Translating Hans Christian Andersen in Colonial Korea

Abstract This study examines the ideological hybridity in Korean translations of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales during early twentieth-century colonial Korea, when translation was a key tool for cultural modernization. Analyzing translations published in fairy tale anthologies, this study categorizes them by Christian, socialist, and nationalist orientations. Although these translations sought to promote distinct ideological messages, they often generated contradictions, as religious, political, and nationalistic reinterpretations introduced tensions within the texts. This hybridity in translation is further reinforced by the ambiguity, irony, and multilayered meanings inherent in Andersen’s original works. This study demonstrates that translation is not merely ideological reinforcement but a hybridized space where competing discourses intersect, reshaping meaning in unpredictable ways. In this light, the interpretative openness of Andersen’s works may also help explain why his fairy tales, unlike many others translated in early twentieth-century Korea, continue to be retranslated and read in Korea today as part of the global literary canon.