The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910-1945
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The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910-1945
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| ISBN-13: | 9780520934153 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 03/04/2008 |
| Series: | Asia Pacific Modern , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea
Education, Labor, and Health, 1910â?"1945
By Theodore Jun Yoo
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-93415-3
CHAPTER 1
Women in Choson Korea
If the family of a scholar's wife lives in poverty and destitution, there is no reason why she should not work a little if it serves as a means of survival.... In so far as raising chicken and ducks, buying and selling soy sauce, vinegar, wine, and oil ... securing [her] family's livelihood should not be her only reason; after all it is one of [her] many sugong [manual tasks].
Yi Tng-mu, Sasojol (A scholar's minor matter of etiquette), 1775
Innaech'on; sa-in yoch'on
Every human being is an embodiment of heaven; serve every human being as you would serve heaven. Ch'oe Che-u, Yongdam yusa (Hymns from Dragon Pool), 1860
In his 1895 memoir, Henry Savage-Landor describes his first encounters with Korean women upon his arrival in the capital: "I remember how astonished I was during the first few days that I was in Seoul, at the fact that every woman I came across in the streets was just on the point of opening a door and entering a house.... The idea suddenly dawned upon me that it was only a trick on their part to evade being seen."
Under the leadership of Yi Song-gye (1335–1408), the founders of the Choson dynasty (1392–1910) had launched a series of social, economic, and political reforms designed to transform the kingdom into a male-dominated neo-Confucian society. Yet while the image of the secluded woman popularized by Savage-Landor symbolizes the conservative character of the dynasty, the Confucianizing of Korea was a gradual, ever-evolving process that met with resistance, especially from women who stood to lose power with the reorganization of society. Though the penetration of Confucian ideals into Korean society was most visible at the level of discourse and ceremonies, the reform of social habits and kinship structures generated intense conflict, as individuals employed diverse resources and strategies to counter the state's quest to create a uniform neo-Confucian order. By the mid-eighteenth century, a new culture of dissent had emerged in Korean society that fostered new mentalités and demands for reform.
This chapter provides a broad overview of the transformation of Korean society—the processes of reform, accommodation, and dissent—during the long Choson period. First, I examine the social structures that defined class hierarchies, gender relations, and customs. The emergence of a strict patriarchy during the Choson dynasty, which differed significantly in organization from the preceding Kory society (918–1392), was shaped largely by social elites. Despite its oppressive character, this new patriarchal structure was not immune to demands for negotiations and concessions. By analyzing the gendered nature of tensions rather than conflicts between social entities, this study seeks to emphasize the diverse, even competing, interests of women within a single family or social class.
To contextualize these changes, I then explore the development of a broader "culture of dissent" and the rise of new historical players in Choson society at large. In particular, it examine two distinct moments—the first coalescing after the Imjin wars (1592, 1598) and the second emerging after the Manchu invasions (1627, 1636). These upheavals triggered intense reactions from a wide spectrum of society, prompting the elites to defend their claim to power against disenchanted groups that insisted on a complete overhaul of the existing order. These two historical moments spawned new intellectual and religious movements, as well as a series of peasant uprisings that generated major socioeconomic upheavals. This powerful culture of dissent—which included new mentalités, language, symbols, political activism, and even violence—bequeathed a complex repertoire for resistance against the Japanese colonial state.
Finally, this chapter examines a new space for women created during this period—the field of modern education—and its impact on the culture of dissent. From 1885 to 1910 a generation of Korean women received a Western-style education at American missionary schools and emerged in the 1920s as leaders, challenging tradition and crafting new gender roles and identities. Although the missionaries claimed that they would prevent Westernization of their wards, their teachings and curriculum invariably instilled American cultural and religious mores that deeply influenced Korean women. With the onset of colonization, female students often utilized Western ideas, adapted and reconfigured to suit the Korean context, to counter a colonial state that vigorously reasserted traditional roles and values, as well as a nationalist agenda that promoted a new cult of domesticity. As a result, women's education became intimately linked to broader issues about cultural authenticity and national identity.
SOCIETY, FAMILY, AND THE STATE
Families, themselves hierarchical, operated within the larger framework of social classes that defined Choson society. In 1868, Ernest Oppert (1832–1903) of Prussia headed a tomb-digging expedition to Korea. His mission was to blackmail the Choson court into accepting Christianity and opening its ports to trade. He observed in Korea a "strict and rigid division of the castes, which part[s] the various ranks of the population of the peninsula from each other, showing on one hand some analogy to the caste institution prevailing amongst the Hindus in India." Though the hierarchical relations in Korean society appeared "rigid" to an outsider, they were governed by complex social and gender conventions. Relations in the Choson period were defined by "degrees of dignity" among classes, age, male and female, and even between the sexes in the Dumontian sense. The tenets of neo-Confucianism placed great emphasis on moral imperatives. As Martina Deuchler explains, "These were the relationship between sovereign and subject guided by ui (righteousness), ch'in (the relationship between father and son guided by parental authority), pyol (the relationship between husband and wife guided by the separation of the functions), so (the relationship between elder and young brothers guided by the sequence of birth), and sin (the relationship between senior and junior guided by faithfulness)."
At a domestic level, the moral imperative of duty dominated Confucian family ethics. Duty meant an understanding of where every individual stood in relation to the whole. Acceptance of personal rank signified awareness of one's place in the world. As a result, these values promoted "hierarchy without shame, a hierarchy that is self-conscious but without conscious abuse, without necessarily infringing on what it means to be human."
Within the larger Choson hierarchy, there were four distinct social classes: scholar-officials, collectively known as yangban ("civil and military branches"); chungin, administrators and yamen who literally lived in the middle of the cities; sangmin or yangmin (commoners), namely farmers, merchants, and craftsmen; and ch'onmin ("base people"), who occupied the lowest rungs of the social ladder. The yangban were members of a hereditary class who occupied important positions in state service based on their status and the civil service examinations. Although commoners could not take the examinations, talent, which had once been a prerequisite for attaining these coveted posts, became less meaningful by the mid-seventeenth century, as powerful clans used their influence to ensure that they dominated the examination system.
The chungin formed the backbone of the bureaucracy as lower administrators and technical specialists in the government. To qualify for one of the eight professional occupations, the chungin were required to pass an examination on specified subjects, known as chapkwa. The majority of the population was in the sangmin class. They assumed a disproportionate burden of taxation, performed heavy corvee labor, and supplied young men for the military. Finally, the ch'onmin class, despite being at the bottom of the social ladder, included some important positions. Their rank and file included a variety of groups, ranging from slaves through professional mourners, shamans, servants, and kisaeng (female entertainers). The paekchong, comprising mainly butchers, lived in segregated villages and were exempt from government conscription.
Accompanying this complex and evolving class structure, with its many implications for the prospects and activities of men, was a transformation of the family from the Koryo to the Choson dynasty that resulted in a gradual decline in women's status and visibility in the public sphere. During the Koryo period, the state's endorsement of Buddhism as the state religion offered a wide range of opportunities for female activities outside the domestic sphere. Women not only joined temples and learned to read sutras but contributed to the faith as nuns. People also revered the female bodhisattvas: the Kwanum posal or the Avalokiteshvara (female bodhisattvas of compassion), for example, had the power to grant the petitions of couples who desired children. In addition, Korean women enjoyed many familial privileges, because Buddhism recognized the right of women to remarry and inherit property. Marriage was neither universal nor a duty imposed upon women; rather, women could choose to live alone, marry, or even have multiple husbands (although this was not common). It was customary for parents to reside with their daughters rather than their sons, as a matter of preference or convenience.
The neo-Confucian vision of a rational, well-ordered society provided the Choson leaders with a blueprint for reorganizing and tightening control over the family. An orderly family became synonymous with the stability of the kingdom. The stricter family hierarchy granted greater prerogatives to the male patriarch and ensured women's subservience through the samjong chido (three obediences): to be obedient to their fathers, husbands, and sons. The introduction of primogeniture transferred all rights of property to men, which resulted in a radical deterioration of women's social position and legal rights. As inheritance became the exclusive right of the eldest son, it was incumbent on yangban households to compile a chokpo (genealogy), which excluded women. As we will see, although the new dynasty sought to define the boundaries of family lineage and class lines, ideals often did not translate into practice. In fact, those who stood to lose power, especially women, resisted attempts to encroach on their prerogatives and rights.
THE ELITE FAMILY
As neo-Confucian scholars of the early Choson dynasty embarked on their reform agenda, they castigated the "unordered" family as the root of all social chaos in Korean society. Monumental compendiums like the Kyongguk taejon (Grand code of the nation), Zhu Xi's Fiali (Family rites) and the Liji (Book of rites) discussed the important four rites (sarye) of Korean family life—capping, wedding, funeral, and ancestor veneration—as the central pillars of stability. They also described how to maintain and strengthen "class privilege in general and for the descendants in particular." If properly observed, the four rites determined the relationships within the domestic sphere and stabilized the social foundation of the public realm. In other words, the peace and prosperity of a state could only be guaranteed in proportion to the purity of family ritual life.
As a result, the emergent neo-Confucian Choson state sought a radical redefinition of the family through restrictive legislation intended to ensure harmony in both the domestic and political realms. One significant change was a shift from a matrilineal to a patrilineal structure of kinship and identity. In Kory, it was customary for the newlywed couple to live with the bride's family. This uxorilocal arrangement offered numerous advantages for women, not the least of which was economic: they could safeguard their portion of the inheritance, which they shared equally with their male siblings. Even if the wife moved to the husband's residence, she retained inheritance rights. If the husband had multiple wives (a custom of the royal house that was emulated by aristocrats and some commoners), they usually resided with their natal families, which impacted marital power relations in favor of the woman. In such "plural marriages," all wives and their children enjoyed equal status, perhaps with the exception of the ch'op—a servant who served primarily as a sexual partner but lacked the status of wife.
The triumph of the patrilineal line naturally eroded rights and privileges that women had enjoyed during the Koryo period. Whereas a woman's inheritance, which she received as a dowry upon her marriage or upon the death of her parents, had been independent of her marriage, now it became part of "an inalienable conjugal fund" and reverted to her husband and his descent group. This deprivation of economic assets no doubt had an impact on power relations within the marriage, precluding the dissolution of the union without financial ruin. In fact, it became nearly impossible for a married woman to sue for divorce or remarry, because after she entered a new descent group she had no way of separating herself from it.
The power of the patrilineal line was nowhere as apparent as in the changing residential arrangements. Zhu Xi's Fiali, a detailed description of a Confucian wedding ceremony, introduced new elements to the rituals, including the ch'in-yong, in which the bridegroom brought the bride into his home. But as complaints from Korean officials reveal, the attempt to impose new residential patterns on married couples met with stiff resistance. In a harsh critique of the tenacious hold of uxorilocal marriages on Korean society, one key reformer, Chong To-jon (1337–98), argued: "Since the groom moves into the bride's home, the wife unknowingly depends on her parents' love and cannot but hold her husband in light regard. Her arrogance thus grows with each day; in the end there will be quarreling between husband and wife, whereby the rights of the family decline." In other words, it was difficult to impose the "proper" power relations in a family that catered to the wife's whims and desires. Only when the "natural" hierarchy of marriage became the norm could there be order in state and society. To ensure the subordination of women, the Confucian legislators emphasized the final act of the wedding ceremony—the sinhaeng or ugwi, when the bride officially entered her husband's household and took her place in the inner quarters (anch'ae). Her husband's family now took precedence over her own.
According to the Fiali, the appropriate marriage age for a yangban male was between sixteen and thirty, while girls were to be between fourteen and twenty. To preserve some aspects of Koryo dynasty custom, the bridegroom went to the bride's home for the marriage ceremony (pan ch'in-yong) and stayed there the first night. People with the same family name and ancestral home (i.e., geographical origin) could not marry, and those who disobeyed received sixty strokes and were forced to divorce.
Though marriage was an important institution for forging alliances between two families and an important rite of passage for an individual man or woman, the stated purpose of marriage was to "bring forth male offspring." Because the lineage was rooted in patrilineal descent, this was "society's means of survival." The Fiali states that "the ceremony of marriage is intended to be a bond of love between two surnames, with a view, in its retrospective character, to secure the continuance of the family line." In other words, "Marriage was to guarantee uninterrupted continuation of the descent group in two directions, taking the living as the starting point—toward the dead and toward the unborn."
Since the arduous burden of sustaining the prestige and honor of a household by safeguarding the lineage fell primarily on the shoulders of the eldest son, producing a son was paramount for sustaining the lineage. Thus, "when a boy was born, they would lay him on a bed, clothe him with good garments, and give him a precious stone to play with, while [when] a girl-child was born, they would lay her on the floor, clothe her with a diaper only, and let her play with pieces of tiles."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea by Theodore Jun Yoo. Copyright © 2008 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Women in Chosen Korea
Chapter 2. The "New Woman" and the Politics of Love, Marriage, and Divorce in Colonial Korea
Chapter 3. The Female Worker: From Home to the Factory
Chapter 4. Discoursing in Numbers: The Female Worker and the Politics of Gender
Chapter 5. The Colonized Body: Korean Women’s Sexuality and Health
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index