Three Generations (review)

184The Journal ofKorean Studies sources (especially those that are not literary translations) is unfortunately small, and the implicit overarching narrative of this literary history demonstrates little sympathy for or familiarity with recent developments in literary studies, regardless of their merit. An approach to literary history lacking sustained critical engagement with salientconcerns and synchronic issues that structure literary and critical studies in many other national literary fields—Japanese, Chinese, and non-Asian—is inherently limited, but this clarifies what steps the field takes next. In addition to questions raised by this important volume, other questions—of hegemony and representation, subjectivity and governmentality, gender and performance, aesthetics and politics, and ideology critique, to name a few—await. The growing cohort of recent Korean literature scholars and teachers now has both a valuable reference work and a clearer mapping of where to go from here. Reviewed by Scott Swaner University of Washington Three Generations by Yom Sang-seop. Translated by Yu Youngnan . Afterwordby Kim Chie-sou. Brooklyn: ArchipelagoBooks, 2005. 476 pp. $19.80 (cloth). Yom Sang-seop (throughout this review I follow the romanization used in Yu Young-nan's translation) is one of the most prominent writers of twentiethcentury Korea, with a long and prolific career, most of it taking place in the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). In fact, over the last twenty years, Yom Sang-seop has become one of the most-written-about literary figures from the colonial period. Critics consider Three Generations (1931) in particular to be a monumental achievement. Some Korean critics have called attention to the way this text offers a family history, the history of three generations, that is at once a history of Korea's entrance into modernity and its fall into coloniality. The first generation is represented by Deok-gi's grandfather, who acquired his wealth in the turbulent period preceding Japan's annexation of Korea and therefore represents a modern shakeup of the old order. Nevertheless, Deokgi 's grandfather seeks to acquire status, an ascriptive position associated with the fallen Joseon dynasty—thus the outlay of funds both to secure the government title of advisor for himself and, later, to position himself as leader of the Jo clan, in charge of the clan genealogy. The grandfather, then, points both to the new, the importance of money for securing status, and the old, the adherence to the feudal order of the past. Sang-hun, Deok-gi's father, stands in for the second generation, those who grew up with the new learning, the new ideas coming in from the west—he is Book Reviews1 85 described as a Christian, a religious activist associated with the possibilities of the Korean enlightenment, the drive for self-strengthening and modernization . In the text, his is a bankrupt, failed position: he becomes representative of a generation of fallen fathers unable to bring about Korea's independence. Yom pins his hopes on the third generation, Deok-gi, the young men of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the professional middle class, who, hopefully, can emerge as leaders of a consensus centering on both the drive for modernization and opposition to Japanese colonial rule. It is this generation, and this class, that Yom imbues with moral legitimacy. It is important to locate the text in its place, colonial Korea, and its historical moment, 1931, the eve ofJapan's incursion into Manchuria. The Japanese colonial state was becoming increasingly repressive, engaging in a general crackdown that both included the suppression of leftist activity in the colony and spelled the end of the united Left-Right front in Korea for which Yom had held such high hopes in the late 1920s. Indeed, the conflict between Left and Right is a central concern of Yom's text, one that revolves around the friendship of two young men of the third generation, Deok-gi, the middle-of-the-roader, and Byeong-hwa, a leftist. Here, we gain an insight into Yom's position in the colonial literary world—he was known, then and now, as a sympathizer, open to the views ofproletarian writers who dominated the literary scene in the late 1920s, up until the early 1930s crackdown. But he was also skeptical...