A Study on the Modernity of Korean Architecture appeared in Yi Sang's Early Poems

이상(李箱)의 초기시에 나타난 한국근대 건축의 '근대성'탐구

Poet, Yi-sang, born in 1910, originally studied architecture in Kyeong Sung High Technical School. He also experienced an architectural practice in Chosun Chongdokbu (the Government office of Japanese empire in Korea) during 4 years. After resigned the post of architectural engineer in 1933, he became a man of letters. Until his death in 1937, he published the writings hard to understand, which remind us of the works of western avant-garde. Because of the peculiarity and difficulty of his poem and novels, he becomes the object of studies by many critics and historians of literature. And he is estimated as the representative of Korean modernism. This study tries to related Yi-sang's early poems to architectural discourse for the search of 'modernity' of Korean modern architecture. His early poems, which is published in from 1931 to 1933, are worthy of notice because they contained a acute shock derived from radically changed spacial structure, the absolute emptiness of the individual happened in the 1930's Seoul. They also show a different attitude from the writings of Park Dongjin and Park Kilryong, the architects contemporary with Yi-Sang. Compared with their writings, Yi sang's early poems had an insight into the totality of modern culture like western avant-gardes. Therefore Yi-sang's early poems can give us a good base to understand the characteristics of 'modernity' of Korean architecture.