A Graduate Student Perspective: Jaeyeon Jeon, G2, Comp Literature, KI Graduate Summer Research Grant, Summer 2024

Thanks to the generous support from the Korea Institute, I could make much progress in my long-term project that looks at intertextuality between Pak Wansŏ and Simone de Beauvoir. This project is central to my dissertation where I am hoping to draw an arc from the import of the Western canon into Korea during the Japanese empire to the recent export of contemporary Korean literature into an increasingly globalized world. Not only does Pak’s engagement with Simone de Beauvoir warrant an exciting case study of a Korean author’s engagement with world literature, studying Pak also helps contextualize recent global success of contemporary Korean writers in the national literary tradition. As I am in the process of developing my dissertation project, it was very important and timely to have access to archives in Korea over the summer.

In particular, one of the archives I visited housed multiple editions of Pak’s oeuvre and translations along with her handwritten manuscripts. There was also a rich collection of Pak’s essays, adaptations of her works and academic publications. These materials gave me an insight into both Pak’s works and her personal life and I could develop different approaches building on so many academic works, especially in relation to the ones that discuss Pak through gendered perspectives or in the scope of world literature. In addition, I was able to meet one of the professors in Korean literature at Seoul National University. With her expertise in modern Korean literature and experience of directing several dissertations on Pak, she offered me with invaluable advice on how to approach both Pak and some of the contemporary writers. I am looking forward to going back to the archive at the university library to access more materials that shed light on the author’s personal life. Finally, at the National Assembly Library, I was able to gather materials on how Beauvoir was introduced to the Korean readership in the 1970s and 1980s. I was interested in the ways in which Beauvoir’s works were framed and more importantly, the first Korean translations of Beauvoir’s works reserved at the library gave me different ideas to tackle the comparative project.

Along with frequent visits to the archives mentioned above, I was thrilled to discover important literature centers and several independent bookstores that curate ongoing trends in contemporary Korean literature. As I make progress for my dissertation project throughout the next few years, I look forward to going back to these important sites and thinking through different ways to discuss Pak’s writing in the context of world literature.