This article looked into “Joseon ? Korean Literary History of the Time” published by the publication department of Yanbian University, which may be a third eye toward Korean literary history. “Literary History of the Time” may be a noteworthy text in that it is literary history aimed at both South Korean and North Korean literature by utilizing data of South Korea and North Korea at the same time as Korean literary history published in a third country. Concerning the period that this study aimed at, it ranges from the period after liberation in 1945 to the Korean War in 1950. “Literary History of the Time” describes this period by classifying it into poetic literature, novel literature, and play literature along with an overview of the time. Among them, this study proceeded to a discussion limited to the poem genre.
“Literary History of the Time” describes the entire South Korean and North Korean literature from 1945 to 1980 while indicating South Korea as “Hanguk (Korea)” and North Korea as “Joseon”. It is also interesting that in the main body of the book, it uses neutral expressions that do not belong to either South Korea or North Korea, just as the literature of the “South” and the literature of the “North” aside from its use of “(North) Joseon” and “Hanguk” indicates the literature of the North and the South. Regarding the classification of the period of literary history, the book is classified into 10-year periods from the 1950s to 1980s, and only Chapter 1 covers about five years from the period immediately after liberation in 1945 to the period immediately before the Korean War under the title of “Literature during the period immediately after liberation”. The reason why the “Literary History of the Time” adopted such a classification of periods may be because the book was intended to be poised on the border that does not belong either to the South or the North.
The fact that the “Literary History of the Time” emphasized in particular “mutual contact between the right and the left” and brought it to prominence while explaining the situation of literary circles during the period immediately after liberation enables us to glimpse the direction of the description of literature history aimed at by the “Literary History of the Time”. That may be read as a different expression of a consciousness of seeking “mutual contact” between the South and the North or aspiring to such contact and to be voluntarily in charge of its role under the special situation of being an “autonomous prefecture of the Joseon people in China”, namely a third country.
Meanwhile the “Literary History of the Joseon Race in China” (2007), which is used as a textbook for the Department of Joseon Literature at the Central University for Nationalities located in Beijing, China, may be a noteworthy text in that it is another literary history produced in the same China. The guidelines that they determined are the literature and history of the citizens of the People’s Republic of China and also of the “Joseon race as a minority race” and they are not the literature of the “Joseon people” who immigrated to China. Therefore, prior to mentioning the relationship with the mother country for literature of the Joseon race, it is defined in the semantic network with Chinese literary circles or Chinese society and history.