earticle

영어

This study is on‘ Nammuntong’(South Gate Thoroughfare), one of the novels written in 1970s by Jeong-In Suh, which characteristically depicts the cognitive fallacies in everyday lives. Using provincial cities in mid-1970s in Korea as a backdrop, Jeong- In Suh made a variety of aesthetic attempts to reveal the desire and cognitive fallacies that bedraggles modern life. Several of his short stories use different approaches to the similar subject. The lives of the characters in a small provincial city are highlighted in this novel in a symbolic setting of ‘inside and outside of a walled city’. Although ‘Nammuntong’is located at the center of the city inside the wall, it is, in fact, no longer the center as the center of the city had moved over. In this particular space, those who lost their center or shunned by the center symbolize themselves the lives that were estranged from the center. The author implies that the cognitive fallacies in their lives may be the true attribute of life. Although people of‘ Nammuntong’are carrying their lives with the center of their lives lost, they still hold illusion of themselves still being in the center.‘ Nammuntong’to them is outside but sometimes feels like inside, it is on the verge of their boundary but still it is at their center. As such, this novel reveals duality of cognitive fallacies in which they live. People of ‘Nammuntong’carry their lives lost in their road to the center or without even a map. This study reveals that their loss of the sense of location eventually change the location where modern lives exist from the center to the boundary. The two faces of modern lives described in ‘Nammuntong’can be considered as the center and the boundary. People in‘ Nammuntong’, with cognitive fallacy, nurture their desire to be admitted from the boundary to the center, to the modernity. Jeong-In Suh made selections of specific parts from the desire of these people while depicting the cognitive fallacies hidden in everyday lives of them. Inside and outside of the walled city in this novel is used as a characteristic, symbolic spatial setting. This study reveals that the desire to be admitted to the modernity is the root of earthly disposition and cognitive fallacies of the people in ‘Nammuntong’who live modern day lives in a small provincial city in mid 1970s.