The purpose of this study is to analyze the internal logic of Korean poetics in South America based on the ‘temporality’ agenda, and to promote the scalability of the study of Korean literature abroad. The temporality of Korean poetry in South Ame...
The purpose of this study is to analyze the internal logic of Korean poetics in South America based on the ‘temporality’ agenda, and to promote the scalability of the study of Korean literature abroad. The temporality of Korean poetry in South America is sensed in the cultural history and unconscious spatiality that unfolds between the time faced and the time to come. Among the problematic poets who have worked in South America are Mok Dong-gyun, Joo Seong-geun, Hwang Un-heon, An Gyeong-ja, Kim Jae-seong, Maeng Ha-rin, Myo-jong Shin, Park Sang-soo, Bae Jeong-woong, Yun Chun-sik, and Lim Dong-gak. Among them, this study focused on the poetics of Kim Jae-seong, Mok Dong-gyun, and Bae Jeong-woong, who exemplified the identity of South American Korean literature in terms of temporality and enhanced it with their own aesthetic grammar. The temporality that works in these poems arises from the relationship between the ‘reality’ faced in South America and the ‘imagination’ to overcome that reality. This is mainly perceived in three contexts. First, it is a case of desire to arrive at a time completely different from the difficult times faced in the relocation area. These two times are disconnected from each other and operate in the eschatological imagination. Second, the time that has arrived is similar to the time before migration. Derridan temporality flows here. Third, the time faced is highlighted, but the time of hope does not come well. The poems of Kim Jae-seong, Mok Dong-gyun, and Bae Jeong-woong show the straight-forwardness, paradox, and demise of time that are difficult to find in the poetry of Koreans in other regions. This temporal imagination is problematic in that it reveals a typical sense of time in South American Korean poetry. Kim Jae-seong’s poems bring kairos time into the South American wilderness. It is because that time marks the time faced in South America as a sinful time. Mok Dong-gyun’s poetry highlights the overlapping of memories from Korea in the unfamiliar time that he encountered at the place he moved to. Bae Jung-woong’s poetry meets the tragic present, in which the future to come is postponed indefinitely. In the process, he experiences the temporality of annihilation. The results of this study are expected to invite more Korean poets from South America, who have not yet been introduced to Korean academic circles, to the study of Korean literature in foreign lands. Furthermore, it will be possible to create a research perspective that allows access to Korean literature of regions such as Bolivia and Peru.