Since the 1990s, there has been a growing interest among scholars in Korean studies in researching the formation of feminine identity. The proposed panel aims to provide an overview of the radical changes taking place in contemporary Korea as reflected by the ways in which literary and cultural producers have represented feminine subjectivity. The panelists investigate the common theme of feminine subjectivity from multiple topical perspectives, such as "motherhood," "sexual infidelity," "father-daughter relationships," and "narrative aesthetics." Miseli Jeon explains the confusion and frustration felt by women trapped inside a tangled web of temporalities, and investigates the unraveling of the web and the discovery of women’s time and language therein. Ji-Eun Lee, taking her cue from the post-structuralist critique of metalanguage, demonstrates the possibility of a new interpretation of women’s writing that would lie outside realism and feminism, contemporary Korea’s two most influential critical paradigms. Seung-hee Jeon discusses several literary and film works produced during the past decade, aiming to shed light on a newly emerging progressive perspective regarding marital infidelity in women. Finally, Young-jun Lee scrutinizes the father-daughter relationship depicted in fiction created by women in the twenty-first century, and draws our attention to an unprecedented phenomenon, the "repositioning of the father," in the Korean family dynamic. The four papers together will offer an up-to-date and multi-dimensional understanding of the enthusiastic search for self-identity among Korean women within their rapidly changing socio-cultural context.

Miseli Jeon, University of British Columbia

My paper will examine the image of the female protagonist in "Chinghyô" ("Weaver Woman," 1971; trans. 2003), written by O Chông-hûi. O warps the intra-textual temporality in this short story to such a degree that it is almost impossible for readers to recognize the structure of its plot at first reading. It takes several re-readings to identify the dynamics within the complex entanglement of various temporalities in "Weaver." This web of temporalities, I argue, represents the traditional Korean ideology of motherhood as womanhood. O situates her protagonist in a confusing and concealing web of time in order to highlight the protagonist’s initial inability to resist patriarchal control over women’s bodies. The protagonist eventually overcomes this temporal confusion, and simultaneously discovers women’s time and language. I use Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of "chronotope" and the notion of "women’s time" proposed by Julia Kristeva in my analysis of the image of O’s protagonist, a woman living in the society of 1960s Korea.

Ji-Eun Lee, University of British Columbia

After her literary debut in 1988, Ch’oe Yun (b. 1953) quickly emerged as one of the most important writers in contemporary Korea. However, critical analysis of her works seems to have been stunted by gender dichotomies. Ch’oe’s early focus on historical subjects (conventionally, the province of male realists), such as the Kwangju massacre (1980) and the Park Chung-hee dictatorship (1961-1979), earned her the reputation of being a "male writer with a womb." More generally, Ch’oe has been classified as a "women writer," together with other female writers in the history of modern Korean literature. Feminists have been just as likely as anyone else to adopt essentialist attitudes towards literary criticism and to make stereotypical judgments based on an author’s sex. This type of essentialist bias has precluded alternative readings of works by authors like Ch’oe, who strive to remain beyond the bounds of any ideology. My paper examines two of Ch’oe’s stories: "Autobiographical Fragments I & II" (1994; 1997). Taking the post-structural critique of metalanguage as my point of departure, I argue that the existing critiques of Ch’oe’s work have been heavily influenced by both realist and feminist discourses, the two ideological paradigms that have dominated modern Korea’s intellectual and cultural production. My main objective here is to demonstrate the possibility of a new interpretation of Ch’oe’s narratives outside these dominant critical frameworks, by scrutinizing the author’s claims regarding the centrality of narrative language and styles in creating and understanding her own art of fiction-writing.

Seung-Hee Jeon, Harvard University

Traditionally, discourses on female sexuality in Korea have been dominated by a rigid patriarchal morality, with chastity at its core. Despite an ongoing feminist movement and "modernization" since the early twentieth century, female sexuality has remained somewhat of a taboo subject until recently. With the democratic reforms of 1987, South Korean society began what appeared to be radical changes in many aspects. For example, films, TV dramas, and literary works have attempted to tackle this once forbidden subject in an open and serious manner. Some of these works have received wide public attention for their "progressive" perspective on female extra-marital sexuality. Responses from social and cultural critics have been divided into two camps: one dismissively labeling them sensationalism, and the other championing "progressive" views as a sign of feminist progress. In this paper, I will examine two films – "The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996)" directed by Hong Sang-su and "Marriage is a Crazy Thing (2002)" directed by Yu Ha – and two fictional works – "Obviously Immoral Love (1999)" by Un Hui-kyong and "That One and Only Special Day of My Life (2001)" by Chon Kyong-rin. My analyses will demonstrate the various ways and levels on which portrayals of "immoral" sexuality are successful or unsuccessful in resisting the patriarchal regime of female sexuality, and will discuss feminist and other political implications of these representations.

Young-Jun Lee, Harvard University

Over the past ten years, South Korean readers and critics alike have witnessed a remarkable transformation in women writers’ views of themselves and their society. Until the late 1980s, the thematic choices of women writers were largely confined within a mainstream, male-dominant, discursive framework: nation-building. In the 1990s, however, a group of women writers began to grapple with themes of feminine "interiority" and subjectivity, breaking away from the dominant patriarchal grand narratives. They questioned the validity and legitimacy of the established family system and attempted to debunk the patriarchal social order. Nevertheless, their primary objective was not to overthrow the family system altogether but to reaffirm motherhood by relocating the center of the family from the father to the mother. The debate thus centered on the nature of motherhood. In the 2000s, woman writers shifted the focus of their investigation to the father-daughter relationship. In my paper, I examine the works of several women writers, such as Shin Kyong-suk, Yi Hye-kyong, Yun Song-hui, and Kim Ae-ran, all prolific during the first six years of the twenty-first century. In their works, fathers are depicted stripped of their traditional authority as patriarchs. My paper highlights the new understanding of the father-daughter relationship as portrayed by these writers and discusses the radical changes in their authorial view of the mother-father-daughter family dynamic as defined by new political, cultural, and economic developments, both national and international.