- Author: So, Young-Hyun
- Title: Writing-document of Non-Places - Focusing on the autobiographical essay of an overseas adoptee
- Language: Korean
- Journal: Korean Cultural Studies 100: 183-210
- Publication Year: 2023
- Publisher: Research Institute of Korean Studies
■ Abstract Through Katy Robinson’s A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots, Jane Jung Trenka’s The language of Blood: A Memoir, Fugitive Vision: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea, this article reviewed writings that contain the experiences of an adult overseas adoptee returning to Korea to find his biological parents and the origin of his existence. These articles, which recorded the adoption experience and return journey of overseas adopters, were examined from the perspective of writing-document of non-place. Understanding the document of An Adoptee’s Return to Korea as a writing-document of non-place recognizes that the document of An Adoptee’s Return to Korea is a transformed document, which should be called cultural refraction, and asks whether violence, deleted emotions, or voices swallowed by silence can be restored. What is important at this time is to acknowledge that overlapping refractions cannot be restored in the end, breaking away from the logic of dichotomous restoration of the pure-pollution method, and if it can be restored accordingly, it will be admitted that it is through repetitive work of dismantling and rebuilding writing-documents of non-place. If the adoptee's adoption and return experience is a writing-documents of non-place, this article itself can be called a writing-documents of non-place in that the meta-work on it is also a writing-documents of non-place. In short, we tried to gauge whether it was possible to make room for the living or imagine an alternative future through writing-document to approach this non-place, an asymptotic translation work that was not finished and repeated.
|