• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• no.26
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• pp.413-433
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• 2011

What this study aims is to analyze that how the stories of Prince Hodong are represented in modern historical fictions. The stories have been reproduced in many forms such as TV dramas, films, fictions, plays. It can be depicted that the narratives are indeed national and popular. Interestingly, however, the description of Hodong has not been found in pre-modern documents or fictions. The story began to appear and became popular in 1935 by Yoon Baek Nam. It can be explained that the narratives are the one of the example of the invented tradition since it became visible in modern period. Yoon, Lee Tae Joon, and Yu Chi Jin have constructed the character of Hodong what we are familiar with. Yoon depicted Hodong as a romatic lover with the motif of a lovers suicide. Lee and Yu put a context of nationalism by explaining Nakrang as a Nakrangkun of Hansagun(the four colonies of China). These are pure invention of the writers which cannot be found in The History of Three Kingdoms(三國史記). These characters are closely related with the surrounding of their own society. Yoon shows how the past can be seen as a nostalgic object by modern aesthetic perspective. Lee illustrates the ambiguous thought of a colonial intellectual who (anti)internalizes the ideology of militarism. Yu tries to find the way to recover the muscularity of the nation by re-colouring the memory of the past. These, the representations created in various contexts, make our common knowledges of Prince Hodong nowadays.