Öz
Ha Jong Oh, who started his literary career in 1975, attracted attention with his poems on multiculturalism in Korean Literature in the 2000s. Ha Jong Oh, who opened a window to the multicultural society of Korea with his works, explained his literary attitude towards immigrants by saying, "At least literature should treat them as equal people and neighbors". In Ha Jong Oh's poems, we can see everyone involved in the Korean multicultural society, such as illegal workers, migrant workers, North Korean immigrants, foreigners married to Koreans, and children born from these marriages. It is possible to see the problems these people experience in detail in Ha Jong Oh's poems.
The language issue is one of the themes that Ha Jong Oh often dealt with in the context of multiculturalism. Ha Jong Oh rises the topic of various language-related problems in his poems such as illegal workers not speaking Korean, the language policy of employment system, and the differing attitudes of Koreans towards Western languages and Asian languages, including the North Korean dialect. Ha Jong Oh brings up the problems faced by foreign workers, whose rights are violated because they do not speak Korean, such as overtime and low wages, with language theme. Ha, who also criticizes the language policy applied in the employment of foreign workers, finds it wrong to employ workers according to their Korean language skills. Ha Jong Oh has carried the stories of families who were aggrieved as a result of the language-based visa application applied in international marriages to his works.
In this study, the poems selected about language issues from the Ha Jong Oh's poetry books titled Countries or Empire (제국: 諸國 또는 帝國), Immigrants (입국자들), Farm Without Borders (국경 없는 농장), Asian Koreans (아시아계 한국인들) have been translated into Turkish and content analysis has been done. In this study, examples of poems about language problems faced by migrant workers, migrant partners, and North Korean immigrants were examined by Ha Jong Oh's poems.
Destekleyen Kurum
This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies.