Modern Korean Literature and Manchukuo

This chapter provides a general overview of how Korean writers in Manchukuo envisioned their new role as intellectuals, expressed in political views that often continued into the post-war period with the division of the Korean peninsula into North and South during the emerging Cold War. Deepening state intervention through the naisen-ittai [Korea and Japan as One Body] campaign in the late 1930s also forced Korean writers to take sides amidst imperial Japanese occupation. The lives and works of writers including Yeom Sang-seop (1897-1963) Ri Ki-yong (1896-1984), and Han Seol-ya (1900-1976), among others, will be examined.