The Chosen Women in Korean Politics: An Anthropological Study (review)

BOOK REVIEWS151 that all political criminals or so-called "men of conscience" be released, that police brutality and the use of torture be ended, or that an independent Supreme Court be given sole responsibility to pass on the constitutionality of laws? Shaw was on solid ground when he argued that quiet diplomacy had little effect on some of the most important issues. James B. Palais University of Washington The Chosen Women in Korean Politics: An Anthropological Study, by Chung-Hee Soh. New York, Praeger, 1991. $39.95. Chung-Hee Soh examines the family and educational backgrounds and career strategies of twenty-nine of the forty-one women who have served in the National Assembly of Korea since its founding in 1948. While studies on Korean women are a growth industry, this is not only the first account of political woman but, to my knowledge, the first western-language account of any professional Korean women in the modern sector. The stakes are very different here than in such venerable Korean female occupations as shaman, diviner, entertainer, and diving woman. The new women professionals, in Korea and much of the rest of the world, must evolve conscious strategies to function effectively in spheres that have been defined of, for, and by men. Soh's account of the experiences of women politicians amply demonstrates the ever-so-familiar double bind whereby a woman risks either transgressing acceptable boundaries of femininity or compromising her effectiveness in a competitive and demanding enterprise. Soh explains that her study is about change in the Korean gender role system, the systematic limits encountered by women in Korean culture , and the social structural impediments to women in high level political office, but her emphasis is overwhelmingly upon "limits" and "impediments" rather than "change." The careers of women politicians in the National Assembly of Korea, and more significantly, the fact that so few Korean women have served in this body, are offered as proof of a constraining cultural ethos against which her subjects must relentlessly adjust, adapt, and compromise. But while Soh insists that her subjects' dilemmas are the irrevocable consequence of "culture," she also notes a particular historical turning, a succession of governments dominated by 152BOOK REVIEWS military men since the 1960s that has had a dampening effect upon the development of women politicians. As Soh tells us, she is not so much concerned with Korean politics as with pattern and variation in political women's lives. We learn, for example, that three of the seven elected women legislators grew up in father-absent homes and that the ratio of married women legislators is far lower than the Korean national average. Soh is at her best when she describes the excruciating strategies her subjects have adopted. We learn far less about what these women stood for, beyond a general assertion that they were motivated by "patriotic fervor" over "feminist awareness ," and that the women's issues some early legislators espoused were soon subordinated to a nationalist agenda. While understandable, Soh's emphasis is sometimes exasperating. We are told, for example, that Kim Chong-rye, whose prior career had been characterized by uncompromising bravery, was appointed to the legislature after reporting to General Chun Doo Hwan on conditions in Kwangju after the revolt and impressing him with her "patriotic fervor." Whatever did she say? And how did her subsequent appointment play in Cholla, her native region? At its worst, Soh's focus demeans her subjects by placing an uncritical emphasis upon the most banal aspects of their careers: we learn that independence fighter Yim Yong-sin temporarily shared the same roof with President Syngman Rhee and is said to have served him as daughter, wife, housekeeper, and personal secretary; that Kim Ok-son, who adopted male dress, is said to "have never worn a bra in her life"; and that Pak Sun-ch'on suffered from a chronic kidney disease owing to the lack of women's restroom facilities in the old National Assembly building. Her subjects come from two more-or-less distinct universes, "pioneers " elected to the National Assembly after the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948, and "second generation" legislators, most of whom were appointed...