Study On Modern Koreans' Shanghai Travel Writing(1910?1937)

As the most unique urban space in modern China and even East Asia hist ory with peculiar political,economic and cultural values,and as the earliest,la rgest and most developed concession in China,Shanghai's special modernization process has the representativeness and historical value of the entire East Asia.Modern Koreans' travel writings about Shanghai have been popular for a long time,and they have been widely published in various newspapers and magazi nes in Korea,indicating the attention of Koreans to the modern process of Sha nghai and East Asia.These travel writings greatly transcend the scope of litera ry texts and are a valuable database for Korean travelers to record modern hist ory.At that time,Shanghai,as a link between the East and the West,actually provided Koreans with access to the West and the space of modernity and m ulti-ethnicity.This paper draws on the reading of the collected texts by Mary Luis Pratt on the interpretation of imperial travel writing,Guy Debord's landscape theory,comparative literary image theory and related postcolonial theories.It classifies and summarizes the overall content and writing characteristics of Koreans,Sh anghai travel writing,including landscape description in Shanghai's urban space,fusion of multi-ethnic culture,narrative tendency of polarization and sadness s tory,and other small nations' resistance found by Koreans in Shanghai.First of all,the description of Shanghai in Koreans' travel writing can be divided into physical landscape and cultural landscape.The unconscious attentio n of Koreans to the material landscape in Shanghai reflects the mutual projecti on relationship between the modernity of literature and the modernity of the li ving environment as pointed out by Wang Yichuan.The writing of Shanghai's cultural landscape also indirectly shows the Koreans' longing for the Western material capital developed material civilization.Borrowing Debord's landscape t heory and Zhang Yibing's point of view about landscape's hegemony,this pape r can further identify the unconscious identification of Koreans as viewers and dominators in Shanghai's urban space.Secondly,by combing the multi-ethnic narratives written by Korean intelle ctuals such as Hong Yangming,Park Kyeong-hi,and Lee Kwang-soo,this pap er finds that with the special space of Shanghai Koreans can more directly and deeply contact and experience the West and other cultures.At the same time,it is precisely in the so-called objective description of Shanghai's internationali zation characteristics that the Koreans have the potential to differentiate the ess ence of civilization.This multi-ethnic fusion image is transmitted by the East-West economic development and economy.However,whether it is the manage ment of the concession or the public aspect of daily life,the Western powers undoubtedly occupy the central position of Shanghai.When the Koreans contac ted Westerners on the ground in Shanghai,it is better to say that their own or ientalist perspective reinforces the image of the Westerners' powerfulness and a t the same time reinforces the impression of ethnic differences.Then,this paper deeply analyzes the writing inertia of the combination of civilization and degeneration,temptation and danger in the Koreans' Shanghai travel writings.With the image theory of the French comparative literature im ager Jean-Marc Moura,this paper points out the hunting psychology reflected by the Koreans in the distorted writing of Shanghai modernity and its entangle ment mentality of modernity.In addition,there are a number of love stories in Korean travel writing.These love stories have similar narrative frameworks.T he first category is based on the aventures between Korean males and prostitut es in Shanghai.By hiding the image of prostitutes,they hide the contradiction between the author's traditional values and modern desire.The second type of love story is full of strange tragic feelings,and all female characters are kille d.This not only shows that the male intellectuals attempt to accuse the imperi alist brutality through the female tragedy,also reflects the male author's intenti on to use female as a sacrifice to produce the national collective resistance.Finally,the Koreans' travel writing of Shanghai as an extension of moder n Korean history and politics preserved the precious memories of many young intellectuals studying in Shanghai and the exile experience of a large number o f national independence activists.By illuminating the scenes of their flashing memories in Shanghai,this paper attempts to awaken the collective experience and memories in the subjective discourse of modern Koreans and reveals Shan ghai as a more inclusive foreign space.It has made it possible for the weak a nd the oppressed groups to discover and display the subjectivity and jointly res ist the imperialists.The Koreans' travel writing is not only a valuable historical record for rest oring the history of East Asia and preserving the changes of Korean modern c onsciousness,but also an important document for regaining the collective mem ory of the Korean nation during the modern transition period and exploring the new possibilities of subjective shaping.Shanghai travel writings is the key to deconstructing modern Koreans' fantasy of Shanghai as well as modernity,so t hat we can once again reflect on the many problems hidden in the overall mo dernization process of East Asia and try to find ways to deal with these mode rn dilemmas.