aid of heaven that the king did not pass beyond the borders of the nation and the royal line was preserved. If we think of the dynasty and the people as separate, though, even though the ruling system of the dynasty was showing its limitations both internally and externally, the people were still capable and could thus repel the foreign invaders and protect the cultural community. When the ruling class weakens, it is only natural that a critical and creative force should rise up from the lower class. As seen in the "righteous armies" that arose during the invasions, the lower class grew and their resistance intensified. Suffering two wars and then entering into the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era was a change that the three East Asian nations experienced together. Japan and China did not enter the modern era with the change in dynasties. However, while the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Qing Dynasty both established ruling systems appropriate to the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era, effectively preventing the progression into the modern era, the Joseon Dynasty refused to abandon the ideals of the late medieval era and thus lost the ability to control society and aggravated the social contradiction. No matter what the place, the most important social change of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era was the emergence of a bourgeois class that made their living through commerce and industry. This was also the period when the demands of the bourgeoisie for a change from a status-based society to a class-based society were rejected and the status system protected, leading to the coexistence of status and class. Qing Chinese society became one in which only those who passed the civil service examination were allowed to retain the highest status, while all others merely belonged to a class and had no status. The Tokugawa Shogunate bestowed on its bourgeoisie the status of chyounin (lit. "townspeople"), thus reestablishing the status system. The Joseon Dynasty at first attempted to preserve the status system intact. When the bourgeoisie gained yangban status, though, followed by wealthy farmers, the majority of the population came to have yangban status and the status system became powerless. The ruling class, which failed to understand that a more fundamental change was taking place, tried to heal the wounds of war and divert domestic criticism by proclaiming that the Joseon Dynasty was indeed the last bastion of medieval values against the barbarians of Japan and Qing China. For this reason, even some cultural movements that sought modernization had to accept these values as their basic premise, and their thorough objections were either made with great effort or grew violent. The numerous records, testimonies, recollections, and imaginings from all walks of life that arose from war brought the history of Korean literature to a new stage. Faced with a severe trial, writers abandoned formalities that they had respected up until then and sought new ways of vividly expressing that which they had seen, felt, and lamented. This was the case with everyone, and so the gap between the upper and lower classes was narrower than it had ever been before. This was the starting point of the literature of the transitional period between the medieval era and the modern era. Even the historical records or journals left behind by government officials carrying out their official duties report in detail the course of the war and the events after it ended, moving the reader with their realistic depictions of the wretched scenes and their expressions of grief. Their experiences were so new that they could not explain them, so they needed to make an unprecedented attempt to simply describe what they saw and felt. Such attempts were published in hangeul (the native Korean script) as well, proving that the usage of hangeul had increased. With the emphasis on expressing sentiments, poetry was chosen in favor of prose. Even in hanmun poetry, which followed traditional forms, the writers were not in a position to refine their writing, and so they put content first. In sijo and gasa, there were cases where the authors failed to bring to life the experiences and sentiments themselves, and thus relied on ancient events and introduced moralistic explanations into the text. In tales and novels, authors could only use those types that had been handed down. Old rhetorical methods were at odds with the new experiences, and this problem took a long time to solve. In cases where the goal was to reaffirm medieval ideology, harmony was achieved by either reducing or watering down new experiences. When questions about the overall meaning of life were asked, even without a drastic departure from the old rhetorical methods, the discord of form and content actually had a positive significance. Shaping the logic of the new experiences themselves into the structure of the work was possible from the literature of the very lowest class. 6 The novel took its place as the literature of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era. What had previously been called "novels" were no more than the pioneering works of outsiders that were ahead of their time. The novel gained its own distinct form and grew in earnest as a new literary genre during the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era, the late Joseon period (17th century and on). At the same time, the age of the novel was beginning in other East Asian nations and in Europe as well. In order to understand the beginning of the age of the novel, we need to examine the history of the changing era as the structure of philosophical thought and literary genres meshed. As philosophy changed, a corresponding change occurred in literature as well, so this change can be explained through philosophical concepts and logic. It is a fact that the history of philosophy and the history of literature are both separate histories and a unified whole everywhere in the world, but in Korea this fact is particularly clear. During the medieval era, the universe was understood to be a duality of the mind/the way/the principle reason and the material/the vessel/the material force. In the early medieval period the distinction was between the mind and the material: the mind was considered genuine while the material was considered false. and so lyric poetry, which expressed the mind, occupied the highest position of all literary branches. In the late medieval period, the mind was called "principle reason" and the material was called "material force". They were both considered important and raised up side by side, establishing a structure of thinking that enabled the coexistence of lyric poetry and didactic poetry. In the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era, principle reason and material force were considered at once separate and inseparable, but the theory of the duality of principle reason and material force was dominant, holding that material force was the more important. The theory of the monism of material force refuted this, and held that principle reason was merely the principle of material force and did not exist separately. This philosophy corresponds with the novel, which expresses the conflict between eum and yang (yin and yang) in the realm of material force as the conflict between the self and the world in the fictional work. In the structure of the novel as well there are elements which follow the dualist theory and elements which follow the monist theory, leading to controversy surrounding the retrogression toward the medieval era and the progression toward the modern era. The novel succeeded the tale, but displayed the inverse of its relationship between the self and the world. It overcame the tendencies of the legend, which asserted the supremacy of the world in the conflict between the self and the world, and the folk tale, which asserted the supremacy of the self in that same conflict, and established a serious structure of conflict characterized by mutual supremacy. The novel is markedly different from legends and folk tales, which were oral literature that were occasionally recorded, in that it was created as written literature. Literary composition methods could not be borrowed from the tale, so a separate model was needed. That model was the biography (jeon). In name and form, the novel paraded as the biography, transforming the didactic into the narrative, fact into fiction, instruction into entertainment, and support of the ruling ideology into criticism of it. The mission of the biography was originally to judge the rights and wrongs of individuals in their biographies in historical records, seeking to instruct later generations. Then there arose personal stories that, unlike official biographies, anyone could write, and the content and expression in these stories became more free, producing works that drew closer to the novel. There are works that could be called intermediate works that show an overlapping of the biography and the novel. This does not mean, though, that the novel was a later modification of the biography. The novel was a rebellious child, disguising itself as the biography, plagiarizing its method of narrating people's lives, and gradually usurping the authority the biography had enjoyed. Not only in Korea, but in other East Asian countries as well, the novel began as a "mock biography," just as it began as a "mock confessional" in Europe. The relationship between the biography and the novel becomes the standard by which historical eras are divided. The period when there was only the biography and no novel continued through the early medieval era, and then the situation changed with the advent of the novel. The period during which the novel, which had been rejected because of its inferior position, posed as the biography was the first stage of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era. The reversal of positions in which the biography lost its influence and disguised itself as the novel was a change that occurred during the second stage of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era. In the modern era, the biography was excluded from the domain of literature and the novel wielded great influence. The novel appeared and grew at the same time in each nation in East Asia, so a comparison is necessary. Through such a comparative study a number of questions about the Korean novel may be answered. The Korean novel was greatly influenced by the Chinese novel, and there were not a few translations and adaptations, but their basic characters were different. This is a difference that is best examined in relation to social history, rather than literary theory. The transcribing and, at the reader's discretion, adaptation of novels whose authors were unknown was something that only happened in Korea. In China, it was customary for an author to publish books under a pen name. In Japan, publishers requested manuscripts from authors and clearly stated the author's name when publishing these manuscripts, thus allowing them to maintain their popularity. It could be said that the novels of China were writers' novels, the novels of Japan were publishers' novels, and the novels of Korea were readers' novels. Chinese novels, even those that were written in baihua, the colloquial language, could only be read and enjoyed by learned men. Japanese novels, which used kana (the vernacular script), were men's novels because of the characteristics of the content, not the language it was written in. Korean novels, though, were read mostly by women and actively addressed women's interests, and it is surmised that there were a significant number of novels written by women as well. 7 Modern literature is the literature of the period from 1919 to today. The literature of the period from the 17th century to 1918 is the literature of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era, divided into the first and second stages by the year 1860. In 1860, "Eastern learning" was founded and a collection of Eastern learning songs, was published, ushering in a new stage of the transitional period from the medieval era to the modern era. With the March First Independence Movement in 1919, the transitional period between the medieval era and the modern era ended and modern literature began. As we enter the period of modern literature, the relationship between Korean literature and world literature increases dramatically, demanding a wide-ranging comparative study. In studying modern Korean literature, we must keep in mind the fact that the basic character of modern literature is the same everywhere, only the timing and the process by which modern literature was achieved differ. Compared with the literature of the preceding transitional period, modern literature differs in the following aspects. During the transition from the medieval era to the modern era, Eastern Asia was one civilization sphere that produced a homogeneous and interrelated literature, but in the modern era the individual countries each went their separate ways. Japan renounced their Asian heritage, joined the ranks of the European imperialist powers and devoted itself to aggression. China suffered civil war in a semi-colonial state, and there was severe ideological conflict in literary composition as well. Like Korea, Vietnam became a colony, but their ruler was France. Unlike most other nations in Eastern Asia, Korea was colonized not by a distant European power, but by its own neighbor. For this reason, Korea was at a far greater disadvantage than other colonized nations in Asia and Africa. Firstly, modern Western literature was introduced second-hand by the Japanese, making a deep understanding of it impossible. Secondly, Japan was unable to secure the moral superiority needed to justify their colonial rule and thus enforced a military rule that leaned toward fascism, engaging in oppression that denied freedom of the press or of thought. The first disadvantage seemed to be a difficult one to overcome. In terms of literary criticism, the indirect transplanting of modern literature did cause difficulties. However, in terms of actual literary composition, authors, whether they realized it or not, succeeded in carrying on the tradition of Korean literature and tapping into the wellspring of modern literature to create a national literature that may serve as a model for the Third World. The second disadvantage led to the misfortune of Korean writers having almost no creative freedom. Korean writers had to develop their literature differently than China, which went no further than a semi-colonial state, not to mention the colonial ruler of Japan. These two characteristics, though, did not cause literature to wither, but became a catalyst that led to a more faithful manifestation of the universal values of modern literature. In Japan, writers who did not want to cooperate with the aggressors, but were oppressed for their proletarian literature and had genuinely abandoned the ideology of Communism, sought to create a literature that pursued sensibilities, as in the West. In China, literary critics who severely discussed the political ideology of the proletarian literary movement assumed leadership of Chinese literature. Korean writers cherished in secret inclined toward proletarian literature that was oppressed more harshly than in Japan and linked this with the national literature. They eschewed the slogans of struggle and focused on composition, using indirect methods such as allusion, symbolism, and satire to criticize colonial rule and express their desire for national liberation. Although they did not proclaim it, they took on the duty of leading the people, earning great trust. In poetry, the surface chaos which is made following Japanese adaptation European literature did not go very deep. There were those who sought to revive sijo, and others who insisted that poets should follow the Japanese precedent and write free verse. Yet there were also those who leaned to neither side, but inherited and modified traditional rules of versification and manifested in their poetry the national resistance against the Japanese imperialism. The exceptional works produced by Yi Sanghwa, Han Yongun, and Kim Sowol were widely loved and considered a proud heritage of national literature, the likes of which cannot be found in either Japan or China. Yi Yuksa and Yun Dongju, who died in prison toward the end of the colonial period, did not attempt to become political poets. Nor were they nationalistic poets. They merely expressed in simple lyrical poetry the desire to live truthfully and without shame, unconquered by the darkness of the age, and for this the Japanese government put them in prison and left them to die, making them martyrs for the cause of national liberation, proving that they had transcended such justifications as political ideology or nationalist consciousness. The modern novel was established by Yeom Sangseop, and his Three Generations (Samdae, 1931) presented an unbiased a cross-section of the differences in ways of thinking and the severity of the struggle between ideologies that emerged along with the changes of the times. In Gang Gyeongae's The Problem of Humanity (Inganmunje, 1934), tenant farmers who could not bear the extortion of the landowners moved to the city and became factory workers, where they engaged in a bitter struggle with the factory owner. She depicted the typical process of proletarian struggle beneath colonial rule through a weak female protagonist and a style that showed a delicate sensibility. In Muddy Stream (Tangnyu, 1937), which carried on the tradition of pansori, Chae Mansik depicted the fate of one poor woman who could not deal properly with harsh reality because of her kind heart, alluding to the coming awakening of the people. After liberation from colonial rule, Korea was divided north and south, and the writers of each side were cut off from each other and created different literatures. In the South, critics who claimed that the new currents of thought in European literature should be adopted were very influential, while in the North the goal was socialist realist composition. Both sides, though, attempted to write narrative poems and historical novels that would stand as monuments to national history. IP Address : 222.234.83.216