잭 런던의 조선: 결핍과 비효율의 시공간

초록

In 1904, Jack London visited the Kingdom of Joseon to investigate the Russo-Japanese War. As a war correspondent whose main mission was to observe the vivid reality of military scenes in the Far East, London was at first illusioned to create a standard reportage for his American audiences at home. While traveling around all parts of Joseon for five months, however, he was slowly disillusioned by Japanese militants that censored out his reportage and camera. In particular, he was chronically annoyed by Korean subjects and their cultural practices as they were the entity of impotence ahead of impending imperial powers. Scholars have investigated his war writings on Korea from the perspectives of biography and Orientalism because London did present superior airs against Korean subjects. Yet, these biography and Orientalism studies do not fully explain the ways that London pronounced Koreans as “disabled” or “ineffective” subjects in many parts of his narrative. In order to understand the peculiar tone he sustained in his war/travel narrative, I argue that studying discourses on disability and capitalism (along with social Darwinism, whiteness, and imperialism) is important, as London was largely part of the complex society in which these ideological discourses, in spite of their apparent contradiction, were circulated together in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.