Hyaeweol Choi

Protestant Modernity in Colonial-Era Korea

Gender Politics at Home and Abroad

This book provides the first English translation of some of the central archival material concerning the development of New Woman (sin yŏsŏng) in Korea during the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It includes selected writings of both women and men who put forward their views on some of the key issues of new womanhood, including gender equality, chastity, divorce, education, fashion, hygiene, birth control, and the women’s movement. The authors whose essays are included express a range of attitudes about the new gender ethics and practices that were deeply influenced by the incessant flow of new and modern knowledge, habits and consumer products from metropolitan Japan and the West. Emphasizing the global nature of the phenomenon of the New Woman and Modern Girl, this sourcebook provides key references to a dynamic and multifarious history of modern Korean women, whose ideals and life experiences were formed at the intersection of Western modernity, Korean nationalism, Japanese colonialism and resilient patriarchy.

A Sourcebook

New Women in Colonial Korea

Hyaeweol Choi examines the formation of modern gender relations in Korea from a transnational perspective. Diverging from a conventional understanding of 'secularization' as a defining feature of modernity, Choi argues that Protestant Christianity, introduced to Korea in the late nineteenth century, was crucial in shaping modern gender ideology, reforming domestic practices and claiming new space for women in the public sphere. In Korea, Japanese colonial power - and with it, Japanese representations of modernity - was confronted with the dominant cultural and material power of Europe and the US, which was reflected in Korean attitudes. One of the key agents in conveying ideas of “Western modernity” in Korea was globally connected Christianity, especially US-led Protestant missionary organizations. By placing gender and religion at the center of the analysis, Choi shows that the development of modern gender relations was rooted in the transnational experience of Koreans and not in a simple nexus of the colonizer and the colonized.

“Pathbreaking. Approaches the transcultural and religious encounters of Korean and American women with a remarkable degree of sensitivity and nuance, as well as with judicious use of feminist and postcolonial theory. Its rich and diverse historical examples and illustrations are both engaging to read and meticulously documented.”—Namhee Lee, UCLA

New Women, Old Ways: Seoul-California Series in Korean Studies

Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea

Margaret Jolly

Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific fills a huge lacuna in the scholarly literature on missionaries in Asia/Pacific and is transnational history at its finest. Co-edited by two eminent scholars, this multidisciplinary volume, an outgrowth of several conferences/seminars, critically examines various encounters between western missionaries and indigenous women in the Pacific/Asia … Taken as a whole, this is a thought-provoking and an indispensable reference, not only for students of colonialism/imperialism but also for those of us who have an interest in transnational and gender history in general. The chapters are very clearly written, engaging, and remarkably accessible; the stories are compelling and the research is thorough. The illustrations are equally riveting and the bibliography is extremely useful. —Theodore Jun Yoo, History Department, University of Hawai’i The editors of this collection of papers have done an excellent job of creating a coherent set of case studies that address the diverse impacts of missionaries and Christianity on ‘domesticity’, and therefore on the women and children who were assumed to be the rightful inhabitants of that sphere … The introduction to the volume is beautifully written and sets up the rest of the volume in a comprehensive way. It explains the book’s aim to advance theoretical and methodological issues by exploring the role of missionary encounters in the development of modern domesticities; showing the agency of indigenous women in negotiating both change and continuity; and providing a wide range of case studies to show ‘breadth and complexity’ and the local and national specificities of engagements with both missionaries and modernity. My view is that all three aims are well and truly fulfilled. —Helen Lee, Head, Sociology and Anthropology, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Hyaeweol Choi

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