Writings of the Korean Student Soldier in Burma Campaign of the Asia-Pacific War ：Lee Ga-hyung’s <i>River of Fury</i>

HONG, Buil

doi:2023.16.1.211

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 16(1); 2023 > Article

Research Material

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2023;16(1): 211-215.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2023.16.1.211

Writings of the Korean Student Soldier in Burma Campaign of the Asia-Pacific War ：Lee Ga-hyung’s River of Fury

Buil HONG

PhD Student, Korea University of Korean Language and Literature Department

ビルマ戦線朝鮮人学徒志願兵の記録 ―― 李佳炯『怒りの河』

洪富日

Correspondence Buil HONG ,Email: ghdqndlf@korea.ac.kr

Published online: 30 June 2023.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Conscripted as a student soldier and deployed to the Burma front, Lee Ga-hyung is a distinctive writer who literalizes the memory of the Asia-Pacific War outside of the national political logic. The narrator of the autobiographical novel River of Fury, written simultaneously in Korean and Japanese, positions himself as the ugliest soldier on the Burmese battlefield. And it is only through the eyes of this loser that the anti-imperialist soldier, comfort women, and guards of POW could be captured, which were not captured in the pre-existing war memoirs. In River of Fury, Lee continues to call out the names of those who were sacrificed for no reason during the war. He attempts to transcend national and ethnic boundaries with these calling. The exclamation of “don’t die” and “come back alive” comfort all the victims, criticize the war and empire, and elevate River of Fury into a complete literary work.

Keywords: Burma Campaign, Bilingualism, Straggler), Comfort Women, Mourning

キ―ワ―ド: ビルマ戦線, 二重言語, 落伍兵, 慰安婦, 哀悼