Korean-Chinese literature after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) predominantly eulogized the lives of farmers. It portrayed their lives and how their work could transform their livelihood and that of the nation through working on their own lands, this time not in the name of imperialism, but for communism. Although such stories were in line with themes that one finds in contemporary Chinese literature of the period, the distinction one finds in the stories written by Korean-Chinese authors is that they would not shy away from depicting the shared historical experience under Japanese colonial rule in Manchukuo. This colonial experience was in fact highlighted to make it play an important role in the creation and fortification of a Korean-Chinese identity. The Korean-Chinese stories from this period focused exclusively on the local to conjure an image of community. Local problems were often viewed as colonial remnants from the Japanese rule in Manchukuo, often stressing the perceived existence of class differences inside their Korean-Chinese communities in particular. Their literature was an attempt to expunge such differences and unify the Korean-Chinese community. By doing so, however, we can also see that a narrative was created that would cause tension and divisiveness in the Korean-Chinese community instead.

Speaker:

Jerôme de Wit is an associate professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany and received his PhD from Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is a specialist on North and South Korean Wartime Literature and Korean-Chinese culture. His most recent project deals with the constantly changing representations of identity in the literature, movies, and music of ethnic Koreans in China due to historical and social changes in Korean-Chinese society.

Co-Sponsors:

UH Department of East Asian Languages & Literature

the Center for Korean Studies, UHM

the Department of Korean Studies, University of Tübingen