부산대학교 도서관

A war destroys the world's order and peace of life suddenly and all at once. Terror, anxiety and fraction that are hard to manage may bear literature. All creatures have instinct to maintain calmness overcoming such a state. Literature governed by power creates heros through mythic lyrics and splendid rhetorics. In addition, literature hides the brutal reality of a war and tries to forget the responsibility of power. It promotes the reintegration and reunification of society, covering up contradiction and irrationality. Such direction of literature techniques exerts a symbolic influence to the reiteration of unhappy history. In this paper, I examined the correlations among war, literature and politics, focused on General Kim Story(金將軍傳), written after the Shimha War in 1619(深河戰役). General Kim Story can be found in the book, "Chung Yeol Rok(忠烈錄)" which is the collection of writings and drawings, as well as his great achievements in life time, in memory of a general named Kim Eung-Ha(金應河). However, the Story hides the reality and responsibility of the war and covers up an intention to facilitate ideological integration through great achievements of a figure. The image of Kim Eung-Ha is ideologically fixed, in line with the direction of political direction of power, and the experience of the war those days does not function as a beneficial memory to the following war. There is a proposition that the whole history is the history of the present times. General Kim Story has only focused on general Kim Eung-Ha's great achievements; thus, it blocked an opportunity to utilize the valuable experience of the war as historical assets. Here lies the reason why General Kim Story should be reviewed in a critical way today. To prevent the reoccurrence of painful history, we should thoroughly investigate the painful incident and conduct sincere reflection of it. To do so, we should avoid an attitude to conceal the reality behind the glory, and see objects without turning away from the wounds and scars of the painful history. In this manner, we could sever the repetition cycle of the painful history. Literature may be used as a tool to maintain power, and it can create a false image, relying on magnificent rhetorics, while turning away from the painful reality. Thus, literature may create an inertia that can reiterate mistakes without a notice, concealing irregularities and contradictions, as well as forgetting the responsibility of power. This is the very reason why literature cannot avoid the historical responsibility.