International Journal of Korean Humanities and Social Sciences
INTRODUCTION: International Journal of Korean Humanities and Social Sciences is published once a year by the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland in co-edition with Inha University, Incheon, South Korea and Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. It contains articles, reviews and reports in English. It is devoted mainly to works dealing with broadly understood current and original studies providing valuable insight into Korean (i) humanities (classics, law, linguistics, literature, performing and visual arts, philosophy, religion), and (ii) social sciences (anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies, economics, history, political sciences, sociology, etc.). We are indexed in ErihPlus (date of approval: 2018.06.14). ABOUT THE JOURNAL CURRENT ISSUE ARCHIVE INDEXED IN: CROSSREF, ERIH Plus, EZB, Google Scholar; OPENALEX, THE KEEPERS, WorldCat, EBSCO Sociology Source Ultimate DOI: 10.14746/kr ISSN: 2449-7444 ISSN online: 2720-6327 PUBLISHED WORK ARE LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS: (2016 -2020): (2020-): Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Colonial Korea’s Perspectives and Literary Representations of the First World War: A Focus on the 1910s Maeil-Sinbo and Shinhan-Minbo (New Korea)
This paper examines the reception and narrative appropriation of First World War in colonial Korea by analyzing serialized literary texts from two contemporaneous newspapers: the Maeil Sinbo and Shinhan Minbo (The New Korea). By comparing works such as Guju Yeolgukji in the Maeil Sinbo and The Biggest Theatre in the World and Iron-Blooded Lovebirds in The New Korea, the study reveals contrasting perspectives shaped by differing political and media environments. Serialized from 1914, Guju Yeolgukji initially conveyed the First World War through an entertainment-oriented lens, focusing on the ethnic tensions between Germanic and Slavic peoples. However, by 1915, its narrative shifted to the Battle of Qingdao, redirecting attention toward celebrating Japan’s military achievements. The text makes no mention of any connection between the war and colonial Korea. In contrast, The Biggest Theatre in the World interprets the outbreak of the war as stemming from German ambition and Austrian vengeance, while highlighting the French people’s will to resist aggression – thus offering a critical portrayal of the invading powers. Yet the work simultaneously laments the absence of direct involvement by colonial Koreans, ultimately framing the war as a conflict among white European powers – a ‘foreign war.’ The subsequent serial Iron-Blooded Lovebirds, published between 1916 and 1917, returns to the Balkan Wars, one of the antecedents of First World War, and emphasizes the national spirit of the Serbian people. This shift reflects an emerging perspective that viewed the global war as an opportunity for the liberation of oppressed nations. This trajectory culminates in the subsequent work Dongpo, which envisions a future war for Korean independence, thereby extending the narrative toward an imagined postwar world order. The voice of hope and passion for the coming postwar world is vividly expressed in the poem World Democracy written by a Korean student who had participated in the war. After the end of First World War, the postwar world was imbued with a spirit of revolution. Korea’s March First Movement was situated within this global revolutionary current, and Shinhan Minbo referred to it as the ‘Korean Revolution’, aligning it with contemporaneous uprisings around the world. These past revolutions did not remain mere historical events; rather, they functioned as living memories that offered Korean independence activists new possibilities for political imagination and revolutionary praxis.
Copyright (c) 2025 Chang-Dong Ryuem https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Two Aspects of the “Individual” in Korean Lyric Poetry: Focusing on the Poems of Kim Sowol and Yoo Chihwan
This paper examines how the notion of the individual is poetically realized in modern Korean lyric poetry through a comparative reading of Kim Sowol and Yoo Chihwan. In Korea, modernity unfolded not as gradual cultural change but as a rupture shaped by colonization and liberation, making questions of subjectivity and identity especially acute in literature. Lyric poetry became a sensitive medium for registering shifts in interiority, affect, and world perception. Sowol’s poems construct a speaker who embraces separation from the world while actively reappropriating traditional sentiment; by organizing seemingly passive emotions into deliberate poetic structures, his work performs a politics of emotion, intervening in the world through inwardness. By contrast, Yoo confronts the absence of transcendence and treats nihilism as the starting point for ethical self-constitution; the self emerges as a resolute, responsible agent that shapes life without external guarantees. Reading these opposing yet complementary strategies together reveals a dynamic of convergence and divergence: while one turns inward to reclaim affective depth, the other expands outward through existential engagement. This dialectic shows how early modern Korean lyricism articulated and transformed the figure of the individual, offering a broader perspective on the evolving configurations of selfhood at the threshold of modernity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hosung Kim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Study on the Voices of Resistance in Korean Poetry under Japanese Colonial Rule
The Japanese occupation of Korea (1910–1945) marked one of the darkest periods in the nation’s history, as Koreans endured political repression, cultural suppression, and constant fear under colonial rule. Beyond the physical struggles of survival–forced labor, sexual slavery, and the eradication of the Korean language–Koreans sought alternative forms of resistance. Among the most powerful of these was literature. This paper examines how prominent writers such as Yi Sang, Yi Sanghwa, Yi Yuksa, Yoon Dongju, Kim Sowol, and Yi Hyoseok used poetry and prose to express resistance, preserve cultural identity, and sustain hope for independence. Although these writers did not live to witness liberation, their works became enduring voices of defiance and continue to shape the cultural memory of modern Korea (Lee Peter H. 1974:161-193).
Copyright (c) 2025 Marlena Oleksiuk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Colonial Intellectual's Project and Its Limitations in Transcending ‘Nation’-Focusing on Jang Hyuk-ju's Novels The Man Who Was Divided (1933) and Pilgrimage (1943)
This article is to illuminate the compositional principle and meaning of his novel, which could not be revealed due to the recognition of being a 'pro-Japanese' writer, through re-reading of Jang Hyuk-ju's novel published during the colonial period. In other words, it is to try to find out what topics he consistently pursued through writing novels and how he chose to create texts for this purpose. In a situation where even individual desires were suppressed and controlled, colonial intellectuals participated in the production of the discourse while expanding the universalist or inclusive dimension of Japanese nationalism as much as possible to secure their own stable position. The same is true of Jang Hyuk-ju, who had creative activities in the imperial-colonial system. Therefore, if the literary artists' actions were born out of an active and independent attitude in the antagonism against the imperial Japanese system, what should be noted is their internal logic formed to cope with this situation. In other words, the important thing in interpreting those who are interpreted and judged by the standards of pro-Japanese/anti-Japanese, cooperation/resistance at the end of the colonial period is not to pay attention to the result of the action, but to the ‘process’ of how to deal with the period. This is to carefully examine the question of why ‘pro-Japanese literature’ committed such ‘blindness’ if it was ‘historical blindness’, or whether they (authors with pro-Japanese literature) thought that ‘pro-Japanese’ was not ‘historical blindness’, or if not, what ‘historical purpose’ is at work there.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seok-Yeol Choi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Configurations of Vision in Korean Postwar Poetry: Cases of Jeon Bong-geon and Kim Gu-yong
This article theorizes the configurations of vision that structure Korean postwar poetry of the 1950s, arguing that war reconfigures visuality itself rather than merely supplying new themes. Building on debates about scopic regimes and modernity’s privileging of vision, I read the Korean War (한국전쟁) as a historical apparatus that reassigns who sees, how seeing is mediated, and what becomes visible or illegible. Through close readings of Jeon Bong-geon (전봉건) and Kim Gu-yong (김구용) – two poets who crystallize the field’s “reality” and “fantastic” currents – I show that vision is neither neutral nor strictly mimetic; it is produced at the intersection of body, weapon, terrain, and trauma. The article contributes a vocabulary for analyzing vision as a historical form in Korean poetry, clarifying how war’s technologies and affects configure what can be seen and said, and why postwar poetry often oscillates between documentary witness and the fantastic.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seongho Jang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Aspects of Voices Appearing in Shin Kyung-Rim’s Poetry
This study explores the transformation in Shin Kyung-rim’s poetic world in the 1970s-1980s by categorizing the vocal modalities that appear in his poems into three analytic categories - the lyric self, the poetic speaker, and the poetic subject. Criticizing the prior studies’ tendency to interpret Shin Kyung-rim’s work under the discursive category of ‘Minjung,’ this study seeks to move beyond ideological frameworks and to reinterpret his poetry through attention to the internal structures of the text and the layers of its practical relationships. When the voice of the lyric self is foregrounded, the poem remains at the level of the poet’s inward confession; by contrast, the emergence of the mudang speaker actively embraces the voice of the other, converting the reader from a mere listener into a performer. Furthermore, the voice of the poetic subject enables readerly intervention, allowing the poem to function as a constantly renewed discourse. These shifts of voice show the process by which the text moves from singularity to complexity and from sameness to otherness, demonstrating that Shin Kyung-rim’s poetry shapes the voice of actual other in reality as living events.
Copyright (c) 2025 Bokyoung Kim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The transition from “fantastic reality” to the “realistic fantasy” in the 1990s and the novel as practice –Rereading Kim Young-ha’s “Jeon Tae-il and Showgirl”
A perspective that seeks to understand ‘what a novel does’ before asking ‘what a novel means’ stems from a will to deconstruct the notion of a transcendental reality. This will reveals that a novel is not simply ‘about’ something, but that it ‘constitutes’ something producing new meaning by communicating with the external world. In this way, the literary scene of the 1990s serves as a suitable experimental ground for a perspective that focuses on the novel’s performativity, as it was a time and space where the conceptual frameworks once considered representations of reality were lost. While an amorphous reality and inner self are constructed alongside the process of writing, the contradiction that serves as the foundation for the existence of the subject of authenticity persists. Therefore, as a part of a project to sketch a big picture of how the (im)possibility of forming a subject of authenticity in the 90s is realized through the novel, this paper focuses on Kim Young-ha’s novels. His novels reveal an internal motility through a cognitive shift: moving from viewing reality fantastically to the recognition that reality itself is a fantasy – that is, from ‘fantastic reality’ to ‘realistic fantasy’. Based on this understanding, “Jeon Tae-il and Showgirl” gains the possibility of being read anew, freed from its initial interpretation as a mere reflection of its era. Through the montage-like insertion of advertisements, this novel doesn't just reflect a reality controlled by capitalism. It creates a reality as another form of virtuality by embodying the fantasy of advertising. Within this fantasy, attempts to deconstruct the dichotomous perception that gives rise to conflict are repeated. In this way, a moment is captured in which the novel’s immanence and transcendence resonate to produce meaning.
Copyright (c) 2025 Seongah Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Changes in 18th-Century Japanese Academic Circles and Tongsinsa 通信使 Exchange: Focusing on the Emergence of the Sorai School 徂徠學派 and the Publication Process of the Pildamchanghwajip 筆談唱和集
Of the 18th century in Japan, new academic trend that called Soraigaku (徂徠學) have emerged. Soraigaku has expanded the force while criticizing the Neo-Confucianism and poet of Song dynasty (宋詩). In the mid 18th century, Soraigaku is as prevalent widely in Japan. However, in fact, crucial opportunity to Soraigaku has become epidemic, it was for the publication to criticize the Tongsinsa. The Sorai school (徂徠學派) was in conflict relation with Rinke (林家), Mokumon (木門), Jinsaimon (仁齋門). So the opportunity to contact with the Tongsinsa was little. In addition, Sorai school’s literary works aren’t included in Geyrimchnghwajip (鷄林昌和集). So the Sorai school published Munsagisang (問槎畸賞) that include their own literary works. He was severely criticized the Tongsinsa in Munsagisang. As a result, Sorai school’s reputation has become to be known throughout the country. Sorai is to criticize the authority of Tonsinsa which was very high in Japan, so it was able to improve their own phase of school.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hyo-Won Lee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cultivating Effective Educators: Experiential Learning in Korean Language Teacher Education
The global rise in Korean language education, driven by the growing influence of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), has sparked a need for innovative teaching methods to effectively address the needs of an increasingly diverse community of learners. This study examines the effectiveness of experiential learning programs in Korean language teacher education, focusing on their role in developing pedagogical competencies, shaping professional identities, and preparing educators for multicultural classrooms. By integrating hands-on, immersive activities such as classroom simulations, practicum placements, and community engagement projects, experiential learning enables future educators to bridge theory and practice, fostering deeper language proficiency and cultural understanding. Grounded in Situated Learning Theory and Possible Selves Theory, the research demonstrates how real-world teaching experiences not only enhance instructional skills but also broaden career aspirations and cross-cultural competencies among teacher candidates. The study further examines institutional responses to the growing demand for Korean language instruction, including curriculum innovations at leading universities and the expansion of international language programs. As Korean language education undergoes a paradigm shift driven by global cultural engagement and domestic demographic changes, this study contributes to the evolving discourse on effective teaching methodologies, underscoring the importance of adaptability, cross-cultural competency, and experiential learning in shaping the future of Korean language educators.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ji Hoon Chung, Yeseul Choi, Nayoung Kim, Minji You, Theodore Jun Yoo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Brain as Myth: Cinematic Representations and Mythic Reproduction in the Korean Science Fiction Film Jung_E
Science fiction films emerge from contemporary developments in science and technology, creating narratives through the integration of humanistic imagination. They also serve as essential bridges for understanding the scientific concerns and aspirations of each era. Since the 2010s, the Korean film industry has witnessed a rise in the production of SF works that engage with issues such as artificial intelligence, robotics, aerospace technology, and genetic engineering. However, these films have not achieved notable success with neither audiences nor critics, despite their growing number. The cause of this phenomenon lies in the attitude of many Korean filmmakers, who often display limited interest in scientific and technological domains. As a result, they fail to meaningfully explore the complex relationship between evolving technological environments and human existence. Director Yeon Sang-ho’s Jung_E exemplifies this problematic tendency. Jung_E incorporates advanced technologies such as AI and robotics, yet these elements remain largely decorative – they do not constitute the core of the narrative. This superficial engagement with science and technology leads to fundamental misrepresentations; for instance, the film’s flawed portrayal of memory and intelligence becomes embedded in its cinematic representations of AI. To investigate this issue, this article draws on Roland Barthes’s theory of mythology as its analytical framework. It further adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates insights from the natural sciences with semiotic analysis. Through this methodology, the study demonstrates how Korean SF films weaken their artistic potential by sidelining scientific thinking and adhering to mythologized views of science and technology.
Copyright (c) 2025 Soojin Lee, Nara Yoon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0