The Utopian Imagination In Zhiyong Kong's Novels

Zhiyong Kong, a famous contemporary Korean writer, is viewed as one of the new generation women writers of the 1990 s. The subjects of her novels, which are consistent with the development trend of Korean society, indicates her critical thinking about social injustice; most of her novels are also filled with a living atmosphere of arduousness and desolation, which unraveling the fact that the huge disparity and imbalance block the way to future, both for the individual and for the Korean society. Still, in her novels, Zhiyong Kong reveals her adherence to the life value, her vision for a better life; she builds an imagination for the “Perfect Society” on the strength of novels in nowadays, the social conflicts become sharpened.Based on the three types of her novels, this thesis is divided into four parts to explore Zhiyong Kong's persistence and development of social ideal at different stages. The first part of this four-part thesis series is the introduction in which the research status, the necessity of research and the introduction to Zhiyong Kong and her works are involved. The second part, which is classified into two small parts, including the fanatical ideal of the Democratic Movement and the arduous explorations after the failure, illustrates that the early works of her imply Zhiyong Kong's yearning for the new type democratic system of the Democratic Movement. The third part examines the problems that center on the protest, survival of Korean women of lower class and middle class, and their fantasy for men and gender equality. The fourth part mainly probes into a sad indictment of the unfair laws and the death penalty system in novels, which is closely related to the reality after social transformation, elucidating Zhiyong Kong's democratic thought of the constancy.