Eun Young Seong

10.18399/acta.2022.25.2.003

Ch’unhyangjŏn colonial Korea Yi Kwangsu Yu Ch’ijin Murayama Tomoyoshi

This article explores new reading paradigms of the Korean folktale Ch'unhyangjŏn 春香傳 under Japanese colonization. I examine how Korean and Japanese literary and political intellectuals during the colonial period respectively envisioned new affiliations for Koreans through competing, yet occasionally connected, reinterpretations of Ch'unhyangjŏn. Korean intellectuals, including nationalist and leftist writers, attempted to inspire readers to imagine a new society beyond the Confucian social order through their modern interpretations that challenged conventional ways of understanding this nationally symbolic literary piece. In contrast, Japanese colonial officials confined this classical literary piece in the framework of a Korean past in an attempt to tighten their control over Koreans during Japan's wartime mobilization. This reading practice by colonial officials, which I call the colonial interpretation, prevented open interpretive practices of Ch'unhyangjŏn that could continuously produce new values of classical Korean literature. With its historical and thematic literary power, along with its popularity, Ch'unhyangjŏn attracted intellectuals from both Korea and Japan and was used to newly affiliate Koreans with either modern Korea or imperial Japan, depending on varying political and social intentions in the early twentieth century.