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Элементы корейского текста в автобиографиях и публицистике писателей корѐ сарам
The Korean diaspora in the post-Soviet states (endonym - Koryo-saram) has a history of more than one hundred and ten years. The deportation of Koreans in 1937 from the Soviet Far East to the Kazakh, Uzbek, and Kirghiz SSRs on suspicion of spying for Japan significantly influenced the preservation of Korean culture within the diaspora. The second generation of Koreans after the deportation practically did not speak the Korean language. However, it was the writers of this Koryo-saram generation (Anatoly Kim, Vladimir Kim, Aleksandr Kang, A. Han, Mikhail Pak, Genrietta Kang and others) who introduced an independent Korean hero into Russian literature. Since the second half of the 1990s these writers have published a number of autobiographical and journalistic texts, which raise problems of individual cultural identity of the Russian-writing Koryo saram writers and undertake attempts to determine Koryo-saram as a Korean diaspora, which has long ago lost ties with its historical homeland. In their texts, the Koryo saram writers draw upon traditional characters from Korean literature and folklore (the faithful Chunhyang,
Heungbu and Nolbu, Hong Gildong), their knowledge of Korean history and ethnography, and the concepts presumably depicting Korean national character. The article considers three cases of literary and cultural references in autobiographic and non-fictional texts. Anatoly Kim was the first of Koryo-saram writers to use the concept han, popular in South Korea and with Korean-American diaspora. His primordial comprehension of han varies from "philosophic sadness" to "reverence for female beauty", but manifests itself as inalienable for the Korean character. Another literary reference Anatoly Kim's autobiography "My Past" is related to his creative and cultural self-determination. Having learned in the late 1980s that he is a descendant of the 15th-century Korean poet Kim Si Seup, Kim creates his autobiography, written while working in in Seoul, as a biography of a Russian writer, yet derives his bloodline and artistic calling to the Korean poet. Aleksandr Kang, the author of numerous essays about Koryo-saram literature, constructs an extended metaphorical image of Koryo-saram in general and especially of Korean writers writing in Russian, based on the 17th century story "The Tale of Hong Gildon" ("Hong Gildong jeon"), whose main character is a noble robber, illegitimate son to a noble man who was forced to leave his home and found a new homeland overseas. Kang compares Utopian Island Yuldo with Russian culture, which allows Koryo saram writers to do their literary work. Koryo saram writers are conscious of their otherness and alienation from their historical homeland, which brings them to the construction of their own Korean cultural identity. The literary sources for
this construction are translations of classical Korean literature into Russian, the works of Soviet and Russian orientalists, as well as popular cultural concepts.