Father-children relationship in the Korean and Romanian rural societies of the early 20th century

Abstract

The aim of the current paper is to study the family relations in two cultures, situated continents apart, i.e., the Korean and the Romanian ones, in an attempt to bring to the surface specific cultural and social aspects related to family relations, with a focus on the father-children power relationship. The data employed are two novels, representative of each culture: Marin Preda’s (1964) Moromeții (volume I) and Kyung-Sook Shin’s (2023) I Went to My Father. The theoretical framework employed in the analysis of the excerpts from the two sources is Hofstede’s (1994) cultural dimensions theory, according to which the culture of a particular society may impact the values and behaviours of its members, and Foucault’s (1982) theory of power. The findings of the analysis indicate that the way in which power is exerted in the two families and the driving force in each of them differ considerably.