This paper explains the inventional process of Korean modern literary style focusing on the writings of Yang, Geon-sik(1889-1943). With examining his various writing styles, it sheds light on how the ‘eonmunilchiche’(vernacularized writing style) was invented, and how the style has become a dominant one of the journalism in colonial Korea since 1920s. Under that point of view, it explores followings:
Frist, Yang, Geon-sik made use of ‘~엇다,’ a sentence ending, in his short stories written in middle 1910s, for the experiment of a modern literary writing style. Yang wrote in various styles for different genres in ‘bulgyojinheungheobo’(The Monthly Journal of buddhism promoting society). It demonstrated that the difference between writing styles was closely corresponded to that of genres. Even styles of same genre, i.e. short story, moreover, exposed the discontinuity in it's writing.
The ‘Sinsoseol’ (new novel) usually employed both ‘~ㄴ다’ and ‘~엇다’ as a sentence ending, but <歸去來>(return to home), a Yang's short story, made experiment of ‘~엇다.’ ‘~더라’ was appeared in 1910s’ writing more than ‘~엇다’ as a past tense sentence ending, which is because of the pragmatical tradition that the one had been actualized in dependent sentences until 1910s. In addition, ‘~더라’ ending has an implication of a speaker's subjective mood or judgement on a past event. Both ‘~ㄴ다’ and ‘~엇다’ ending, rather, implied his/her objective information on it. That characteristic let the ending become selected proper for the writing delivering an idea of vernacularization based on the belief that the word was the thing.
Second, short stories of Yang, Geon-sik well demonstrates how the genre helps the invention of so called ‘oenmunilchiche’ defined by Lee, Yun-jae in the paper of 1926, which adopted both chinese character under dominant usage of Korean character. <歸去來> is a very example of that style, and also well demonstrates a ‘self reflexivity’ exposing the making condition of the modern literature. It discloses the situation how much the short story with adopting ‘~엇다’ ending is strange to contemporary readers used to the style of new novels. <슯흔矛盾>(sad dilemma), one of the first Künstlerroman - in that sense, be able to be classified self reflective- demonstrates the style's possibility of illustrating both the human inside and the outer world.
Third, since 1919, so called ‘eonmunilchiche’(mixed use of both Korean and Chinese characters, especially the other for chinese oriented nouns and translated concepts of the west) adopted in the short story assimilated another genre style into itself, and finally made homogeneous of them one another. The national movement in March first, 1919 gave a strong motivation for the journalist to select the style for the journalism, whose selection expedited it to be winner in the competition of various styles for a modern literary style. The movement made Korean intellectuals sure to hear the nation's voice, of which different voices of classes was made homogeneous. For giving address to the nation, the journalist selected the style experimented in Yang's short stories. 『東明』(dawn light), one of the earliest journal published right after the movement, is a very example to adopt the style as the national linguistic form.