ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the controversy surrounding the issue of gender within the postcolonial discourse through a reading of two short stories, both written by Korean women. These stories include: The Light; and The Song That Hasn't Ended. One of the dominant tropes in such discourses is the representation of the Korean state as being feminized because of its subordinate position to the masculine, victorious, and perhaps evil, imperial states. The chapter discusses the way female bodies are either metaphorized or resist metaphorization within the context of neoimperialist and patriarchal domination. The narrative is informed by an unequivocal consciousness about the practice of neoimperialism and its specific impact on women. The chapter presents the way the stories occupy certain loci within the tradition of Korean nationalist literature. It describes the trend of certain feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial critics' attempts to produce local and partial knowledge, pitting those ideas against the notion of assumed mastery and universal understanding of the subject.
