This paper, concentrated on Chae Man-sik’s Boy Grows, pays attention to war refugees’ cultural shock and examines what the substantial of the fearful strangeness they were faced with is. To straightforwardly conclude, it was the absence of democracy. Chae Man-sik deplored the fact that he could not find any chance to see the realization of democracy in the motherland. Prior to analyzing the novel, this paper explores what the writer’s concerns are, in terms of Chae’s novels right after the Liberation. His concerns include the resolution of pro-Japanese residues, self-criticism, and the independence and foundation of the nation. After the Liberation, Chae addressed problems with the national foundation, and his main interest is in the ‘sovereignty’ among other characteristics of the modern state. He deplored his motherland’s conditions in which she was not able to recover and exert her sovereignty undergoing the U.S. military administration even though she had been independent of Japan.
Creating Boy Growsin 1949, Chae Man-sik hoped a promising future of this land after the Liberation in terms of a boy who had no experience in the Japanese colonial age. Though it is sorry that this work was not completed, with his main concerns, he criticized the conditions of democracy right after the Liberation, and was interested in the recovery of democracy. The returnees’routes in the work include 4 areas, i.e., Manchu, the journey from Manchu to Seoul, Seoul, and the trip from Seoul to Iri. Especially, the thresholds connecting spaces made themselves standards not only for the moving subjects’identity but also for the clarification of the particularity of
the reality where they existed. One of the most fundamental motivations of Joseon farmers’depart from Manchu for their motherland lied in their fantasy about democracy, which they believed would provide equality of opportunity.
As they arrived at Seoul, they experienced unhomeliness, which was due to the totally undemocratic conditions of their motherland. Not able to bear the unhomeliness, they set out for farmland in Jeolla-do. The young brother and sister began a new life without their parents in Iri, Jeollado. As they led a life on their own, they were wakened to the reality. What the young boy found out was the reality in which democracy was taken advantage of for each individual’s benefit. As democracy was lost and was misunderstood due to each party at stake’s interest, mammonism and egoism (shadows of capitalism) were in full swing. Though his will in the novel was praiseworthy, the boy’s grow was quite incomplete. His incomplete grow suggests the incompleteness of the establishment of democracy.