Family as Allegory: Yŏm Sangsŏp’s Works in the Korean Liberation Space, 1945–1948

Abstract This article examines Yŏm Sangsŏp’s (1897–1963) literary works in the immediate aftermath of the end of Japanese colonial rule by focusing on his first postliberation story, “Haebang ŭi adŭl” (“The Son of Liberation,” 1946), and the understudied postcolonial rewritings of two of his seminal colonial-era novels: Manse chŏn (Before the Cheers, 1924) and Samdae (The Three Generations, 1931). With a focus on the figure of family, this study explores how Yŏm’s postliberation works represented the nation as it was negotiating its renewed identity in the tumultuous post–World War II world. When unpredictable sociopolitical situations made it difficult for the nation to hold on to a static identity and estranged it from a desired course of decolonization, Yŏm leveraged the figure of family to allegorize the nation, redefining its form amid historical suspension, without completely cutting itself off from its past or relying on a particular ideology to posit a preconceived course of history. The figure of family, this article argues, encapsulates Yŏm’s postliberation fiction as an embodiment of the Korean “liberation space,” distinguished not entirely by historical progress but also by suspension, pregnant with possibilities for the nation’s postcolonial future.