[Feature] Rethinking the Literary History of a Unified Korea: How to Meet the Other Within Our Mother Tongue / Kim Hyung-su
The Quarterly Changbi 184, Summer 2019
Abstract
With the phrase “My country is my mother tongue” as a key phrase guiding the momentous task of rethinking literary history of a unified Korea, Kim Hyung-su freely discusses how to overcome the obstacles of a divided literature. While recalling earlier writers who rejected the framework of division and created a literature of their own, Kim also reminds us of the importance of meeting numerous others within our mother tongue, a situation that could not help appearing during the 70-year division of Korea. The last stop he arrives at is “the wedding hall of neutrality” that the late poet Shin Dong-yup yearned for.