{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02673456397199236, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.338709677419355, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The Ironic Style of Hyun Jin-geon’s Short Stories and Perception of Reality

Hyun Jin-geon’s short stories have been discussed through a “realism-perspective”, but in the matter of “realism”, they were devalued when compared to realist works. The modern colonial era was an era in which double and triple contradictions were revealed and absurd situations were reproduced by imperialism and capitalism. Rather than accurately and realistically portraying this reality, Hyun Jin-geon ironically expresses the opacity caused by the inconsistency of language and ironically embodies the reality in a way that breaks the inevitability of the incongruity of causality. While securing an objective distance free from subjectivity, they recognize the contradictions and absurdities of various realities. Therefore, as we sense this inconsistency and incongruity, we experience irony in Hyun Jin-geon’s short stories. This paper explores how irony works, focusing on a few of Hyun Jin-geon’s representative short stories how he recognizes the reality of modern colonialism. Irony has historically been interpreted in various ways as a literary form. However, there are generally two forms of irony that have been consistently agreed upon in the process: ‘rhetorical irony’ and ‘situational irony’. In this way, Hyun Jin-geon rescues irony in his work, objectively revealing the various contradictions and absurdities of colonial modernity at a distance. Subsequently, Hyun Jin-geon reveals his true value and position as a writer and his characteristic representation of reality.