Young Adult Fiction and Gender: Focusing on the Korean Young Adult Literature Award Winner

This study focuses on the ways in which Korean society's gender norms are reinterpreted by the winners of the Young Adult Literature Awards. First, I examined how the gendered family system in Korean society has been transformed and reconfigured, and how it affects the youth identity. Families in the Young Adult Fiction do not conform to conventional models of normal families and gender role norms. However, I critically examined the direction of family narratives by pointing out that the newly transformed familism limits the imagination of Young Adult Fiction. Next, I examined the representation of adolescent sexuality as a consistent practice. Male adolescents were often portrayed as the protagonists of events, which is problematic from a gender-sensitive perspective, and female adolescent sexuality had largely been addressed in the realm of pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth. However, I expect to see more narratives exploring female sexual self-determination in a new light. Finally, I highlighted issues of queer identity that are not captured by the gender binary. The winners of the Young Adult Literature Prize tend to deal with queer identity issues in friendships, and the recent winners have portrayed queer issues in new ways and formats through a combination of family, travel narratives, and romance narratives. Unlike in the past, when queer people were categorically excluded, minority issues have recently been addressed in terms of human rights education; however, it remains to be seen whether this will generate meaningful reflections in the future.