Hybrid orthographies and the emergence of modern literature in early twentieth century Korea

This chapter examines the phenomenon of “experimental textuality” in the first decade of the twentieth century, whereby previously separated vernacular (han’gŭl) and cosmopolitan (hancha/hanmun) linguistic elements were combined in novel configurations, a process that both foreshadowed and mediated the textual establishment of modern Korean fiction and nonfiction genres in the next decade. These experimental writing styles were a response by Korean language reformers to the perceived disunity between the spoken and the written (ŏnmun ich’i) language. They also represented an attempt to bridge the gap between elite and popular readerships and overcome the “crisis of the vernacular” due to its perceived lack of standardization and legitimacy. These experimental forms of writing offer an informative backdrop to the subsequent script-based “genrefication” of Korean writing as “pure” han’gŭl literature on the one hand and mixed-script (kukhanmun) expository writing on the other. This development in Korean writing represented a fundamental reconfiguration of the Korean linguistic landscape: the shift from a premodern, cosmopolitan language ideology based on hierarchical compartmentalization of scripts to modern language ideologies inspired by language nationalism that sought a path to increased literacy and eventually established a genre-based separation of scripts.