Session 125: Practices of the Body, Discourses of the Mind: The New Woman in Colonial Korea

Organizer and Chair: Kelly Y. Jeong, City University of New York, John Jay College

Discussant: Kenneth Maurice Wells, Australian National University

Keywords: new woman, colonialism, literature, birth control, missionary discourse, modernity, enlightenment, nationalism.

One of the most heated debates in colonial Korea was the New Woman question, which closely intersected with nationalist agendas, Japanese colonial rule, and growing modern sensibilities. This panel examines the complex domain of that intersection with particular attention to the body, subjectivity and imaginaries of New Woman, offering detailed analyses drawn from a medical history, life history and literary and religious discourse. Hyaeweol Choi examines both shin sosôl ("new fiction") and missionary fiction, tracing early imaginaries of modern womanhood that intersected with nationalist discourse, the shifting power dynamics in East Asia and the reified images of the West. Emphasizing the heterogeneous nature of the early imaginaries, she delves into shifting and contradictory impulses of new gender relations represented in literary and religious discourse. Sonja Kim explores the discourse on birth control in 1920s and 1930s Korea, suggesting its significance for family, politics, gender roles, sexual activity, eugenics and racial discourse. She frames it in a longer history of targeting the body that began in the late 19th century by Korean reformers as an integral part of munmyong kaehwa projects, demonstrating how a woman’s body and sexuality were contested for colonial, national, and feminist reasons. Finally, Kelly Jeong’s essay (abstract not available online) studies the phenomenon of New Woman with focus on the historical figure of Na Hyesok. She examines Na’s unprecedented identity formation and the public’s construction of her as a spectacle of new femininity, and explores colonialism as a totalizing violence leading to the New Woman’s psychic disavowal and the splitting of the self.

Re-imagining Old Womanhood: Literary Representations of New Womanhood in Early Twentieth-Century Korea

Hyaeweol Choi, Arizona State University

This paper examines both shin sosôl ("new fiction") and missionary fiction which prefigure "modern" womanhood in early twentieth-century Korea. Written exclusively by male writers, shin sosôl is an intriguing genre that reveals both the desire for and resistance to new womanhood in the face of imminent colonization by Japan and the influx of new ideas from the West. Protestant missionaries, who are often associated with modernity in Korea, also produced interesting fictions that imagined new ideals for Korean women in the transition from "heathen" to Christian. Analyzing some of the classic examples of shin sosôl and missionary fiction, I trace the early imaginaries of modern womanhood by Koreans and American missionaries. In this exploration I pay particular attention to the ways in which these imaginaries intersected with nationalist discourse led by enlightenment-oriented Korean intellectuals, China’s declining power, the rise of Japan as an imperial power, the reified image of the West, and Korea’s desire to construct a modern nation-state. I argue that the imaginaries of modern womanhood within this matrix of competing forces are not homogeneous. To the contrary, they reflect the uneasy, shifting and contradictory impulses of new gender relations. I further argue that the newly created space for women in the modern era signals noble opportunities, and yet the same space is defined and appropriated by male-dominant Korean nationalist or Christian patriarchal norms.

"Limiting Birth" in Colonial Korea: New Woman, Sex, and Birth Control

Sonja Kim, UCLA

This paper explores the materiality of and active discourse on "sana chehan" (literally, "limiting birth" or birth control) that emerged in 1920s and 30s colonial Korea, suggesting its significance for family politics, gender roles, sexual activity, eugenics and racial discourse. I will frame this discussion in a longer history of targeting the body in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Korean reformers as an integral part of munmyông kaehwa ("civilizing") projects to strengthen and/or protect Korea’s sovereignty in a time of rapid change and increasing incorporation into global politics and economy. In Korea, as in other parts of the world, reformist visions and state projects were envisioned to establish public sanitation projects, transform medical practices and institutions, and instill/enforce new habits of everyday life in the realms of cooking, diet, exercise, sex, clothing, child-rearing, etc. Translating practices of modern concepts of hygiene, biomedicine, and science altered not only medical systems, but also the social sphere of domesticity and meaning of new womanhood. While the Japanese colonial authorities did not sanction birth control in its colony, they did allow notions of "eugenics," thus framing, along with Korean patriarchal and nationalist ideals, the debate on "limiting birth." One active proponent in this debate was the New Woman, and women’s journals in Korea at this time displayed an increasing interest in woman’s health, her body, and reproduction both in advertisements and articles. I will thus attempt to demonstrate how a woman’s body and her sexuality were contested for colonial, national, and feminist reasons.