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• 1 media/Section_1_Banner_1b.jpg 2022-05-26T13:11:44-07:00 Colonial Modernity and Science Fiction 32 Sunyoung Park image_header 2022-07-18T15:31:14-07:00 Science fiction as a modern literary genre was first introduced to Korea in the early twentieth century with the coming of modernity along with global imperialism. The Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910) accomplished a significant development of science and technology, but the theme was rarely featured in its rich tradition of creative literature, likely because science and technology were largely regarded as the domains of the so-called chungin (middle people), a class of specialists, who were ranked below the ruling elites of Confucian scholar-officials. Confronted with the lures and threats of Western technoscientific modernity, however, some reformist intellectuals turned to Western science fiction as marvelous cultural products of modern civilization as well as an effective means of mass enlightenment. Especially popular were Jule Vernes’ work such as Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Begum’s Fortune. The latter uto-dystopian novel was translated by Yi Haejo under the title of Steel World (Ch’ŏl segye; 1908) and was sold in book form [Fig.1-1]. Such early sf translations, however, were discontinued after Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea and did not resume until the colonial authorities relented its censorship in the wake of the 1919 mass uprisings known as the March First movement.
  
  Between the early 1920s and the early 1930s, the years of intense social activism, science fiction was more widely translated, and Korean writers also produced a few original stories in both desire and critique of technoscientific modernity. From Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887 to Čarel Kapek’s R.U.R (Rossum’s Universal Robot), the translations introduced Korean readers to the classic sf themes of utopia, dystopia, space and time travel, mad science, artificial intelligence, and more (M. Kim, 2021). As early as in 1921, Chŏng Yŏn’gyu published Utopia (Isangch’on; 1921), which depicts a future Korea in 2023 as a communist utopia with no money, no state organization, no disease, and no pollution thanks to electricity. This novel’s anti-capitalist technoutopian vision and its dream narrative are believed to have been partly inspired by Bellamy’s novel (Mo, 263–270). [Fig.1-2] On a more dystopian tone, Kim Tongin’s “Dr. K’s Research” (“K paksa ŭi yŏn’gu”; 1929) mocked at a deluded scientist’s failed experiment of turning human excrements into food, and Hŏ Ilmun’s “A Brave Boy from Mars” (“Ch’ŏn’gong ŭi yong sonyŏn”; 1930) projected an apocalyptic view of a war-ridden Earth seen from the perspective of a Martian boy and his scientist uncle. In addition, Kang Kyŏngae’s story, “The Woman” (“Kŭ yŏja”; 1932), a satirical tale of a liberal feminist, featured an image of a robot, and the trope also adorned a 1933 cover of the woman’s magazine Contemporary Woman (Hyŏndae yŏsŏng) as a symbol of modernization [Fig.1-3].
  
  Yet, despite the general expansion of science culture in late colonial years, science fiction did not take a root as a recognizable part of popular culture throughout the colonial period (1910–1945) for various social and cultural reasons. The colonial education system offered Koreans a limited access to higher education in science. It was not until 1938 that the Kyŏngsŏng Imperial University, the only university in colonial Korea, began to offer science and engineering education (Kuksa, 2005). Until then, the Kyŏngsŏng Engineering High School remained as the highest educational institution in science and engineering. The graduates of this school organized the Society of Invention (Palmyŏng hakhoe), which led the publication of the monthly Science Korea (Kwahak Chosŏn; 1933–1936) and the “Scientification of Everyday Life” (saenghwal ŭi kwahak) campaign amid the accelerating industrialization. [Fig. 1-4] Under the decade’s intensifying assimilation policy, however, literary intellectuals seem to have felt further alienated from contemporary technoscientific modernity. It also did not help that colonial censors imposed a ban on some titles such as Yi Haejo’s Steel World and Chŏng’s Utopia. The earlier thought experiments all but ceased, but in the late 1930s, sci-fi detective fiction in the style of Edogawa Ranpo, the bestselling Japanese writer, became popular through its local renderings such as Kim Naesŏng’s Evil (Main, 1939). This late-colonial genre hybridization would leave a lasting legacy in the postcolonial development of science fiction in South Korea.