Gender Politics at Home and Abroad: Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea by Hyaeweol Choi (review)

In many colonized and formerly colonized countries, modernity and colonialism have been introduced as two sides of the same coin. Engaging the discourse of colonial modernity and introducing the concept of ''Protestant modernity,'' Choi shows how in colonial Korea under Japanese rule gender relations were challenged and deconstructed/reconstructed under the powerful influences of Christianity. She carefully articulates ''the concept of Protestant modernity as a heuristic device'' for understanding the complicated dynamics of gender relations and its interactions with global Christianity and defines it as ''a composite of religious morality, historical outlook, and material practices that could mean different things to different historical subjects'' (15). Recognizing the dynamics between Japanese colonial imperatives, Korean nationalism, Western modernity, and global evangelical Christian ambition, she analyzes how transnational dynamics and flows between transferring knowledge and the mobility of people through Christian networks influence gender norms and culture. Concentrating on the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century (up to around the 1930s), she demonstrates how Korean elite women as the subject—not the colonial object—understood transnational encounters and used Christian networks to develop their own ways of building modern, cosmopolitan, and national identities to participate in the restoration of the Korean nation.

In chapter 1, Choi shows how the ideology of ''wise mother, good wife'' played out in different cultural contexts and contributed to forming gender ideology in Korea. As she examines Japanese colonial gender ideology from the Meiji period, Confucian gender ideology from Chosŏn, and Western Victorian ideology from Protestant American missionaries, she demonstrates how this ideology of ''wise mother, good wife'' was formed, nurtured, and practiced in Korea as the image of ideal womanhood. She argues this ideology to be a modern construction—rather than the mere traditional ideology of Korean culture; a result of the interplay of multiple transnational influences.

In chapter 2, Choi extends her argument on ''wise mother, good wife'' to the concept of the modern home. Through an interaction with Anglo-American texts, she analyzes the missionary discourse on the distinction between house and home, showing how Japanese reformers in the Meiji era adopted the Western concept of home to construct family relations and women's roles and presented this as a colonial project. Tracing ''the evolution of the modern home as embodied in the various images and models presented by Western missionaries (mostly Americans), the Japanese colonial power, and the Korean popular media and foreign-educated Korean intellectuals'' (75), and analyzing the institutionalizing process of home economics in women's school education, Choi successfully demonstrates how the ideology of home refortified the ideal of ''wise mother, good wife'' in every dimension of women's lives, to include economic and material life, family relations, and scientific knowledge of nutrition, among others.

In chapter 3, Choi focuses on Korean elite women and reformers who connected to Christian networks and traveled overseas in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Korea. Tracing the travel experiences of Pak Indok, Ha Nansa, Ch'a Mirisa, Na Hyesok, Kim Hwallan, Yang Hanna, Ch'oe Yongsuk, Julian Park, Yim Yongsin, and many other women students and immigrants who were deeply involved with Western Protestant missionary organizations, she describes how these elite Korean women encountered a diverse range of figures from China, North America, Europe, and Australia, understood this experience, and were inspired to develop a new womanhood. She interprets their global experience as a way of traversing ''the divide between traditionally prescribed gender roles and new expectations for women in the modern era,'' overcoming ''the hierarchical order of the social classes,'' and going ''beyond the nexus of the metropole and colony under Japanese rule'' (113). She believes that such international experiences gave these elite women the temporary freedom to move beyond the colonial boundary, and initiated the formation of a new sense of self, national identity, and cosmopolitan mindset.

In chapter 4, Choi claims that as Korean women traveled...