The purpose of this thesis is to examine ‘the wounds and healing’ arising from the place where personal experiences and historical experiences are overlapped. The literary world of Ha Geun-chan, the author of ‘Soonanidae’ (Ordeals of two generations), was dealt with as the specific object of study.
With regard to Korean War and the division of the country, Korean literature in the 1950s～1960s was tied up in anti-Communism. Anti-communism was a kind of ruling techniques that reinforces the ruling system through ideological oppression. Under the ideological oppression, Ha Geun-chan created literature relatively freed from the oppression of anti-Communism. How could the writer, who had personal wounds of his father being charged of reactionary and killed by the North Korean People’s Army, form the distance from the ideological regulating power? This is meaningful as a case of wounds from the division being healed by literature.
Ha Geun-chan’s major works include Soonanidae (1957), Ferry Stories (1959), White Paper Beard (1959), Hongso (1960), Boon (1961), Royal Tomb and Occupation Forces (1963), the Mountain Rumbling (1964). These novels painfully described the wounds that the war had left. It was sudden misery stormed into the peaceful village, and in a sense, it could be a narration of remorse and wishing that it might have been better if it had been out of touch with the external world. The resistant actions against this are represented by cutting off the river way by ferry (Ferry Stories), crushing bullets with stones (Backwoods Fable), describing war wounds from the war stormed into the mountain village (Mountain Rumbling), destroying the notice of the person killed in battle (Hongso), and describing positive refusal of conscription. (Boon)
Ha Geun-chan’s novels dealing with the division of the country and war wounds may be viewed as foolish defense against war. However, such foolishness is a kind of literary methods to soothe war wounds that have already occurred and undoubtedly exist. If the readers in the 1950s and the1960s sympathized with Ha Geun-chan’s novels, it would be because the novels comforted those who were still suffering from war wounds with soothing words. Most of all, his populist attitude of viewing the world from the position of damaged people played an important role in forming the views of regarding the war as the violence of powers and the violence of the nations.
If Ha Geun-chan’s literature performed healing functions, it is deeply related to populism. He took the attitude of seeing the war from beneath from the viewpoint of the people. Before discussing the justification of war, he showed how violent the war was and embodied in literature why the war must not break out again in this country. It is well revealed in his language that he tried to maintain people’s viewpoints. Ha Geun-chan’s novels all used Gyeongsang-do crude dialect full of warmth This is where Ha Geun-chan’s literary attitude of adhering to people’s sentiments through the people’s language is confirmed. It can be said to be a ‘carnivalesque imagination’ that heals the wounds of the division with the people’s language through the populist viewpoints.