A Comparative Study of Korean and Australian Children’s Literature with a Vietnamese Multicultural Topic

초록

The stories published in South Korea that have Vietnamese multicultural topics, such as Wandeugi, focus on Vietnamese immigrant women and their children born to Korean fathers, and examine how they deal with issues of successfully integrating and settling into Korean society. The authors plotted these women as ‘marked others,’ having superior qualifications to their husbands, yet submitting themselves to the domestic gender regime, providing a stark contrast to the egoistic Korean women around them. Even with the good intentions of the authors, these set-ups are more likely to strengthen the South Korean/Vietnamese gender regime, and are unlikely to contribute to gender equality in Korean society. Australian authors often note the Vietnamese refugees who have settled in Australia. Noodle Pie adds a possibly new dimension of a hybrid subject—a second generation immigrant born in Australia. Compared to his father, the protagonist of this novel breaks out of the existing order and creates a hybrid third space. The title itself, Noodle Pie, as a combination of the representative foods of Vietnam and Australia, is a symbol of hybrid imagination illustrating a hybrid subject.

키워드