인간 엿보기 : 『네이티브 스피커』에 나타난 인생 스파이로서의 작가 Writer as a Spy of Life in Chang - Rae Lee`s Native Speaker = Spying Culture and Life

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker explores such issues as a search for identity as Korean American, the psychological loss resulting from assimilation to the dominant culture and the history of immigration. Looked from a different angle, however, this novel can be viewed as metafiction which deals with the problems of writing, the relationship between a narrator, a writer and a reader. Henry Park, a Korean American is a spy who has to observe, dissect and report on a person for a white employer while hiding his own identity. He is a spy looking at American and Korean culture from a distance without belonging to either culture. The narrator/writer in the novel is also a spy investigating, making incisions into people's lives from the perspective of an observer. He has to make himself invisible but his voice heard Just as an immigrant longing to be assimilated is a spy of the American culture, the narrator/writer is a spy of characters.
Henry Park in the beginning is the person who denies his own identity as Korean American. When he grows up, he is ashamed of his father's broken English. He is therefore alienated not only from himself but from his wife. Working as a spy he feels no emotional conflicts. However, when he is assigned to become a spy to a successful Korean American politician named John Kwang, he is not able to carry on with his regular job of reporting every detail of his movement as he gradually comes to identify him with his father and himself as well. At times, the narrator also feels the difficulty of putting distance between himself and his characters as he becomes emotionally involved with their lives in the process of writing. Henry eventually realizes what he has done with his life. He has betrayed his father by working as a spy. The writer also feels guilty about the fact that he has in a sense 'exploited' the lives of immigrants by looking at their lives as a on-looker without understanding their pains and sufferings. The writer realizes his work is indebted to the numerous lives of immigrants. Just as Henry decides not to be a spy anymore, the writer also leaves being a spy of other people. If Henry Park in the beginning is a colonized subject who desperately wants to be assimilated at any cost, he is transformed later to accept his own identity, asking his father's forgiveness. The writer Chang-Rae Lee also is transformed through the process of writing into a person who understands his cultural roots and identities. His work raises the question of what an author is and gives him the direction to his project of writing and an understanding of what he owes his own immigrant ancestors.