• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.279-302
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• 2019

This paper introduces Youngju Ryu's Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee's Korea, and examines its significance and limitations. The book examines the relationship between literature and politics during the Park Chung-hee Yushin era, focusing on Yang Sŏng-u, Kim Chi-ha, Yi Mun-gu, Cho Se-hŭi, and Hwang Sok-yong. The books starts by describing the relationship between the U.S. hegemony and the Park Chung-hee regime during the Cold War. The book shows how poets like Yang and Kim fought against the Park Chung-hee regime based on poems, trial records and memoirs, while it describes novelists such as Yi's resistance by how novels envisioned a community against the Park administration based on the keyword "neighborhood." This is significant in that it describes how literature from the Park Chung-hee era was able to stand on the front lines against the regime. However, it is regrettable that because the book adopts a heroic tale to describe their lives and literature, these are illuminated in a somewhat flat way. Also it is noteworthy that the lives and works of novelists after the 2000s were illuminated, but Yang and Kim's life and literature were not described. Furthermore, it is regrettable that women writers were not mentioned and its concept of "politics" is rather shallow. Overall, this book is very significant in that it introduces the relationship between Korean literature and politics in the Korea of the 1970s with rich data and a beautiful style, as well as allowing Korean studies researchers to reflect on the future of Korean studies.