How did the Korean people who were impoverished by the capitalistic exploitation accept the capitalism imposed by the Japanese imperialists in 1930’s? Salient clues to answer the question can be found in the novels of Kim, Yoojung, which describes impoverished people’s everyday lives in 1930’s. This paper tries to trace such clues based on S. Federici’s feministic critics on capitalism and F. Benjamin’s perception of capitalism as irrational religion.
In those days, people were exploited and deprived of their lands and assets which were their means of livelihood by the capitalists as well as by the feudalists, where independent self-sustained peasants were the typical victims. The situations in the novels are not different from the reality, but they are described in paradoxical connotation : the characters of the novels mobilize the capitalism to carry out their own schemes to make money for their livelihood and / or their never-coming fortune.
They tries to manipulate the capitalist market system based on exchange value into means for their dreams to escape the horrible living conditions. At this point, the capitalism is not just economic system, but is escalated to the position of religion : the religion, in which every dreams to change one’s destiny as impoverished people have to end in failure. All the characters, who have no money to invest, no land to cultivate, nor any knowledge and information on the capitalist economy to make their fortune with, are actually dreaming false dreams, that will make their lives worse than those before the dreams. The more dreams, the more severe failures in such a colonized and capitalized economical system as 1930’s Korea.
This paper tries to explain the paradoxical nature of the capitalism and to find any possible alternatives by analysing Kim’s novels, which describe such dreams and failures in patterned plots. The characters accept the capitalist market system and try to confirm their way of living to the system, but eventually come to horrible fails. Those paths of failure of the characters cast so much salient implications on the nature of the capitalism : The failures comes not only from the characters’ disability, but from the capitalism’s very nature, where nothing but the capital can survive any more. The dreams and failures of the characters are just motifs for revealing the intrinsic irrationality and superstitiousness of the capitalism’s impossible dreams to make endless accumulation of the capital. But the novels go further : they suggest alternative ways of living against the grain of the capitalist greed to maximize profits. Theft, cheating, contract marriage, tresspass, etc. are examples of such ways of living, which are based on mutual understanding and reciprocity in such a communal society as 1930’s Korea. Such motifs of the novels can constitute non-capitalist ethics which transcend the victim-selves, and can offers us who are living in the 21th century a golden opportunity to overcome the fetters of the neo-liberalistic capitalism.

이 글은 자본주의에 대한 여성주의적 비판을 도모하는 페데리치(2011)와 자본주의의 비합리성에 주목한 벤야민(2004)의 논의에 기대어 김유정 소설을 해석하였다. 소설의 시대적 배경을 이루는 1930년대는 봉건적 착취와 자본적 착취가 병존하며 수많은 자영농민들을 그 생활의 근거인 토지로부터 축출하던 시기였다. 세속화된 종교의 형태로 최종심급에 좌정한 것은 자본이나, 현실은 노동착취와 빈곤으로 일관되는 식민지 근대의 자본주의 구조 안에서 하층민들이 도모하는 축적의 꿈은 실패를 반복할 수밖에 없다. 이 글은 반복되는 실패의 패턴에 주목하여 김유정 소설을 분석함으로써 식민지 근대 자본주의의 모순과 대안을 찾아내고자 하였다. 자본에 유혹되어 자본과 공모하였으나 결국은 실패하고마는 이 필패의 경로는 개인의 실패를 넘어 자본의 실패를 노정하는 의의를 지닌다. 작중인물들이 그리는 꿈과 실패의 패턴은 불가능한 자본의 꿈과 자본주의적 합리성에 숨은 비합리성과 미신성을 폭로하는 주요한 계기로 드러나는 것이다. 나아가, 교환의 실패를 비자본주의적 윤리로 전이시키는 이행과정에 주목함으로써 피해자 주체를 넘어서는 능동적 가능성을 확보할 수 있었다.