On Korean Female Writer Pak Kyongni: Remembering and Forgetting in the Anthology Bulsin Sidae (The Age of Doubt)

Paper Abstract: Pak Kyongni (박경리) is one of South Korea's most emblematic authors. Furthermore, her contribution to Korean literature is of such magnitude that she could be regarded as the most representative female writer in South Korea. Despite her national recognition - with the inclusion of the Toji saga in the UNESCO collection of representative works, the establishment in 2011 of the prestigious literary award Park Kyong-ni Prize in honour to her prolific career, the establishment of a cultural organisation under the name Toji Cultural Foundation, the preservation of the last residence occupied by the writer in a house-museum in Wonju, or the creation of Pak Kyongni´s Memorial Hall in her homeland Tongyeong, and so forth - the research conducted outside Korea about her figure is deficient, being non-existent in many countries.

This paper explores some of her literary features, focusing on how remembering and forgetting is displayed in her anthology Bulsin Sidae (The Age of Doubt), which includes seven stories from the 1950s and 1960s titled Gyesan (Calculations), Heuk-heuk Baekbaek (Black is Black, White is White), Amheuk Sidae (The Age of Darkness), Bulsin Sidae (The Age of Doubt), Byeokji (Retreat), Hwansangui Sigi (The Era of Fantasy), and Yageuro-do Mot Gochineun Byeong (The Sickness No Medicine Can Fix), with special interest on two short stories, Amheuk Sidae and Bulsin Sidae, which contains relevant autobiographical memory from her own experience of the Korean War as a war widow.