The title of divided nation in modern prose of Korea and problems of literary translation

Abstract

One of the main themes in the contemporary Korean literature is the theme of the separated nation. The ideological division of the nation led to the diversion of the national literature. Literature of any country has its own specifics, but the Korean literature is truly unique as it reflects the split of the nation into the two states – North Korea and South Korea. To the present day the Korean peninsula continues being divided, the issue of the separated families and the questions of motherland for those who ended up on the South during the war period (Cho Chong Rae «Human Fates») remain acute. Another major theme of the contemporary Korean fiction is a human desire to revisit childhood places before death (Lee Che Ha «The voyager doesn’t rest»).
South Korean literature has had limited exposure to the foreign readers. In the recent years a few novels, stories, plays have been translated and published in Russian due to the efforts of Russian academics. However, the translation process is associated with certain difficulties that are examined in this article.