ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to rethink the literary history of Korea of the mid-twentieth century by exploring the uncanny repetitions that characterize the modernist works of Ch’oe Myŏngik. It argues that the system of ongoing national division has cemented a series of polarities that structure the understanding of works from this period and proposes the concept of mid-century modernism in an attempt to recognize continuities across the historical divide of Liberation and commonalities with contemporary early postcolonial literature around the world. The chapter highlights a melancholic socialism as one characteristic of this mid-century modernism.
