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"Wise Mother, Good Wife": A Transcultural Discursive Construct in Modern Korea

Hyaeweol Choi

The article investigates the genealogies of "wise mother and good wife," arguably the most influential gender ideology in modem Korea. Approaching it as a prod- uct of transcultural encounters in turn of the twentieth-century Korea, the article examines the ways in which Korea's Confucian-prescribed gender norms were refashioned and reconstituted under the influence of the ideology of domesticity promoted by American Protestant women missionaries and the Meiji gender ideol- ogy ofryösai kenbo, which transpired through Japanese colonialpolicies in Korea, largue that the modern construct of "wise mother andgoodwife" ideology was the latest form ofpatriarchal gender arrangements designed to meet new challenges in the modern era. Ifurther argue that this modern ideal ofwomanhood was both oppressive and liberating in the sense that it continued hierarchical gender prac- tices of the past, and yet it also enabled women to carve out new space for power and authority within the circumscribed conditions.

In 2007, the Bank of Korea announced that it was considering printing the pic- ture of Lady Sin Saimdang (1504-1551) on the new 50,000 won bill.1 Sin Saim- dang was one of the few well-known women painters from the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) and her paintings are presumed to be the earliest examples of work by Korean women painters extant.2 However, her greatest claim to historical renown has been the fact that she was the mother of one ofKorea's most promi- nent Confucian scholars, Yi I (1536-1584). Eulogized as the quintessential exam- ple of a "wise mother and good wife" (hyönmo yangch'o), she has long been celebrated as the ideal Korean woman.3 The reaction of women's organizations

Hyaeweol Choi is an associate professor ofKorean Studies at Arizona State University. Her work largely concerns gender, culture, and religion with particular focus on transcultural encounters. Her recent publications include Gender andMission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways (University ofCalifornia Press, 2009).

The Journal ofKorean Studies 14, no. I (Fall 2009): 1-34 1

2 Hyaeweol Choi

to the announcement by the Bank of Korea has been mixed. On one hand, they welcomed the fact that for the very first time a woman was even considered to be ofenough historical significance to have her portrait printed on Korean currency. On the other hand, some were troubled by the choice ofSin Saimdang. In a public forum organized by the feminist group, If, on October 15, 2007, Kim Kyöngae argued that Sin Saimdang was selected not as an "individual," but as a model of a "wise mother and good wife," and such a choice was an attempt to maintain the anachronistic patriarchal order ofKorean society. Another participant, Kim Sin Myöngsuk, further pointed out that the notion of "wise mother and good wife" that has been associated with Sin Saimdang was in actuality a modern product of the Japanese colonial education system in Korea (1910-1945), which tried to suppress critical consciousness and propagate obedient female colonial subjects.4 Despite the concerns expressed by women's organizations about the negative impact that such a conservative female role model might have on women in con- temporary Korean society, the Bank ofKorea has persistently highlighted Sin as an exemplary "person of culture and art" (munhwa yesul in), and issued a new bill with her picture on it on June 23, 2009.5 What is most noteworthy in this controversy is the fact that, despite her pio-

neering status as a sixteenth-century woman artist, Sin Saimdang in modern Korea has been, perhaps first and foremost, a potent symbol of the "wise mother and good wife" ideology that continues to shape gender discourse, even in the twenty-first century. Recent research on Sin Saimdang offers particularly use- ful insights into the ways in which her image has been discursively constructed throughout Korean history. In her analysis of the discourses on Sin Saimdang from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, Yi Sugin illuminates the male-dominant Confucian politics of knowledge that invoked Sin as the model of ideal motherhood and the bearer of Confucian "womanly virtue" (pudök).6 In an article focusing on the invention of tradition and the nationalization ofwomen as citizens, Kim Sujin demonstrates that an array of social and political forces, including enlightenment-oriented Korean intellectuals of the early twentieth century, the Japanese colonial authority, the regime ofPresident Park Chung Hee (Pak Chönghüi) in the 1970s, and various women's groups have deployed selec- tive images of Sin Saimdang to promote their own agendas.7 What these stud- ies suggest is that for the past five centuries the imagery of Sin Saimdang has been historically and discursively constructed, in some ways even fabricated, in accordance with the particular political and cultural demands ofdifferent histori- cal agents. Building on these recent studies, this article has two goals. One is to further

discuss what the persistent invocation of a historical figure as the ideal woman tells us about resilient patriarchal systems. Feminist historian Judith Bennett has suggested that one strategy for bringing about a better understanding of the mechanisms of persistent patriarchy is to undertake case studies incorporating specific historical contexts, especially times of exceptional crisis, and to exam-

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ine how historical "transitions challenged patriarchies, how patriarchies changed in response to these challenges, and how patriarchies nevertheless endured."8 In exploring these questions within the Korean historical context, the concept of "wise mother and good wife" is a particularly expedient target for analysis because it has been extremely influential in (reshaping patriarchal gender dis- course and practices in Korea since the early twentieth century. Furthermore, an analysis of the formation, maintenance, and rupture of "wise mother and good wife" sheds light on not only the complex mechanisms ofpatriarchy at the struc- tural level but also on women's own complicity in and resistance to these patri- archal arrangements. The other goal of the article is to provide a fuller and more nuanced picture of

the modern gender ideology of "wise mother and good wife" by considering the significant contribution ofAmerican Protestant women missionaries, who began to arrive in Korea in 1885 and played a crucial role in women's education through the first half of the twentieth century. As I will detail in later sections, recent feminist studies in Korea have elucidated the complex ways in which the norm of "wise mother and good wife" was deployed for the purpose of the Korean nation- alist mandate on one hand and Korean women's desire for the new in the form of an "empowered" and "educated" mother and wife in the modern, nuclear fam- ily on the other. These studies approach the ideology of "wise mother and good wife" as a modern construct with significant influence from Japanese colonial gender ideology and the import of Western domesticity and modernity.9 How- ever, very little attention has been given to the prominent influence of Ameri- can Protestant women missionaries in Korea from the late nineteenth century in shaping the ideology of modern domesticity. The fact that the vast majority of educated Korean women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had direct or indirect connections with American missionary women through educa- tion at mission schools or job opportunities in Christian organizations makes it impossible to omit the crucial influence of missionary women in fashioning a new ideal woman in modern Korea.10 In this article, I investigate the ways in which the notion of "wise mother and

good wife" came about at the turn of the twentieth century through a conver- gence of Chosön Korea's Confucian notion ofpudök (womanly virtue), Japan's Meiji gender ideology of ryôsai kenbo (good wife and wise mother), and Ameri- can Protestant missionary women's ideology of domesticity in mission schools.11 To be sure, pudök, ryôsai kenbo, and the Victorian12 notion of domesticity were shaped by their respective indigenous cultures and histories, so the specific details of their notions of ideal womanhood varied. However, they all tended to place high value on the idea that women should occupy the domestic sphere. In order to understand the dynamic interactions among these gender ideologies, I employ Mary Louise Pratt's term, "contact zone," which she defines as "the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and his- torically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing rela-

4 Hyaeweol Choi

tions, usually involving conditions ofcoercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict."13 What complicates the use of the term "contact zone" in this particular case is that Korea at the turn of the twentieth century was not a typical colonial situation in that it had not been colonized by a Western country, but rather by Japan, a non-Western and non-Christian imperial power. The Westerners, espe- cially American Protestant missionaries, who were present in Korea at that time, were not perceived by Koreans as Western imperialists. In fact, the missionar- ies were often considered allies of Korean people in their struggle against the Japanese colonial power and were hailed as harbingers of the advanced modern civilization from the West.14 It is within this complex, historical, and political context that indigenous, Japanese, and Western gender ideologies interacted to shape a new modern gender ideology. I further argue that the promotion of this modern gender ideology "wise mother

and good wife" was not simply a continuation of traditional patriarchal gender relations. Rather, it was a transcultural discursive construct that served as an expe- dient, flexible, and contested ideology that a diverse collection of social agents— Korean intellectuals, the Japanese colonial authority, and American Protestant missionaries—embraced, challenged, or strategically appropriated for their own unique mandates. In my use ofthe notion of"transcultural discursive construct" in this article, 1 emphasize the dynamic interactions among these groups of disparate origins. These groups actively participated in the rearticulation of this particular gender discourse, which was based on their own primary objectives and readjusted to reflect local particularities. Despite the uneven power relations among these groups, I underscore the creative engagement of different agencies in promoting or challenging the emerging new gender ideology. An examination of the complex- ity of the idea of "wise mother and good wife" within this transcultural context helps us articulate major fissures and challenges that patriarchal systems faced, but more importantly, it illustrates the paradoxical nature of the evolving patriarchies in which both oppressive and liberating forces were embedded.13

A MODERN DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCT OF GENDER

The period around the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was arguably the most turbulent era in Korea's history, one that contained unprecedented chal- lenges to the Korean patriarchal system. The era was characterized by foreign aggression and the influx of new and modern ideas from other countries. Forced to open its doors to foreign countries beginning in 1876, the late Chosön dynasty was plunged into global politics and the world economic system, and was eventu- ally made a colony ofJapan in 1910. During this turbulent era,16 not only were the traditional political and economic systems shaken but also the Confucian moral and cultural values that had been the foundation of the dynasty began to come under critical scrutiny.17

" Wise Mother, Good Wife " 5

In the midst of this turmoil, "woman" served as a metonym for assess- ing the level of civilization a society had achieved. Korean intellectuals, such as Yu Kilchun, So Chaep'il, and Yun Ch'iho, who were influenced by Western enlightenment thought during their education overseas, linked the degraded lives of Korean women to "evil customs" of old Korea, which were viewed as some- thing to overcome in order for Korea to modernize and enlighten the nation.18 In his 1895 book, Sôyu kyönmun (Observations of my travels to the West), Yu Kilchun argued that valuing women's education and better treatment of women were signs of an advanced civilization. He wrote that Westerners treated their women fairly well because they believed that the "woman is the foundation of human society and the girder of the house and thus if she is weak or igno- rant, she would not be able to fulfill her central role."19 He further noted that since children are the foundation of the country, their having well-informed and knowledgeable mothers is crucial to the well-being of the country.20 The emerging print media, especially from the 1890s forward, served as vehicles for challenging Confucian-prescribed hierarchical gender relations and advocating the critical importance of "educated" women for the family and the nation.21 Some prominent newspapers, such as the Tongnip sinmun (1896-1899) and the Cheguk sinmun (1898-1910), and women's magazines, including Kojong chapchi (1906-1908), YoJa chinam (1908), and Chasön puinhoe chapchi (1908) chose to publish in the Korean vernacular in order to reach out to as many women as possible and distribute new knowledge (sin chisik). Furthermore, after the first appearance oí sin sosöl (new fiction)22 in 1906, when Yi Injik published the novel Hyöl üi nu (Tears of blood), that genre, along with other print media, engaged in the woman question by contributing to new imagery of "educated women" at the intersection of enlightenment, nationalism, and modernity.23 In this way, "woman" emerged as a new social and political category to be incorporated into the public and national sphere, and the budding gender discourse was an integral part of the transformative experience Koreans had in their pursuit ofmodernity and national sovereignty.24 The arrival ofAmerican Protestant missionaries coin- cided with Korea's enlightenment period, and the interactions between mission- aries and enlightenment-oriented Korean intellectuals were crucial in fashioning a certain mode ofdiscourse on new womanhood. Christian magazines and news- papers, such as the Sinhak wölbo and Kürisüdo sinmun, were important media for the dispersal of new perspectives on both the role of educated women in the advancement of Korea to the status of a civilized country and the new ethics of gender relations in the Christian family.25 At the core of the new gender discourse during this era was the idea of

"wise mother and good wife" (hyönmo yangch o)—a new, ideal woman for a strong, modern nation-state. The terminology "wise mother and good wife" first appeared in Korea in 1906 in the mission statement of Yanggyu Üisuk, a pri- vate Korean girls' school that followed the Japanese model. It stated that the school aimed to "cultivate and perfect the qualifications for a wise mother and

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good wife (hyönmo yangch'o) by educating girls with academic work, dexterous skills for craft-making, and womanly virtue of compliance and wisdom (pudök sunch'öiy26 Two years later in 1908, when the Korean government established Hansông Kodüng Yóhakkyo, the first public school for girls in Korean history, its goal echoed that of Yanggyu Üisuk in that the school aimed to train each student to become a "wise companion and benevolent mother" (hyönbae chamó) by teaching them morality, reading, art, hygiene, care for the ill, childcare, and home economics.27 The literal meaning of these goals significantly reflect the Confucian ideals represented by "womanly virtue" (pudök), which was system- atically propagated especially after the patrilineal social and economic arrange- ments were adopted and implemented during the Chosön dynasty.28 However, as Chöng Kyöngsuk argues, despite the continuing emphasis on tra-

ditional roles of women as mothers and wives, Yanggyu Üisuk and Hansöng Kodüng Yöhakkyo adopted a "modern" form of schooling in the spirit ofdistrib- uting new learning (sin hangmuri) appropriate for the new era.29 This provision of modern education for women was no small feat given the fact that up until 1886, when an American missionary woman founded the first girls' school, no formal educational institute for girls or women existed in Korea.30 The only edu- cation the majority of Korean women received was informal instruction about filial piety (hyo) from their family members within the domestic sphere.31 The conventional disdain for "educated women" was significantly challenged when Korea was thrown into modern competition with other countries. Education for all, including women, soon became a national imperative in order for Korea to modernize itself and compete with other modern states. The emphasis on wom- en's education led to the construction of an ideal modern woman, one who would be equipped with scientific knowledge that would contribute to effective child rearing, promote good hygiene in her family, and bring about süwit'ü horn (sweet home), a concept that projected a new type of family (kajöng).32 The nuclear family (tan'ga) composed of a husband, wife, and children, with the wife as the "house mistress" (chubu) replaced the late Chosön family, in which the mother- in-law (i.e., mother of the husband) dominated. As I detail in the later section, the scientification of the domestic and the enhanced power ofwomen within the family added the significant flavor of the modern to the newly idealized woman as wife and mother. It was within this context that the educated "wise mother and good wife" emerged as the ideal model for the modern era.33 The Meiji Japanese government's gender ideology of ryôsai kenbo (good

wife and wise mother), a term coined in 1875, notably influenced the model of "wise mother and good wife" in Korea.34 Beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese state tried to respond to Western criticism based on "one of the favored patriarchal myths of the nineteenth-century West: that the sta- tus of women was an important measure of any society's progress toward civi- lization."35 Though Western women themselves were, in reality, struggling to improve their status within their own "civilized" societies, the Japanese were

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"7

compelled to react to the prevailing perception in the West that Japanese women were ignorant, oppressed, and superstitious. What emerged was an emphasis on the primary roles ofwomen as "mothers" raising healthy children, as interesting conversational partners for their husbands, and as "managers of the household" for saving and judicious consumption.36 Notions of the ideal family in the mod- ern era and the place of women within it were systematically propagated by the state as part of what Sheldon Garon calls "social management" to shape new gender norms appropriate for a modern nation-state.37 Early on through com- pulsory elementary education, the Education Ministry popularized the ideal of "good wife and wise mother" as an overarching principle for female subjects, urging women "to contribute to the nation through their hard work, their frugal- ity, their efficient management, their care of the old, young, and ill, and their responsible upbringing of children."38 Sharon Sievers argues that the concept behind the Japanese phrase "ryôsai kenbo" certainly paralleled the idea of "true womanhood" in the United States; however, she contends that American women exerted power and authority in the family through their "Christian virtue," which put women in a superior position vis-à-vis the "unrestrained male," and that such superiority did not exist in the newly imagined Japanese home. Instead, the Meiji government denied women's power or rights in the family, while promoting the role of women as "producers of sons for Japan's expanding Empire, as teachers of patriotism and loyalty in the home, and as pillars of stability in the midst of social stress."39 Indeed, the Civil Code of 1898 decisively confirmed the exclusive power of the male as head of the household over his wife and other family mem- bers.40 Sharon Nolte and Sally Hastings further elaborate on critical differences between the American model of domesticity and that of Japan. Proposing the term "cult of productivity," they argue that the Japanese model heavily empha- sized women's productivity in economic activities and systematic household sav- ings as part of the industrialization of Japan.41 In addition, unlike the American gender ideology, which was based on middle-class domesticity, the character of a new ideal woman in modern Japan was drawn from "the cardinal feminine virtues of the various Japanese classes," and in the end the "cult ofproductivity" contributed to shared gender ideals across all social classes in Japan.42 As Elyssa Faison's analysis of Japanese women laborers in modern Japan demonstrates, factory managers systematically promoted and inculcated the initially middle- class feminine virtue of "good wife and wise mother" by offering "educational and cultural amenities that they framed as opportunities to become ideal (and presumably middle-class) housewives and mothers" to female factory work- ers.43 In so doing, the modern gender ideology of "good wife and wise mother" penetrated all classes of women, incorporating them into the modern project of nation-building and industrialization. Japanese colonial power in Korea promoted the Meiji gender ideology of

"good wife and wise mother." Yanggyu Üisuk and Hansöng Kodüng Yöhakkyo, which I described above, exemplify the beginning of the Japanese colonial edu-

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cation policy for girls based on the Meiji gender ideology. Both schools were founded during the era when Korea was Japan's Protectorate (1905-1910) and Japan rapidly expanded its control over Korean affairs, including the educational system. In the case ofYanggyu Üisuk, the board of directors, including the prin- cipal Kwön Chunghyön, had close ties with and had studied in Japan.44 Hansöng Kodüng Yöhakkyo was the first outcome of the Japanese colonial policy on women's education at the national level after its proclamation of the Edict of High Education for Girls in April 1908.45 The comment of the Japanese vice- minister of education captures the essence ofwomen's education at the time. He noted that: "It is not necessarily important to offer education to girls. When we do, we offer it only to the extent that facilities are available, and its curriculum should be rudimentary and practical." As a result, girls' education centered on "sewing, embroidery, and homemaking," tasks which were considered appropri- ate and practical to girls.46 After Korea became a colony of Japan in 1910, the Japanese government sys-

tematically promoted the ideology of "good wife and wise mother" as the official goal of women's education in colonial Korea with the aim ofproducing obedient imperial subjects and an efficient, submissive workforce.47 In 1911, the first Edict ofKorean Education proclaimed that "girls' higher common schools should edu- cate students to cultivate womanly virtues, build the character as a national sub- ject and learn knowledge useful to everyday life."48 The colonial government viewed the critical role of women to be their capacity to produce industrious, obedient imperial subjects, and focused largely on elementary and vocational education with a decided emphasis on Japanese language instruction and practi- cal skills for girls such as sewing and embroidery.49 As Theodore Jun Yoo argues, colonial education "promoted a cult of domesticity not for the purpose of foster- ing modern middle-class womanhood in the Western sense, which included cul- tivation ofmoral sensibilities, cultural refinement, and aesthetic taste [bildung], but with the sole intent ofmaintaining Korean women, who were knowledgeable about 'modern ideals,' within the traditional constraints of domesticity."50 Thus, it is no wonder that graduates of Hansöng Kodüng Yöhakkyo (later Kyönggi Yöja Kodüng Hakkyo), one of the premier schools for girls during the colonial era, recall that exceptional emphasis was placed on "wise mother and good wife," giving the overall impression that it was the central theme of their education.51 What should be noted about the influence of Japanese gender ideology on

Korea is that there was a significant gap between Korean and Japanese women in terms of educational opportunities. The educational opportunity for the colo- nized Koreans was exceedingly limited, and the vast majority ofgirls andwomen received no education at all. In 1919, only 2.2 percent of girls entered public ele- mentary schools (compared to 10.2 percent for boys). Ten years later, the percent- age had increased only to 7.9 percent (compared to 30.9 percent for boys).52 Out of this small number ofelementary school graduates, roughly one-fifth advanced to middle school. The scarcity of "educated" female students throughout the

"Wise Mother, Good Wife " 9

colonial era is in drastic contrast to the higher rate of school attendance among Japanese female students. Japan mandated primary education for both boys and girls beginning in 1873, and by 1920, 98.8 percent ofJapanese girls were enrolled in primary school.53 Although a similar gender ideology was in place in both Korea and Japan,

the disparity in educational opportunities led to different outcomes. While the Japanese gender ideology of ryôsai kenbo "gradually replaced the premodern differentiation of women by class,"54 the ideology of hyönmo yangch 'ö in Korea evolved into a marker ofmiddle-class women, serving to distinguish them from low-income urban dwellers, factory workers, or peasant women. Socialist intel- lectuals criticized the bourgeois nature of "wise mother and good wife." Chöng Ch'ilsöng, a socialist activist, contrasted well-educated bourgeois women and their decadent lifestyle with working-class women in the cigarette and textile factories, who had to labor in terrible conditions merely to survive.55 In a simi- lar fashion, Kim Ünhüi details the miserable lives of proletarian women, not- ing: "In their family life stricken by poverty, proletarian women [musan puin] struggle and worry everyday about meals and wood for heating. They do not even have enough time to nurse their children crying out of hunger." In contrast, bourgeois women are described as "housewives who lead leisurely lives without shedding a drop of sweat." While "educated mothers" were publicly lauded, Kim urged people to see the reality in which proletarian women could not even afford the opportunity to gain basic literacy because they had to struggle daily just to sustain themselves.56 Despite the growing criticism of "educated" women and their complacent, privileged lifestyle, the Korean model of "wise mother and good wife" remained a gender ideology closely associated with the middle class, accepted by and expected of those women who had garnered formal education in colonial Korea. Significantly, when there were few jobs for women, becom- ing a wise mother and good wife represented the most realistic "career option" available to the small cohort of educated women.57 This middle-class orientation has been perpetuated, moreover, in the activities of the Korean Federation of Housewives Clubs (Taehan Chubu K'üllöp Yönhaphoe), which was founded in 1966 with the goal of enlightening middle-class housewives. The group even instituted an annual award, the Sin Saimdang prize, in 1968.58 Together with the influence from Japanese gender ideology, American Prot-

estant women missionaries also shaped the modern gender ideology of "wise mother and good wife" in significant ways. Mary F. Scranton, the first American woman missionary, landed in Korea in 1885 and founded Ewha Haktang, the very first school for girls in 1886, and ever since that time American Protestant women missionaries (largely Methodists and Presbyterians) have had a significant impact on the lives ofKorean women, particularly in the field ofwomen's education.59 To be sure, mission schools represented part of a larger strategy to spread the Gos- pel; furthermore, education was regarded as "woman's work" and thus became a major focus for women missionaries, not only in Korea but elsewhere.60 Korean

10Hyaeweol Choi

reformers established girls' schools relatively slowly, despite their rhetoric about the significance of women's education, so Korea provided a particularly fertile area where the mission could have lasting success.61 Further, during the colonial era, the "Japanese government in Korea avowedly does not propose to provide much beyond the grammar grade alleging that the mentality of the Koreans is of such a low grade that the few exceptionally bright ones can secure their higher education in Tokyo."62 Because of the dearth of higher-level educational institu- tions, especially ones open to women, mission schools took the lead in educat- ing the next generation of women beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through the first halfof the twentieth century.63 As a result, at the turn of the twentieth century the vast majority of Korean women who had modern education up to the level ofmiddle school were linked with Christianity because they attended and taught at mission schools or got involved in Christian organi- zations, such as the YWCA.64 Chu Yosöp, a public intellectual during the colo- nial era, regarded the opportunity to receive a "modern education" as a criterion that distinguished "new women" (sin yösöng) from "old-fashioned women" (ku yösöng).65 According to his definition, the vast majority of "new women" had ties with Christian schools and societies. Yi Man'gyu, an educator, asserted in 1934 that "Christian-influenced women have near complete hegemony in the women's world" in Korea.66 In her discussion of the women's movement (puin undong) in Korea, Hwang Sindök, a graduate of Sungüi Yöhakkyo, a mission school in P'yöngyang, made a comment in 1933 that since the opening ofKorea in the late nineteenth century, "almost all women over thirty who were educated and had worked in society had been exposed to Christianity, even if it was only minor contact."67 In this way, Christian-educated women often took center stage in set- ting the agendas and activities for the women's movement in Korea. Given the prominence of Christian-educated women in modern Korean his-

tory, it is not surprising to find American women missionaries portrayed in Korean historiography as pioneers who ushered in new models of gender roles based on conceptions developed against the background of imported notions of Christian gender equality and Western modernity.68 However, the imagined role of Christianity and Western modernity in constructing a new gender ideology should be examined within the context of the prevailing gender norms in Ameri- can churches and foreign missionary organizations at the time, while keeping one key question in mind: what constituted modern womanhood in the minds of American women missionaries? One way to answer this key question is to examine the significance of the notion of "woman's work for woman," a promi- nent motto among women missionaries. "Woman's work for woman" identified a separate sphere for women missionaries within the foreign mission enterprise, one in which women were precluded from clerical rights and channeled into the care of women and children.69 This work assignment grew out of the prevailing gender ideology in the United States that privileged religious piety, domestic- ity, purity, and submissiveness.70 This gender ideology of domesticity went hand

"Wise Mother, Good Wife " 11

in hand with the nineteenth century's singular notion of civilization primarily informed by a worldview based in Christian and Enlightenment ethics.71 Women missionaries shared a sense of urgency to spread Christian civilization to the entire world to rescue "heathen" women and children.72 Especially in the coun- tries with a custom of keeping the genders separate, the role of women mis- sionaries became vital to the distribution of the Gospel to local women because male missionaries did not have permission to access them. In the case ofKorea, the culturally prescribed gender roles expressed in the Confucian norm of the "distinction between man and woman" (namnyö yubyôï), assigned women to the domestic arena and men to the public domain. This distinction manifested spa- tially in living arrangements—women stayed in inner chambers (anbang) and men in outer chambers (sarangbang).13 William Scranton, one of the early mis- sionaries in Korea, reported that "[tjhe seclusion of women in Korea has made this temporary separation in the places of worship necessary" and the mission work for Korean women was "in the hands of the ladies of the WFM [Woman's Foreign Missionary] Society."74 The creation of a "Christian home" became a central goal of "woman's work

for woman."75 Significantly influenced by leading evangelical scholars in the United States, the ideal Christian home valorized the role of the woman as the "moral arbiter" in nurturing children and fostering a loving conjugal relationship. From the vantage point ofmissionaries, the conversion of "heathen" women was of special importance. To ensure the production and reproduction of "Christian homes," the establishment ofthe Woman's Foreign Missionary Societies (WFMS) in various denominations from the 1860s spurred greater involvement by women and provided better educated women of the time with an outlet to discover their talents and to develop leadership skills. Especially for single women, who had been prevented from becoming missionaries earlier, the WFMS served as a means to legitimize their religious and professional ambitions. Women missionaries actively engaged in distributing and articulating the ideal of "domesticity" in their interaction with Korean women. Missionaries largely succeeded in their primary goal, as was testified by J. S. Ryang, a leading Korean Christian intellectual, who praised the role of women missionaries in bringing forth "true Christian homes" that "dignified the wife and raised the mother to a higher plane."76 The ways in which Confucian "womanly virtue," Meiji Japan's "good wife, wise

mother," and the American gender ideology of domesticity intersected with each other in Korea should be understood within the context of Japan's rising imperial force, Korea's struggle to modernize itself and regain national sovereignty, and the height ofWestern imperialism in political, economic, andmoral spheres. Rooted in different historical circumstances, these gender ideologies found both comparable and distinctive practices in each other's notion of ideal womanhood and ultimately contributed to what was to constitute ideal modern womanhood. In the next sec- tion, I delve into the ways in which the interactions among Korean, Japanese, and American gender ideologies in the contact zone challenged, reinforced, or appro-

12Hyaeweol Choi

priated old and new gender rules and discuss how the ideal of "wise mother and good wife" possessed both oppressive and liberating traits, depending on each woman's own perspective on "modern" womanhood.

MAKING MODERN DOMESTICITY

When American women missionaries first arrived in Korea, they criticized the "oppressive" nature of the Confucian gender rules imposed on Korean women. Korean women being confined to the inner chambers, the lack of formal educa- tional opportunities, and the practice in which individual women did not even receive names shocked the missionaries. They described a "heathen" woman- hood that rendered the woman "unworthy ofa name, a creature without rights or responsibilities, only a convenient adjunct to some man—his daughter, his wife, his mother."77 Women missionaries certainly felt a lot more liberated in com- parison. After all, they were educated, had freedom to work in public, and trav- eled overseas. However, despite being proud of this "liberated" status, women missionaries largely embraced the idea of having a separate "woman's work for woman" sphere centered on domesticity with particular emphasis on religious piety. This orientation toward "domestic feminism," which meant "women using domestic credentials to enhance their position in the family or in the society,"78 provided a link with Korean reformers, who, although keenly interested in the enlightenment ofKorean women to the benefit ofthe nation, continued to envision a "new" role for women that remained limited to the domestic sphere and a wom- an's capacity as a wife and mother. The overall Japanese colonial policy on girls' education centering on domesticity and obedience also shared common ground with the missions. Ultimately, missionary women's advocacy of the "divine art ofhome-making"79 based on modern knowledge, the Korean reformers' vision of the modern ideal Korean woman, and the Japanese authorities' policies designed to produce obedient female imperial subjects converged to construct a gender ideology that placed a heavy emphasis on domesticity for women.80 The shared emphasis on the domestic proved to be a strategic advantage for the

Korea mission. In the beginning of the mission in the late nineteenth century, the Korean public feared that American women missionaries and their educational work would turn Korean girls into "American ladies" who would defy Korean customs and be uninterested in learning domestic skills. In response to this anxi- ety, the missionaries publicly emphasized the elements of domesticity in their curriculum for Korean girls. Emily Haynes, a Methodist missionary, reported in 1910: "Having heard the fear expressed on more than one occasion that if the girls were educated they would not learn to sew, cook, and do other household tasks, we decided to put it to the test. Accordingly on the last halfday ofthe winter term we had an exhibit of the girls' sewing. . . . Not a hint have we heard since that the girls would not know how to sew."81 In addition, missionaries stressed that they

" Wise Mother, Good Wife " 13

came to Korea to help produce "better Koreans" with "home-grown Christian characters."82 Annie Baird, a Presbyterian missionary, precisely expressed this caution. She wrote: "We want a system which will train young women and yet leave them indigenous, their thoughts and affections deep in Mother Korea, who can reach out on all sides and draw to themselves other girls and young women in whom they can instill their own home-grown Christian characters, and to whom they can impart the training they have themselves received."83 The focus on domesticity and indigenous Korean character is best manifested

in the curriculum of mission schools that put particular emphasis on domestic science as a key subject, in addition to the Bible and Christian teachings. Velma Snook (in Korea 1900-1936), the principal of Pyeng Yang Academy for Young Women (P'yöngyang Sung'üi Yöhakkyo), proudly reported that "Amid many discouragements and trials our hearts are made glad when we hear that Kore- ans say 'When you want a good cook for a wife go to the Women's Academy in Pyeng Yang,' and that the "graduates of the Kindergarten Training Dep't are in great demand both as teachers and wives."84 The establishment of the so-called Self Help Department at mission schools, which was originally designed as a work-study program to help poor students pay tuition by selling sewing and embroidery, also served as a platform for displaying the domesticity and femi- ninity of their students to the public through regular exhibitions of the students' needlework. The school invited patrons and the general public to see that girl students "were learning to use their hands as well as their heads."85 In addition to domestic skills, students received "lessons in neatness and cleanliness and obedience," and "their going and coming receiving of visitors and such things [at the dormitory] have been given closer oversight."86 The displays of domesticity and strict discipline not only reassured a skeptical public but also provided an important tool in recruiting future students. Missionary teachers proudly noted that "[w]e have already heard of some of the women who went home [after view- ing the exhibit] saying that they had thought that girls who went to school did not know how to sew, but they had found out that they could do even better than others so they were going to send their daughters to us."87 In 1940, a half century after the introduction ofChristianity into Korea, a Methodist missionary teacher, Ellasue Wagner (in Korea 1904-1940), claimed that "the ideal woman of Korea to-day is, as it should be, the ideal wife and mother. We believe that there is no higher destiny than this. We remember the old saying that 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.' In Korea today, however, there is a new realization of the fact that the woman who wields this influence needs the best of education and training. We have heard it said over and over lately that the best families now demand an educated daughter-in-law."88 In this way, by consistently extolling the model of good wife and wise mother,

the mission schools offered a model of female education that went hand in hand with Korean reformers' emphasis on the sacred role of mother as the core of a good female education.89 Yi Kwangsu, a novelist and reformer, asserted that

14Hyaeweol Choi

"[t]he only duty that women have to humankind, to the nation and to society is to become good mothers and raise good children, and only women can do this. If a nation wants to produce good citizens, it first has to cultivate good mothers. Especially in a case like Korea, where the population urgently needs to reform its national character, there is a particular need for many good mothers."90 A promi- nent Christian woman intellectual, Hwang Sindök, echoed Yi's call to center women's education on motherhood when she envisioned a new model ofa mother in colonial Korea. She wrote that Korea is "waiting for strong-willed mothers ... to raise children who could transform Korea from its miserable condition to the glorious future."91 In this way, "good mother," a model appropriate for the reconstruction of the nation, deeply resonated with the missionary emphasis on the role ofmother as the moral arbiter in creating a "Christian home" that would raise "better Koreans." The connection between domesticity and modern education put focus on sci-

entific homemaking and childrearing. The "modern" version of the wise mother and good wife should know how to raise children and manage the home scien- tifically. Since the opening of the nation in the late nineteenth century, hygiene, nutrition, and scientific childrearing had become hallmarks ofmodernity and a necessary step in Korea's path toward becoming an advanced civilization. The emerging women's magazines, such as Kajöng chapchi and Chasön puinhoe chapchi, provided a variety of information ranging from the prevention of dis- eases and hygienic ways of preserving food to the handling of children.92 In the 1920s and 1930s, women's magazines and other popular publications poured out detailed information about scientific homemaking and child rearing, reinforcing the new mandate assigned to women requiring them to raise healthy children to be the future of the modern nation-state.93 Hwang Sindök urged Korean women to carefully examine their children. She wrote, "a mother who does not know her son's physical constitution, personality, taste, goals of life is no different from a wet nurse. She must know what kind of exercise is good for his body, what kind of toys are suitable for his taste and what pedagogical methods would maximize his ability to learn."94 Like Hwang Sindök, an emerging group of experts armed with modern scientific knowledge played a crucial role in shaping the new mod- ern family and the role ofwomen within the family. Some of these experts received training overseas, largely in Japan.95 Mis-

sion schools regularly helped their graduates pursue further study at mission- run schools in Japan. For example, the P'yöngyang Union Academy for Women regularly sent its graduates to Shimonoseki Girls' School for further education.96 Missionary teachers at Chöngsin Girls School, the flagship girls' school for the Presbyterian Church, sent promising graduates to Tokyo Women's College.97 The Methodist flagship school, Ewha, identified future Korean leaders among its students and helped them continue their education at Kwassui Women's Profes- sional School.98 Other Japanese schools, such as Döshisha Women's Professional School, Kobe Academy and College, and Hiroshima Women's Academy also

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"15

hosted Korean students from the mission schools.99 This connection between mission schools in Korea and Japan also became a fruitful venue for recruiting teachers from Japan to work in Korea.100 While Japan hosted the large majority ofKorean students studying abroad, some

select Korean students studied in the United States. A letter by Gordon Holdcroft, a Presbyterian missionary, described the typical trajectory for female students cho- sen to study overseas at the time. He noted, "Miss Pak [Grace Pak] is a graduate of our Seoul Girls' School [Chöngsin Girls' School] and then had a year in Japan, after which she went to Ewha College and so she will probably be able to enter the Junior Year at Dubuque."101 Upon returning from studying in the United States, Grace Pak joined the faculty at Ewha and taught English and the Bible.102 The edu- cational path ofKimHwallan (aka Helen Kim), a prominent protégé of the mission- ary teachers, illustrated the role of mission schools in facilitating and sponsoring further education of their graduates in the United States. Kim attended Methodist mission schools: Yönghwa Primary School, Ewha Girls' School, and Ewha Col- lege. After graduating from Ewha, Kim studied at Ohio Wesleyan University, the alma mater of many of the Methodist women missionaries in Korea, including Lulu Frey, Mary Hillman, and Jessie Marker,103 and received a BA degree from that institution in 1924. She then pursued graduate work, getting an MA degree in 1925 from Boston University and a PhD degree in 1931 from Columbia University.104 Groomed to be the leader of Ewha by the missionary teachers, she became the first Korean president of Ewha College in 1939. Like Kim, the majority ofwomen who received education abroad worked at girls' schools, typically at their alma maters, conveying a new ideal for Korean women that was informed by the knowl- edge they had acquired during their study in Japan or the United States. What is particularly noteworthy is that Kim Punok, one of the first faculty members to teach in the newly established Department of Home Economics at Ewha Col- lege in 1929, received her higher education degree from Oregon State University.105 Shortly after Kim's arrival on the faculty, the curriculum showed a new emphasis on scientific domesticity. According to the 1930 catalogue, the department offered hygiene, home nursing, interior design, homemanagement, and child rearing.106 No doubt while at Oregon State University, Kim Punok came under the influence of Ava Milam, a faculty member who, according to Pak Sönmi, can be credited with helping establish and develop the field of home economics in East Asia, having helped institute a department of home economics at North China Union College and trained many East Asian women leaders. 107 The emergence of"home econom- ics" as a scholarly discipline meant the systematic distribution of new, scientific ways of home management alongside modern aesthetics. In addition, the modern outlook also included a denouncement of "supersti-

tions." Western pundits commenting on "Eastern civilization" regarded the "igno- rance and superstition of the women" to be "the one insurmountable obstacle to the improvement of society in those countries."108 With the Eurocentric notion of"reli- gion" that prevailed in late nineteenth-century Korea, the link between women and

16Hyaeweol Choi

superstition came to bear connotations ofbackwardness and inferiority, problems to overcome.109 Of traditional religious beliefs and practices, shamanism symbolized the quintessential example of superstition. Numerous missionary articles testified to the prevalent phenomenon of"demon possession" and shaman rituals performed to drive evil spirits away. Missionaries denounced shamanism, and portrayed sha- mans as being evil, greedy, manipulative, and the "obedient servant of Satan."110 Annie Baird offered a vivid portrait of a "heathen" woman in a fictionalized story, entitled Daybreak in Korea. In the story, a female protagonist resorts to the "magi- cal power" of a greedy shaman when her baby daughter contracts small pox, and ultimately the daughter dies.111 Another missionary, Ellasue Wagner, deplored the horror that ignorance and superstition brought to children. She noted:

Where ignorance and superstition prevail the burden is always heaviest on the help- less children. The fact that mother and father are devoted to their children and would give their very lives for them does not make any less dangerous the unsanitary condi- tions of the home, nor can that devotion mitigate their disobedience to every law of hygiene and common sense. ... To whom can the mother go for help when the baby is sick? Probably, unless she is a Christian, she will think first of the sorceress, the mudang, for she has been taught all her life that sickness is the work of evil spirits and these must be driven out before there can be any relief."2

Making the implicit contrast between an educated Christian woman and an ignorant "pagan" woman, Wagner suggested that motherly devotion and love were no longer sufficient for good child rearing. A mother had to be educated, equipped with scientific knowledge for child rearing, and removed from the old practices based on the recommendations of shamans. In their attempt to encour- age Korean women to use Christian child rearing techniques, women mission- aries offered formal and informal lessons about the "care of children" at local churches.113 Kim Sökcha, managing director of Chasönpuinhoe chapchi, deplored the tendency of women who relied heavily on the power of ghosts for luck and wasted their fortune on visiting shamans. She urged women to relinquish this "evil practice" (p'yedan) in favor of joining civilized forces."4 In the words of Bible woman Song Myöngsa, conversion to Christianity meant her becoming "a born-again new person" breaking away from a life drenched in superstition.115 With the modest increase in the number of educated women in Korea, women themselves began to identify superstition as a marker of backwardness, and it became an important criterion for distinguishing the educated modern wife and mother from the uneducated old-fashioned woman.

CHERISHED AND REBUKED IDEOLOGY OF DOMESTICITY

It is important to note that the meaning of the modern form of domesticity has been neither singular nor unchallenged. Women often found strategic utility in

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"17

complying with the dominant gender ideology through which they managed to appropriate power and authority within the patriarchal family structure. Nancy Cott argues that American women cherished and strengthened the ideology of domesticity out of their own self-interest because the separate "woman's sphere opened to women (reserved for them) the avenues ofdomestic influence, religious morality, and child nurture."116 American women missionaries—both single and married—and their interaction with Korean women precisely reflected the com- plex nature of this ideology ofdomesticity. In line with the global trend toward the "feminization of the mission force" that started in the late nineteenth century,117 women missionaries constituted the majority of personnel in the Korea mission field. In 1901, for example, women comprised 56.5 percent of the mission force in Korea. Among the women missionaries, 52 percent had not married and held leadership positions in "woman's work for woman."118 The fact that single women held these leadership roles contradicted the idealized gender image common in America at the turn of the twentieth century; nonetheless, unmarried women became a vital component in the mission's plan to spread Christianity, and thus these women received opportunities to actively participate in the foreign mission enterprise. As Susan Thome notes, "part of the transformative power of the mis- sionary project was its sanctioning of transgressive behavior as religious excep- tions to gender rules.""9 These unmarried women became powerful role models for young Korean

women to emulate. Korean women encountered teachers in mission schools, doc- tors in hospitals, and social workers in city centers.120 Indeed, some of the most prominent Christian "new women" in Korea remained unmarried, two prominent examples being Kim Hwallan, who was described earlier, and KimMaria, whose commitment to national independence was so inspirational to the general public that she came to be called Korea's "Joan of Arc."121 Many of these women later attested that the pressures of Korean society made it difficult to remain single, but their work in education or national independence movements helped to ratify their unusual status and even enabled them to pave the way into new territory for women. It could be argued that, while these women defied the prevailing concep- tion of the ideal Korean woman by remaining unmarried, they were accepted because they devoted their lives and careers to the fulfillment of the nationalist mandate ofmodernization and political independence. Although Kim Hwallan's history of collaboration with the Japanese authorities during World War II made her a controversial figure,122 her significance as a leading educator of women has never been questioned, and her dedication to her career as an educator led Kim to declare "marriage is not necessarily an absolute thing to do if the woman has a will to pursue an important task."123 Just as the global mission to Christianize the world justified the work of single women missionaries, the public not only tolerated the work of unmarried Korean women professionals but also, to some extent, glorified their presumed contributions to the nation and future genera- tions of educated women.

18Hyaeweol Choi

While the professional example provided by unmarried women missionaries was noteworthy, the married women missionaries were no less important role models in the performance of their roles as wives and mothers. In her discussion of the role of missionary wives, Annie Baird presented the dual aspect of the woman's domain. On one hand, Baird strongly believed in the division of gender roles, and from her perspective, no one should try to blur the gender boundaries. On the other hand, she also believed in the power ofwomen. She wrote, a "good wife ought to influence a good husband and a good husband ought to be neither afraid nor ashamed to be influenced by a good wife; and by the use of this influ- ence there are some ways, I am convinced, by which we may prove that we not only do not impede but do actually accelerate the promotion of the missionary enterprise."124 To Baird, a woman's role as helpmate did not erode her power or influence. To the contrary, she believed that a woman advocating the evangelical mission from her own position in the domestic sphere as a good wife and mother was indispensable. The idea that the power ofwomen resided primarily within the domestic arena

had significant appeal to Korean converts. Mattie Noble (in Korea 1892-1934), a Methodist missionary wife, described how the missionary home and family had become a model for Koreans in bringing about an enhanced role and status for wife and mother. She wrote:

They [Korean students] have watched us in the training of our children and have seen our companionship with them. Different ones have told me how wonderful it appeared to them to see a mother in her home, educated and capable, able to enter into the fuller life experiences with her husband, and to be a real companion, men- tally and physically, with her children, even with the grown-up ones. ... I would like to tell of the scores of things material that have been improved in and around the homes of this land, of which a great deal has been due to the precept and example of the members of the missionary home—father, mother and children, (missionaries' children have a great part also in this out-going influence) ... let me just say, that love through Christ gradually but surely brings cleanliness, purity and beauty. . . . The modern Korean woman, in many cases, is no longer the subservient one but the co-serving one; she no longer remains aside while her master, (the husband), and her sons eat; she no longer walks behind her husband with downcast eyes and covered by a cloak thrown over her head and held closely so as to nearly cover her face and form; no longer does she have to give to the mother-in-law complete authority in the raising of her child. . . . She is learning, and she sees the bearing out of this truth in concrete, tangible form in the missionary home, by observing the wife and mother— her freedom, her love, her authority . . . this missionary mother has met people who have told her how, in the raising of the children, they have taken pattern after some methods they had seen used in the raising of children in the missionary home.125

To be sure, Mattie Noble attributed the enhanced role and status ofwomen to Christian belief and practice. Indeed, the ideal "Christian home" drew Korean women to the new religion. Kim Sedùi, one of the early converts and a well-

"Wise Mother, Good Wife " 19

known Bible woman in the P'yöngyang area, decided to join because the church members told her that if she became a Christian, "her family would be in peace, her husband would give up womanizing and her relationship with her husband would be harmonious."126 The missionary home served as a new model, inspiring the new Korean woman to be educated, pious, resourceful, and morally upright. She would have "her freedom, her love, her authority" in an idealized family in which she would be a true companion to her husband, would have control over the household free from the in-laws' intervention, and would practice clean, pure, and beautiful housekeeping. This upgraded power of women within the modern Korean family consti-

tuted the core of the discourse on "wise mother and good wife" in the 1920s and 1930s.127 In her study of "new women" in 1920s and 1930s Korea, Kim Sujin cogently argues that contrary to a common assumption that views "new woman" as the polar opposite of "wise mother and good wife," the discourse of "wise mother and good wife" constituted a crucial part of the discourse on "new woman."128 She further suggests that from the late 1920s and the early 1930s, there occurred a major shift in emphasis from "wise mother" to "good wife." The notion of "chubu" (house mistress) emerged as "a complex system of stan- dard knowledge to be mastered to secure the role of good wife" in new family (sweet home).129 In a similar vein, Chön Migyöng distinguishes the role of "wise mother," a socially expected virtue, from that of "good wife," a virtue desired by new women who aspired to have modern love and equal companionship.130 In an example of "Camera Art," Tonga Ubo published a photograph of a nest with two birds, taken in the city of Phoenix. The title of the photograph is "süwit'ü hom (tallanhan kajöng)" (sweet home—happy and harmonious family), signi- fying the new modern family.131 The media eagerly presented examples of the "sweet home" by showcasing celebrities and well-known intellectuals, such as Yi Kwangsu and Kim Wönju. The contemporary domestic sphere based on modern love, referred to as the "new family" (sin kajöng) or "sweet home," became an integral part of the imagery of new womanhood. Indeed, this new family pro- vided an expedient platform from which the "new woman" could safely carve out a noble space for her own empowerment and individual subjectivity. However, when the family as the fundamental social unit came under threat,

the categories of "new woman" and "wise mother and good wife" appeared to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Two sensational divorces among the group of prominent new women illustrate how flimsy and contingent the strategic linkage between "new woman" and "wise mother and good wife" was. Na Hyesök, the first woman painter trained in Western art, while a student in Japan, made a criti- cal comment on the notion of "wise mother and good wife" in a 1914 essay on the "Isangjôk puin" (Ideal woman).

We need to acquire all the strength we can muster and elevate our consciousness daily. By doing so, we can progress toward the best ideal. We cannot say that a

20Hyaeweol Choi

woman has achieved an ideal if she is a moral woman by virtue of habit alone or by merely fulfilling her secular duties. I believe that she has to go one step further and prepare herself to fulfill future ideals. I also believe that it is not wise only to pursue the customary ideal of "good wife, wise mother" \yangch 'ö hyönmo]. It seems to me that that ideal is one of the favorite marketing strategies that teachers have used. The man is both husband and father; however, I have never heard of any curriculum that emphasizes "good husband, wise father" [yangbu hyônbu]. It is only women whose conduct as good spouses and wise parents is reinforced through our education, and this makes women into mere appendages of men. Such education does not develop our minds. In addition, the idea ofwarm and compliant womanhood, which has been a necessary point of the propaganda to turn women into slaves, cannot be an ideal for women.132

Na's interpretation of "good wife and wise mother" pointed to a patriarchal mechanism that continued to subjugate women to slavish bondage under men. After her highly publicized divorce in 1930 prompted by her extramarital affair, Na made an even bolder and more controversial comment on chastity, a thorny topic that often drew heated debate in the print media. She argued: "Chastity is neither morality nor law. It is only a taste. Just as we eat rice when we want to eat rice [pap], and we eat rice cake [ttôk] when we want to eat rice cake, chastity depends on our will and usage. We should not be constrained___ In order to keep chastity, we often suppress our natural laughter, our irresistible passion and our point of view. How ironic is that? Therefore, our liberation begins with our lib- eration from the requirement of chastity."133 Na's rejection of the "requirements of chastity" directly affronted the order of the patrilineal Confucian society that valorized women's purity and fidelity.134 In this context society portrayed Na as uncontrollable and unconstrained, subject to the whims ofher passions, while her husband, the lawyer, represented the safety of rules and convention. To be sure the divorce greatly shook Na, but she publicly announced in her essay "Confes- sion about My Divorce" that she was "going to willingly take all the ridicule and criticism from people and go on silently with the cross on my back. I am determined to continue my journey for renewal, listening to the gentle whis- per of life coming from profound agony."135 After the divorce, she continued to pen her fundamental challenges to the conventional male-centered moral codes and lifestyles.136 Na's continuing public discourse received both voyeuristic and unsympathetic responses from the public. One harsh critic even suggested that Na suffered from a madness that drove her to exhibitionism as she talked openly about her intimate private life and divorce in the print media. The same critic also argued that Na's justification of her free love lifestyle by using examples of Western practices was a mere delusion.137 The other highly publicized divorce was that of the prominent Christian

woman intellectual, Pak Indök (aka Induk Pahk). The case became a national sensation and ignited heated debate on the tensions between selfhood and moth- erhood. Upon returning from her study in the United States, Pak sought to end

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"21

her unhappy marriage and placed the blame for the failure of the marriage on her husband for his infidelities. She was the "first woman to divorce her husband for infidelity under new laws introduced by the colonial authorities."138 In her memoir, she wrote, "unless ills were cured they would go on hurting. I would rather have an arm amputated and live than to die because it was diseased. . . . Being bound by age-old concepts and traditions was the worst burden of all. I had learned that the most precious thing in the world is freedom to do what one believes is right and now I must choose between the Korean custom of remain- ing with my husband 'no matter what,' or starting out on an independent way of life."139 Keenly aware of the scorn and notoriety her divorce would surely bring, Pak nonetheless ended her marriage. Calling Pak "Korea's Nora Who Left the Doll's House," the media severely criticized her for her "selfish and irresponsi- ble" decision and further condemned Pak's rationale that the divorce was her way of sacrificing herself for the younger generation of women, providing a model for the future rather than remaining in a marriage where she would have to be subservient.140 Here the invocation of the figure of "Nora" from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House was significant. Since a translation of the play first appeared in Maeil sinbo in 1921,141 the character of Nora fascinated and inspired the new class of educated women and men in Korea and elsewhere. One literary critic asserted that Nora was not only a symbol of "new romance" (sinyönae) or "indi- vidualism" (kaeinjuüi) but an icon of"self-awakening" (chagak).'42 Indeed, in her 1921 poem, "A Doll's House" (Inhyöng üi chip), nine years prior to her divorce, Na Hyesök expressed her desire and determination not to live as a doll for her father and husband but to live as a human being with full self-consciousness.143 The self-awareness as individuals on the part of these women and their desire to pursue "freedom to do what one believes is right" caused great anxiety and public criticism.144 A growing fear of the breakdown of the family transpired in this public

denunciation, and the public suspected educated "new women" to be the cause of this deterioration of the family in the name of their own independence and self-realization. The divorces and love affairs of prominent women intellectuals alerted the public to this unexpected outcome of women's education. Theodore Jun Yoo notes that while the new class of educated women was expected to serve as "symbols of modernity, civilization, and nationalism," they were "undermin- ing the stability of the family, compromising sexual morality, and denigrating national character."145 Within this context, the public effectively positioned the idealized "good wife and wise mother" as the antithesis of liberal womanhood of the West, which was understood to produce selfish, irresponsible, and extravagant women. In particular, various scandals involving high-profile women intellectuals who had had significant exposure to liberal ideas through their overseas education in the West and Japan functioned as powerful cautionary tales in warning of the danger of the modern. Christine Marran argues in her book Poison Woman: Fig- uring Female Transgression in Modern Japanese Culture that the transgressive

22Hyaeweol Choi

figure of the "undesirable woman" functions to reinforce what is considered ideal and desirous.146 The desire of the few early Korean feminists to pursue selfhood as a sacred domain sharply contrasted the feminine virtue of"good wife and wise mother" in the modern family that the majority of "new women" endorsed as a safe haven.147 While respected as pioneer women in their own fields, these women frequently became the objects of caricature and derision, especially when their extramarital love affairs or divorces came into public view. The majority of edu- cated Christian women adapted to the new circumstances with flexible strategies to accommodate the still male-centered gender norms. However, some Christian women, like Na and Pak, demanded and lived with drastic transformations of gender practices in pursuit of selfhood and emancipation.

CONCLUSION

The origin and evolution of the modern gender ideology of "wise mother and good wife" demonstrates the complex intersections of patriarchy, colonialism, nationalism, and Western modernity in which women conformed to, resisted, or appropriated the existing male-dominant structures. Various social agents strategically promoted this gender ideology. Korean nationalists actively uti- lized the ideology for the revitalization of the nation, emphasizing the sacred role of educated mothers in the modern scientific training of children as future citizens and the crucial duty of educated wives in assisting their husbands. This ideology served as a central aspect of Japan's gender policy to discipline colo- nial subjects to be obedient and efficient. The American missionaries' primary goal to spread the Gospel went hand in hand with its emphasis on the vital role of the pious mother and wife as a moral guide in the Christian family. How- ever, both Korean women reformers, including "new women," and American women missionaries strategically employed this domestic gender ideology as a platform to empower women within a certain circumscribed domain. While the centrality of domesticity and "woman's work for woman" continued to confine women's domain to the private and the informal, it ironically worked to expand the scope of life and work for women toward the public and even the global sphere. Those who benefited from this education centered in domesticity paved the way to new domains for career women, especially in the fields of teaching and nursing, and empowered modern housewives (chubu). However, these lim- ited openings within the overall patriarchal system did not provide sufficient means to those few pioneering new women who explored and desired selfhood away from the confining role of woman as primarily mother and wife. These women questioned and challenged the very root of patrilineal social arrange- ments by engaging in discourses on chastity, marriage, divorce, and mother- hood. It is no surprise, then, to witness relentless criticism and antagonism against these pioneering women who critiqued and resisted the continuing

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"23

undercurrent of patriarchy. In a significant way, the self-righteous condemna- tion of these "new women" represented nothing more than the expression of a collective fear about the subversion of the basis of patriarchy and a deliberate effort to tame and discipline women. It is important to note that even those new women who publicly resisted the

gender-specific, discriminatory roles in their families and society did not neces- sarily deny the value of "wise mother and good wife." Motherhood in particular was often extolled as a glorious fulfillment for women. Kim Wönju, the founder of the first feminist magazine, Sinyoja, praised motherhood (mosong) as the most beautiful and grand thing women can do.148 The Japanese colonial regime com- bined with exposure to Christian domesticity had indeed produced a particular version of the "wise mother and good wife" ideal in these pioneering women. However, what the early feminists primarily refuted was the singular, confining role of women that suppressed intellectual, artistic, and sensual desires. Many of them also consciously distanced themselves from the caricature of the new woman who "wore a fox hair shawl and strong perfume,"149 or the "contempo- rary woman" (hyöndaeyöja) 15° whose vanity, carelessness, and conspicuous con- sumption often drew public criticism in the print media. Nonetheless, the largely defamed personal lives among some of the new women generated heated debates often led by male intellectuals. The public debates criticizing the scandalous lives of "new women," while intended as a way to tame and discipline them, ironically served as a platform for creating significant cleavage in the solid building-blocks of patriarchy by publicly addressing the unconventional life choices made by these women; choices that undermined male-centered social arrangements. In this sense, the promotion and critique of the modern gender ideology of "wise mother and good wife" in the pages of the male-dominant print media and in the life experiences of new women demonstrated the complex formation of a new ideal womanhood that constantly interplayed with the resilient, ever-changing patriarchy that continues to evolve and accommodate socioeconomic and cul- tural changes.

NOTES

I would like to acknowledge the valuable suggestions of the editors and external review- ers, which helped me to better articulate my thesis. Yi Sugin shared her insights and some of the key literature for the revision of this article. I presented portions of this article at the annual meeting of the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies and the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2008. I greatly benefitted from comments from the panelists and members of the audience. I would especially like to acknowledge helpful suggestions from Jan Bardsley, Sujin Kim, Laurel Rodd, Chong Bum Kim, Kwok Pui-Lan, and Namsoon Kang. AU translations ofKorean texts are mine unless otherwise noted.

1. Chosön Ubo, August 7, 2007. Won refers to the basic unit in Korean currency.

24Hyaeweol Choi

2.Yi Söngmi, "Sin Saimdang: The Foremost Woman Painter of the Chosön Dynasty," in Creative Women ofKorea: The Fifteenth through the Twentieth Centuries, ed. Young-Key Kim-Renaud (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 58-77. 3.Yi, "Sin Saimdang," 59; Yung-Chung Kim, Women ofKorea: A History from

Ancient Times to 1945 (Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 1979) 158; Kim Sujin, "Chönt'ong üi ch'angan kwa yösöng üi kungminhwa: Sin Saimdang ül chungsim uro" [The invention of tradition and the nationalization of women with a focus on Sin Saim- dang], Sahoe wayöksa 80 (2008): 215-255. 4.OhmyNews, October 15, 2007. 5.Choson Ubo, October 15, 2008; OhmyNews, February 25, 2009; for the design of

the new bill, see http://www.bok.or.kr/broadcast.action?menuNaviId=25 (date accessed June 23, 2009). 6.Yi Sugin, "Sin Saimdang tamnon üi kyebohak (1) kündae ijön" [The genealogy of

the discourse on Sin Saimdang in pre-modern Korea], Chindan hakpo 106 (2008): 1-31. 7.Kim, "Chönt'ong üi ch'angan kwa yösöng üi kungminhwa," 215-255. 8.Judith M. Bennett, "Feminism and History," Gender & History 1, no. 3 (Autumn

1989): 259. See the book forum in the Journal ofWomen's History 20, no. 2 (2008) that focuses on Judith Bennett's recent book, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge ofFeminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 9.These studies pay special attention to a shift in focus from the emphasis on

"filial piety" Qiyo) in the traditional Confucian patriarchal family, to respect for indi- viduality and equal companionship between husband and wife in the modern nuclear family. See Kawamoto Aya, "Han'guk kwa Ilbon üi hyönmo yangch'ö sasang" [Ideology of wise mother and good wife in Korea and Japan], in Mosöng üi tamnon kwa hyônsil, Sim Yönghüi et al. (Söul: Nanam Ch'ulp'an, 1999), 221-244; Hong Yanghüi, "liehe sigi Chosön üi yösöng kyoyuk: hyönmo yangch'ö kyoyuk ül chungsim uro [Korean women's education during the Japanese colonial era: with a focus on education for wise mother and good wife], Han'gukhak nonjip 35 (2001): 219-257. For an in-depth analysis of the discourse on filiality in Chosön, see JaHyun Kim Haboush, "Filial Emotions and Filial Values: Changing Patterns in the Discourse ofFiliality in Late Chosön Korea," Harvard Journal ofAsiatic Studies 55, no. 1 (June 1995): 129-177. 10.In 1935, about 65.4 percent high school girls attended mission schools, and 60

percent of those who enrolled in professional schools for women attended mission-run institutes. Pak Sönmi, Kündaeyösöng cheguk ül koch o Chosön uro hoeyuhada [Modern women return to Korea via empire] (Söul: Ch'angbi, 2007), 53. 11.Kim Sujin notes that, although the order changed in the literal translation from

Japanese ryôsai kenbo (good wife and wise mother) to Korean hyönmo yangch'ö (wise mother and good wife), it does not mean that Koreans gave greater emphasis to mother- hood. In Korea hyönmo yangch'ö (wise mother and good wife) and yangch'ö hyönmo (good wife and wise mother) were used interchangeably. See Kim Sujin, "1920-30-yöndae sin yösöng tamnon kwa sangjing üi kusöng" [Excess of the modern: three archetypes of the new woman and colonial identity in Korea, 1920s to 1930s] (Paksa hagwi nonmun, Söul Taehakkyo, 2005), 344. 12.In this book, "Victorian" refers to American Victorian culture and society. See

Thomas Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"25

13.Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6. 14.Hyaeweol Choi, "Christian Modernity in Missionary Discourse from Korea,

1905-1910," East Asian History 29 (June 2005): 39-68. 15.Line Nyhagen Predelli and Jon Miller, "Piety and Patriarchy: Contested Gender

Regimes in Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Missions," in Gendered Missions: Women and Men in Missionary Discourse and Practice, eds., Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy C. Lutkehaus (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1999), 67-112. 16.The period between 1876 and 1910 is broadly known as the "enlightenment

period" (kaehwagi). In his analysis of modern political thought, Korean historian Pak Ch'ansüng terms the particular period after Korea became a Japanese Protectorate, 1905- 1910, as the "self-strengthening movement era" (chagang undonggi) to capture the wide variety of social movements that came about during that time. Pak Ch'ansüng, Han'guk kündae chöngch ? sasangsa yön'gu [A study of the history ofmodern political thought in Korea] (Söul: Yöksa Pip'yongsa, 1993). See also Peter Lee, ed., Sourcebook ofKorean Civilization, vol. 2, From the Seventeenth Century to the Modern Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 337-360. 17.Key-Hiuk Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order: Korea, Japan,

and the Chinese Empire, 1860-1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Vipan Chandra, Imperialism, Resistance, andReform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Center for Korean Studies, 1988); Andre Schmid, Korea between Empires 1895-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 18.Tongnip sinmun, September 29, 1896; May 31, 1899. See also Yu Kilchun, Söyu

kyönmun (Observations of my travels to the West), trans. Hö Kyöngjin (Söul: Hanyang Ch'ulp'an, 1995). 19.Yu, Söyu kyönmun, 350. It is important to note that Yu's writing about gender

relations in Western countries is not so much an advocacy as a report based on his obser- vations. He wrote that "The manners with which westerners treat their women are quite different from those in Korea. I am not sure what preferences readers might have, but I am writing about the subject only based on what I saw and will reserve my judgment whether those western manners are good or bad." Ibid., 350. 20.Ibid, 326-327; 349-353. 21.Tongnip sinmun, April 21, 1896; September 5, 1896; May 18, 1897; May 31, 1899;

Cheguk sinmun, January 11, 1898; Taehan maeilsinbo, July 2, 1907. Representative wom- en's magazines at the turn of the twentieth century include Kajöng chapchi (1906-1908), YoJa chinam (1908), and Chasön puinhoe chapchi (1908). For the role of sin sosöl in the formation of new modern subjectivities, see Susie Jie Young Kim, "The Ambivalence of 'Modernity': Articulation ofNew Subjectivities in Turn of the Century Korea" (PhD dis- sertation, University of California Los Angeles, 2002). 22.The label sin sosöl first appeared in Taehan maeil sinbo (February 1 , 1906) in the

advertisement ofYi Injik's fiction, Hyöl üi nu. For an excellent analysis ofYi's fiction and its gender discourse, see Yoon Sun Yang, "Nation in the Backyard: Yi Injik and the Rise ofKorean New Fiction (1906-1913)" (PhD dissertation, University ofChicago, 2009). 23.It should be noted that not all sin sosöl have the theme of enlightenment and

modernity. Though expected to play a key role in educating the public, the sin sosöl also

26Hyaeweol Choi

drew criticism because it failed to focus on nationalist-bent agendas and instead explored private, individual, and lascivious emotions. Yi Injik's Kwi üi song was singled out as an example of bad literature. Taehan maeil sinbo, March 14, 1909. 24.Theodore Jun Yoo, The Politics ofGender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor,

and Health, 1910-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Narratives ofNation Building in Korea: A Genealogy ofPatriotism (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2003); Yung-Hee Kim, "Under the Mandate ofNationalism: Development of Feminist Enterprises in Modern Korea, 1860-1910," Journal ofWomen's History 7, no. 4 (1995): 120-136. "Woman" serving as a criterion in the discourse of "civilization and enlightenment" can be found elsewhere. SeeWang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlighten- ment: Oral and Textual Histories (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1999), 35-66. 25.Editorial, Sinhak wölbo 4.7 (July 1904); "Pubugan chikpun" [Duties and respon-

sibilities of husbands and wives], Kürisüdo sinmun, January 10, 1901. 26.Taehan Ubo, May 4, 1905, quoted in Chöng Kyöngsuk, Taehan cheguk malgi

yösöng undong üi sönggyök yön'gu [Characteristics of the women's movements in the late Taehan Empire] (Paksa hagwi nonmun, Ihwa Yöja Taehakkyo, 1989), 196, emphasis added; Han'guk yösöng yön'guso yösöngsa yön'gusil, ed. Uriyösöng üiyöksa [Our wom- en's history] (Söul: Ch'öngnyönsa, 1999), 264. The exact equivalent of hyönmo yangch'ö, which instructed women how to live and behave, cannot be found in traditional Confu- cian texts. See Hong, "Ilche sigi Chosön üi yösöng kyoyuk," 234. 27.Kim, Women ofKorea, 225; Pak, Kündae yösöng, 192-193. 28.Marina Deuchler, "Propagating Female Virtues in Chosön Korea," in Women and

Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, eds. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2003), 142- 69. See also Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation ofKorea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). 29.Chöng, Taehan cheguk malgi yösöng undong üi sönggyökyön'gu, 197. 30.For the contribution of American missionaries to women's education in Korea,

see Hyaeweol Choi, "Women's Work for 'Heathen Sisters': American Women Missionar- ies and Their Educational Work in Korea," Acta Koreana 2 (July 1999): 1-22. 31.Yoo, The Politics ofGender, 38-40; Kim, Women ofKorea, 154. 32.From the late 1920s, the term, "sweet home," regularly appeared in magazines

in reference to the modern family. See "Süwit'ü ho-m, Yi Kwangsu ssi kajöng pang- mungi" [Sweet home: A visit to Mr. Yi Kwangsu's family], Pyölgön'gon 34 (November 1930): 110-13; "Küriun sinhon sidae" [Reminiscing about the honeymoon], Samch'ölli 5.3 (March 1933): 64-67. 33.Theresa Hyun, Writing Women in Korea: Translation andFeminism in the Colo-

nial Period (Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 2004), 9-22; Hyaeweol Choi, "Wom- en's Literacy and New Womanhood in Late Choson Korea," Asian Journal ofWomen's Studies 6, no. 1 (2000): 88-115. 34.Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings ofFeminist Consciousness in

Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983), 22. 35.Ibid, 10. 36.Ibid, 10-25; Sheldon Garon, "Women's Groups and the Japanese State: Contend-

ing Approaches to Political Integration, 1890-1945," Journal ofJapanese Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 5-41.

"Wise Mother, Good Wife " 27

37.Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). Muta Katsue argues that the notion of "family" (katei) first appeared in 1893 and signaled a major propaganda ploy in shaping the new modern family—the foundation of a modern nation state—in which women reproduce and raise future citizens. See Muta Katsue, "Kajok, song kwa yösöng üi yangüisöng" [Family, sexuality and the duality of woman], in Tong Asia üi kündaesöng kwa söng üi chöngch 'ihak [The modernity of East Asia and the politics of sexuality], ed. Han'guk yösöng yön'guwön (Söul: P'urün Sasang, 2002), 127-142. 38.Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, "The Meiji State's Policy Toward

Women, 1890-1910," m Recreating Japanese Women, ¡600-1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 152. 39.Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 87-113. 40.Robert Smith, "Making Village Women into 'Good Wives and Wise Mothers' in

Prewar Japan," Journal ofFamily History (Spring 1983): 70-84. 41.Nolte and Hastings, "The Meiji State's Policy toward Women," 151-174. 42.Ibid, 171-174. 43.Elyssa Faison, Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan (Berke-

ley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2007), 10. 44.Chöng, Taehan cheguk malgi yösöng undong üi sönggyökyön'gu, 183-199. 45.Yun Könch'a, Han'guk kündae kyoyuk üi sasang kwa undong [The ideology of

Korean modern education and its social movements], trans. Sim Söngbo (Söul: Ch'öngsa, 1987), 299-325. 46.Yun, Han'guk kündae kyoyuk, 310. 47.For an excellent analysis of the colonial project on women's education and labor,

see Yoo, The Politics ofGender in Colonial Korea, especially chapters 1, 3, and 4. The connection between Japan's ryôsai kenbo and Korea's hyönmo yangch'ö is relatively well-known, especially in the area of Japanese colonial education for women. See Hong, "Ilche sigi Chosön üi yösöng kyoyuk"; Chang Migyöng, "Kündae Ilbon susin kyogwasö e nat'anan yösöng üi kündaesöng kwa pan-kündaesöng" [The modern and anti-modern nature ofwomanhood reflected in ethics textbooks in modern Japan], Ilbon'ö munhak 25 (2005): 219-237; Chön Migyöng, "1920-30-yöndae hyönmo yangch'ö e kwanhan yön'gu" [A study ofwise mother and good wife in the 1920s and 1930s], Han'guk kajöng kwalli hakhoeji 22, no. 3 (2004): 75-93. 48.An T'aeyun, Singmin chöngch' i wa mosöng [Colonial politics and motherhood]

(Söul: Han'guk haksul chöngbo, 2006), 93. 49.Kumamoto Shigekichi, "Kyohwa üigyönsö" [An opinion on education], September

8, 1910, quoted in /ZcAe kangjömgi chonggyo chöngch'eksa charyojip [A sourcebook of the religious policies during the Japanese colonial era], ed. Kim Süngt'ae (Söul: Han'guk kidokkyo yöksa yön'guso, 1996), 29-41. For a comparative study of the Japanese colonial education system in Taiwan and Korea, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, "Colonial Education in Korea and Taiwan," in The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 275-311. 50.Yoo, The Politics ofGender, 70. 51.An, Singmin chöngch''i wa mosöng, 184, 194. 52.Kim Kyöngil, Yösöng üi kündae, kündae üiyösöng [Modernity ofwomen, women

ofmodernity] (Söul: P'urün yöksa, 2004), 281.

28Hyaeweol Choi

53.Elizabeth Knipe Mouer, "Women in Teaching," in Women in Changing Japan, eds. Joyce Lebra, Joy Paulson, and Elizabeth Powers (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1976), 161. 54.Nolte and Hastings, "The Meiji State's Policy Toward Women," 172-173. 55.Chöng Ch'ilsöng, "Amnal ül parabonün puin nodongja" [Woman laborers and

their vision for the future], Tonggwang 29 (December 1931): 70. 56.Kim ünhüi, "Musan puin undongnon" [On the movement ofproletarian women],

Samch'ölliA, no. 2 (1932): 64-67. 57.Song Yönok, "Chosön 'sin yösöng' üi naesyönöllijüm kwa chendö" [Gender and

nationalism of the "new woman" in Korea] in Sin yösöng [New women], ed, Mun Okp'yo (Söul: Ch'öngnyönsa, 2003), 83-117. 58.Kim, "Chönt'ong üi ch'angan kwa yösöng üi kungminhwa," 240. 59.Choi, "Women's Work for 'Heathen Sisters,'" 1-22. 60.Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History ofTheir Thought

and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 81-124, 160-162. 61.Editorial, Tongnip sinmun, May 12, 1896. 62.October 12, 1911, letter of H. G. Underwood to Arthur Brown, Record Group

140, 11-26, Presbyterian Historical Society (hereafter PHS). See also Tsurumi, "Colonial Education in Korea and Taiwan," 294-308. 63.Especially for education at the middle school level, the oppressive policy of the

colonial government resulted in the greater role ofmission schools in meeting the demand ofKoreans. Kim, Yösöng üi kündae, kündae üi yösöng, 280-285. 64.Ch'ön Hwasuk, Han'gukyösöng kidokkyo sahoe undongsa [History of the social

movement ofKorean Christian women] (Söul: Hyean, 2000). 65.Chu Yosöp, "Sin yösöng kwa ku yösöng üi haengno" [The ways ofthe newwoman

and the old-fashioned woman] Sinyösöng 7, no. 1 (January 1933): 32-35. The definition of the "new woman" (sin yösöng or sin yöja) in Korea varies. Kim Sujin detects two major trends in defining the "new woman" in Korea: one uses the label for an actual, collec- tive group. In the popular imagination, the concept of the "new woman" often refers to a small number of elite women represented by Na Hyesök, Kim Myöngsun, Kim Wönju, Yun Simdök, Kim Hwallan, and Pak Indôk, who became prominent figures in art, lit- erature, education, or journalism in the 1920s. The other trend focuses on the discursive formation of the image of the "new woman," largely through the print media. However, it should also be noted that within each trend, one can see subtle variations on the "new woman," depending on characteristics of education, attitude, ideology, and occupation. See Kim, "1920-30-yöndae sin yösöng," 1-19. 66.Yi Man'gyu, "Chosön samdae chonggyo konggwaron: kidokkyohoe üi kong kwa

kwa" [Discussion of the contribution and shortcomings of three major religions in Korea: the contribution and shortcomings ofChristianity], Kaebyök 1 (November 1934): 27-31, 42. 67.Hwang Sindök, "Chosön puin undong ün öttök'e chinaewanna," Sin kajöng (April

1933): 22-23, quoted in Kim, Yösöng üi kündae, kündae üi yösöng, 74. 68.Yi Paeyong with the cooperation of Son Sünghüi, Mun Sukchae, and Cho

Kyöngwön, "Han'guk kidokkyo yösöng kyoyuk üi sönggwa wa chönmang—Ihwa Yöja Taehakkyo rül chungsim uro" [Accomplishment and prospect of Korean Christian edu- cation for women—with a focus on Ewha Womans University"], Ihwa sahak yön'gu 27 (2000): 9-36.

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"29

69.Since the publication of Jane Hunter's seminal book, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984), there has been much research on Western women missionaries. To mention a few, Patricia R. Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: Uni- versity of Michigan Press, 1985); Leslie A. Flemming, ed. Women's Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989); Kwok Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860-1927 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992); Gael Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity: American Protestant Mission Schools in China, ¡880-1930 (New York: Peter Lang, 1995); Dana Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History ofTheir Thought andPractice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996); Susan Thome, CongregationalMissions and the Making ofan Imperial Cul- ture in Nineteenth-Century England (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1999); Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy Lutkehaus, eds, Gendered Missions: Women and Men in Missionary Discourse and Practice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999); Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands": American Missionary Women in South Asia (1860s-1940s) (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000). 70.Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quar-

terly 18, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 151-174; "She Hath Done What She Could: Protestant Women's Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century America," American Quarterly 30 (Winter 1978): 624-638. 71.Prasenjit Duara, "The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism," Journal of

World History 12, no. 1 (2001): 99-130. 72.After World War I the gendered division of labor in the foreign mission came to

be challenged for the first time. See Ruth Compton Brouwer, Modern Women Modern- izing Men: The Changing Missions of Three Professional Women in Asia and Africa, 1902-1969 (Vancouver: University ofBritish Columbia Press, 2002). 73.Laurel Kendall and Mark Peterson, eds, Korean Women: View from the Inner

Room (New Haven, Conn.: East Rock Press, 1983). See especially "Introduction" by Ken- dall and Peterson (5-21) and "Women, Men, Inside, Outside" by Clark Sorensen (63-79). 74.W. B. Scranton, "Report of Pastor, Baldwin Chapel and Ewa Hak Tang—1893,"

Minutes of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Korea Mission of the Methodist Episco- pal Church (1893), 44-46. See also Huldah A. Haenig, "From West Gate to East Gate," Woman's Missionary Friend 43, no. 1 (January 1911): 9-11. 75.Dana Robert, "The 'Christian Home' as a Cornerstone ofAnglo-American Mis-

sionary Thought and Practice," in Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mis- sion History, 1706-1914, ed. Dana Robert (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 134-165. 76.J. S. Ryang, "Foreword," in Fifty Years ofLight, prepared by the Missionaries of

the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Com- memoration of the Completion of Fifty Years ofWork in Korea (Seoul, 1938). 77.Mrs. E. W. Rice, "AWoman ofKorea," Heathen Woman's Friend 17, no. 8 (Febru-

ary 1886): 182-183; Mrs. T. J. Gracey, "Something about the Koreans," Heathen Woman's Friend 23, no. 12 (June 1892): 282-283; Ellasue Wagner, "Girls and Women in Korea," Korea Mission Field 4, no. 6 (June 1908): 82; Haenig, "From West Gate to East Gate," 9-11.

30Hyaeweol Choi

78.Daniel Scott Smith, "Family Limitation, Sexual Control, and Domestic Femi- nism in Victorian America," in Clio's Consciousness Raised, Mary Hartman and Lois W. Banner, eds. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), quoted in Glenna Matthews, "Just a Housewife": The Rise andFall ofDomesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 28. 79.Mary Swale Wilkinson, "The Place of the Missionary Training School," Woman's

Missionary Friend 35, no. 11 (November 1903): 384-385. 80.Yoo, The Politics ofGender, 58-94. 81.Emily Irene Haynes, "Union Academy School and Evangelistic Work on Pyeng

Yang District," Annual Report of the Korea Woman's Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church (1910), 55-60. 82.Annie Baird, "Higher Education of Women in Korea," Korea Mission Field 8,

no. 4 (1912): 113-116. 83.Ibid. 84.Velma Snook, "Annual Report for 1928-1929," PHS. 85.Velma Snook, letter (no exact date indicated but it was filed on June 26, 1913),

Record Group 360, PHS. To some students, earnings from their embroidery or sew- ing were crucial for continuing to study because they could muster no other financial resources. Missionary teachers "supervised, bought materials for, found a market for, and managed the business end of the work in the self-help department, which provided board and a little extra money for needy students." Anna Bergman managed the department particularly well with "a lot of thinking and planning to get the work ready for them and to sell it fast enough." Anna Bergman, March 28, 1931, Record Group 360, PHS. 86.Velma Snook, "Pyeng Yang Union Academy for Women, 1911-1912," Record

Group 140, PHS 7-28. 87.Velma Snook, letter (no exact date but was filed on June 26, 1913), Record Group

360, PHS. 88.Ellasue Wagner, "Then and Now Founders' Day at Holston Institute, May 15th,

1940," Korea Mission Field 36, no. 8 (1940): 133-135 (from 134). 89.Yi Kwangsu, "Mosöng chungsim üi yöja kyoyuk" [Women's education center-

ing on motherhood], Sin yösöng 3, no. 1 (1925): 19-20; "Mosöng uro üi yöja" [Woman as mother], Yösöng 1, no. 3 (June 1936): 8. 90.Yi, "Mosöng chungsim üi yöja kyoyuk," 19-20. 91.Hwang Sindök, "Chosön ün iröhan ömöni rül yoguhanda" [Korea demands this

type ofmother], Sin kajöng (May 1933): 12-15. 92.Kajöng chapchi 1, no. 3 (1906): 6-8; Chasön puin hoe chapchi 1 (August 1908):

23-25.

93.YiHwayöng et al, Han'guk kündae yösöng üi ilsang munhwa [The everyday life and culture of the Korean modern woman], vol. 8 (Söul: Kukhak Charyowön, 2004). 94.Hwang, "Chosön ün iröhan ömöni rül yoguhanda." 95.Pak Chöngae, "1 910-yöndae-1920-yöndae ch'oban yöja Ilbon yuhaksaeng yön'gu"

[A study of female students studying in Japan in the 1910s and 1920s] (Söksa hagwi non- mun, Sungmyöng Yöja Taehakkyo, 1999). 96.Velma Snook, "Annual Report of Pyengyang Academy for Women, 1922-1923,"

Record Group 360, PHS. 97.Pak Yongok, Kim Maria (Söul: Hongsöngsa, 2003).

"Wise Mother, GoodWife"31

98.Ihwa 100-yönsa P'yonch'an Wiwönhoe, Ihwa 100-yônsa [The hundred-year his- tory of Ewha Womans University] (Söul: Ihwa Yöja Taehakkyo Ch'ulp'anbu, 1994), 79. See also Pak, Kündae yösöng, 58. 99.Velma Snook, "Annual Report for 1928-1929," Record Group 360, PHS; Pak,

Kündae yösöng, 57. 100."Annual Report, Chung Sin Girls' School, Seoul, Chosen, Margo Lee Lewis,

Principal, received February 16, 1937," Record Group 360, PHS. 101.September 29, 1932, letter of Gordon Holdcroft to Rev. C. B. McAfee. Record

Group 140, 1-16. PHS. 102.Ihwa 100-yönsa P'yonch'an Wiwönhoe, Ihwa 100-yönsa, 249. 103.Annual Reports of the Korea Woman's Conference of the Methodist Episcopal

Church (1908), 6. General Commission on Archives and History, the United Methodist Church, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. The first Korean woman to receive a BA degree was Ha Nansa, graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University. 104.Ihwa 100-yönsa P'yonch'an Wiwönhoe, Ihwa 100-yönsa charyojip [A source-

book of the hundred-year history ofEwhaWomans University] (Söul: Ihwa Yöja Taehak- kyo Ch'ulp'anbu, 1994), 255-256. 105.Ihwa 100-yönsa P'yonch'an Wiwönhoe, Ihwa 100-yönsa, 248-249. 106.Ihwa 100-yönsa P'yonch'an Wiwönhoe, Ihwa 100-yönsa charyojip, 347. 107.Pak, Kündae yösöng, 155-182. 108.Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "The Kansas Campaign, 1867,"

quoted in Sievers, Flowers in Salt, 10. 109.Kim Yunsông, "1920-30-yöndae Han'guk sahoe üi chonggyo wa yösöng tamnon:

'misin t'ap'a' wa 'hyönmo yangch'ö' rül chungsim uro" (Religion and gender discourse in 1920s and 1930s Korea: With a focus on 'eradication of superstition' and 'wise mother and good wife,'" Chonggyo munhwa pip 'yöng 9 (2008): 164-190. What is fascinating about this analysis is that regardless of race, women are often lumped together as the inferior gender easily subjected to the temptation of superstition. Yun further notes that while Protestant missionaries assailed Korea's superstitions from the beginning, other Korean religions, including Buddhism and the indigenous Ch'ondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way) also began to do so from the 1920s. 110.Annie Baird, Daybreak in Korea: A Tale ofTransformation in the Far East (New

York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1909); L. A. Miller, "The Conversion of a Sorceress," Korea Mission Field 2 (February 1906): 65. 111.Baird, Daybreak in Korea, 25-39. 112.Ellasue Wagner, Korea: The Old and the New (New York: Fleming H. Revell

Company, 1931), 107. 113.Esther L. Shields, "Nursing in Mission Stations: Work in Korea," American Jour-

nal ofNursing 8, no. 5 (February 1908): 368-372. 114.Kim Sôkcha, "Kwisin ege kidohaesö pok pilji malgo pulssanghan saram ege

chasön ül pep'ul il" [Do not pray to ghosts for luck but rather exercise your benevolence for poor people], Chasön puinhoe chapchi 1 (1908): 3-5. See also Kim, "1920-30-yöndae han'guk sahoe üi chonggyo wa yösöng tamnon," 164-190. 115.Mattie Noble, ed. Victorious Lives ofEarly Christians in Korea: The First Book

of Biographies and Autobiographies of Early Christians in the Protestant Church in Korea [Süngni üi saenghwal] (Seoul: Christian Literature Society, 1927), 20-22.

32Hyaeweol Choi

116.Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), 200. 117.Hunter, The Gospel ofGentility, 14. 118.Sung-Deuk Oak, "The Indigenization of Christianity in Korea: North American

Missionaries' Attitudes towards Korean Religions, 1884-1910" (ThD dissertation, Bos- ton University, 2002), 484. 119.Susan Thorne, "Missionary-Imperial Feminism," in GenderedMissions: Women

andMen in Missionary Discourse andPractice, eds. Mary Taylor Huber and Nancy Lut- kehaus (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1999), 50. 120.Induk Pahk, September Monkey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954). 121.Pak, Kim Maria, 339. 122.For a feminist critique on the public accusations against Kim Hwallan for her

"collaboration" with the Japanese colonial power, see Insook Kwon, "Feminists Navigat- ing the Shoals ofNationalism and Collaboration: The Post-Colonial Korean Debate over How to Remember Kim Hwallan," Frontiers 27, no. 1 (2006): 39-66. 123."Ilmun ildap, Kim Hwallan ssi pangmungi" [Question and answer, visiting Ms.

Kim Hwallan], Pyölgön'gon 9 (October 1927): 49-54. 124.Annie Baird, "The Relation of the Wives of Missionaries to Mission Work,"

Korean Repository (November 1895): 417. 125.Mattie Wilcox Noble, "The Missionary Home," Korea Mission Field 27, no. 4

(1931): 75-77. 126.Noble, Victorious Lives ofEarly Christians in Korea, 34-49. 127.Yoo, The Politics of Gender, Kim, "1920-30-yöndae sin yösöng tamnon kwa

sangjing üi kusöng," 323-374. 128.Kim, "1920-30-yöndae sin yösöng tamnon kwa sangjing üi kusöng," 323. 129.Ibid. 130.Chön, "1920-30-yöndae hyönmo yangch'ö e kwanhan yön'gu," 75-93. 131.Tonga Ubo, February 15, 1930. 132.Yi Sanggyöng, ed, Na Hyesök chönjip [The complete works ofNa Hyesök] (Söul:

T'aehaksa, 2000), 183-185. 133.Ibid., 432-433. 134."Pyönhosa p'yöngp'angi" [A lawyer's comment], Tonggwang 31 (March (1932):

65-68. 135.Na Hyesök, "Ihon kobaekchang" [Confession about my divorce], Samch'ölli 6,

no. 8 (August 1934): 85. 136.Na Hyesök, "Sin saenghwal e tülmyönsö" [Starting a new life], Samch'ölli 7,

no. 1 (January 1935): 70-81. See also "Manhon t'agae chwadamhoe, aa, ch'ôngch'un i akkawöra" [Debate on how to solve deferred marriage: Alas! The blossom ofyouth lost!], Samch 'olii 5, no. 10 (October 1933): 84-89. In her response to a question ofwhy marriage- aged women remained single, she told the reporter at Samch'ölli that "it is because they have observed unhappy married life of their senior women friends----- Indeed, howmany couples lead a happy married life among educated class ofpeople? Statistically speaking, there are more unhappy couples than happy couples." 137.Sin kajöng (October 1934), quoted in Yi Sanggyöng, In'gan uro salgo sipta [I

want to live as a human being] (Söul: Han'gilsa, 2000), 425-426. 138.Ken Wells, "Expanding Their Realm: Women and Public Agency in Colonial

" Wise Mother, Good Wife " 33

Korea," in Women's Suffrage in Asia, ed. Louise Edwards and Mina Roces (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 160. 139.Pahk, September Monkey, 162-163. 140."Chosön üi Nora ro inhyöng üi chip ül naon Pak Indök ssi" [Pak Indök: Korea's

Nora has left the doll's house], Samch'ölli 5, no. 1 (January 1933): 73-74; "Pak Indök konggaejang: Ihon sodong e kwanhayö" [Open letter to Pak Indök: Regarding her divorce nasco], Sin yösöng 5, no. 11 (1931): 30-35. 141.Na Hyesök, "Inhyöng üi chip" [A doll's house], Maeil sinbo, April 3, 1921, quoted

in Yi, Na Hyesök chönjip, 1 1 3-1 14. 142.Hyön Ch'öl, "Kündae munye wa Ipssen" [Modern literature and Ibsen], Kaebyök

7 (January 1921): 129-138. 143.Maeil sinbo, April 3, 1921. 144.Hö Yöngsuk, "Puin munje üi ilmyön—namja hai il, yöja hai il" [One aspect of the

woman question: Men's work, women's work], Tonga Ubo, January 1, 1926 and January 4, 1926; "Myôngil ül yaksok hanün sin sedae üi ch'önyö chwadamhoe" [Talk with promis- ing single women of the new era], Sinyösöng 7, no. 1 (January 1933): 26. 145.Theodore Jun Yoo, "The 'New Woman' and the Politics of Love, Marriage and

Divorce in Colonial Korea," Gender andHistory 17, no. 2 (August 2005): 296. 146.Christine L. Marran, Poison Woman: Figuring Female Transgression in Modern

Japanese Culture (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2007). 147.Pak Noja, Na nun p'ongnyök üi segi rül kobalhanda [I indict the century of vio-

lence] (Söul: Inmul kwa Sasang, 2005), 301-317. 148.Kim Wönju, "Chaehon hu ilchunyön üi hoego: in'gyök ch'angjo e" [Reflections

on the occasion of the first anniversary of my remarriage: On the creation of character], Sinyösöng 2, no. 6 (August 1924): 40-43. 149.Hwang, "Chosön ün iröhan ömöni rül yoguhanda," 12-15. 150.Kim, "Chaehon hu il chunyön üi hoego," 40-43.