[Feature] Two Affects of Korean Literature in Our Time: Han Kang & Kwon Yeo-sun / Choi Won-sik
The Quarterly Changbi 174, Winter 2016
Abstract
Covering the novels by Han Kang and Kwon Yeo-sun in his critical essay, Choi Won-sik typifies The Vegetarian as an experiment of the instinctive resistance to the petit bourgeois, and The Human Acts as an achievement of "non-totality" constructed upon the anonymous minorities, while describing the recent short stories by Kwon, also highly acclaimed by critics, as the apocalyptic landscape subsumed irrevocably into the capitalist mode. Furthermore, the scrupulous attention to the implications successfully places the social significance of the works by the two authors into proper position which would have otherwise been criticized for being destitute of narratives or for the seemingly low degree of class consciousness.