Against the Chains of Utility: Antiutilitarian Sacrifice in

Cho Sehŭi's A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf

Serk-Bae Suh

Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 28, Number 1, March 2023, pp.

91-110 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/893761

[147.47.193.211] Project MUSE (2025-03-21 18:04 GMT) Seoul National University

 Against the Chains of Utility:
Antiutilitarian Sacrifice in Cho Sehŭi’s
A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf
Serk-Bae Suh

This article looks at Cho Sehŭi’s novel A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf (1978) as
the epitome of antiutilitarian literature in the 1970s. During the period, the develop-
mental state invoked the rhetoric of sacrifice to justify its demand on the people and
society for devotion and commitment to the state-led economic development. This
idea of sacrifice lies at the heart of what this article terms “utilitarian ideology.”
The utilitarian ideology indicates the set of premises on which the developmental
state privileged production over consumption, work over leisure, accumulation
over expenditure, and the future over the present. This article highlights a moment
of antiutilitarian sacrifice in The Dwarf that defies the instrumental reasoning that
[147.47.193.211] Project MUSE (2025-03-21 18:04 GMT) Seoul National University

lies at the heart of the utilitarian ideology. In doing so, the article does not merely
take issue with the state ideology of 1970s South Korea. By drawing from Georges
Bataille’s thoughts on sacrifice and literature, the article criticizes utilitarian sacri-
fice, which not only lay at the core of this ideology but continues to pervade today’s
society. In the end, the article locates a new possibility of literature’s relevance to
society in the moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice radiating from The Dwarf.

Keywords: modern Korean literature, the developmental state, utilitarian ideology,

sacrifice, A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf

Serk-Bae Suh is associate professor of Korean studies at the University of California, Irvine. His
book Treacherous Translation: Culture, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Korea and Japan from the
1910s to the 1960s was published in 2013. He also coedited Beyond Death: The Politics of Suicide and
Martyrdom in Korea (2019). He is currently completing a book manuscript tentatively entitled Against
the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and ’80s South Korea. This book examines
1970s and 1980s South Korean literature with a focus on the problem of sacrifice. It argues that
the idea of sacrifice lay at the heart of the utilitarian ideology of the developmental state during the
period, and the literary imagination highlighted in this book flashed a moment of defiance to the util-
itarian ideology and alluded to an alternative idea of sacrifice. The book reads a diverse range of 1970s
and 1980s literary texts as instances of criticism against the tyranny of utility, which not only domi-
nated during the period but still reigns over contemporary South Korean society.

Journal of Korean Studies 28, no. 1 (March 2023)

DOI 10.1215/07311613-10213195
© 2023 Journal of Korean Studies Inc.
92 Serk-Bae Suh

This essay illuminates a rare instance of literary imagination in Cho Sehŭi’s novel
A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf (hereafter referred to as The Dwarf) that rad-
ically challenges the utilitarian mode of sacrifice pervasive in 1970s South Korea.
The essay examines the novel against the backdrop of the rise of economic rea-
soning amid the country’s state-led economic development.1 The South Korean
state, an exemplary case of the “developmental state,” as it is known in the
field of political economy, constantly invoked the rhetoric of sacrifice to justify
its demand on the people and society for devotion and commitment to the
state-led-economic development. The exploitation of workers and countless vio-
lations of civil rights were rationalized as unavoidable sacrifices for economic
growth and national security. Consumption was vilified and thrift praised in the
name of sacrifice for a better future for the nation. The rhetoric of sacrifice, in
this context, does not merely constitute a discursive device. It also indicates a
mode of instrumental reasoning that ruthlessly subordinates a means to an end.
“Let’s prosper” (chal sara pose), the most popular slogan constantly blared out
by the state propaganda machine, illustrates how the idea of sacrifice underlies
what I term “utilitarian ideology.” The utilitarian ideology refers to a set of prem-
ises through which the developmental state sanctifies the maximization of utility
in pursuit of constant growth in the national economy as well as personal wealth.2
The slogan “Let’s prosper” turns the pursuit of material wealth into a civic duty.
The imperative let’s entails a demand for sacrificial efforts on the part of the peo-
ple in order to attain the goal that the developmental state categorically sets, which
is material prosperity. This demand for sacrifice in the utilitarian ideology casts a
moral hue over its privileging of production over consumption, work over leisure,
accumulation over expenditure, and the future over the present. In short, it mor-
alizes the obsession with constant growth in economy. Although the propagation
of the utilitarian ideology in this developmental period certainly contained ele-
ments of coercion, that was not the reason why it was effective. The masses em-
braced this message because of its promise that an individual’s sacrifice, through
hard work for the nation, would be rewarded with their own prosperity in the fu-
ture. The promise resonated with the desire of the masses for economic success.
This essay highlights a moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice in The Dwarf that defies
the economic reasoning that lies at the heart of the utilitarian ideology. In doing
so, the essay does not merely criticize the state ideology of Park’s regime. More
importantly, it problematizes utilitarian sacrifice, which not only lay at the core of
this ideology but continues to pervade today’s society.
This essay consists of two parts. The first part provides a preliminary discussion
to set up its examination of The Dwarf, which constitutes its second part. It first
discusses the book Our Nation’s Path (1965), which was written by the author-
itarian president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee (Pak Chǒnghŭi, 1917–1979), to
illustrate how the idea of sacrifice was invoked to legitimize utilitarian ideology.
Our Nation’s Path warrants our attention especially because it identifies modern
subjectivity as the locus in which an autonomous and rational individual volun-
tarily embraces his role as an agent of utilitarian sacrifice.
 Against the Chains of Utility 93

This essay then briefly discusses Yi Ch’ŏngjun’s Your Paradise (1976), another
novel written in the 1970s that tackles the problem of sacrifice. This novel pivots
on multiple layers of sacrifice: the sacrifice of a visionary for his ideal, the sac-
rifice of a woman for her lover, the sacrifice of individuals for their community,
and, above all, the sacrifice of the present for a better future. Your Paradise offers
an elucidating point of comparison against which the moment of antiutilitarian
sacrifice in The Dwarf stands in sharp relief.
Next, this essay turns to the French author Georges Bataille for an alternative
view of sacrifice. Bataille upholds sacrifice as an exit from subjectivity, through
which instrumental rationality limits the possibility of our experience. This brief
discussion of Bataille’s insight intends to spell out its relevance to appreciating the
significance of antiutilitarian protest that radiates from The Dwarf.
The second part of this essay examines the ways in which The Dwarf portrays
various instances of sacrifice that were imposed on the working class in 1970s
South Korean society. Then it moves on to highlight an especially memorable mo-
ment of Bataillean sacrifice in the novel. It closes with a brief discussion on the
implications of this moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice for rethinking the relevance
of literature to society.

SACRIFICE AND THE UTILITARIAN IDEOLOGY

OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATES

In 1965 a book was released under the name of President Park Chung Hee of
South Korea.3 Four years earlier, the former army general had led the coup
d’état that overthrew the democratically elected government of the second repub-
lic. Park, as the leader of the military junta, justifies the coup in this book by
claiming that it was an unavoidable measure he had to take to rescue the nation
from disorder, poverty, and Communist threats.
Park sums up the Korean national character as one that is void of love for one’s
nation.4 For Koreans, allegiance to their clans, regions of origin, and alma maters
is much more important than loyalty to their nation. Thus, factionalism is rampant
in society, dividing the nation into numerous interest groups.5 To break faction-
alism and unite the nation in its endeavors for prosperity, Koreans should become
autonomous individuals, free from blind allegiance to their interest groups. Only
autonomous individuals are capable of keeping their private interests in line with
public interests out of love for their nation.6 Park ultimately identifies this align-
ment of private interests with public interests as a sacrifice.7
Park further suggests that one can make such a sacrifice for the nation—that is,
align one’s private interests with public interests—by working selflessly and hard
no matter what one does for a living. He entreats his readers to be industrious
workers and promises that they will all prosper together with their fellow Koreans
in the end. In order to work selflessly and hard, one needs to be sacrificial. The
 94 Serk-Bae Suh

implication is that hard work will fix the moral failure of Koreans, which has re-
sulted in the paucity of the nation.8 In other words, Park insists that Koreans
should work hard not only to become prosperous but also to make up for their
moral deficiency through hard work.9
Instead of demanding unconditional sacrifice from the people, however, Park
reminds his readers that the interests of the nation are ultimately connected back
to one’s individual interests, despite the temporary conflicts between the two.
He insists that it is in an individual’s best interest to build an economically robust
and politically stable society through one’s sacrifice for the national community,
because the private interests of an individual can be protected only in such a soci-
ety.10 If that is the case, in the end, sacrifice for the nation is sacrifice for oneself and
love for the nation is love for oneself. In this schema, the sacrifice of an individual
for the nation eventually pays off by ensuring one’s own private interests. In other
words, the sacrifice Park calls for is a wager motivated by the utilitarian calculation
for one’s best interest. In that sense, what underlies the utilitarian ideology of the
developmental state of South Korea is the instrumentality of reason. As mentioned
above, Park argues that only autonomous and rational individuals can be sacrificial
for the nation because they understand that their private interests are best protected
under the aegis of the nation. Park’s argument presupposes that instrumental ratio-
nality is ingrained in the modern subjectivity of an autonomous and rational indi-
vidual. Put differently, although the utilitarian ideology of 1970s South Korea was
propagated through repressive state apparatuses, its core logic resonated with the
principle of instrumental rationality.11 Because the developmental state intensified
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this principle to legitimize its repressive regime, it could not help but amplify the
violent aspect of said principle—that is, ruthless subordination as a means to an
end. Sacrifice, which is at the heart of the developmental state’s ideology, can
then be understood as a euphemism for such violence.
Yi Ch’ŏngjun’s novel Your Paradise merits our attention at this point because it
is one of the most memorable literary works from 1970s South Korea in which
this issue of utilitarian sacrifice reverberates. Yi’s novel revolves around Colonel
Cho Paekhŏn, a doctor from the army medical corps who had been assigned the
task of administrating a leper colony on a small island off the southern coast of
South Korea. Cho assertively implemented his plans to make the island a better
place for the lepers. His endeavors to build a “paradise” for the islanders culmi-
nated with a land reclamation project. The islanders’ general suspicion of outsid-
ers and their particular mistrust of authority figures posed almost insurmountable
obstacles to the ambitious construction project. However, their initial hostility
subsided as Cho persuaded them to see that the reclaimed land would be theirs
and no one else’s. The islanders worked ferociously, but the embarkments they
built continued to be swept away by high waves. The islanders began to run
out of patience. To make things worse, several lost their lives or became seriously
injured during the construction work. The islanders accused Cho of sacrificing
them for his vanity. The tension increased to the point that they threatened to
 Against the Chains of Utility 95

kill Cho to avenge their fellow islanders, whose lives they deemed he had sacri-
ficed.12 Cho, however, had on his side Elder Hwang Hŭibaek, who commanded
the islanders’ respect. Elder Hwang helped Cho, believing in the latter’s genuine
commitment to the betterment of the island. When the project finally made steady
progress, Cho was ordered to leave the island for another position, and the land
reclamation project was taken up by the government. Cho returns to the island five
years later as a private citizen. The story ends with a scene in which he is prac-
ticing his speech for the upcoming wedding of a cured Hansen’s disease patient
and a nonpatient.
As implied by the author himself, Your Paradise can be read as an allegory for
the state-led economic development under Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian re-
gime.13 In this reading, Cho personifies the developmental state that demands
the sacrificial devotion of the people to economic development. Cho emphasizes
that the islanders’ sacrifice through hard work would pay off with future prosper-
ity for them and their children on the island, and therefore they are not being used
as a means to an end. However, at the core of Cho’s conviction of his good inten-
tions lies instrumental rationality. Cho does not hesitate to employ manipulation
and deception, believing that the end justifies the means.14
Although the novel sympathetically portrays Cho, it does not look away from
the problems of the sacrifice imposed on the islanders. Yi Sanguk, head of the
hygiene division at the hospital on the island, represents a critical voice against
Cho’s conviction that his good intentions will translate to an outcome beneficial
to the islanders. Yi keeps reminding Cho that regardless of his intentions, there
will come a moment when Cho will betray the islanders. He points out that be-
cause the islanders admire him for his own sacrificial commitment to the better-
ment of the island, the paradise he is leading them to build will be taken to be his
achievement, not theirs.
The fundamental problem, in Yi’s view, is that all the plans to help the islanders
have been imposed on them by such authority figures as Cho, and the islanders are
never free to reject these plans made for them. Unless they are given freedom to
decide their own fate, they will never think of themselves as anything but the
means to an end that the authority sets for them. In other words, they are deprived
of active agency in their life and are subjected to the authority as the objects of
rule. The novel suggests that the legitimacy of leadership will be granted only
when the people see that their leader shares the same fate with them.15 The
novel further indicates that for both the leader and the people to achieve such gen-
uine unity it takes “courage to sacrifice or become martyred.”16 The novel, in the
end, rephrases as “love” this courageous sacrifice for the leader to allow the peo-
ple to choose their own fate and for the people to accept such a leader as their
own.17 Only love enables both the people and their leader to build the community
of fate founded on “common interest.”18
The novel thus locates the possibility of overcoming the problem of utilitarian
sacrifice in a rather banal idea of love that induces individuals to align their self-
96 Serk-Bae Suh

interest with a common interest. The limitations of this possibility come into clear
view if we remember that Park’s Our Nation’s Path preemptively addresses this
issue. It insists that South Koreans should become autonomous and rational sub-
jects who voluntarily take up the task of utilitarian sacrifice not only for the na-
tional community but also for themselves. In other words, there is not much con-
tradiction between the alternative to forced sacrifice suggested by the novel and
the defense of utilitarian sacrifice employed by Park’s book. Although the novel
insightfully captures the problem of sacrifice imposed on individuals by political
authority, it ultimately takes no further step to radically challenge the utilitarian
logic at the heart of such sacrifice. It instead ends up settling for a rather conven-
tional view of sacrifice—that is, an individual subject’s heroic act of renouncing
itself for a higher cause.
At this juncture, I bring Georges Bataille into the discussion to inspire radical
criticism of utilitarian sacrifice. Bataille’s thoughts especially pertain to our discus-
sion because they illustrate why any radical criticism of utilitarian sacrifice should
entail a critical reflection on subjectivity as the locus of instrumental rationality.
Bataille views sacrifice as an event in which one liberates oneself from subor-
dination to utility by exiting one’s subjectivity.19 For Bataille, sacrifice constitutes
a venue in which useful things turn into nothing through destruction. It returns its
participants to the lost intimacy, the state prior to the separation between man and
the world, between subject and object.20 Through sacrifice—that is, a fit of
passion—one can burst out of the boundaries of one’s individuality and transgress
the limits of subjectivity, which is imbued by instrumental rationality.
Bataille’s idea of sacrifice opposes the utilitarian worldview that prioritizes pro-
duction over consumption, conservation over spending, and the future over the
present. In the utilitarian worldview, consumption is condoned only when it is
conducive to expanded production with increasing profit.21 According to Bataille,
expenditure is the mode of pure spending detached from production, unlike con-
sumption in capitalist society. Expenditure used to be celebrated in the form of
religious sacrifice and the magnificent consumption of the aristocracy in the
past. However, in the world of the stingy bourgeoisie, any consumption outside
the restricted circuit of production-consumption-expanded production is con-
demned as wasteful and vilified as sinful.22 We, subjugated by instrumental ratio-
nality in a modern, capitalist society, are subjected to the order of things, which
leads us to see others as objects with varying degrees of utility.23 In this world-
view, it is impossible to form genuine community, the self’s association with oth-
ers, because even fellow human beings are mere objects whose value are judged
according to their utility.24 Sacrifice offers a rare pathway through which one can
break away from the abysmal state of thinghood reigned over by utility.25 There-
fore, it is crucial to keep in mind that at the heart of Bataille’s idea of sacrifice is
not violence, which is inevitably embedded in any act of sacrifice, but the destruc-
tion of thinghood transpiring in sacrifice.26
Bataille’s thoughts on sacrifice are closely connected to his view of literature.
Bataille equates poetry, which stands for literature in many of his writings, 27 with
 Against the Chains of Utility 97

sacrifice as absolute expenditure.28 He sees literature as sovereign transgression in

language, denying one’s servility to what society forces one to do.29 Sovereignty
does not involve an individual’s selfish pursuit of one’s own interest. On the con-
trary, it leads to genuine communication with the other by transgressing social
interdicts.30 Social interdicts are limiting because they cannot encompass the ex-
cess of human possibility beyond what instrumental rationality condones. Ba-
taille’s equation of literature with sacrifice suggests how his idea of sacrifice
can materialize in the modern world. It leads to speculation that literature is
the privileged, if not the only, occasion of sacrifice in which expenditure as sov-
ereign defiance against utility transpires. I believe that with this radical denunci-
ation of utility, Bataille offers us a critical vantage point from which we can appre-
ciate a moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice flashing within The Dwarf. His view of
literature as sacrifice also invites us to rethink the role of literature in society. I will
share my thoughts on this issue at the end of this essay, where I will briefly discuss
the implications of the critical moment of protest in The Dwarf that seek a new
possibility of literature’s relevance to society.

THE FLEETING MOMENT OF PROTEST AGAINST UTILITY

The Dwarf consists of twelve related episodes, each of which can be read inde-
pendently. Written in a series of short, simple sentences, it tackles such social is-
sues as inequality, industrial pollution, and the exploitation of workers from an
[147.47.193.211] Project MUSE (2025-03-21 18:04 GMT) Seoul National University

unequivocal perspective of ethics that denounces those responsible for the suffer-
ing of workers and the urban poor. The pathos of the novel’s message lies in its
implication that no realistic solutions are readily available despite the ethical clar-
ity of the problems.
Numerous studies and reviews have highlighted several significant aspects of
the novel. It has been hailed as one of the first novels tackling the subject of indus-
trial labor in South Korea, a pioneering work in ecocritical literature, and a rare
example of overcoming the schism between realism and modernism in modern
Korean literature.31 Many critics have paid close attention to the fact that the nov-
el’s style deviates from the conventions of realism despite dealing with issues of
labor and poverty, the usual subject matter for realist novels.32 The novel, for
example, enigmatically invokes mathematical and scientific concepts, which
seems to suggest that the problems it tackles require more than commonsensical
solutions. Whereas the fantasies and fables interweaved into the novel accentuate
its allegorical structure, such texts as government documents, the budget book of a
working-class family, and labor-management conference minutes inserted into its
narrative imbue it with hyperreality. Moreover, the novel often juxtaposes scenes
out of temporal and spatial sequence and connects them through image and theme
instead. Focusing on the episodes of a high school math class that begin and con-
clude the novel, some critics even read into the novel poststructuralist tendencies
98 Serk-Bae Suh

toward overcoming the structural binarism embedded in modern epistemology

and toward advocating the opening of the self to the other.33
My discussion of the novel is focused on one aspect of the novel, which is that
this work is also a story about sacrifice. The novel revolves around a working-
class family and their sacrifice. These characters either sacrifice themselves or
are sacrificed by others. In that sense, their beings are subordinated to their utility
for those whom their sacrifices are made. In the end, the novel indicts 1970s South
Korean society, in which such utilitarian sacrifice prevails. The father, whose mar-
ginality in society is allegorized by his physical dwarfness, sacrifices himself for
his family. He had worked hard for them to the brink of mental and physical
exhaustion and insanity. In the end, he is driven to suicide. His daughter Yŏnghŭi
also sacrifices herself. She becomes the mistress of a rich man in order to take
back her family’s house, the only place in the world they could call their
own.34 She makes the sacrifice only to find out that the house had already been
demolished for the redevelopment of the neighborhood. The dwarf’s elder son
Yŏngsu sacrifices himself for his fellow workers, who toil for meager wages
under abominable working conditions. He attempts to murder the chairman of
the Ŭngang Group, who is ruthlessly squeezing out every bit of labor power
from his workers. Yŏngsu decides to mete out justice to the culprit of the worker’s
unbearable sufferings. He willingly breaks the law, which is on the side of the rich
and powerful, even though he knows well the consequences of his act. In this act
of what Walter Benjamin called divine violence, Yŏngsu kills the boss’s brother by
mistake.35 He is hanged for it.
Above all, the novel portrays the victimization of industrial workers who were
sacrificed for the economic development of the nation.36 The industrial workers in
the novel suffer underpayment, horrendous working conditions, and maltreatment
by management. They and their families are helplessly exposed to malnutrition,
the fear of eviction from their houses, and industrial pollution. The novel explic-
itly calls the suffering of industrial workers a sacrifice. Sacrifice in this context is
not such a noble deed as renouncing oneself for a higher cause. It is unjust vio-
lence imposed on its victims. As Yŏngsu writes in his journal, “If leaders are well-
off, then human suffering is forgotten. Accordingly, their use of the word sacrifice
is utterly hypocritical. I think the exploitation and savagery of the past were forth-
right in comparison.”37
In the novel, the workers are treated by management as mere instruments for
production, attached to machinery. Their bodies are forced to move in tune with
the rhythms of the constantly moving components of the machines in exchange
for meager wages, which are hardly enough to support their families. Once
they become useless due to exhaustion and industrial accidents, they are discarded
like the broken parts of the machines. Although their suffering is euphemized as
sacrifice for the economic development of the nation as well as the success of their
company, in reality, it is the violation of their human dignity and rights as workers
that are guaranteed by labor laws but never respected by management. The
 Against the Chains of Utility 99

government is on the side of management and is not intent on enforcing the law.38
Thus, for the workers, their sacrifice results from the collusion between manage-
ment and the authorities for the maximization of profits and the economic devel-
opment of the nation.
It is not only human beings that are sacrificed in the novel. The novel depicts
the severity of air and water pollution affecting the people in the industrial city in
which the dwarf family works and lives. The factories there are constantly spew-
ing industrial wastes that make the soil and water barren as they flow along the
rivers in the city to the sea. The air pollution is so severe that the people in the city
cannot freely breathe when there is no wind to blow the polluted air away.39 The
novel exposes the real face of “sacrifice,” the idea that undergirds the utilitarian
ideology, which legitimizes the incessant pursuit of profits and growth in econ-
omy, by describing the sufferings of the industrial workers and the consequent
environmental degradation.
Furthermore, through the character named Yunho, the novel suggests that there
are people who monopolize profits created from the workers’ suffering. He under-
stands the suffering of workers and empathizes with the dwarf’s family despite his
upper-class background. In one of the most bizarre scenes from the novel, he
stages a mock torture of his love interest, a girl from an affluent family. He presses
her, saying, “Until now the dwarf man’s sons and daughter and all their young
coworkers have been sacrificed for the likes of you. From now on, it’s your turn
to be sacrificed for them. Understand? You tell that to the grown-ups when you
get home.”40
According to Yunho, not only do the workers’ sacrifices increase the profits of
their companies and develop the economy of their nation; more concretely, their
sufferings also enable people like him and the girl to have a comfortable life. They
should be held responsible for the workers’ sufferings even though they might not
intend to make them suffer. Thus, he demands that people like him and the girl
return to the workers the “sacrifices” the latter have been forced to make. What
does it take to make sacrifices for the workers, then?
Chisŏp is the character who makes such a sacrifice. He had been a law student at
the most prestigious university in South Korea. He made easy money to tutor
Yunho for the latter’s college entrance exam. Chisŏp, however, taught Yunho
about the privations of the workers instead and lost his coveted job for that. He
violently protested against the demolition of the house of the dwarf’s family,
with whom he had made friends. In return, he was brutally attacked by the demo-
lition crew. In the end, he becomes a worker and commits himself to the labor
movement. In other words, he gives up his future career and comfortable life
to be on the side of the workers.
Certainly, not many can make such an exorbitant sacrifice. The episode entitled
“On the Footbridge” shows how difficult it is to sacrifice oneself to make the
world a better place for everyone. It concerns a man who suffers serious digestive
problems and insomnia. Years ago, he had been an activist in college. He and his
 100 Serk-Bae Suh

friend intended to publish a political statement in his college newspaper, but the
editor in chief, one of their professors, tried to dissuade them because he found it
subversive to the status quo. He insisted that their mere words would not bring
about any real change, and would only disturb the peace on campus and bring
government persecution upon them. Instead of publishing their statement in the
school newspaper, they secretly mimeographed it and handed copies out to stu-
dents. Unfortunately, none of them seemed interested in political activism any-
more. Those who had been active in student protests were either conscripted to
the army or felt lost and gave up on activism for good. The two young men
were hurt by this bitter experience. Years later, his friend was offered a position
to work closely with the same professor, who happened to become his boss at the
workplace. The novel does not specify the nature of his work but implies that it
was a position in an important government institution.41 After discussing the job
offer with the man, the friend had taken their former professor up on the offer.
Now, the friend lives comfortably with all the trappings of power. The man him-
self is also being tempted to give in. His inner conflicts obviously translate into the
physical symptoms that ail him. The episode ends with a scene in which he is
sleeping in his hospital room. Beside his bed, there is his family photo showing
his children, described as “little beings, smiling innocently, who weakened people
more than anything else.”42
This episode reminds the readers that it is not only the blatant repression of the
authoritarian state or the fear of it that perpetuates the established system. Many
do not just passively endure but actively work for the established system because
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of their desire to live comfortably or make life more comfortable for their families.
Their desire makes them turn their eyes away from the victims of social injustice
and economic inequality built into the established system. It is the temptation
everyone has difficulty resisting. The man and his friend had already known it
when they were engaged in the student protest. Therefore, when the professor
asked them whom they were fighting against, the man answered, “It is our-
selves.”43 The desire for a materially comfortable life prevents them from making
sacrifices for those who are sacrificed for the incessant pursuit of economic devel-
opment. Their decision is a rational one, if the ultimate goal of their life consists of
material comfort for them and their families. In other words, they end up colluding
with the establishment in the sacrifice of the unfortunate victims of rash and un-
equal economic development. Their ethical and political principles are something
they are willing to sacrifice for the pursuit of material comfort. How many of us
are innocent of it? The question the novel poses to its readers can be paraphrased
as follows: How can we escape the closed circuit of this utilitarian sacrifice?
If the novel presented the heroic act of Chisŏp as the only instance of sacrifice
in opposition to the victimization of the working class at the hands of the exploit-
ative system of capitalism and the repressive state, it could hardly be called
groundbreaking, because such heroic sacrifice was mirrored in many fictional
and nonfictional narratives about the labor movement in the 1970s through
 Against the Chains of Utility 101

1990s in South Korea. More importantly, it is questionable whether Chisŏp’s

devotion to the labor movement is completely free from utilitarian logic. To be-
come a union organizer, he sacrifices the bright future that would be guaranteed by
a diploma in law from the most prestigious university in South Korea. His aim is
to fight for the rights of workers, and his ultimate goal is to make society fairer and
better for the workers. His sacrifice is the result of a decision made through the
process of careful consideration for achieving his goal. If that is the case, can it be
still said that his sacrifice is completely insulated from the influence of instrumen-
tal rationality? The problem is that it is impossible to dissociate any decision
based on instrumental rationality from the utilitarian idea of sacrifice, because
the utility of what is sacrificed is gauged by the degree of its contribution to
achieving its ultimate goal. Put differently, what is sacrificed becomes a mere
means to an end. No matter how much value is assigned to a sacrifice, it is always
measured against the value of its ultimate goal in the utilitarian logic of sacrifice.
Thus, the conventional idea of sacrifice—that is, renouncing oneself for a higher
cause—is never impervious to utilitarian logic.
As our earlier engagement with Bataille’s thoughts on sacrifice makes clear, if
we want to envision an alternative mode of sacrifice, it is crucial for us to place
sacrifice outside the circuit of exchange that equates the value of a sacrificial vic-
tim with its utility for achieving higher goals. In the event of utilitarian sacrifice,
those who make sacrifices are never free from concerns for the outcome of their
sacrifices. In other words, they subjugate themselves to utility. The irony is that
they cannot be sovereign, even though they never lose their individual subjectiv-
ity. It is through their individual subjectivity that instrumental rationality directs
them to pursue maximum utility.
In contrast, in the event of genuinely antiutilitarian sacrifice, the one who makes
a sacrifice is sovereign because one frees oneself from the tyrannical grip of utility
by losing one’s individuality and exiting one’s subjectivity. One lets go of oneself,
who is constantly concerned about the future in which the outcome of his act of
sacrifice will play out. In other words, in the event of antiutilitarian sacrifice, you
make a sacrifice no matter whether you will be rewarded for your sacrifice in one
way or another, or not at all.
The novel has a moment of such antiutilitarian sacrifice in the episode titled
“Knifeblade,” which revolves around a middle-class housewife named Sinae.
Sinae is unhappy with her life. Her family has spent most of their savings paying
medical bills for her parents-in-law. Her family had to sell their house and move
down to the outskirts of the city. Her husband, a government employee, suffers
from chronic fatigue. He hates his job but cannot afford to quit. When he was
young, he wanted to become an author in the hope of writing good books. How-
ever, he needed to get a job to support his mother, who was ill with stomach can-
cer. Working for the sake of money was the last thing he wanted to do, but he did
not have any other choice. After his mother’s death, his father succumbed to a
mysterious disease and passed away, leaving behind a pile of medical bills.
102 Serk-Bae Suh

Fed up with his work and burdened with the weight of his responsibility as the
only breadwinner of the family, he has become increasingly taciturn. Sinae
tries to make conversation with him, but all he does after he comes home from
work is read newspapers. Sinae also feels a growing distance from her two teenage
children. Her daughter, although a good girl willing to help her mom with house-
hold chores, never stops listening to the radio. Sinae cannot understand how her
daughter can do schoolwork as she claims to do while listening to loud music on
the radio. Her son, a good student who will be able to go to one of the best uni-
versities if he keeps working hard, worries her as well, because he has grown
skeptical of what he is taught at school about society. She is afraid he will be
too frustrated with society to be successful within it when he grows up.
Her next-door neighbors also make Sinae unhappy. Loud noises that constantly
blare from their television sets, household items that symbolize their middle-class
status, get on her nerves. The heads of both neighboring families, a government
tax auditor and a middle-ranking manager of a big company, are unscrupulous,
obviously taking bribes to provide their families with all the trappings of the
emerging middle class, while Sinae and her family struggle to survive on her hus-
band’s single income.
In short, the world in which Sinae and her family live is an intensive manifes-
tation of what Bataille calls the profane world. The logic of utility reigns over the
profane world, in which the order of things is maintained by instrumental ratio-
nality and people are enslaved to work.44 We cannot be free from work because we
are constantly worrying about possible destitution in the future when unexpected
circumstances arise. Although we might not always be conscious of the constant
fear that hovers over us, it is engraved upon our subjectivity, through which instru-
mental rationality prevails. In the profane world, we are all for production and
careful about spending. Otherwise, we would lose out.
A moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice comes to Sinae when she encounters the
dwarf. The latter is peddling faucets in the neighborhood, which suffers constant
water shortage. Recently, she has not been able to get enough sleep because she
stays up late to collect and store as much water as possible, since there is less
demand for it at night. She sees the dwarf trying to sell faucets to the two
women of the neighboring families. He explains that if they were to install faucets
lower than the main faucets in the yards of their houses, they would be able to get
water more easily because the new faucet would be closer to the level of the water
line. The women are as crass and shallow as usual. They do not trust him because
of his appearance. Partly because she feels sorry for him and partly because she
wants to show her disdain for her neighbors’ insensitive treatment of the dwarf,
Sinae asks him to install a new faucet for her house. As soon as the dwarf finishes
installing a new faucet and gathers his tools, a man comes storming into the yard
of her house and starts brutally attacking the dwarf. The attacker is from a neigh-
borhood hardware store in which the main items available for sale are faucets and
pumps. He has kept his eyes on the dwarf, whom he views to be his competitor.
 Against the Chains of Utility 103

He does not tolerate any competition in the market he thinks he monopolizes.

South Korean society of the 1970s as depicted in this episode is the most intensive
version of the profane world. It is a society in which the pursuit of economic suc-
cess takes absolute precedence over all else. The only reason the attacker despises
the dwarf to the extent that he does not hesitate to pound him with vicious punches
and kicks is an economic one. The repressive aspects of the tyranny of utility are
readily pronounced as it drastically materializes in the merciless blows landed on
the small body of the dwarf. Although the attacker behaves like the master of the
profane world, he must scarcely be better off than the dwarf, scraping by, worried
about the future, and desperate enough to attack another human being with brute
force. Even those who act like they own the profane world are enslaved by the
tyranny of utility that clings on to the precept “The end justifies the means,”
in which the ultimate end is economic success. There is no subtlety that would
dissimulate the brutality embedded in the blind pursuit of economic success in
the novel.
The vicious attack on the dwarf sparks an instance of antiutilitarian sacrifice.
Thrown back by the attacker when she tries to protect the dwarf by covering
him with her body, Sinae runs into the kitchen and comes back with two knives.
She relentlessly stabs at the attacker, and the blade of one of the knives slides off
the side of the attacker’s arm. She does not stop trying to kill him until he runs
away. This sudden fit of violence has rarely been examined by previous studies.
Because this excessive violence on the part of Sinae, a demure housewife in her
forties without any violent tendencies, is so unlikely, it might be easily glossed
[147.47.193.211] Project MUSE (2025-03-21 18:04 GMT) Seoul National University

over as a hysterical burst into momentary insanity that is not worth much serious
examination.
Here, I offer a different reading of Sinae’s sudden act of violence with the help
of Bataille’s notion of sacrifice to bring out its radical criticism of a utilitarian
world. It is a fleeting moment of Bataillean sacrifice, in which an individual
lets go of herself, renouncing the instrumentality of reason, and goes beyond
the limits of the world of objects. It should not be mistaken as merely an occasion
of irrationality, because Bataillean sacrifice returns an individual to the lost inti-
macy of the sacred world in which there is no separation between subject and ob-
ject, rationality and irrationality, and body and mind.45 In contrast to the profane
world in which the possibility of human experience is constrained by instrumental
rationality, the sacred world points to a different dimension of human experience,
in which we can be absolutely sovereign, free from the shackles of utility, and the
possibilities of our experience are boundless.
What makes Sinae’s convulsive violence a Bataillean sacrifice is not her inten-
tion to annihilate the life of the attacker but her act of unsettling the order of things
without which the profane world cannot persist. In slashing at the face of brutal
violence against the dwarf, she stops caring anymore about what she has always
concerned herself with—her safety, the welfare of her family, the future of her
children, and her own future as well. Such concerns keep the people docile
104 Serk-Bae Suh

and make them turn away from the injustice and privations the exploited are sub-
ject to, as discussed in the above examination of the episode entitled “On the Foot-
bridge.”46 Without being deterred by the possibly disastrous consequences of her
act, Sinae risks everything that makes up her life as it is known to her, by snapping
out of herself in this fit of rage. It is an occasion of absolute expenditure of the
world with which she is familiar.
Sinae is not a solemn hero like Chisŏp who consciously and conscientiously
fights for the workers. Her act does not aim at liberating the working class
from exploitation. In fact, it is hard to attach any rational meaning to her act
of excessive violence because it erupts with no mediation of instrumental ratio-
nality.47 Neither is it clear whether the aim of her act was derived from her con-
scious decision to rescue the dwarf from the brutal attack. If she had consciously
attempted to defend the dwarf, she would not have needed to assault the attacker
ferociously with not only one but two knives. She certainly lost control over her-
self. Furthermore, as the novel makes clear, she desired to annihilate the attacker.48
Her violence was too excessive to be a mere means to an end. In other words, her
compulsive violence transcended the boundaries of reason. There is no rational
explanation available in the novel for the excessiveness of her act. This difficulty
of making sense of her act of excessive violence characterizes it as a Bataillean
sacrifice.
No clear meaning can be attached to a Bataillean sacrifice. As soon as any
meaning is assigned to an act of sacrifice, the act falls into the circuit of exchange
that relegates it to the status of an instrument and sets its price in proportion to the
value of the goal, as witnessed in so many justifications of sacrifice—sacrifice for
the underprivileged, sacrifice for the nation, sacrifice for revolution, sacrifice for
liberty. Sinae’s sacrifice is as antiutilitarian as can be, because it does not have any
clear goal it serves as a vehicle toward. Nevertheless, it has the effect of shattering
the hard shell of subjectivity within which an individual is comfortably nestled.
Such an individual, under the spell of instrumental rationality, remains ensconced
in isolation from those other than oneself and one’s family. Sinae’s act of sover-
eign violence captures a moment of accidental communion with others in need,
the possibility of community with those who are other than us.

IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION

Sinae’s sudden act of violence is one of the most radical instances of antiutilitarian
sacrifice captured in South Korean literature.49 This event of antiutilitarian sacri-
fice is momentary, however, and, as mentioned above, the other cases of sacrifice
portrayed in the novel are far from being antiutilitarian. This fleeting moment of
antiutilitarian sacrifice cannot provide a blueprint for a revolution, because it can
hardly materialize outside the realm of literature and cannot bring about any prac-
tical change to society. Rather, it hints at the limitations of literature as a means of
 Against the Chains of Utility 105

social change. This revelation, in turn, invites us to rethink the relevance of lit-
erature to society as the art of imagination in language, not as a substitute for pol-
itics. Some might be quick to point out that literature created a significant impact
on society in 1970s and 1980s South Korea. Certainly, during this period, an
increasing number of writers and poets tackled explicitly and implicitly such so-
cial and political issues as class inequality, political oppression, state violence, and
the division of the Korean peninsula.50 However, to be more precise, such liter-
ature served as a surrogate for politics, in order to enact change upon 1970s and
1980s South Korean society under authoritarian rule. Not only did the writers and
poets deal with sociopolitical issues in their literary works, but their readers also
sought the political engagement in literature that validated their criticism of
repressive society and the authoritarian state.
The Dwarf does not merely decry the miserable state of industrial workers and
the urban poor in 1970s South Korea. It relentlessly traces the course in which the
endeavors of working-class characters to improve conditions for their fellow
workers and themselves falter. Instead of presenting any practical vision of a bet-
ter society, the novel conjures such imaginary locations as human settlement on
the moon51 and Lilliput52 as radical alternatives to the reality of 1970s South Ko-
rean society, as if suggesting that there is no radical alternative available outside
the realm of literary imagination. Likewise, such an instance of antiutilitarian sac-
rifice as encapsulated in Sinae’s act of violence can hardly bear fruit in the real
world and thus testifies to its lack of utility. Ironically, therefore, it shines as a
poignant outcry against the chains of utility. This recognition of the defiant mo-
ment against the tyranny of utility in The Dwarf helps extend the relevance of the
novel to our contemporary world well beyond 1970s South Korea. This fleeting
instance of protest in literature may elicit a moment of critical reflection upon our
mundane life, in which not even a single individual can be spared from the iron
rule of utility.

NOTES

1. There have been quite a few studies on the emergence of a new subjectivity pre-
mised on economic reasoning in South Korea during the authoritarian rule of Park
Chung Hee. See Hwang, “Pak Chǒnghŭi wa kŭndaejŏk ch’ulse yongmang”; Yi S., “Sa-
nŏphwa sigi ŭi ‘ch’ulse’”; Sin, “Peibibumŏ ŭi nodong sŏsa e nat’anan sedae ŭisik.”
2. As a matter of fact, such economic subjectivity remains the dominant mode of social
being in South Korea more than forty years after Park’s death. This reduction of human life
to the realm of economy is farcically and frighteningly captured in an expression of greet-
ings that became popular in the early 2000s in South Korea, “puja toeseyo” (may you be
rich).
3. The book was originally published in 1962. Here, I use the second edition, pub-
lished in 1965, because it puts forth the utilitarian ideology of the developmental state
more forcefully than the first edition, which was released barely one year after the coup.
The most conspicuous difference between the two editions is that the first edition contains
 106 Serk-Bae Suh

the author’s promise that he will step down and return power to the civilian government
soon, once the military junta accomplishes its goals. The promise was erased from the sec-
ond edition, since Park went back on his word and remained in power. The English trans-
lation of the book was published in 1970 and omits a number of original passages that may
sound odd to English speakers. Unfortunately, many of them pertain to our discussion. For
that reason, I use the Korean original for our discussion. The most recent edition of the
book came out in 2017. The continuous interest in the book four decades after Park’s
death suggests that the book has been taken seriously by many as the core of his thought.
In this sense, Park is not merely a person who died forty years ago, but the personification
of the utilitarian ideology that I argue is the key to understanding the mores of contempo-
rary South Korea.
4. Park C., Uri minjok ŭi nagal kil, 15.
5. Ibid., 17.
6. Ibid., 20, 21.
7. Ibid., 26–27.
8. Ibid., 208.
9. Park’s privileging of labor for its crucial role in the formation of subjectivity smacks
of the Kojèvian inflection of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic in which the slave triumphantly
emerges in the end as the creator of the world through his hard work, while the master
becomes dependent on the labor of the slave (Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of
Hegel). That said, the transformative power of labor in Hegel’s thought is much more com-
plicated than the unconditional affirmation of it in Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation. Hegel
sees both the indispensability of labor in humanity’s creation of its own world and the inev-
itability of alienation in the process. His earlier writings suggest that, at times, he despairs
of reconciling the two aspects of labor in modern industrial society. For more information,
[147.47.193.211] Project MUSE (2025-03-21 18:04 GMT) Seoul National University

see Avineri, “Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes in Hegel’s Realphilosophie”; Skomvou-
lis, “Hegel Discovers Capitalism.”
10. Park C., Uri minjok ŭi nagal kil, 32.
11. This permeation of instrumental rationality throughout modern society is the issue
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno tackle in their book Dialectic of Enlightenment. In-
terestingly, they draw upon sacrifice in Homer’s epic Odyssey to illustrate how the instru-
mentality of reason already pervades myth, a mode of reasoning (Horkheimer and Adorno,
Dialectic of Enlightenment, 35–62).
12. The following passage in the Korean original makes clear that the issue of sacrifice
lies at the heart of the conflict between Cho and the islanders: “Let us release the grudges of
our fellow lepers who were made sacrificial victims by that son of a bitch!” (chŏ saekki
chemul i toeŏgan uri mundŭngidŭl ŭi wŏnhanŭl p’urŏjuja 저 새끼 제물이 되어간 우리
문둥이들의 원한을 풀어주자!). Yi C., Your Paradise, 340; Yi C., Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk,
317.
13. U and Yi C., “Uridŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk ŭl hyanghan tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk ŭi taehwa,”
274.
14. “He knew he was deceiving the patients, but for the future of the island, it was nec-
essary. What was important was the result, not the means. If it produced good results, the
means used to get to that point shouldn’t matter” (Yi C., Your Paradise, 326–27; Yi C.,
Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk, 304).
15. Yi C., Your Paradise, 498; Yi C., Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk, 482.
16. Yi C., Your Paradise, 482; Yi C., Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk, 465–66.
 Against the Chains of Utility 107

17. Yi C., Your Paradise, 488–90; Yi C., Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk, 473–74.

18. Yi C., Your Paradise, 491–92; Yi C., Tangsindŭl ŭi ch’ŏn’guk, 476–77.
19. Bataille, Theory of Religion, 43.
20. Ibid., 43–61.
21. Bataille, “Notion of Expenditure,” 120–23.
22. Bataille, however, acknowledges that in real life, no expenditure is entirely produc-
tive or nonproductive, although his argument pivots on the rigid distinction between pro-
ductive and nonproductive expenditure. See Bataille, Accursed Share, 1:12–13.
23. Bataille, Accursed Share, 1:129–42.
24. Bataille, Accursed Share, 2–3:237–57.
25. Ibid.
26. Bataille, Accursed Share, 1:56.
27. For an example of Bataille’s identification of poetry with literature, see Bataille, Lit-
erature and Evil, 160–61.
28. Bataille, “Notion of Expenditure,” 120.
29. Bataille, Literature and Evil.
30. Ibid., 172–73.
31. For a helpful survey of previous commentaries on the novel’s significance in mod-
ern Korean history, see Kwŏn, Ch’immuk kwa sarang. This is an anthology of essays about
the novel published in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the novel’s publica-
tion. For information in English about the significance of this novel and the sociopolitical
context in which the novel was written, see Ryu, Writers of the Winter Republic, 99–135.
For a discussion of the science fiction aspect of the novel in English, see S. Park, “Dissident
Dreams.”
32. Kim P., “Taeripchŏk segyegwan kwa mihak.”
33. For the two representative reviews of the novel that point out its poststructuralist
tendencies, see Kim Y., Palgyŏn ŭrosŏ ŭi Han’guk hyŏndae muhaksa, 109–27; U, “Taerip
ŭi ch’ogŭngmi, kŭ k’aosŭmosŭ ŭi sihak.”
34. Although reminiscent of the archetype of the filial daughter who sacrifices herself
for her father or male siblings, Yŏnghŭi is not exactly a helpless victim of patriarchy and
social injustice. She exercises her agency more assertively. By disarming the rich man with
her beauty and charm, she tricks him and takes back the deeds of the house.
35. Walter Benjamin distinguishes the violence that serves to maintain the established
system from the violence that breaks the law to uphold justice. He calls the former the
mythic violence, which combines law-making violence and law-preserving violence. In
opposition to it, he supposes that divine violence rejects the authority of the established
system and reveals the failure of the law to defend justice. For more information, see Ben-
jamin, “Critique of Violence.”
36. According to Moshe Halbertal, sacrifice refers to a victim of crime as well as an
offering in modern Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and German. The word also denotes a victim
of a crime in the modern Korean language. In that sense, it can be said that the word sac-
rifice recurring in the novel delegitimizes and even criminalizes the industrialization led by
the developmental state and carried out by South Korean capitalists, under which workers
were exploited (Halbertal, On Sacrifice, 2).
37. Cho, Dwarf, 68; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 115.
38. Although the threatening presence of the developmental state is in the background
of the story, it is the capitalists who directly repress the workers in the novel. The critic U
108 Serk-Bae Suh

Ch’anje’s explication of the novel’s deconstructive style can help understand its silence
about the state’s direct role in the rash industrialization under which workers suffer. U sug-
gests that the aesthetically innovative style of the novel was partly due to the author’s
endeavors to deal with urgent social issues without running afoul of government censor-
ship. The novel’s reluctance to deal with the state repression might have to do with the
stringent censorship that literature was subject to when it was written (U, “T’algusŏngjŏk
sŏsa wa t’algusŏngjŏk sot’ong”).
39. Cho, Dwarf, 120–22; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 195–98.
40. Cho, Dwarf, 115; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 189.
41. Cho, Dwarf, 98–99; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 163.
42. Cho, Dwarf, 101; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 167.
43. Cho, Dwarf, 96–97; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 160.
44. Bataille, Theory of Religion, 27–42.
45. Ibid., 43–61.
46. The sick man in the episode is Sinae’s own brother. The episode begins as Sinae sets
out to visit her brother in the hospital and closes as she is looking at the picture of her
brother’s children next to his bed.
47. The English translation makes Sinae’s violence look more like a conscious act than
it does in the Korean original. It translates the scene in which Sinae rushed to the kitchen to
grab two knives of hers as follows: “She had to save him, thought Sinae, and she ran”
(Cho, Dwarf, 29). The original text, however, keeps it more ambiguous whether her act of
violence ensues from her thought or not: “Sinae has to save the dwarf, and she ran” (sinae
nŭn nanjangi rŭl sallyŏya haetko, kŭraesŏ ttwiŏtta신애는 난장이를 살려야 했고, 그래서
뛰었다 (Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 55).
48. “She was going to kill the man. In one brief instant Sinae sprung back onto the
veranda, then down to the yard. ‘I am going to kill you! I am going to kill you!’ She stabbed
at the man’s side with the fillet knife. . . . The man clasped his arm and backpedaled as
blood began streaming from the wound. Fear had seized him. When Sinae had brand-
ished the knife and shouted, ‘I am going to kill you!’ he realized that she had tasted
blood” (Cho, Dwarf, 29–30; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 55).
49. This essay is derived from a larger project in which I engage with various occasions
of literary imagination that uphold literature’s lack of utility as its critical distance from
society. These cases of literary imagination range from Kim Hyŏn’s critical essays to
Pak Sangnyung’s monumental work of fiction A Study of Death.
50. This conventional view of 1970s and 1980s South Korean literature is reflected in
the Hong Yong Hee’s overview of the literature of the period (Hong, “Literature Takes Up
the Fight for Freedom and Equality”).
51. Cho, Dwarf, 38; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 68.
52. Cho, Dwarf, 129–30; Cho, Nanjangi ka ssoa ollin chakŭn kong, 209–10.

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