서수진의 장편소설 『코리안 티처』 다문화적 관점으로 읽기: ‘다문화 없는 다문화 사회’를 중심으로

초록

This study examined Seo Soo-jin's novel The 『Korean Teachers』, focusing on a ‘multicultural society without multiculturalism’. Chapter 2 revealed that Korean society is not practicing multiculturalism in the true sense, and Chapter 3 found the possibility of turning the narrative of collapse into a narrative of hope. The contents revealed in Chapter 2 are as follows. The ‘H University Language School’, which is closed after operating under the market's logic rather than the logic of education, concretely and realistically reproduces the reality of a multicultural Korean society without multiculturalism. The way to solve this problem is not an abstract morality such as human rights, hospitality, and coexistence, but a concrete reform of immigration policies including international student policies. And this is why the Korean Teachers should be read as a novel that reflects on ‘multicultural discourse and policy in Korean society’ beyond ‘working stories of highly educated non-regular women’. The contents found in Chapter 3 are as follows. The four focus speakers with distinct personalities in the novel, ‘Seon-y’, ‘Mi-Joo’, ‘Ga-eun’, and ‘Han-Hee’, face a crisis caused by structural problems. However, all responsibility is passed on to the individual. Experiencing this crisis, the four focal speakers show the possibility of turning the narrative of the downfall into a narrative of hope through thoughts about the Korean language. Among them, the change of thinking about the future tense of ‘Han-Hee’ in Korean is important. At first, ‘Han-Hee’ thinks that ‘there is no future tense in Korean’, but changes his mind that ‘there is a future tense in Korean’ after pregnancy. It should be noted that the parents of the born child are the children of Korean ‘Han-Hee’ and British ‘Jacob’. For a child to be born, the future must exist as complete facts, neither will nor speculation. However, the possibility of turning the narrative of the downfall found in the Korean Teachers into a narrative of hope is literally only a possibility. In order to make this possibility a reality, it is necessary to move away from isolation and toward solidarity. This is not the responsibility of the novel, but of Korean society. Even now, Korean society must reflect on its multicultural discourse and policies and implement better multicultural discourse and policies.

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