Generational Struggle: Postwar Korean Views of Anti-colonial Violence in Minshu Chōsen and Hinawajū no uta
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Considering a variety of historical incidents, this study examines how liberated Koreans living in postwar Japan wrote about resistance movements of the colonial period. I argue that as part of the mission to develop a new founding mythos for the modern Korean nation (envisioned as a single unified state) several of these authors focused on establishing the necessity for violent anti-Japanese resistance, valorizing the historical incidents of it, and tying these acts to the development of Marxist political consciousness. By juxtaposing the agitprop editorials of a Korean centered postwar magazine, ‘Democratic Korea’ (Minshu Chōsen, 1946-1950), with Ho Nam-gi’s 1951 epic poem The Song of the Musket (Hinawajū no uta), I connect the efforts of political activists with the budding movement of Korean cultural workers using the Japanese language as a medium. In both cases, Koreans voiced their anti-colonial critique directly to the former colonizer and situated Korean resistance movements within a broader and ennobled historical context.
Source: Japanese Language and Literature
DOI: 10.5195/jll.2025.384
Author: Robert Joseph Del Greco
Institution: Oakland University
Language: English
Topic: Japanese History and Culture
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409595695