earticle

영어

This article aims to examine kijichon women as homo sacers Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother and Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl from an Agambenian viewpoint, considering the thesis of Encyclopedia of Korean Culture which defines heroines as homo sacers in the Korean kijichon novels in the mid-1990s. In these texts, the women become prostitutes for their poverty-stricken families and nation after the Korean War, but are insulted and abused without legal and moral punishment. In addition, the frequent and atrocious sexual abuse and insults by sadistic American soldiers. In fact, the women undoubtedly resemble actual kijichon prostitutes who were expatriated from their communities as dirty women and abandoned without legal protection and compensation from their nation. From Giorgio Agamben’s point of view, the reason that kijichons are in “anomie” states and women there live as homo sacers in the texts is due to the Korean government, which suspended the existing anti-prostitution laws and applied the absurdly biased administrative laws over-examining and isolating prostitutes in order to control venereal diseases. This analysis could help establish an important basis that would push the Korean government to improve the former kijichon women’s poor living conditions with adequate compensation, as well as to improve negative perceptions of them.