[KS] Re: Response to Jacqueline Pak

[Frank Hoffmann]

Jacqueline, I feel a bit sorry that I often find it hart to agree with your
arguments ... but again:

You wrote:
  >While it was not my intention to be controversial (...)
How can it be your "intention to be controversial" -- I really wonder what
all this is about. In my humble opinion historians should have the
*intention* to be "right," which often might be controversial because
others have other interpretations and theoretical concepts.

  >When one begins to really grasp the horrifying magnitude and scope of
  >sufferings of Koreans under colonial rule, one may begin to see why
  >collaboration (even voluntary) too could be construed as a form of
  >victimization.

Can you let us know of any theoretical works dealing with the
"Collaborators as victims" issue? Not necessarily re. Korea. Is there
anything out there on India, for example ... anything you would recomment
reading?

  >... One of the works that Frank failed to mention, for example, was
  >Ann Lee's thesis on her grandfather, Yi Kwangsu, who was a disciple
  >of An Ch'angho who, in my view, was forced to collaborate after
  >having to endure torture, imprisonment, and prolonged trial of the
  >Hungsadan with ill-health.

.."failed to mention" -- you are really tough on me today. Okay then, this
list was just thought to be a starting point.
H o w e v e r,  why would Ann Lee's thesis be of intrerest? I didnt read
it, but here is the UMI abstract, and it seems the thesis focusses on Yi
Kwang-su's *early* years, not on the 1920s, 30s and 40s:

Lee, Ann Sung-Hi. "Yi Kwangsu and Early Modern Korean Literature." Ph.D.
diss., Columbia University, 1991.
ABSTRACT-->
The present study examines the early writings of Korean novelist Yi Kwangsu
(1892-?), with particular focus on Yi's first novel Mujonq (1917). Three
prefatory chapters of the study provide an introduction to early modern
Korean literature, and suggest an intertextual context in which to
interpret Yi's writings. Chapter one examines issues of language and style
in early modern Korean literature. A second chapter discusses the origins
of modern Korean literature in the period 1905 to 1910. Chapter three
focuses on the novel of domestic intrigue, a popular genre of early modern
Korean literature which dominated Korean literature until the publication
of Yi Kwangsu's Mujonq in 1917, and with which the novels of Yi Kwangsu
bore both affinity and marked contrast. A biographical essay sketches yi
Kwangsu's childhood and early youth in Korea, Japan, and China. Stylistic
analysis of language in Yi's literature identifies experimentation and
innovation in sentence structure, diction and verbal affixes. Chapter six
discusses the novel Mujong in terms of the central theme of mujong, which
means to be "without emotion, without love" and may refer to the state of
insentience. Its conventional meaning is close to "cruel, heartless."
Chapter seven examines how Mujong depicted spiritual growth as the
experience of love, and depicted love as a spectrum of emotions differing
in degree of "selfish" and selfless emotion. An eighth chapter explains how
Mujong was also significant in its introduction to Korean literature of an
irony subversive of the principal characters in a novel. Chapter nine
discusses nationalism in the novel Mujong. An additional purpose of this
study is to relate Yi's early works to some of the problematic issues in
other works written by Yi during the Japanese occupation of Korea.
[UMI order no.: AAC 9421369]



         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Frank Hoffmann * 1961 Columbia Pike #42 * Arlington, VA 22204 * USA
E-MAIL:  hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu
W W W :  http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hoffmann/




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