Abstract

The last novel released by Im Soon-deuk at the end of the Japanese colonial rule, “Moonlight Talk” quotes a verse from Seo Jeong-ju. With this as a clue, this study revealed the human and literary relationship between Im Soon-deuk, a novelist and Seo Jeong-ju, a poet. In early 1936, Seo Jeong-ju appealed for love Im Soon-deuk, a cutting- edge modern woman, but was rejected by Im and Seo married to a shabby country woman. This process parallels Seo’s departure from the Western world of Baudelaire in his early poetry to discover the Eastern world of tradition. To Im Soon-deuk, Seo Jungju looked like a clumsy modernist and was not a match to share the agony of the times. Later, Seo Jeong-ju went to Manchuria to make money and entered pro-Japanese literature around 1942. Im Soon-deuk saw Seo Jeong-ju’s life hardship and expressed her compassion for the “weight of poverty” by quoting Seo Jeong-ju’s poem in her novel “Moonlight Talk”. This relationship between the two created an interesting scene in the history of literature at the end of the Japanese colonial era in that it was an interesting relationship between pro-Japanese writer and writer who resisted with indirect writing.