New Women in Colonial Korea: A Sourcebook by Hyaeweol Choi (review)

New Women in Colonial Korea is the first English translation of some of the most representative writings on New Women produced between the mid-1890s and the mid-1930s. Choi translated most pieces directly from original texts but also worked from some reproductions of original texts.¹ The selections consist of competing narratives of New Women put forward by both male and female elites, as well as misrepresentations and overgeneralizations of New Women. Choi’s decision to combine these writings is meant to “bring attention to both the discursive and historical space women resided in and to question the nature of the hegemonic mechanisms used to represent women” (p. 4).

The introduction in this sourcebook is concise and highly informative. It presents a brief history of the development of and discourses on New Women in Korea and provides background information about the archival sources—in particular, women’s magazines, popular magazines, and Socialist magazines—from which Hyaeweol Choi selected pieces to translate. It also provides discreetly constructed commentaries on the “Modern Girl” in Korea. Although there was a small cohort of Korean women who were categorized as Modern Girls from starting in the mid-1920s, as a phenomenon it was “far less visible and influential than it was in semi-colonial China and Japan” (p. 10). Choi explains why this was the case by discussing the impoverished economic conditions of colonial Korea, which made it difficult for Korean women to experience the materiality available to women in China and Japan.

This sourcebook is not organized chronologically; it is divided into eight chapters according to themes that are vital to understanding the historical significance of Korean New Women. Chapter 1 contains early writings—on women’s education, equal rights, and ways for women to contribute to society—selected from family magazines and a newspaper, The Independent, that were published in the 1890s and 1900s. The inclusion of female writers’ works here is valuable because of the scarcity of women’s writings at the time. Chapter 2 presents public discussion over the meaning of the New Women, and Choi’s arrangement of articles is thought provoking in terms of its juxtaposition of contradictory views on the New Women’s role in society. Yi Kwangsu’s “Ten Commandments for New Women” (p. 41) and a direct response to Yi by a female writer, Ko Yŏngsuk (pp. 41–43), are excellent examples that demonstrate the tensions and conflicts between conservative male elites and New Women. This kind of gender dynamic is also strongly reflected in chapter 3, “Controversy over ‘Schoolgirls’ (yŏhaksaeng),” where Choi presents writers who have overlapping, yet contradictory opinions on educating women about domestic duties, sex, dress codes, and social work.

If there is a section where the gender dynamic ruptures, it is chapter 4. Four essays selected here are excerpts from a “great debate” held by the popular magazine Pyŏlgŏn’gŏn (1927) on the “Modern Girl and Modern Boy.” As Choi notes, not a single woman was invited to this “debate.” Selected excerpts from the “debate” reveal how male intellectuals grappled with the Modern Girl phenomenon in the Korean context. Perhaps the Modern Girl was more of a symbol of the “decadent culture of capitalism” (p. 73) than a real phenomenon in Korea, yet it would have been useful to include voices from the women themselves. The comparatively short list of translations on the Modern Girl is complemented by the inclusion of cartoons which show how visual constructions popularized the image of the Modern Girl as “decadent, morally depraved, and money-hungry” (p. 72).

Chapter 5 consists of writings on love, marriage, and divorce. Choi uncovers how love and marriage, “two of the most popular terms in the 1920s,” (p. 94) came to the fore for women in critiquing their positions beyond the domestic realm. From publicizing the most personal experience of extramarital relationships and divorce (Na Hyesŏk, pp. 123...