The third Seoul International Forum for Literature, which took place at Kyobo Conference Hall two weeks ago, was a literary festival for writers from all over the world. Under the theme, “The Globalizing World and the Human Community,” 14 celebrated international writers including two Nobel laureates, Le Clezio and Gao Xingjian, joined 31 representative Korean writers to discuss what to write and how to write in the radically globalizing world. All the sessions were intriguing: “Multiculturalism,” “The Globalizing World,” “The Age of Post-Ideology,” “The World Market and the Multimedia Environment” and “Eco-Criticism.” 

In his keynote address, “Ideology and Literature,” Gao Xingjian, an exile living in France, enlightened the audience with his calm yet eloquent speech: “Literature, however, transcends practical interests, as it is a free expression of human feelings and thoughts. A writer who lost his ability to think independently easily ends up following one ideological trend or another.” Those Korean writers who simply follow one ideological trend, then, must be those who lost their ability to think independently. Gao Xingjian lamented: “From the unfortunate way that literature today has all too often lost its independence to become a mere servant of an ideology, the 20th century’s literature already taught us too many lessons.” Indeed, my radical Korean students in the early 1980s stubbornly insisted that literature must serve an ideology, that is, Marxism. Later during the Roh administration, those leftist students seized political power and seriously degraded literature and arts by using them as ideological propaganda.

Gao Xingjian continued, “In an attempt to reconstruct reality through a utopian dogma that went under the banner of rationality, various revolutions incited violence, drove entire nations into rage and madness, and eventually caused a disastrous calamity.” Then he deplored that literature made the same mistake: “Incorporated into an ideological system, literature, too, stirred up violence and war, promoted worship of heroes and leaders, and lauded sacrifices for them ... Today’s literature, as it were, is not entirely free from the grasp of ideology, and the view that literature should engage in real politics is still being circulated around the current intellectual world.”

In the “Literature in the Age of Post-Ideology” session, Yi Mun-yol, the controversial writer who has long opposed the subordination of literature to ideologies, told the audience: “Ideologies, which have been designed for humanitarian purpose, ironically exploited humans as a means of propagating themselves. Consequently, the ideologies that should have improved our lives betrayed their original purpose and sought their own propagation by sacrificing us.” Then he added, “My family’s misfortunes, too, originated from the reversal of means and ends of my father’s ideology.”

When Yi was 3 years old, his father, who had collaborated with the communist regime during the Korean War, went to North Korea following the retreating communist troops. At that time, if someone in your family was a communist, every member of your family was guilty by association. Thus, Yi and his family had to live like a social pariah, enduring political persecution. Yi’s childhood memories are full of hastily moving from one place to another, constantly fleeing from imminent danger of arrest and possible execution. Therefore, Yi had every reason to become a spiteful leftist who tried to seek vengeance upon the right wing. Instead, however, he has chosen to be a man free from ideologies, criticizing the leftists who try to pay off old scores and do exactly the same thing as the rightwing once did to them. That is what makes Yi a greater writer than those who are still enslaved by their dead fathers’ ideological legacy.

Yi looked back upon the difficult times when he made a literary debut as an aspiring writer: “But when I started as a novice writer, it was unfortunately a time when all values were integrated under the banner of the public good, and the literature that was subordinated to it was publicly required to serve a higher value. That ideology dominated the zeitgeist by attracting and persuading intellectuals who had resisted and escaped the long-held totalitarian rule.” Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, however, Yi had the courage to say ‘No!’ in thunder to the dominant ideology when all men said ‘Yes!’

The session invited another Korean writer Jeong Ji-a, a daughter of pro-North Korean socialist guerillas during the Korean War. Her parents were arrested and did time in prison. Despite her inclination toward socialism, Jeong, too, warned us that we should not blindly worship an ideology. “As a writer myself,” she said, “I am convinced that writers should directly confront the injustice of their times rather than adhere to an absolute ideology. Although I don’t like capitalism, I often have a quarrel with my mother about her blind faith in socialism.” Both Yi and Jeong seemed to embody the tragic history of Korea, ruthlessly torn due to political ideologies.

Listening to them, we realized we should now put an end to the chronic ideological warfare, heal our psychic wounds and seek reconciliation through mutual understanding, reciprocal comfort and unlimited tolerance. 

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon, a professor of English at Seoul National University, is editor of the literary quarterly “21st Century Literature.” ― Ed.