Abstract

From the perspective of 'exile criticism', this paper attempts to reveal that Heo Jun's novel Jandeung., as a return narrative, is a work that shows the paradoxical situation of exiles who cannot but realize the impossibility of returning to his homeland despite having returned to his homeland, through an analysis of the narrator's journey of return. The discussion in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, Jandeung. indirectly depicts the fate of the refugees who had to flee Manchuria and struggle to return to their homeland due to the change in historical circumstances brought about by the collapse of the Japanese Empire, and the painful collective memory that the Korean migrants in Manchuria had to go through, through the unfortunate life narrative of the 'cousin and uncle' clan, which is recalled through the memory of the the narrator, 'I' on the return journey as a refugee in a state of homeland loss. Secondly, Jandeung. reminds us of the possibility of compassion for the suffering of others through the 'I' who identifies the fate of the residual Japanese, who are bound to be othered in a liberated Korea, with their own fate as othered refugees on the road to return. Third, the 'spirit of the third party', which represents the inner loneliness of being placed outside of the national community despite returning to the homeland, reveals the 'I''s despairing awareness of being a third party in an eternally unstable state, and of no longer being able to return to the stable situation of being in the homeland imagined in nostalgia. However, it has a resistant meaning in that it reveals that the reality of the harsh revolution, which seeks to build a national narrative through the exclusion of the other, is only an illusion.