Eun-Shil Kim
Department of Women's Studies, Ewha Womans University
This paper explores the relationship between education/knowledge, modernity and women in Korea by examining the lives of three women intellectuals. First is Rha Hye-Seok, who was a famous and spotlighted Western style painter, as well as writer, during the colonial period in Korea, but died on the road; the second is Kim Hwalran, who was a famous women’s leader and educator during the nation building period in Korea and later was criticized as a Japanese collaborator; third is Mo Yunsuk who was a famous poet and writer and deeply involved in the formation of South Korean nation building, but was attacked as a kind of vamp whose femininity and sexuality were used for political intention in the public sphere. These women appeared as leaders and intellectuals in colonial Korea and were revered, as well as scandalized, in modern Korea.
This paper will deal with three points: Firstly, what is the meaning and power of modern education and knowledge for women in the period of the colonial and nation-building in Korea, in order to situate Korean women intellectuals' ways of understanding the world and themselves. Secondly, I describe some ideas of a few Western and Asian women intellectuals of the same period. I examine how women intellectuals deal with the idea of being modern women working in public in their societies. Thirdly, I make a postcolonial argument of why we need to explore, visualize and write about histories of women intellectuals in Asia.
(Presented in the 2013 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: The Emergence and Heritage of Asian Women Intellectuals, 10-11 September 2013, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Indian Studies Center, Chulalongkorn University)