ABSTRACT
From the inception of the Korean literary modern, many writers from northern Korea (Sŏbugin, or northwesterners) dominated the Seoul-based publishing world even while their regional identities were undernoted. Yi Kwangsu, Kim Tongin, and Paek Sŏk were three such northwesterners who wrote nostalgically about the Taedong River, Peony Hill, kisaeng, and idyllic scenes of hometown. This chapter argues that it was not living in Seoul, which first configured Pyongyang as a periphery in the Korean national topography, but travel abroad to Japan that inspired the idyllic northern imaginaries invented through a new metropole aestheticism adopted in the imperial center.
