Into the Light

This chapter continues the discussion of Kim Saryang, offering a new reading of his “Into the Light.” The chapter’s analysis of Kim’s work centers on dismantling the notion of a self-same I, as well as an allegorized I standing in for the plight of the Korean people. At the same time, the analysis of this text pays careful attention to questions of performativity and passing. The misrecognition of identities—the assumption of the character Haruo’s Japaneseness, for example—leads to a confrontation with the breakdown of binaries, the impossibility of seeing difference that informs the proximity of Japanese-Korean relations and differs markedly from the Euro-American colonial context.