Writing and Censorship During the Japanese Colonial Period: The Strange Case of Yi Sang's Poem "Publications Law"

Speaker: CEAS SPECIAL KOREA TALK / CO-SPONSORED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE Young-Min Kwon Seoul National University Yi Sang (1910-1937) is one of the most eminent authors of the colonial period, whose literary legacy is punctuated by modernist tendencies. His poem "Shuppanho (Publications Law)" appeared in the July 1932 issue of Chosen to kenchiku. As a parody of the censorship of a special edition of the newspaper and its typographic conventions, the poem creates a unique poetic space. Its typography shows the process of textual production, and it conveys, through parody, a critique of the political reality in colonial Korea and the control the Japanese exerted over the print media.