Death Writes Back: Reading Autobiography of Death through Gothic Aesthetics

Abstract

A long period of public mourning followed the 2014 Sewol Ferry incident, one of South Korea’s horrific disasters, which resulted in the death of hundreds of passengers. This paper explores how contemporary South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon employs Gothic poetics to narrate collective trauma in the aftermath of the Ferry disaster. The paper also argues that Kim mobilizes the Gothic impulse to amplify the force of her elegy, turning poetic mourning into a site of communal witnessing and resistance. The research is backed by the theoretical grid of the transgenerational haunting forwarded by Abraham and Torok. Hyesoon’s poetry constructs a Gothic of haunting and horror, where spectral voices expose historical trauma and bodily horror, through grotesque and horror imagery. This study further argues that a Western literary mode such as the Gothic—typically associated with European trauma and haunting—finds a compelling and culturally resonant expression in the South Korean context. The Gothic aesthetic, I contend, offers Kim a unique medium to articulate the impulses of haunting and historical trauma that shape Korean collective memory. To date, her poetry has not been examined in depth through this lens, making this an original contribution to both Korean literary studies and comparative Gothic criticism.