• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.33
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• pp.121-141
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to establish a methodology useful for identifying links between the postwar novels of Spain and Korea. We analyze the lives and actions of the characters from Nada by Carmen Laforet, and Writing on blank paper by Oh Sang Won. The characters in these novels demonstrate the challenge of adapting to the harsh reality of life because of the psychological or physical scars of war: characters such as Jungsub and Jungseo in Writing on blank paper and Juan and Andrea in Nada finally overcome their difficulties thanks to a shared sense of existential conscience and a steadfast fighting spirit; others, like Jungyun and Roman, surrender to the struggle and commit suicide, tragically succumbing to the bitter harshness of reality. Through the analysis of these novels' characters, we can empathize with the common tragedy of war-time life and death; we gain perspective on the destruction of both society and people caused by war.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.86-91
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to study the tragic world perception that appears in Kim Sung-han's novels 'Frogs' and 'Five Minutes'. The main emotion that emerges in his novels in the 1950s is non-polarity. His novels "Frogs" and "Five Minutes" satirically express the relationship between God and humans, and the human figure in comparison to animals In the 1950s, in Korean society, individual lives were distorted in postwar situations, and the relationship between individuals and society was inconsistent. Kim Sung-han wanted to create new ethical and social values through novels. In "Five Minutes" and "Frog," Kim Sung-han expresses and criticizes the crisis in Korea's post-war society as a tragic reality that God has no ability. In the novel, Kim Sung-han criticizes the degenerate reality of humans without God and criticizes the slave grit of humans who cling to God. After all, what he wants to say in the novel is the perception of human free will and existence. In the two novels, the author talks about a tragic world perception that denies the realm of God, but finds out that there is no other world to live a new life that denies God.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.57-62
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• 2022

This paper is intended to study the tragedy of Kim Sung-han's short stories 'Extreme' and 'Return'. The author describes the postwar chaotic reality as a tragic reality in the novel as the pain of the times people experience. In the novels "Extreme" and "Return," war is violence, and all human beings who participate in it are victims of the violence of war. However, in "Extreme," Tatsuko expresses her will to fight against the tragic reality in "Return." Kim Sung-han never wants them to stay in the tragic world, although the tragic reality of the main characters in his novel ends in a tragic ending. He wants them to fight against the tragic reality.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.161-188
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• 2020

This paper seeks to expand the scale of literary history by restoring and analyzing the whole aspect of Kwak Hashin's works, which has so far been studied little. For this purpose, I notice the rupture of discontinuity of his works which is greatly divided into the colonial period and post Korean war period. And the characteristics of each works can be analyzed based on the three axis, local(colonial period), jobless person(post-war period), and Homo Economicus(some short stories, and popular novels in post-war period). In Chapter 2, 'Local-the world of Munjang', I evaluated that Kwak Hashin's novel, which had been published in the late 1930s in the Journal of Munjang, embodied anti-modern aesthetic consciousness, as clearly revealing the sorrow for disappearing things, the pre-modern sense of time, and the preference for local. In Chapter 3, 'Jobless Person' and Chapter 4, 'The State of All People's Struggle against All People, The Appearance of Homo Economicus', the Korean society in late 1950s, which entered underdeveloped capitalist countries after Korean war, can be characterized by two contrasting male-gender, one is the jobless, incompetent male, and the economic man on the other hand. In the late '50s, Lumpen(=Jobless Person) novels showed the problems of the Korean economy through incompetent male character. The intelligent men took the path to survival rather than morality or intimacy, projecting their own incompetence and anxiety to women/wives. In the popular novels Women's Song and The Shadow of the Fig Tree, achievement-oriented male figures who betrayed their colleagues, and exploited women's sex by using love relationships to rise to the top appeared. They can be defined as the Homo Economicus who embody the state of universal struggle against all people. These novels showed the formation of the masculinity in post Korean war period, which pursued the survival of the fittest, borrowing form of popular novel. As we have seen so far, Kwak Hashin needs to be re-evaluated as an writer who expanded the modern literary history in the outside of literature. He was the last generation writer written in Korean late colonial period, and provided the model of postwar literature by borrowing the form of journalism and popular novels.