In this article, I considered Park, Hwa-Sung's novel, Dawn of a Northern Country as Bildungsroman. This article focused on how the heroine, Baek, Hyo-Soon grows as a person engaged in practical movement and what the ideological tendency in the novel is. Hyo-Soon grows from the tentative stage, to uncompleted stage, finally to decisive stage in practical movement.
Hyo-Soon in the ideological vacuum became seriously affected by Lee, Chang-Woo and took a vow that she would act on behalf of him in front of his death. Here, this can be tentative stage which she didn't yet have strong ideology about practical movement.
The heroine who studied in Japan attended social science research institute, while she participated in the practical movement and became a top executive of Tokyo branch. During the period, she came into conflict with Choi, Jin, her fiance and then broke off an engagement. Here, the line conflict with Choi, Jin can be first 'realization of evil'. Finally, Hyo-Soon married a younger man, Kim, Joon-Ho who was harmony with her ideology and movement. But due to his conversion, she was disgusted with him and came to declare the division of the couple relationship. This can be second 'realization of evil.' It is the uncompleted stage which she completed internal consciousness but not found a decisive course. When Hyo-Soon got the letter from Sang-Hyon and Soon-Jeong, she started to the northern country by herself to become an active person engaged in practical movement. That is, the novel ends by entering decisive mature stage as a person engaged in practical movement.
This novel concludes that the heroine disillusioned about her husband's conversion starts to the northern country with joy, and agrees with the participating in the social movement. But the concrete ideological tendency of the social movement leaves to the reader's imagination.
It is obvious that it is not to the right wing but to the left wing that the novel pursue the social movement. But we cannot know clearly whether it is anarchism or socialism. It is possible that the writer was satisfied with showing the external activities of the intellectual class. Anyway, the novel could avoid censorship of Japan by keeping silent about what the ideological tendency is.
In Dawn of a Northern Country, Park, Hwa-Sung could not present the social ideology as his early stage of short stories. But this novel did a great job in that it conveyed ideal and frustration of the young intellectual class who developed ideological movement at home and abroad in 1920s-1930s, and presented that time's atmosphere such as the line conflict around the national movement, conversion, and exile.