Comments on: Korean Books at SOAS 2: North Korean poetry collections http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/07/21/korean-books-at-soas-2-north-korean-poetry-collections/ Thoughts on Korea, northeast Asia, history and other things Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:22:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: kotaji http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/07/21/korean-books-at-soas-2-north-korean-poetry-collections/#comment-5 Fri, 22 Jul 2005 16:48:30 +0100 http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/07/21/korean-books-at-soas-2-north-korean-poetry-collections/#comment-5 My understanding of the literary class in North Korea at this point in time is that they were generally intellectuals of the Japanese colonial period. Many of these people had been left-leaning, and even some who weren't that leftwing had 'gone north' before or during the Korean War. Anyway, they would have been fairly privileged people, often educated in Japanese universities I expect. I very much doubt that in any of these cases we're talking about 'proletarian poets'. If you're at all interested in the dicussion on the previous post, it's all happening over at <a href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com/2005/07/autonomism-in-korea.html" rel="nofollow">blogger</a>. I haven't done much about cutting the umbilical cord yet and seem to have committed myself to running two versions of my blog... My understanding of the literary class in North Korea at this point in time is that they were generally intellectuals of the Japanese colonial period. Many of these people had been left-leaning, and even some who weren’t that leftwing had ‘gone north’ before or during the Korean War. Anyway, they would have been fairly privileged people, often educated in Japanese universities I expect. I very much doubt that in any of these cases we’re talking about ‘proletarian poets’.

If you’re at all interested in the dicussion on the previous post, it’s all happening over at blogger. I haven’t done much about cutting the umbilical cord yet and seem to have committed myself to running two versions of my blog…

]]> by: tak http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/07/21/korean-books-at-soas-2-north-korean-poetry-collections/#comment-4 Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:43:48 +0100 http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/07/21/korean-books-at-soas-2-north-korean-poetry-collections/#comment-4 Wow. The images are intriguing. Your interpretation of these book covers as nostalgia for the rural past seems quite right, which also makes me wonder if perhaps these poems were written more by the elite class rather than peasants. The orderly-plowed fields that stretch into the distance, as you rightly noted, seems like a sign of progress. Very Mao. Wow. The images are intriguing. Your interpretation of these book covers as nostalgia for the rural past seems quite right, which also makes me wonder if perhaps these poems were written more by the elite class rather than peasants.

The orderly-plowed fields that stretch into the distance, as you rightly noted, seems like a sign of progress. Very Mao.

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