월남 여성작가 임옥인 소설의 집 모티프와 자유

Abstract

I focused on these keywords ‘defector’, ‘woman’, ‘writer’ that were supposed to be the key way to analyze Im Ok-in’s works. Her female characters in her early works with passion desired the liberty from any kinds of collective subject and tried to build her own home as a modern individual. Around defector tended to emphasize the external reality such as communism rather than the harsh self-criticism. This novel was not obedient to the anti-communism and formed the inevitability of defector at the level of internal motivation. ‘My love, my baby, my own room, my books’ are the components that construct ‘my home’ and explain her identity. When they were all buried, she had no choice but leaving North Korea. The Adventure of Daily Life showed lots of daily episodes but its main structure was made of two characters in terms of unconsciousness. Kang Beon-gil, the prisoner, symbolized the desire of liberty from control that was a kind of trace of passion. Meanwhile, Han Il-seok symbolized the other desire of building my own home that was originated from the orphan experience just after moving to South Korea across the border. The more important thing is that the action of getting there and back between ‘building home’ and ‘the liberty from home’ showed the ‘abject’ like blood. That can be translated regarding the diaspora. The ‘abject’ like blood in Im Ok-in’s novel can be the writer’s ethics because she attempted to get the continuous sufferings between the ambivalent desires during the national devision.