Whose Korea Is It? Reading Zainichi Literature Intersectionally

Chapter published in The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature (edited by Heekyoung Cho). (link)

Abstract:

This chapter takes up the question “whose Korea is it” in order to unpack key differences between belonging and representation, as understood with respect to the increasingly expansive and transnational category of Korean literature. I argue that as the notion of Korea expands to become more inclusive, it becomes all the more important to deploy intersectional analysis that attends to hierarchical structures of difference that persist within the broader community of a global or transnational Korea. Such an intersectional mode of reading is developed through an exploration of two works of contemporary fiction by Koreans in Japan: Sagisawa Megumu’s “Hontō no natsu” (“The True Summer,” 1992), and Che Sil’s Jini no pazuru (Jini’s Puzzle, 2016).