It was not until the modernization theory appeared that urban problems began to draw attention within the Oriental societies. Although we must not fall into the error of mechanically classifying the Western world after the Industrial Revolution as the nurturing ground of urban culture and the rest of the globe as being invariably agrarian in cultural mode, still we cannot but admit that in the Oriental feudalistic societies, the conflict between the city and the rural areas, between the agricultural mode of production and handicraft was by no means serious. The mildness of the conflicts between the city and the rural areas and that between the agricultural mode of production and handicraft were mutually related and determining.
Even if we accept the contention that the form of the city existed long before the emergence of capitalism and some of the characteristics of the city-even some of the modern urban characteristics-are not directly dependent upon the capitalistic accumulation, it still seems unavoidable that we determine the rise of the city in Korea as the cognitive object in the structure of conflict inherent in modern society, as contrasted with the city as the place of residence and the place of consumption for the class of bureaucracy under the feudalistic social regime, as occurring only after the opening of the ports in the modern era.
If we understand the whole process of opening of the ports, modernization, and urbanization as one, connected sequence of the infiltration routine of the monopoly capitalism and evaluate the entire phenomenon from the nationalist perspective, viewing this process as directly conducive to the annihilation of nationalist consciousness, we are bound to arrive at a position critical of urban culture. It is the truth that even among our writers and poets who were not equipped with the knowledge of social science, the city failed to ever be recognized as the ideal setting for the national life, as we can see illustrated in many literary works after the modernization period. Kim So-wol, a leading modern poet of Korea, for instance, sings in "Night of Seoul"
They say streets are good in Seoul
They say nights are good in Seoul
There are red lights
There are blue lights
But in the hidden bottom of my heart
The blue light shines all by itself
The red light shines all by itself.
This harkening back toward the idyllic life of the agrarian society came to form a cultural matrix rooted deep in the primitive communal feeling of our nation, and this nostalgia for the past agrarian mode of living augmented as modernization came to mean more and more the colonization and usurpation by a foreign power. The refusal to accept the urban culture and emotion, as seen in Shin Tong-yop's poems in the sixties, the era of industrialization, has been one of main currents of our literature even to this day.
The recognition of the city as the symbol of dehumanization stems from the reality in which "the urbanization phenomenon helps to create a hierarchical society by aggrandizing the gap between the rich and the poor instead of promoting a gradual progress, so that the marginalization of the poor strata of the society is being stabilized as the characteristic phenomenon of the third world." As the city became more active in its economic role aggravating the conflict between the poor and the rich, the dehumanization phenomenon which accompanied this change as well as its various impacts on the society, loomed up as useful dramatic materials for literature. It is especially undeniable in the case of our country that the post-modernization literature attained a dramatic richness on account of its awareness of the elements of conflict and contradiction in the society, which made a marked contrast with our classical literature which was poor in the dramatic quality.
It was after the opening of the ports that the impact of the urban culture became palpable. To be more concrete, the Foreign Residential District, which existed from 1876 through 1910, came to play the role of the avant-garde for the urbanization of Korean temper, which is partly attested to by the fact that this one-time foreign residential area forms the central part of the metropolis in the present day municipal map.
During this period of the quickening of our urban literature, we see the first emergence of the anti-foreign esthetics as well as enlightenment poems. That the longing for urbanization and enlightenment developed side by side with an attitude critical of such longing well reflects the duality in the reaction of our literature toward urbanization ever since this era.
After the first urbanization stage led in by the foreign residential district, the second stage of urbanization set in the form of a controlling and usurping structure of Japanese colonialism. The third stage of urbanization as a phenomenon leaving a significant mark on the history of our literature, was occasioned by the encounter of our society with the Western ways and things through liberation and the Korean War. The fourth stage in urbanization was brought in by the industrialization programs of the sixties when a new cognition of what is urban took shape.
The urban literature of the enlightenment period did not go much beyond expressing a longing for such things as steamships, ports and a concern for means of transportation such as the train. This same era, however, produced quite a number of works of anti-urban esthetics which demonstrated a naked animosity toward the foreign impingement on our society. This trend was formed mostly by those of the writers and poets who placed the importance of the historical or the national consciousness above enlightenment. It is to be noted here that this literature, which had its purpose in diffusion of the anti-imperialist national consciousness, was contributed mainly by non-literary writers including historians or journalists.
II. Growth of a Colonialist Urban Literature
In determining the time when the problem of the city became a serious concern of our national esthetics, we must settle on the decade of the 1920s as the most appropriate dating. Yi Chae-son, who chooses this period as the formative era of ecological cognition of the city as the scene of life, mentions realism as the esthetic mode of expression by which the impact of such a cognition on the Korean society as a whole was portrayed. He further comments that this literary trend of the twenties develops into modernism in poetry in the next decade.
The urbanized pattern characterized by incorporation of the Foreign Settlement District gave way, after the Japanese Occupation, to a recognition of the scope of the city planning with emphases on the centralized colonial dictatorship, exploitative industrialization, opening of strategical transportation routes, and centralized educational administration for the diffusion of colonial consciousness. Thus, the urban literature during the colonial period has developed, in terms of material and theme, into (1), "the literature of the drifters" depicting how the stable agrarian spirit was broken up and the rural people came to lose their homestead, (2) "the literature of the urban poor" depicting how the uprooted people who drifted into the city became impoverished and suffered, (3) "the literature of the laborers" which portrayed the lives of the people who ended up as the urban laborer under the foreign rule, (4)"the literature of the middle classes", offering a critique of the way the upper classes including landlord class and bureaucrats adjusted to the new urban order, giving themselves up to the pleasure and corruption offered by city living, (5) "the literature of the petit bourgeoisie" depicting the sorrows and the joys in the urban living of the petit bourgeois class, and (6)"the avant-garde literature" of various derivations (i.e. modernism, surrealism, etc.) that distilled the modern urban culture into highly refined esthetics.
Unlike the West, where the transition from agrarian to industrial society took place in the eighteenth century, we cannot consider the literature before the 1960s, when this transition is believed to have occurred in our country, as a mature urban literature characteristic of the modern time. The evaluation of the form of urban literature given in Section (6), therefore, is bound to vary according to each interpreter. The mere fact, however, that such various forms of urban literature developed at all, despite the oppressive condition of the colonial time, is worthy of some praise.
The theme of lost homestead constitutes a representative model of our literature during the colonial period. We may classify Hyon Chin-gon's "Hometown" depicting the impoverished life of an uprooted people, Yi Ik-sang's "Leaving Home'', Chtoe Hak-song's "Escape", Cho Myong-hui's "Naktong River" as representing this model. The occasion of home-leaving by the characters appearing in these stories is the colonial condition of poverty and oppression. There are, for these people forsaking their homestead, no certain destinations, and they end up becoming the urban poor, day laborers, or "reserve laborers". In the case of women, the fate awaiting them was even harsher. These home-deprived wanderers that we find in our early urban literature quickly enough turn into the group described in Section (2), and as such make their presence Conspicuous in the urban scene.
The image of the urban poor which we encounter in such literary works as Kim Tong-in's "The Potatoes", Cho Myong-hui's "A Midsummer Night", Yi Ik-sang's "Madness", and many early works of Kim Kijin and Pak Yong-hui as well as Yi Sang's "The Wings", demonstrates an aspect of urban literature developed under the deforming colonial policy. The manner in which these people confront their reality, however, differs considerably in each case.
Some of them show an image of the selfish poor pursuing what their animal instincts direct, while others roam about in the maze of abstract ideas oblivious of reality. Still others are presented as plunging into an abyss of self-destruction or else boldly throwing themselves into the brave task of reforming society. In any case, however, we cannot help noting that the urban literature of this period did not reach the stage of objectively recognizing the social reality of the time as it really was, but instead remained as an esthetic adventure tending toward an abstract, theoretical perception of reality.
The urban literature described in Section (3)flowered in the latter part of the decade of the twenties and thrived through the thirties. A representative example of this literature of he city which may well be simply called "the literature of the laborer is Kang Kyong-ae's "The Human Problem". Against the background and the fall of the agrarian society and the rise of the colonial industrial society, the novelist pits the existential problems of the laborer class. One outstanding feature of this novel is the fact that the hero is a modern industrial laborer of the colonial time in Korea. (As to the other trends and questions of the literature of the laborer, see "The New Direction of the Literature of the Laborer" in The Fate of the Nation and the Literary Trends by the present writer.)
I have so far examined three forms of urban literature representing literature of the lower classes. The remaining three of the six derivations of urban literature involve the classes, including the petit bourgeois class, the middle classes or the classes that share the conditions of these classes. What they portray is the image of these people as they make their living in their urban setting. Yom Sang-sop's "Mansejon" and "Three Generations", portray a city life in which despite the dark shadow of the colonial time, some of the Korean upper classes pursue pleasures made possible by the material progress of the modern period. The novelist faithfully portrays the stages through which the traditional ethics of the Korean people crumble under the condition of urbanization during a colonial rule, which inevitably effects a moral corruption of the colonial subjects. Especially the passage in which Yi In-hwa, one character in the novel who appears as a Korean studying abroad in Japan, describes Pusan as it was going through the process of urbanization is noteworthy:
Leaving the harbour behind, I walked west following the tracks of the tramway. All along both sides of the wide street, however, I saw only two-story houses standing one next to another in straight lines but not one Korean house. . .
We could tell what they felt as they took refuge out in the outskirts of the city or away in the country throwing away into foreign hands this land which their ancestors had patiently and sweatingly trodded down into a foundation of living...One house and then two houses went and ten houses changed faces and then one hundred houses. Old houses were pulled down and in no time now houses stood up. One-story houses turned into two-story houses and ondol was replaced by tatami(Japanese straw flooring), kerosene-oil lamp giving way to electric lighting.
"Did you hear, X's house is going to be pulled down to make the new road?"
But the old man who had made this gossiping remark while filling his long pipe woke up, would hear the noise of the picks and the shovels busy at work coming from the direction of X's house and in no time the direction of X's house and in no time, there would be tramways, running automobiles spitting dirt and hooting. The sound of Japanese wooden sandals would become louder daily and there would be the new post office. Old military buildings would be pulled down to make room for the new M.P. station and the brothel with its music of shamisen (Japanese string instrument) would quickly replace Korean inns and taverns. No sooner would the country gentlemen hitched by such new visitors as syphilis or gonorrhea complain of the lack of hospital, than clever quack doctors would present themselves full of readiness to serve. The world became so convenient.
"We have electric lights and tramcars now in our village. Come and see. There are a couple of nice cozy eating houses, too.... I bet you never saw a Japanese whore, did you? I will show you one."
"Pusan is the miniature portrait and the symbol of Korea," says Yom Sang-sop who eloquently displayed through his novels how the pattern of urbanization in Korea went through deformation under the colonial rule.
The transformation of the lodging places which are an inevitable part of a city life begins in 1910, about three decades after modern-style lodging accommodations first appeared on the Korean scene for the convenience of foreign visitors. To give a more detailed picture, there were as many as 449 inns and spas by 1927. This was, in all its ramifications, an indication more of the fast crumbling of the traditional ethics than of any constructive efforts in terms of development of tourist and vacation facilities. The Japanese, moreover, interfered with even the management of traditional tavern-inns so that disintegration of the traditional values was accelerated even in these peripheral areas. In contrast to this was the fact that for the laborers and the rest of the urban poor, there were no lodging accommodations except those provided by some religious groups.
The pattern of urbanization under foreign rule can be grasped by comparing the population ratios between the city and the rural area. The ratio between the city and the country in 1920, for instance, was 3.4%: 96.6% but the percentage rates of the city population increased to 4.4% in 1925, 5.6% in 1930, 7.0% in 1940, and 14.0% in 1942. These ratios, of course, may seem considerably insignificant compared with the ratios shown in England where the agrarian population decreased from 36% in 1800 to 22% in 1859 or in Japan where the urban population increased from 18.0% in 1920 to 24.0% in 1930, and 37.7% in 1940. What is more noteworthy, however, is that the increase in urban population signifies mainly the role of the city as the place of agglomeration by a large number of people. The reason I make this statement is that 35.2% of the Seoul residents at the time constituted the class of the extreme poor who subsisted at the level of one meal per day. This fact alone points us to the reality that urbanization under foreign rule was only a symbol of colonial usurpation and no more.
What we can learn from Yom Sang-sop's aforementioned novel is the grave aspect of the colonial period in Korea which allowed the ruling class of traditional Korea to continue to live affuently enough to send their sons and daughters abroad to study. Even under colonial rule. they were the same upper privileged class. True they formed a declining class, and yet the declension in their status was actual only in comparison with their past glory, but in relation with what the lower impoverished classes went through, the level of power and affluence they enjoyed was immense. They were still the overlords indulging in pleasure and corruption, while the poor famished and suffered in their shadow.
In Ch'ae man-shik's "Time of prosperity" also, we find the antinationalist delusion of Korean traditional ruling classes in the character of old man Yun Tu-sop who sends his grandsons to Japan to study to become either provincial magistrates or police chiefs under Japanese rule. These old ruling class heads of families often appear as having young concubines and deeply submerged in pleasure and corruption. Their immorality and greed seem to grow in contact with the selfish individualism of the city.
The expression of the petit bourgeois consciousness displayed in the mode of literary work classified in Section (5) is somewhat similar to that manifested in the case of Section (4) and yet shows a more wholesome aspect compared with the latter. The characters portrayed in these novels are neither the poor nor the laborer, nor the traditional ruling class personages. They are the common citizen class and as such demonstrate both the acquiescent and critical attitudes toward the social system under which they were obliged to make their living. This class, also portrayed in Pak T'ae-won's "By the River", make their appearance on the urban scene as the floating sector of the urban population, wavering between the conservative and progressive ways of life and uncertain as to the system of values by which their urban living was to be directed. In literary history, these people are defined as the subjects of "the novels of manners", and the novelists who were mostly deeply concerned with the problems of this segment of urban population were ones who harboured an ambition to perpetuate their artistic and social goals through their work.
All five categories of urban literature which we have so far examined have been based on a classification done by consideration of class-determined social distinctions. What remains for our final discussion of the above categorized urban literature during the colonial period, however, differs from the foregoing examples in that this group involves the kind of urban literature by which it made a decisive break with the realistic mode of esthetic perception governing all five forms of urban literature we have studied. What this new esthetic drive, which had made its leap out of the domain of realism, settled on achieving was modernism in its wider sense.
Old sentimentalism merely sang about the subjective feeling of the poet and objects of nature. It did not even begin to show any awareness of the forms and nature of modern civilization and its various affects on the minds of the people that lived, within the influence of that historical happening.
Modernism succeeded, first of all, in capturing the impression of this historical phenomenon called modern civilization as it was flung in our face, being child of this new historical experience and therefore well equipped with fresh perception. Differing from all attitudes of escape vis-a-vis modern civilization, it appeared as its progeny. In other words, a son was born to Korean new poetry (shinshi). It sought freedom from oppression in the city and along with it enabled multiple aspects of civilization to appear in our poetry in place of senseless mumble-jumble. That is, we now have a new sensibility grown out of civilization.
As an example of the expression of this kind of urban esthetics, Kim Ki-rim mentions Kim Kwang-gyun's collection of poems Gas Lamps, illustrating thereby how city-oriented sensibility and emotion can be effectively expressed in poetry.
In debating the problems involved with urbanization, however, the question as to which one of many aspects of our urban problem should receive the primary attention remains open to various answers depending upon different views of our urban situation. The kind of attitude Kim Ki-rim shows in his perception of the urbanization phenomenon, for instance, denotes, a historical understanding positive toward civilization and progress. The question still remains, however, what we can possibly gain by singing about a city growing under a colonial regime even with all the refined esthetic sensibility approved by the poet? Even so, this modernistic esthetic in literature continued to make its impact on the Korean literary mind throughout the colonial period, with its focus on exploration of the theme of man's alienation in the modern world.
III Urbanization during Liberation and Korean War Periods
The next turning point in the development of the colonialist urban literature was the national experience of liberation and the Korean War. The reason why I treat these two historical events in one bundle is that they together offered an occasion of encounter with the West (especially America) and consequent disintegration of the traditional Korean mind. The experience of liberation and the Korean War played the drastic role of pulling down the agrarian ethical code, replacing it with the individualistic value system of the West, while changing the image of the city from that of a gathering place of a large size of population to a scene in which this historical shifting of value systems occurs. The period between liberation and the Korean War effected a far greater impact on such social phenomena as emergence of floating population, loss of homestead, freedom from old value system, disintegration of tradition and alienation than the entire period of thirty-five years of Japanese rule. In this sense, this relatively short period was an important landmark in our modern history.
We may, for the sake of expediency, divide the period from liberation through the end of the Korean War into three phases. The first lasted from liberation to a date immediately preceding the outbreak of the Korean War, and is characterized by the phenomenon of the loss of home rather than by the return to the old homesite as a consequence of the termination of the colonial rule. The expectancy and excitement of homecoming soon changed to disillusionment and this in turn led to the phenomenon of leaving home, which ended up as a concentration of population in Seoul and other cities. The increase in the number of refugees from the north and return of Koreans from foreign countries of their temporary residences, accelerated the urbanization phenomenon'° and brought about the expansion of urban poor districts.
The second phase coincided with the large scale exodus undertaken during the period of the Korean War by those who had missed an earlier chance to leave their home in search of another place of abode, and this again intensified the phenomenon of population concentration in urban areas. The third phase of the migration phenomenon began with the armistice in 1953 continuing through the period immediately before the onset of modernization which produced two groups of homeless population, one of them representing those who were forced to forsake their homesite on account of the division of the country and the other comprising the intentional home-forsakers who took to the road in search of a new life.
Unlike in the case of urbanization under colonial rule, the problems literature faced in the midst of the urbanization that took place in the confusion of the post-war era were (1) the formation of the class of the urban poor after liberation, (2) the increase of the homeless population on account of ideological dissension, and their move into the city, and (3) the formation of urban sensibility after the Korean War with the center in the American army posts.
The portrayal of the urban poor immediately after liberation presented in Kye Yong-muk's "Counting the Stars", gives the impression that the size of the poor population in urban areas was larger and their standard of living lower than in colonial times. In that these poor urban dwellers are devoid of any identifiable political or historical consciousness but are merely concerned with finding a secure basis of living, however, they fail to add to the worth of urban literature in any constructive way.
The more outstanding feature in the urban literature of this period is offered by the literary works belonging to Section (2) of the above listing. Hyon Ki-yong's "Sun-i's Un-cle''U, Mun Sun-t'ae's "The Festival of Royal Azaleas'', Cho Chong-nae's Fire-works, and-although in an indirect man-ner-Yi Mun-gu's Kwanch'or' EssaysX all belong to this category. The logic proffered or implied in these works is that having sided with one or the other ideological camp during the confusing time of national division, some Koreans had no other way but that of leaving behind their home and in most cases move to the city. It is no wonder that the city became a most harsh existential battleground and the stage of the most dehumanized encounters among individuals. For these people there was no past. They had only the present and the days to come, and for this reason they were ready to commit any injustice to make a living for themselves and managed their city life with this frame of mind. Similar to this is the case of Section (3). Towns which developed around the American army stations may be called urban regardless of the sizes of the areas. The life in these garrison towns with its characteristic features of alienation and interest-seeking may, in a sense, be called the most eloquent and concentrated picture of the urban culture of our time. Yi Mun-gu's "Cliff"Y and Ch'on Sung-se's "The Cry of a Yellow Dog"Z both portray this type of city life which has formed one domain of our urban literature as it went through liberation and the Korean War periods.
The novels written between liberation and the end of the fifties with urban themes seem inseparably linked with the question of national division. This is, however, not the case with poetry. The kind of modernist perception of urban life experienced by Kim Kwang-gyun during the colonial time was taken over by Pak In-hwan during this era of great national confusion with little revision, and the fact that our poetry after the Korean War continued to follow this esthetic trend elaborating it deserves some critical reappraisal. We probably ought to interpret this modernistic preoccupation as having resulted from the sense of despair over the dehumanization of urban living and as having materialized as an esthetic breakthrough from the restrictions placed by the condition of division.
IV. Urban Literature after the Decade of the Sixties
Urban literature up to the sixties may be said, in a strict sense, to be only a prologue to its more full-fledged development in the time that followed. That Korean society "experienced a rapid urbanization process after the decade of the sixties"'2 is an analysis unanimously accepted by socioeconomic theoreticians. What we observe in the urbanization pattern of this new decade is its marked difference from that of the fifties. Although the period from the sixties to the present date may be treated in several separate divisions, we will here deal with this whole period in one sweep.
Thanks to the economic development policy, the problems of modernization and urbanization now center around the concentration of population in the city with the ratios scoring 50%:50% in 1970 and finally recording 60% in urban population in 1976 thus reversing the patterns of earlier decades dramatically.
The basic approach of urban literature toward this situation in general is directed by an analysis that "urban problems do not have their roots in the rapid economic growth or the capitalistic system itself, but are merely a temporary phenomenon arising from the lack of sufficiently careful consideration in the course of such rapid growth."In other words, the urban themes appearing in Korean literature after the decade of the sixties, did not question the social system itself but found fault with the inequality in the distribution of profit and whatever negative by-products were created in the process of rapid development.
This approach brought about the situation that the middle class characters that often appeared in urban literature visibly decreased in number, which is rather regretable in a way of looking at the matter. The reason I say this is that only when literature attains the state in which it represents a bird's-eye view of society, it can be said to have depicted reality in its totality. Korean literature after the sixties has focused on the petit bourgeoisie and the urban poor to the exclusion of the lives of the middle class, and after the seventies, moreover, it has been concerned mainly with portraying the urban poor and the laborer class. The result of this is that our urban literature of today is poorer even than that of the colonial period in that it lacks the diversity the latter had. To put it differently, we now face the situation in which urban literature can easily be narrowed down to meaning the literature of the poor and the laborers. I do not make this statement with an intention to minimize the importance of the literature of the poor or the literature of the laborers but to help to elevate the general level of urban literature so that we may the more clearly recognize the importance of the literature of the poor and the laborers through a better understanding of its historical meaning. I cannot help feeling that the kind of method Moctar Lubi used in his "Twilight in Jakarta", for example, I mean the method of juxtaposing the lives of the urban poor against those of the upper classes, may open a new perspective for our urban literature today.
We may summarize the development of Korean urban literature since the sixties as follows:
First, portrayal of how the floating migrating groups of the post liberation period came to settle down in the city and what difficulties they suffered constitutes a large part of its concern. Yi Ho-chtol's "No Vacancy in Seoul" presents that aspect in the development of our urban literature that shows how loss of homestead tends to combine with moral disintegration.
Ch'oe Il-nam, on the other hand, shows how these floaters and migrants, after they settled themselves in the city, internalized the urbanized habits of Seoulities who missed coffee, cold beer, television programs, and drinking refrigerator-cooled milk even during a two-day trip in the country.
Second, in parallel with the transformation of citified constitution into a constitution which can no longer stand the condition of life in their original homes, a sprouting of a new generation with urban sensibilities occurs. Kim Sung-ok's Winter, 1964 in Seoul plays the role of the avant-garde in experimenting with the perspective of the modernism of Korean poetry of the late forties and the fifties in the novel. This approach has been taken over by later novelists such as Yi Ch'ong-jun, Ch'oe In-ho and Yun Hu-myong.
Third, The urban literature of this period is characterized by an approach that keeps its focus on the urgency of the problems of the poor and the laborers. The importance of a study on the urban poor has been amply attested to, I think, by numerous works and various efforts in the field of social science. In literature, also, the problems of the urban poor may be said to have received sufficiently serious attention. The fact that 62% of the indigent population reside in Seoul may help confirm this contention. The occupational, or the educational level of these people is well exemplified in such works as Pak T'ae-sun's On the Top of a Hill in My Beloved Land, Paek U-am's "Rhapsody in Seoul", or Yi Tong-ch'ol's People of the Village of Kkobang Houses.
According to research on major Korean novels, those who moved into the citybecause of loss of home constitute 81% of the entire migrant population, and among these 38% come from farming areas. These figures eloquently demonstrate how great a role floating and migrant population played in the urbanization of Seoul.' We also find that the occupational and living standard of these people corresponds to what is suggested by our novels in examining the research made by Song Sun-yong and Ho Sok-nyol, and we cannot help feeling even in reading Pak T'ae-sun's "The Cord" how precarious and hard the life of a poor urban dweller is with no definite occupation, drifting from one transitory job to another constantly. (One feels that we might give a separate name to the kind of urban literature that treats the problems of the urban poor such as "the literature of poverty". I have written an essay on "The Archetype of the Literature of Poverty", elsewhere which might be of some interest in this regard.)
Seoul, which Shin Tong-yop looked at from his vantage point of "The Fifth Avenue, Chongno", or the Seoul Shin Kyong-nim called up in his song about 'Pun-i who went to Seoul to become a servant girl' in "Winter Night"ai transformed itself into 'the Seoul of the laborers' after the mid-seventies. Now even the poetry portrays mainly the suffering of the poor and the laborer and how bleak life in the city is. Ha Chong-o's "Midori Machi" (the Green Street), Ko Kwang-hon's "A Poor Song", "Terminal l0l of the Mountain Village Nak-kol", and "The Letter", Mun Pyong-nan's "The Child Worker at the Tanning Factory", and the third part of Kim Chong-hwan's Yellow jesus present the city stripped of any fine feelings, as it has turned into a place of suffering and harsh living of the poor and the laborer.
What we feel in looking over the literature of the urban poor and laborers that have become an object of great concern in the eighties is that in view of the comprehensive total perspective which might be obtainable and, moreover, profitable, the attitude of placing the focus too narrowly on this specified area of urban literature may fall somewhat short of a richer goal.
Perhaps one of the most urgent tasks urban literature is facing is liberation from a limited angle of view which tends to impose a perspective one-sidedly focused on some restricted area of the total vision offered by urban literature as a whole. I am not implying here that we must ignore the meaning of class difference in our consideration of the subject. What I am trying to establish is only that in order to deal with the problems of our urban literature in a proper constructive way, we must start from an historical understanding and, keeping our eye on the socio-economic side of our problem correctly, strive to reach a broad understanding of the problems of our urban literature in all its social, national and international implications so that answers to these problems may truly be found.
The urban problem, which is bound to be met by any society struggling for a rapid
development, is approached by literature with what may be called the esthetic intensification of realistic perspective. The social issues that may be explored by such an approach are: (1) organized exploitation through large consumption, (2) conflict arising from the intensification of the gap between the city and rural areas, (3) subjugation of manufacturers of small products and laborers to big business organizations.
These socio-economic problems have been continually treated by our urban literature over the years and, therefore, it would not be too much for us to expect a worthy result to this painstaking effort. And yet, what I feel must be taken up by our literature as truly urgent homework is the issue involving the fact that because of the change in social structuring under the impact of urbanization, we have come to lose what we may call "the filter mechanism" traditionally formed by multiple filtering layers such as the homestead, the family and the age-long moral code prepared against the contingencies of various social contradictions. In an urban-centered society, the young laborers used to be able to go back to their homes in the country and were taken care of by neighbors or family. But this is not possible today. Those young migrants to the city now have no place to which to return. Thus, the drop-outs in the competition of harsh urban life now very often turn to social rebels, some-times going as far as siding with the opposition against the state in their desperate struggle to win back the right of existence. In my opinion, such contemporary problems as the problem of youth and the conflict between the labor and management should be approached from this angle of perceiving these problems as part of the fundamental dilemmas of urbanization. In our literature, too, we no longer find such themes as the theme of glorious homecoming so often found in the literature of the thirties. Now there is only the theme of ongoing urbanization.
V. Concluding Words
Urban literature, as regards its role in the historical development of our nationalist literature, may well be called a critique of our society. "You are no fatherland, Seoul/ Not even five hundred years ago/You are the appendix which we wanted to have cut out" (Shin Tong-yop, "Seoul") represents the antagonism nurtured by our literature ever since the double-faced phenomenon in our modern history, that of the event of the opening of the ports and the invasion of the country by a foreign force. With this critical consciousness toward the phenomenon of urbanization, our realistic novels have approached the socio-economic problems of the city beginning from the twenties, while on a parallel line with this we have the development of modernistic esthetics with its empathy for the beauty of urban life.
The urbanization phenomenon in our country after the decade of the sixties, however, has held several negative aspects along with its positive sides and especially after the mid-seventies, when social construction and population ratios began to show a reversal symptom, the urban problem has expanded into the heavy problem of our entire country. That is, the problem of the urban poor is now directly connected with the problem of the farmers, and the problem of the farmers leads straight to the problem of the laborers. And this is not all. Many other social problems, including the problem of national division, are found to be tied up with the urban problem.
Albeit somewhat belatedly, our urban problem has now grown enough in gravity and dimension that it can now turn into a driving force for some meaningful historical change. We know that notable historical events such as the Tonghak Revolution, the March First Independence Movement, and the April Revolution have occurred not in the rural districts but in cities, and the chance of rural areas becoming central scene of any significant historical happening in the future, too, appears rather slim.
This does not mean that the days of regional literature of the farming people are numbered. Rather, I mean to suggest that only an urban sensibility can elevate the level of our urban literature to the plane of historically valid esthetics. What I am hopefully envisaging is something like a combination of urban setting and agrarian mind and personality.
From a larger perspective, it looks as if our literature still needs to learn to distinguish the agrarian literature from the kind of literary output that derives only from some residue of the feudalistic agrarian mentality. Methinks we now live in a transitional period in terms of literary development in which there still is felt the unnatural effort to transplant this feudalistic agrarianism unreflectively in the soil of modern urban culture. That is why among our poor strata of society, we notice not much development of historical or national consciouness.
NOTIES
1 .Lee Hyo-jae, "A Perspective for Viewing Social Development", in Lee Hyo-jae, Ho Sok-nyol, (ed.), Urbanization and Poverty in the Third World, Hantgil-sa, 1966, p. 11.
2 . See Son Chong-mok, A Study on the Process of Urban Transformation during the Period of the Opening of the Ports in Korea, Ilchi-sa, 1982.
3 . See Yi Chae-son, A History of Modern Korean Novel, Hongsong-sa, 1979, pp. 316-22. Yi Chae-son points out such abstract issues as "man's loneliness in the world", "alienation", "disintegration of communal society" and "annihilation of tradition". What the realist novel achieves, however, is treating the actual lives of the people.
4. See Na Chong-u, "The Lodgings during the Japanese Colonial Period with Focus on Seoul", A Collection of Essays Compiled by theSecondNavalAcademy, 1980.
5. See Kim Yong-mo, "A Study on the Formation and Transformation of Social Classes under the Japanese Rule" in Cho Ki-jun et al., (ed.),National Life under the Japanese Rule, Center for the Study of Asian Problems, Korea University, 1971. We will understand the impact of the opening of the ports on the urbanization process in Korea if we take note of the fact that out of the seventeen cities developed during the Japanese Occupation Period, nine were port towns.
6. Ibid., p. 630.
7. Perhaps it is necessary to include in this kind of reckoning of petit bourgeois literature, the literature which depicted the extent of the anguish and agony of the intellectuals of that period. We may, for instance, place many works by Chtae Man-shik and Yu Chin-o in this category as well as One Day in Novelist Kubo. In the case of Yi Sang, however, all his works except "The Wings" should be considered examples of urban literature of modernistic sensibility. His poetry is more definitely modernist-urban.
8. Kim Ki-rim, Theory of Poetry, Paegyang-dang, 1947, pp. 74-75.
9. It is true that some poems of Kim Ki-rim call up historical implications while singing about the city. It is undeniable, however, that these poems throw an idealistic and abstract glow on the history and the national reality compared with the works of poets with the realistic perspective.
10. See A Thirty Year History of Five Provinces of the North, p. 74. According to this
documentation, Seoul is the place where the refugees from the north of Korea have concentrated most. Urban concentration phenomenon is also attested to by the fact that Kyonggi-do province and Pusan drew a Iarge segment of the refusee population.
11. See the present writer's "Those Who Lost Homeland because of the Korean War and
the Division: How the Condition of Division May be Overcome". I attempted here to
present the problems of drifters and migrants during the period from liberation to the end of the fifties and an interpretation of their impact on literature.
12. Ho Sok-nyol, "The Employment Pattern in Illegal Settlements of the City", A Study of Korean Society, Vol. 1, compiled by Han'gil-sa, p. 247. This writing presents the contention that unlike the poor districts of advanced countries, Korean cities are dwelt in by "the farmer in the city" (p. 248). This is an important point about which our urban literature today needs to undertake a careful investigation.
13. SeeAn Ch'ung-yong, "The Change and Problems in the Economic Structure of Korean Urban Societies of the Seventies", The Ur-ban Problems, 1979, p. 85.
14. A Study of the Urban Are
a Movements, P 276.
15. Ch'oe Il-nam, Seoulites, Sedae Mun'go, 1975. This novelist vividly portrays the agrarian migrants going through the process of urbanization.
16. See Yi Chong-shik, "The Socio-Economic Position of the Urban Poor and Its Remedy", Urban Problems, 1982, p. 19. In 1965, 38% of the legally acknowledged indigenous resided in the city but this population increased rapidly. Those requiring welfare was4.0% of the total population in 1975 but increased to 5.4% in 1980.
17. See Song Sun-yong, "A Literary and Sociolo-gical Study on the Structure and Conscious-ness of the Urban Low Class", A Master's Thesis, Ehwa Womans University, 1983.
18. Ibid., p. 30.
19. Song Sun-yong, op. cit.; Ho Sok-nyol, op.cit.
20. A Study of the Urban Area Movements, pp.312-14.
(Translated by Sol Sun-bong.)
GLOSSARY
a "Night of Seoul": 서울밤
b "Hometown": 고향
c "Leaving Home": 이향
d "Escape": 탈출
e "Naktong River": 낙동강
f "The Potatoes": 감자
g "A Midsummer Night": 한여름 밤
h "Madness": 광란
I "The Wings": 날개
j "The Human Problem": 인간문제
k "The New Direction of the Literature of the Literature of the Laborer": 노동문화의
새 방향
l The Fate of the Nation and the Literary Trend's: 민족의 상황과 문학사상
m "Three Generations": 삼대
n shamisen (J.):
o ``Time of Prosperity": 태평천하
p "By the River": 천변풍경
r shinshi (K.):
s Gas Lamp: 와사등
t "Counting the Stars": 별을 헨다
u "Sun-i'sUncle": 순이 삼촌
v "The Festival of Royal Azaleas": 철쭉제
w Fireworks: 불놀이
x Kwanch'on Essays: 관촌수필
y "Cliff": 해벽
z "The Cry of a Yellow Dog": 황구의 비명
aa "No Vacancy in Seoul": 서울은 만원이다.
ab Winter, 1964 in Seoul: 서울 1964년 겨울
ac On the Top of a Hill in My Beloved Land: 정든 땅 언덕 위
ad "Rhapsody in Seoul": 서울 타령
ae People of the Village of Kkobang Houses: 꼬방동네 사람들
af "The Cord": 끈
ag "The Archetype of the Literature of Poverty": 빈궁문학의 원형
ah "The Fifth Avenue, Chongno": 종로 5가
ai "Winter Night": 겨울밤
aj "A Poor Song": 가난한 노래
ak "Terminal 101 of the Mountain Village Nakkol": 낙골 산동네 101번 종점
al "The Letter": 편지
am "The Child Worker at the Tanning Factory": 피혁공장의 소년공원
an Yellow Jesus: 황색예수
ao "A Perspective for Viewing Social Development": 사회발전을 보는 시작
ap Urbanization and Poverty in the Third World: 제3세계의 도시화와 빈곤
aq A Study on the Process of Urban Transformation during the Period of the Opening of the Ports in Korea: 한국 개항기 도시변화과정 연구
ar A History of Modern Korean Novel: 한국 현대소설사
as "The Lodgings during the Japanese Colonial Period with Focus on Seoul": 일제시대의 숙박시설-서울을 중심으로
at "A Study on the Formation and Transformation of Social Classes under the Japanese Rule": 일제하의 사회계층의 l형성과 변동에 관한 연구
au National Life under the Japanese Rule: 일제하의 민족생활사
av One Dayin Novelist Kubo: 소설가 구보씨의 1일
aw Theory of Poetry: 시론
ax A Thirty Year History of Five Provinces of the North: 이북5도 30년사
ay "Those Who Lost Homeland because of the Korean War and the Division: How the Condition of Division May be Overcome": 6.25와 분단에 따른 실향민-분단극복의 주체세력이 될 것인가
az "The Employment Pattern in Illegal Settle ments of the City": 도시 무허가 정착지의 고용구조
ba A Study of Korean Society: 한국사회연구
bb "The Change and Problems in the Economic Structure of Korean Urban Societies of the Seventies": 1970년대 도시사회 경제구조 변화의 문제점
bc The Urban Problems: 도시문제
bd A Study of the Urban Area Movements: 도시 지역 운동연구
be Seoulites: 서울사람들
bf "The Socio-Economic Position of the Urban Poor and Its Remedy": 도시빈곤층의 사회-경제적 실태와 대책
bg Urban Problems: 도시문제
bh "A Literary and Sociological Study on the Structure and Consciousness of the Urban Low Class : 도시하층계급의 구조와 계급의식에 대한 문학 사회적 연구
(K.: Korean; J.: Japanese)
<> Vol.27, No. 5, May 1987.
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