Lee,
Jinhyoung

This presentation addresses the configuration of an island as the source of postcolonial politics in 1960s Korea through a reading of Chŏng-han Kim’s short story “A Story of Shoal” (1966) by employing the terms of “forms of life” (the various ways of biopower to control life) and “form-of-life” (a singular life as analogous to a happy life), as formulated by Giorgio Agamben (2000). The frame novel, in which a teacher (narrator) recounts the history of an unstable Korean island (Jomaisum), comprises three formats of the story about the island. The first story is presented as a diary written by a student named Gunwoo, who resides on the island and commutes to attend classes. It serves as a kind of archive, in which the long history of exploitation on the island, encompassing both the colonial and the post-colonial period in Korea, is documented. The second is narrated in the form of memory by Gunwoo's grandfather, in which the political exclusion of people in Korea, particularly in the post-colonial period, is described. Finally, the third format is a short story, “A Story of Shoal," in which Gunwoo's teacher, acting as the narrator, incorporates the preceding formats and establishes the frame, beginning and closing it. The precarious lives of the islanders, or bare life, who are exposed to a constant threat of death on a daily basis, are recounted. In Agamben's terminology, Kim’s short story symbolically illustrates the historical development of the forms of life which were dominant in Korea from the colonial to the post-colonial periods, as well as the concomitant precarious lives of people. In this context, the islanders can be characterized as Indigenous refugees, as they are not only deprived of the land and are forced to move away on the sea for survival at the sacrifice of death, but they should also be deported from the island due to a political reason (anti-communism). The work's concluding scene, in which the military deployment on the island is completed, provides insight into the constitution of the contemporary military regime in 1960s Korea. It can thus be argued that Kim's work finds a source of postcolonial politics seeking the form-of-life in the precarious lives of people on the island suffering from the forms of life, significantly including the military regime.