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A Comparative study on violence in Lee Mun-yeol and Yu Hua's novel Lee, Mi-Ock This study is going to figure out difference between Yu Hua and Lee Mun-yeol regarding their recognition of violence. It is a meaningful attempt to understand the ideological gap between the two authors and examine the detailed aspects of violence in the two countries which their ideological discourse is grounded on. In the 1980's, Lee Mun-yeol began his journey of literature and created works actively, and it was the period that started with the Gwangju Democratic Movement against the military dictatorship. The 1980's was the period when culture and ideology represented as ‘the National People’s Movement’ were prevalent; however, even in the circumstances, Lee Mun-yeol tried to dig deeply into the ultimate meaning of humans, not historic realism. As what is written on his novels, Lee Mun-yeol did not put his trust in the crowd realizing any true revolution even under the democratic system. He thinks that the people can never be the main agents of history due to their snobbish and selfish nature, and who grasps authority does not matter as authority will spoil, and the people will lead their lives according to that. He maintained that tendency consistently, and it is revealed in other works like 『Son of a Man』, too. On account of his tendency of writing works like that, Lee Mun-yeol was criticized by some critics as being “a conformer to the system”. On the contrary, Yu Hua did show changes gradually. In the 1990's, he transferred from demagogic literature to folk literature. This is not unassociated with Yu Hua’s experience of Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Although they failed to bring revolution, Yu Hua found individuals’ power and potential through the explosion of the people’s energy and cohesiveness then. Despite that enormous alteration, however, in Yu Hua’s novels, the people are still depicted as the victims of violence within the great tide of history and fragile individuals that can never escape from the bonds of destiny no matter how hard they try. They just appear to suffer pathetically and desperately in order to survive as a human that is more humane. Yu Hua focuses on the people’s joys and sorrows more like this while Lee Mun-yeol pays more attention to snobbery internalized in the crowd. But the aspects of violence cannot but