A History of Korea (73 page)

The relatively small number of paintings attributed to Na Hyes
k that can be considered reliably authentic today show indeed a master craftsman deserving of status as one of the accomplished Korean painters of her era, regardless of gender. But Na Hyes
k’s historical significance stems also from her opinions as a social commentator and chronicler, and from her own actions. Even in her student days in Japan she expressed reservations about the prevailing “wise mother, good wife” model and insisted that females shape their lives in accordance with reason and self-confidence. In a 1921 newspaper editorial entitled “Painting and Korean Women,” which provided a prelude to the opening of her single-artist exhibition, she deplored the social biases resulting in a lack of opportunities for Korean women to develop an interest and talent in painting. This stood in contrast to the visibility of female poets and writers, she noted. In a veiled reference to herself, Na proclaimed, “I am convinced that female painters can appear if only an effort arose to facilitate interest in painting among common women.”

In her later writings, she expressed views that would have been considered radical even half-a-century later. In a long magazine essay entitled “Thoughts on Becoming a Mother,” published in 1923, Na shredded the niceties of the motherly ideal and asserted that her experiences contradicted everything she had been taught. She wrote of the difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing, and of the resentments she built up against society, her husband, and even her baby for impinging on her career and personal freedoms. There must be an implicitly conspiratorial character to the social conventions that divided men and women into their respective roles, she wondered. Upon her return from Europe, she openly praised the model of gender relations that she observed in the West and even speculated that cohabitation before marriage, or a “test marriage,” could allow women to become better informed before taking the plunge. After the failure of her own marriage, in writings such as “A Divorce Confession” she called for the liberation of women’s sexuality, lamented the social and familial conventions that constrained females, and condemned the hypocrisy of typical Korean males regarding chastity. She even put into practice her calls for female empowerment by suing Ch’oe Rin,
the nationalist activist with whom she had become involved in Paris, for “infringement on a woman’s honor.” She accused Ch’oe, in other words, of abandoning her despite his role in the events that led to Na’s public disgrace and divorce, and she demanded monetary restitution. These actions failed to rehabilitate her artistic career or social standing, but Na Hyes
k demonstrated that Korean women could aspire to new levels of assertiveness, even if society as a whole remained unaccommodating.

Like Na, most Korean women affected by the new era encountered definite limitations on their dreams and ambitions. The group of women who perhaps embodied these constraints the most were the thousands of young factory workers who “manned” much of the burgeoning manufacturing sector, in industries ranging from textiles to food processing. From having been nearly absent from enterprises at the turn of the century, women accounted for a fifth of the factory work force in the early 1920s and a third by the mid-1930s. Both the pull factors of regular wages and city life as well as the push factor of rural immiseration brought these girls, caught between puberty and marriage, into the factories. Their lives, however, were in many ways Dickensian: they were herded into tight and tedious working conditions and paid paltry wages. And despite the allure of the big city, they could enjoy at most one day a week off, and usually they spent this day in their cramped dormitories recuperating from their 12-hour shifts. These jobs also presented only meager opportunities for schooling, given the incessant work demands, and even for consumption, since whatever they earned in wages was usually sent directly to their families back home. The lives of these factory girls, then, fell far short of the glamorous existence of the “modern girl” lore. But their experiences offered them at least the foundation, however restricted, of self-determination through work and training.

This phenomenon also affected the countryside, though of course with differences in the scope and character of the changes. While most young women worked the fields or engaged in household work, unprecedented social forces, including the colonial government and private groups, gradually made possible educational and training opportunities—including, for a fortunate few, schooling
itself. And here, too, women often stood at the forefront of generating the very changes affecting them as a group. An example comes from Ch’oe Yongsin, a rural educator whose life and activities were dramatized in a famous novel of the 1930s. After having attended a girls’ high school in the 1920s, Ch’oe entered a women’s seminary and thereafter used her newfound connections, in particular to the Korean YMCA, to engage in work to eradicate illiteracy and provide basic schooling to children in the countryside. Her close connection to church-sponsored activities exemplified the major role of religion, particularly Protestantism, in bestowing opportunity for rural women. Ch’oe was one of countless Christian women who served simultaneously as translators for foreign missionaries, as liaisons for outside educators, and as pastoral deputies dealing with people, especially females, who could not be easily approached. In turn, these women used this activity as a stepping stone to a higher calling, whether in religious or other kinds of work, and regardless of their social background.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The connection between Protestant activities in colonial Korea and changes affecting Korean females bespeaks a larger issue of the relationship between religion and social change in the early twentieth century. This in turn compels us to ponder one of the great historical questions about modern Korea, namely, the cause of the unusual success of Christianity in Korea compared to other non-Western countries. And while Catholicism, as well as Buddhism, also experienced dramatic growth, the development of Protestantism is most notable. Foreign Protestant missionaries began their activities in the 1880s, having entered through a back door, in a sense, as attachments to the increasing diplomatic, educational, and commercial presence of North Americans. Through their unshakable aura of advancement, resourcefulness in employing the Korean alphabet, implicit promises of social liberation, and explicit promises of salvation in the afterlife, the missionaries found great success. Significantly, they counted among their
converts many of the most influential social elites at the turn of the twentieth century. An early peak in Protestant growth was reached in 1907 through the Great Pyongyang Revival, a gathering of thousands in what quickly became the center of Korean Christianity, the northwestern region surrounding the city of Pyongyang.

In the colonial period Pyongyang came to be known as the “Jerusalem of the East,” a designation pointing to its centrality in Korean Protestantism, but also to the incorporation of Protestantism in the city’s self-identity as a beacon of freedom from the darkness of foreign rule. That the majority of the most prominent nationalists and independence activists of the early twentieth century were also Protestant could not have been a coincidence. Indeed many of these figures, including 16 out of the 33 signers of the March First Declaration of Independence, pointed to their Protestant faith as inspiring their work. Most conspicuous in this regard was An Ch’angho, from Pyongyang, who began his activities as an educator and independence activist in the first decade of the twentieth century, and soon became one of the first Korean immigrants to the US. Traveling to and from his home in southern California, which acted as a base for the early Korean American community, An organized and inspired efforts to achieve Korean independence throughout this period. His life and thought exemplified the role of both religion and nationalist activity as havens of collective identity away from the colonial state, and in turn as further examples of the forces of social change that marked the long 1920s.

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Nation, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Late Colonial Period

CHRONOLOGY

1925	Founding of the Korean Communist Party and KAPF
1931	Korean newspaper campaigns to eliminate illiteracy in the countryside
1931	Manchurian Incident and invasion of Manchuria by imperial Japan
1932	Establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo
1936	Olympic marathon victory by Son Kij ng, defacement of Japanese flag on newspaper picture of Son

THE DOCTORING OF A NEWSPAPER PHOTO OF THE OLYMPIC MARATHON CHAMPION, 1936

The first evening edition of the August 24, 1936 issue of the Korean language newspaper,
Tonga ilbo
, had cleared the colonial censors. But just as the authorities had feared, a second evening edition quickly published thereafter caused quite a stir. On its front page was emblazoned the picture of national hero Son Kij
ng, who two weeks earlier had captured the gold medal in the marathon in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The cause for alarm was not that Son himself, pictured solemnly on the medal stand, was prominently featured, but rather that the Japanese flag on Son’s uniform had been rubbed out, leaving a black smudge in its place (see Image 18). Unbeknownst to their own editors and managers, a group of journalists had pulled off the stunt in a fit of emotion comprised of both pride and shame: pride that a Korean had reached a pinnacle of world sport, and shame that he had been forced to don a foreign conqueror’s flag. Not surprisingly, the ringleaders were fired, blacklisted, even jailed, and the newspaper was shut down for almost a year.