This paper analyzes the changes and prospects of the research trends in the field of modern Korean literature by investigating the bibliography data of doctoral dissertations in the area over the past 20 years.(2000∼2019) To this end, first and fore...
This paper analyzes the changes and prospects of the research trends in the field of modern Korean literature by investigating the bibliography data of doctoral dissertations in the area over the past 20 years.(2000∼2019) To this end, first and foremost, a data collection survey of the doctoral dissertations was carried out by data-crawling bibliography such as titles, tables of contents, abstracts, publication years, and authors from the two public DB platforms―RISS(Korea Education and Research Information Service’s) and the National Assembly Library’s. Additionally, we examined keywords and attempted dynamic topic modeling by extracting nouns with a Korean morphological analyzer.
This study shows that most researchers in the realm of modern Korean literature earned their doctoral degrees from about twenty topnotch universities(mostly located in Seoul or the metropolitan area) during the past 20 years and that the number of dissertations has been gradually decreasing since the 2010s. It is also found that traditional research themes such as studies on writers or poets(authorship) and studies on novel works or poetry still account for the largest portion. However, it is notable that new types of studies including cultural theories, comparative literature, and feminism have been increasingly visible. These findings suggest that the academia of modern Korean literature began to fissure, thereby gaining differences and diversities. This study has also found that the use of words revolving mainly around modernity of Korean literature has declined in the 2000s’ doctoral dissertations, chiefly based on keyword and topic analysis. Moreover, such changes are highlighted in researches on novels, which has been the most popular topic and theme in the field of modern Korean literature. Through such a digital humanities approach, this study aims to discuss not only the current research trends but also the changes or prospects of modern Korean literature in both terms of forms and contents.