Journal of Korean Studies

Scholars of critical gender studies have made important contributions to Korean Studies in recent years, perhaps most noticeably in works on the “new woman” and her education during the Japanese colonial era (1910–45). Hyaeweol Choi’s Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways represents an innovative addition to this vibrant locus of scholarship, shifting our attention from the 1920s and 1930s back to the turn of the century—and thereby enriching our understanding of the pre-colonial as well as colonial formation of new womanhood. Choi promises to explore and shed light on these formations, especially their extraordinarily complex “transcultural context” which featured three major historical agents: (1) American Protestant missionaries, (2) enlightenment-oriented Korean male intellectuals, and (3) Korean women (p. 8). Engaging a wealth of sources from both Korean and American missionary archives (containing numerous reports, journals, correspondence, personnel files, and even rare works of “missionary fiction”), Choi delivers on her promise.

Some of the most compelling observations in Gender and Missionary Encounters in Korea center on Choi’s analysis of “Christian modernity” in the Korean context. American women missionaries, who began arriving in Korea in 1885, played a critical role in establishing modern education for Korean women. This role was available to the former because of official neglect of women’s education in the late Chosŏn period. For their visible accomplishments in setting up educational institutions that remain household names even today (such as Ewha University), American women missionaries came to be known in both historiography and public memory as “pioneers who acted as catalysts for Korean modern womanhood” (p. x). At the core of her book is the complicated relationship between a particular brand of “Christian modernity” and more general notions of modernity. As Choi writes, “[i]t was in the mission field that largely conservative American women missionaries came to be regarded as ‘modern’ women by Koreans and by women missionaries themselves, who felt they held relatively greater freedom and independence than Korean women” (p. 181). [End Page 303]

“Christian modernity” served to constrain as well as to facilitate the development of Korean modern womanhood. The prevailing idea of “women’s work for women” in the foreign mission field provided American Protestant missionaries with exceptional opportunities to pursue a professional career as well as to discover and develop leadership skills (pp. 52, 56). Similar to other global mission fields, the majority of missionaries in Korea were women: 59 percent in the period between 1884 and 1910 and 63 percent by 1936 (p. 58). On the other hand, Christian womanhood introduced by American women missionaries was based on the (American) Victorian ideal—that is, the late nineteenth-century Protestant culture of “proper spheres.” The notion of separate spheres suited Korean women who were well accustomed to the Confucian idea of the “distinction between man and woman.” Despite the American missionaries’ views on the backward status of women in Korea on certain levels, Victorian ideals actually went hand-in-hand with existing Confucian prescriptions of womanhood. That this convenient inter-cultural meeting of conservative norms could serve evangelical goals also helps explain the reproduction of a male-centered hierarchy in the church and accommodation with late-Chosŏn Confucian norms in mission schools.

It follows that scrutinizing the unfolding of Christian modernity reveals much about the ways Korean male intellectuals understood “Western” conceptions of womanhood offered by American Protestant missionaries. Because nationalist thinkers saw gender equality as an indicator of “civilization and enlightenment” and therefore fundamental in the quest to build a modern nation-state, gender equality became a central trope of the Korean enlightenment movement as surely as it was for the Christian mission (pp. 43–44). Korean male intellectuals offered rhetorical support for gender equality, and American missionaries provided limited but nonetheless significant opportunities for Korean women to break the “inside-outside” boundary and enter the public sphere. Yet, even as Korean women entered schools and churches to support mission objectives as well as to pursue other personal goals, they were encouraged to continue observing established gender norms from the private sphere. In other words, the missionaries’ strategy of highlighting “feminine virtues” and “womanly politics” soothed male anxieties about emerging female leadership (p. 85).

These and many other fascinating stories fill the seven chapters comprising Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea. The first and last chapters function, respectively, as introduction and conclusion, while each chapter in between explores a different theme. Chapter 2, “Gender Equality, A New Moral Order,” begins with Korean male intellectuals’ appropriation of the woman question at the turn of the century. It investigates the way in which the national modernization project focused on the enlightenment of women. The next two chapters explore the areas of Korean women’s lives that were transformed mostly by missionary women. While chapter 3, “The Lure and Danger of the Public Sphere,” discusses the public and private works extended by missionary women and [End Page 304] Korean converts, chapter 4, “Disciplining the Modern Body and Mind” examines missionary education for Korean women.

The next two chapters stand out as case studies of mission and gender encounters. In chapter 5, “Imagining the Other: Discursive Portraits in Missionary Fiction,” Choi analyzes three novel-like works of fiction—Daybreak in Korea: A Tale of Transformation in the Far East (1909) by Annie Baird; Ewa: A Tale of Korea (1906) by W. Arthur Noble; and an unpublished manuscript entitled The Concubine by Ellasue C. Wagner. Written in English and published mostly by Christian presses, this literary genre primarily targeted readers back in the United States to maintain and promote interest in foreign missions (pp. 121–22). As Choi’s close readings of these texts show, they unquestionably draw our attention to “the varied experiences and desires of missionaries” that are rarely seen and often absent in official records and promotion-oriented documents (p. 143). The Concubine by Wagner, which Choi discovered in a missionary archive, tells a rare story about interracial marriage between an American woman and a Korean man. Like other works of missionary fiction, The Concubine illustrates the author’s views on local customs. But it goes beyond genre conventions to grapple with stereotypes of the unmarried missionary women and critique secular modern womanhood. In this story, ironically, the American woman represents the secular and the Korean woman manifests proper Christian womanhood. This reversed representation of pious “yellow sister” and secular white American shows the Wagner’s sense of achievement in the mission field.

Chapter 6, “Doing It for Herself: Sin yŏsŏng (New Women) in Korea,” profiles five renowned new women—Kim Hwal-lan, Kim Maria, Pakh Induk, Kim Wŏn-ju, and Na Hye-sŏk—whose lives spanned the end of the Chosŏn period and the colonial era. This chapter contextualizes the complicated intersections of Christianity, Japanese colonial rule, anti-colonial movements, and a growing desire for the new and the modern (p. 146). New women were exposed to Christianity through mission schools and churches, and many even came from Christian families. However, as Choi shows in this chapter, their responses to Christianity were by no means uniform. For example, while some managed to gain critical support from American Protestant leaders (who sent promising pupils to the United States for higher degrees and offered them prominent positions in women’s education and church work upon their return), other New Women, especially those who struggled with the oppressive nature of institutionalized patriarchy, did not have a lasting relationship with their missionary teachers or with Christianity (p. 179).

Finally, it should be noted that Choi’s work helpfully suggests new lines of inquiry. Although the primary contribution of Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea is its meticulous investigation of the pre-colonial origins and gendered dimensions of Christian modernity in Korea, the book also traces the significant influence of Japan, especially with respect to nationalist male intellectuals’ interaction with Christianity vis-à-vis Japanese and Korean new [End Page 305] women activities during the era of war mobilization. Informed by both English and Korean scholarship, Choi does not shy away from the controversial collaborationist history of some Korean Christian woman leaders, while also questioning the disproportionate attention paid to collaboration by female public figures. That being said, readers will likely want to read more about the dynamics of mission and gender encounters after the 1930s—notably, concerning interactions between American missionaries and Japanese colonial authority as well as the fate of Korean Bible women (chŏndo puin) who gained leadership skills through mission schools and church organizations.¹ Elsewhere Choi states that the modern gender ideology of women was not only for the educated few but figured as an idealized notion of womanhood that “penetrated all classes of women, incorporating them into the modern project of nation-building and industrialization.”² The book lays critical groundwork for further studies on the culture of New Woman in both its Christian and secular guises and how they affected the population at large. In this sense, the next step may be to investigate the broader effects of Christian womanhood outside of educational institutions and print culture.³

Based on subtle analysis and excellent archival research, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea provides a much needed study of modern Korean gender construction in a context marked by negotiations between Christianity, nationalism, and Confucian patriarchy. It furthermore accomplishes a rare transnational and interdisciplinary feat, linking American studies with Korean studies and mission studies with gender/sexuality studies. In so doing, Hyaeweol Choi’s exemplary book helps chart a new and exciting direction for Korean studies.