koreanlit1-10, Exercise 2: Class and gender (a sample; yours will differ)

Model answer:

1. Hong Gildong (Korean Literature 5): the chapter reported an illegitimate son of a nobleman, denied full status, who becomes an outlaw and then a king; authorship and date are open. [My reading: the story is about who gets full status.]
2. The Dwarf (Korean Literature 8): the chapter reported a 1978 linked novel set around forced redevelopment in 1970s Seoul, a family evicted, a father who dies, a daughter who tries to win back the home. [My reading: it is about the cost of modernisation to the poor.]
3. Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (Korean Literature 9): the chapter reported a novel tracing a woman's life through son preference, workplace discrimination, marriage and motherhood, over a million copies by November 2018, and that the article says it became part of feminist movements. [My reading: the questions of who is believed and who has status run from Hong Gildong to this novel; the sources do not say so.]

Also available: Chunhyangjeon (a gisaeng's daughter), gisaeng sijo poets (Korean Literature 4), Park Wan-suh's turn to women's lives from the 1980s (Korean Literature 8).