The afterlives of Yi Gwangsu: Narrating the trauma of colonial collaboration

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the repeated appearance of Yi Gwangsu (1892–1950) in South Korean postcolonial fiction as a sign of collective trauma. Yi was a pioneering novelist who was a nationalist hero to his readers, but later became a collaborator who supported Japan's war effort. This article focuses on depictions of Yi in the works of three postcolonial writers – Choe Inhun, Seonu Hwi, and Bok Geoil – whose works bore witness to how traumatic his collaboration was. Their works displayed many of the defining characteristics of trauma such as delayed experience and transmission to others. They were also marked by narrative rupture as represented by Yi's mutually incompatible identities as both a nationalist and a collaborator. Rather than repeating the traumatic event, these stories employed various strategies to create new narratives that attempted to heal the trauma.