Abstract

This article aims at a comparative analysis of the prefaces in Lim Hak-Su’s translations of the Iliad. Lim published three translations of the Iliad, the first in 1940 during the Japanese colonial period, and later in North Korea in 1963 and 1989. The differences between the prefaces in these three editions are noteworthy. While the 1940 preface begins with high praise for the Iliad and the emotional and romantic tone is maintained until the end, the 1963 preface attempts to focus on an objective narrative. Lim defined Homer’s Iliad as an “inmin epic.” The most noteworthy point of this preface is that Lim cites Engels and Marx to support his evaluation of the Iliad. Finally, in the preface to the 1989 translation, the perspectives of Marx and Engels are gone and Kim Ilsung’s teachings appear instead. Such changes show that the communism of Marx and Engels, which can be called a foreign ideology, had finally been overcome in North Korean society and that Kim Il-sung’s Juche ideology had been established as the absolute state policy with the highest authority. The case of Lim’s prefaces allows us to think about how literary criticism is influenced by national ideologies and what it means to study literature and humanities in North Korea.