원문정보
초록
영어
This essay uses Paik Nak Chung’s theorization of the Korean “division system” to read Underground National, the second collection by Korean American poet Sueyeun Juliette Lee. Paik’s theorization of the key “division” being between the governments, on the one hand, and the general populace of North and South together, on the other, is a useful frame for Lee’s exploratory poetics. The visual images reproduced in “Korea, What is,” the first poetic sequence in the book, resonate with the written text to show how division is imagined by a nation that clings to idealized memories of a unified past. In the second sequence, “Underground National (a priori,” Lee continues her images of division, adding to the North-South division a division between herself as a Korean American and the requirement for ethnic unity sometimes enforced by both Korean nations. Just as Paik insists that national unification can come only through the acceptance of division, Lee suggests that unification of various Korean peoples, diasporic and domestic, may come only through the acceptance of diversity.
목차
II. Images of Division
III. The Individual in Division
IV. Insider/Outsider Imagination
V. Conclusion
Works Cited
Abstract