Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. xi, 182 pp. (Illustrations.) US$49.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3926-0.
Women throughout much of Korean history have left behind little evidence in the historical archives. The copious volumes of historical documents from the premodern period occasionally hint at the presence of women, but only a handful of sources, like petitions and letters, allow us to reconstruct their lives. Ji-Eun Lee addresses this dearth of women’s voices in Korean history in Women Pre-scripted: Forging Modern Roles through Korean Print through an examination of the discourse on “New Women” as Koreans discussed the issues of modernity, enlightenment, and nation for the first time within the print media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By gathering together a wide range of materials such as cartoons, literary works, and editorials, the author contributes many insights into the construction of modern Korean womanhood.
The first chapter of Women Pre-scripted starts with a discussion of female readership during the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910). A succinct overview of the secondary research on female participation in the book culture of Chosŏn highlights the difficulties in determining the extent of female writing and literacy. The general lack of conclusive evidence calls into question some of the claims that tend to link vernacular fiction and the han’gŭl script to women. The ambiguity of women’s participation in reading and authorship in the premodern era makes it hard for us to draw firm conclusions about how Korean women understood their gender relations. Therefore, the careful literature review allows us to appreciate the intellectual contribution of Women Pre-scripted, which provides a nuanced analysis of the historical period when the first writings on women and by women appeared in the modern media.
The second and third chapters introduce several representative periodicals such as The Independent newspaper and Korea’s first women’s journal Kajŏng chapchi to show how women’s roles became “prescribed” with modern knowledge that was “appropriate,” while critiquing those aspects of modernity found to be problematic. The initial male-dominated discourse of The Independent offers few discussions outside the topics of a woman’s role in the family and women’s education. In a sense, male guidance regarding a woman’s role restricted women to the home during this initial period. Ji-Eun Lee draws attention to the writings of Yun Chŏng-wŏn (1894–?) in the journal T’aegŭk hakpo, because she is the first known female contributor in the modern media. Yun’s writings differ from The Independent’s discourse on womanhood, because she establishes a clear role for women in public life. While women were encouraged to take an active role outside the home, at the same time the new women’s journals like Kajŏng chapchi, written mostly by men, emphasized the importance of practical knowledge and domesticity for women. The images of womanhood that emerge from this period are mired in contradictions, as women were called upon to construct a “home” for Korea’s male patriots while also taking a limited part in the public life beyond the confines of traditional gender roles.
Chapters 4 and 5 examine in detail two women’s journals from the colonial period, Sinyŏja and Sinyŏsŏng, and discuss their importance in fostering the emerging discourse on “New Women.” These two chapters highlight the importance of literary forms like confessions and letters in establishing an emerging female agency in the print media. Sinyŏja was particularly important because it was a journal edited by a woman and featured mostly female writers. This new space for imagining the role of Korean women was not without its limits, and the most successful women’s publication during the 1920s, Sinyŏsŏng, was predominantly produced by men and had few developments that could be viewed in a progressive light. Ji-Eun Lee’s analysis emphasizes the problematic assumptions within these journals and provides a broader historical framework for understanding how modern womanhood emerged from these women’s publications.
Women Pre-scripted brings to light the historical value of Korean periodicals as sources that can provide a major window into the cultural and social developments of modern Korea. The volume skillfully links the emergence of literary forms, readership, and authorship with newly emerging gender roles. Yet a number of unresolved issues remain in this study because of the limited selection of journals. For example, the author provides a valuable corrective that we should be careful in linking han’gŭl script with women by highlighting the usage of mixed Chinese-character script in Sinyŏja. While the diversity among female readers needs to be kept in mind, there is considerable indirect evidence that links women to the han’gŭl script. Several women’s journals published in the early 1920s, like Puin, were published all in han’gŭl and the association between women and the vernacular script becomes even more pronounced in the 1930s. Women Pre-scripted carefully limits its analysis to a small subset of highly educated women readers in the 1920s, who were mostly affiliated with religious organizations. However, this limited selection of journals does not allow for a broader overview of the female readership, which expanded rapidly through the mass publications that emerged in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Ultimately, the decision to examine only Sinyŏja and Sinyŏsŏng raises the problem that they represent only a small fragment of the female readership of the colonial period. Kaebŏksa, the publisher of Sinyŏsŏng, stopped publishing in the mid-1930s, because it could not compete with the relatively well-financed newspaper companies and other organizations that entered the journal market. The mass women’s publications of the late colonial period eventually reached tens of thousands of readers per issue. Examining the earliest publications to explain how the modern discourse on womanhood emerged is an important contribution, but the insights are not connected to the long-term trends in colonial print culture such as the increasing usage of the Japanese language and the commodification of female identities. Despite these reservations, Women Pre-scripted offers an excellent and compact introduction into the world of pre-1945 women’s journals for English-language audiences. The insights into the literary production and the discussion of key players in the discourse of womanhood provide a welcome contribution for specialists of East Asian history and literature.
Michael Kim
Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
pp. 915-917