Korea Lectures Series – The Subject as the Subjected: Intellectuals and Workers in Labor Literature (Nodong Sosol) of South Korea

This paper explores the literary representation of intellectuals and workers in prose fiction written by labor activists in the late 1980s and early 1990s in South Korea. Written and published at the onset of the demise of the minjung project as a vibrant social and political movement, these novels by and large reflect on the intellectuals’ relationship with workers in what is known as the “worker-intellectual alliance” of the 1980s. The paper argues that these novels also function as “revolutionary words,” calling into existence the subjecthood of working class as a transparent reflection of a reality that speaks for itself.