The Biography of Ch’oe Yŏng-suk and the Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea

On the margins of Korean history lies the forgotten life story of Ch’oe Yŏng-suk (1905–1932), the first Korean woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in political economy at Stockholm University in 1931. She was a pioneer who crossed the boundaries of culture, education, and gender in her quest to emancipate Korean working women from the dual oppression of their sex and Japanese colonialism. Conversant in five languages, she traveled to some twenty countries before returning to her homeland with an ardent desire to apply her learning and experiences abroad to better the lives of her female compatriots. Yet as Ch’oe discovered, hierarchies and established power relations could not be transformed overnight. Despite her training and travels, she could not obtain a professional job and ended up as a vegetable peddler—a dire fate for a multilingual scholar. It was only after her tragic death on 23 April 1932, at the age of twenty-seven, that the Korean public became intrigued about the life of this adventurous woman.

How does a historian of the colonial period treat marginal figures like Ch’oe Yŏng-suk? Should she be singled out and treated separately? What aspects of her life should historians highlight and interrogate? Ch’oe’s biography—her accomplishments, travels, love life (especially her relationship with a mysterious Indian man and a miscarriage), and fate—elucidates in a dramatic way the precarious and profound challenges of being a female intellectual during the colonial period (1910–1945). This reflection will focus primarily on the controversy behind her death and the different narrative strategies deployed by different groups to recreate Ch’oe’s past.

Three distinct narratives emerged in the Korean press after Ch’oe’s untimely death, which provide a glimpse into the politics of gender and identity during this period. Instead of remembering her as a trailblazing educator, the first narrative strategy treated Ch’oe as a sexualized subject whose adventurism led to a transgression of moral propriety. Employing a language of voyeurism, sensationalism, and scandal, Ch’oe’s obituary and subsequent articles published in the journal Samch’ŏlli (1932) focused on her illicit relationship with an Indian man and her pregnancy with their biracial child. To create this image, Samch’ŏlli liberally tampered with Ch’oe’s original writings by substituting words like tongmu (comrades) with kŭ (he, that man). All this suggested that she had started this relationship with an Indian man during her sojourn in Sweden. By casting Ch’oe’s imagined sexual liaisons at the center of the narrative, the journal ignored her intellectual accomplishments, which were so central in shaping her identity and aspirations.¹

Angered by the tabloid reporting and public scrutiny of her life-long friend, Im Hyo-jŏng decided to challenge journals like Samch’ŏlli. She had corresponded with Ch’oe during her travels, sat vigil at her death bed, and even covered her friend’s funeral expenses. To set the record straight, Im decided to publish her own narrative in the journal Tongkwang. Unlike the tabloid articles written, Im’s narrative wove a tale of two ill-fated lovers whose common interests represented a modern, cosmopolitan love story that crossed national boundaries—a true relationship that would be sacrificed as a result of Ch’oe’s devotion to her homeland and working class. Others have suggested that perhaps Im fabricated the story of Ch’oe’s encounters with Mr. Roh (Roy?) because she did not want to see her friend’s memory defaced in public after her death. While her friend Im tried to recast Ch’oe’s relationship in a more sympathetic light, it only provided fuel for her detractors to fabricate her past further.

Perhaps the most damaging narrative can be found in the biography of the nationalist An Ch’ang-ho (1878–1938) where Ch’oe is depicted as an immoral woman. In this particular narrative, Ch’oe is introduced as a member of the Hŭngsadan (Young Korean Academy) in Nanjing. However, she is described as having fallen...