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영어

Shimchung rarely appears in modern Korean poetry even though it is one of the deep-seated symbolic features in most Koreans’mind. We see this heroin takes turn into a scape-goat of modernization, a new incarnation of the Korean traditional virtue of filial piety, a victor of feminity, and a soul friend and deliverer of people in a few Korean verses. The Shimchung is first of all a victim of patriarchism and of rapid industrialization kicked off with the general Park Jung - hee’s dictatorship. This Shimchung shows up between the lines in “The Lettter”by Kim Pil-gon. As Shimchung in the famous novel had to be sent away for the 3 hundred bags of rice so his father’s blind eyes could be opened, the girl in his work shows us a laborer, a housekeeper, even a prostitute to save her family some rice, to let her parents have less burden, to earn the school fee for her sister and brothers. This girl is a Shimchung as a victim of Korean modernization. The Shimchung in this sense is not only a victim inside a family but also that of history. The“ Drinking the U-dong soup”by Park Je-chun quotes a play that adapted the palace in the sea in the old novel Shimchung into a brothel, awakening the Shimchung as a victim of history as she might have been smuggled into another country. The “Blind Mr. Shim”by Go Eun shows in a roundabout way our era’s attitude regarding filial piety. The oild virtue has now become not a sacrifice but a living- together. Children are the genuine light and debt. The serial“ The Queen of Shimchung”by Yun Je-rim shows us an incarnation that comes up time and again in each different outfit. Mr. Yun finds out Shimching not only in the Korean peninsula but also in Yen-bien, in China. He might find her soon in all places over But the most important aspect of the Shimchung reincarnated in our times should be the victorous bearer of feminity. Shimchung in classical Korean novel is the bearer of ‘obedience’which became a resistance beyond ordinary dimension. That plane of resistance is expressed in the“ The Sea Indang”by Go Eun, which later turns into the victory of feminity in his “Shimchung”. The latter tells that the Shimchung story should not be limited to that of a Chosum girl’s filial piety, picturing Shimchung as deliver and partner of people. The variation of the Shimchung motive predicts a wider adaptation of the old heroin in modern Korean poetry. Poetry as a genre has only a limited capacity in varying the classical figures and images, which must be why there are only a scarce reinterpretation of Shimchung in the verses in our times. Out of poetry, there are so many versions of its recreation and reinterpretation. Shimchung in them can be a scapegoat, a queen of all people, a feminity with strong power of life. Poetry can do the same, adapting the Shimchung motive in a wider and fuller way, because there can be no freer genre than poetry in utilizing imagination.