earticle

영어

One of the trends that emerged in South Korean literature after the travel liberalization policy in the 1990s was travel novels in the travelsettlement- travel structure, which indicates that the global community has entered the era of fluidity both in name and reality along with the creation of diaspora literature in the 2000s. In such travel novels, the travelers encounter or meet migrants of the Korean race from multicultural novels, realizing that the country has not yet escaped from the colonial situation and reality of division, which are wounds and agonies in the Korean history. North Korean defectors have a unique other-identity as Korean descent migrants along with the second- and third-generation migrant Goryeoins, ethnic Koreans living in China, and Zainichi people. They are treated as a minority in the countries where they are living and as a marginal or second class in South Korea, going through a difficult and brutal life of separation. Women of North Korean defector diaspora have dual otherness and are especially subjected to body, sex, and capital extortion, crime, fraud, and violence. This study examined The Wild Rose by Jeong Do-sang to figure out the foreigner awareness and other-identity of travelers and migrants. Previous studies on the novel conducted analysis with a focus on Chungshim(Mina, Soso, and Meina), a woman that defected North Korea. The novel, however, tells a story of "I," who is a traveler wandering around China after losing her son, meets diaspora women wandering along the streets-ethnic Koreans living in China, Han race, and North Korean defectors-, and shares grief and pain with them in a healing process. Meeting Mina, who has a hell-like mind and lives her life for survival after suffering unendurable despair and physical damage, and listening to her story about how she defected North Korea, "I" joins her in efforts to heal each other's wounds and moves from the issue of lost ego to that of national identity. Entering the multicultural age beyond borders, East Asia has faced a bunch of ethical issues raised by the sexual assault, separation hardship, and infringement on human rights of East Asian women and the mass production of Homo Sacer man. A lot of strangers receive unethical and inhumane treatments and are excluded from the community along the border boundaries among North Korea, South Korea, and China. The multicultural situations of the 21st century especially put female North Korean defectors, who have multiple otherness including "migration," "teenage girl," "East Asia," and "defection from North Korea," under harsh and excluding conditions. The migration process of Mina, who was subjected to treatments as an animal or object the moment she crossed the border, and her encounter with I, who lost a child, tell that we are currently living in the age of Homo Nomad full of travelers and migrants.