Two Incarnations, One Person:The Complexity of Kim Iryŏp's Life
Kim Iryŏp (Kim Wŏnju, 1896‒1971) was a pioneering feminist and prolific writer who left lay life to become a Buddhist nun. The bifurcation of her life between the secular and religious has generated two separate narratives, with Korean feminist studies focusing on Iryŏp as a revolutionary thinker and Buddhist studies centering on Iryŏp as an influential Buddhist nun. When divided this way, the biography of each career reads more simply. However, by including two significant but unexplored pieces of her history that traverse the two halves of her narrative, Iryŏp emerges as a more complex figure. The first is her forty-five-year relationship with the Buddhist monk Paek Sŏng'uk (1897‒1981). The second is how she extended some of her early feminism into monastic life but said little about the marginalization of nuns in Buddhism's highly patriarchal system. In both her relationship with Paek and her feminism, Iryŏp drew on the Buddhist teaching of nonself, in which the "big I" is beyond gender. Thus, Iryŏp repositions herself as having attained big I, while Paek remained stuck in "small I." Yet, while she finds equality with monks through an androgynous big I, none of her writings contest Korean Buddhism's androcentric institutional structure.
Kim Iryŏp, Paek Sŏng'uk, Buddhism, feminism, patriarchy
Tragedy characterizes the first generation of feminists in 1920s colonial Korea, who through writing, art, and music challenged—but were unable to overcome—the patriarchal ethos of Korean society.1 Collectively called the New Women (sin [End Page 51] yŏsŏng), they received modern educations, learned Western ideas, and became activists. Writing for the journal New Woman (Sin yŏja) founded in 1920, they rejected male-dominated traditional roles and adopted lifestyles based on individual rights, gender equality, free love, and the liberation of women.2 Although now recognized for their crucial role in advancing feminism, in their own time they were largely derided and rejected by a conservative society. Na Hyesŏk (1896‒ 1948), a writer, painter, and poet, was forced to divorce following discovery of her extramarital affairs, fell into poverty, and died a vagrant.3 Kim Myŏngsun (1896‒1951), a novelist and poet, likewise struggled with mental illness and destitution in later life.4 Most tragic, Yun Simdŏk (1897‒1926), a professional opera singer, died in a double suicide with her married lover by jumping off a passenger ferry sailing from Japan to Korea.5 However, Kim Wŏnju (1896‒1971), who published under the pen name Iryŏp, was the most unusual of these trailblazing feminists.6 While Iryŏp, as Hyaeweol Choi argues, "literally and symbolically started the New Women's Movement,"7 she escaped the fates of her three peers. It is generally thought that Iryŏp survived and thrived because she left secular life at age thirty-eight to become a Buddhist nun.8
The demarcation between Iryŏp's early life as a New Woman and later life as a monastic has naturally led to a division in scholarship, with Korean feminist studies focusing on Kim Wŏnju as a pioneering thinker and Buddhist studies centering on Iryŏp as a prominent Buddhist nun.9 However, recent scholarship by Jin Y. Park integrates these two fields, providing a more comprehensive view of Iryŏp's life. In the introduction to a meticulous translation of Iryŏp's Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun: Essays by Zen Master Kim Iryop (2014) and a subsequent analysis of Iryŏp's philosophy in Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryŏp (2017), Park brings Iryŏp to the center of scholarly discussions of modernity and philosophy in colonial and postcolonial Korea. By characterizing Iryŏp as both an activist and a Buddhist philosopher, Park illuminates how a female Buddhist figure encountered and wrestled with modern forces and the ensuing philosophical issues. In so doing, Park amends the scholarly bifurcation of Iryŏp's life, providing continuity rather than disjunction between the two eras of her persona. For example, Park shows how Iryŏp's engagement with women's issues in terms of "the search for the self and for freedom"10 persisted into her monastic life. Although her engagement shifted from "societal"to "existential,"Park aptly points out that both were predicated on the same objective: "To live as a being who is free and who is creative."11
Following Park's lead in looking at Iryŏp's life taken as a whole, this article adds two important but unexplored facets of Iryŏp's life that appear both in her early years as a laywoman and in her later years as a nun and Buddhist teacher. By integrating these considerations into the current narratives of her life, Iryŏp emerges as a much more complex historical figure than she seems when depicted in biographies of each era. The first aspect traversing the two halves is her forty-five-year relationship with the Buddhist monk Paek Sŏng'uk (1897‒1981). The [End Page 52] second aspect is how she was able to extend some of her feminist ideals into her monastic life but ultimately declined to challenge the androcentrism of the Korean Buddhist monastic institution. This article draws on Jin Y. Park's translation of Iryŏp' major works and uses additional primary sources to elucidate these two threads of her narrative.
Regarding Paek, it has been largely assumed that once Iryŏp became a nun she permanently abandoned romantic feelings. Indeed, her later writings about her premonastic relationships, including her tumultuous love affair with Paek, were framed as a mere footnote, useful only as a pedagogic tool for inducing "all men and women who suffer from failed love affairs"12 to practice Buddhism. Certainly, the unexpected, bitter breakup with Paek and his continued rejection of her advances in subsequent years led her to rethink true love and to pursue ordination as a celibate nun. However, her letters reveal that she continued to long for him even after six years of life as a nun; she even expressed a willingness to return to him. Not until much later in her life did Iryŏp accept that they would be spiritual friends. In her writing for publication, she drew on the Buddhist teachings of non-self to provide a meaningful framework for resolving their relationship. As she would have put it, when she let go of her secular life, which was characterized by ensnarement in the "small I"of ego, and embarked on a spiritual path of celibacy under a Sŏn (Zen in Japanese) master in pursuit of the "big I"of transformation and liberation, she transformed her trauma into healing. Iryŏp resolved the resentment she harbored against Paek for rejecting her by repositioning herself as having attained a big I while Paek remained mired in a small I.
This same rhetoric on the big I, the I that is beyond gender and sexuality, gave Iryŏp a way to extend her feminist vision into her new life as a Buddhist monastic. On the ground, however, Buddhist monasticism was decidedly misogynistic, both historically and in modern times. By joining the monastic community, she entered a situation where there was a gulf between her genderless idealism and the malecentered reality of the Korean Buddhist system.
Buddhist monasticism is historically and institutionally patriarchal, even into the present day.13 While the Buddha broke social norms by allowing women to be ordained as monastics, and the early record attests to nuns attaining enlightenment, nuns were discriminated against from the start. In scriptures attributed to the Buddha, as well as in the celibate institutional structure, a number of misogynist teachings were set forth. For example, it was said that, as a result of allowing women to join the monastic community, the lifespan of Buddhism would be shortened; moreover, nuns had to follow additional precepts and follow the rule that even the most senior nun was subordinate to the most junior monk.14 Female ordination required the presence of male monks to make it legitimate. Later scriptures further consolidated the understanding that, to reach enlightenment, women, including nuns, would have to be reborn as men.15 These views are repeated even today in conservative Buddhist circles.
Buddhism's varying attitudes toward women can be classified in four ways, as laid out by Alan Sponberg in an analysis of early Buddhism: while on the one [End Page 53] hand there has been both "soteriological inclusiveness"and "soteriological androgyny,"for the most part Buddhist monasticism enacted "institutional androcentrism"toward all women and "ascetic misogyny"toward its nuns.16 In the Zen Buddhism in China (on which Korean Buddhism patterned itself), the rhetoric of masculine heroism, as Mariam Levering has pointed out, is so deeply engrained in Zen that female aspirants were instructed to model their practice after a great male hero (ta-jang-fu).17 Institutionally, this androcentric Buddhism, wrote Rita Gross, "manifests in male-controlled institutions, i.e. in patriarchy, [to the extent that] Buddhist institutions often excluded women from valued pursuits and leadership roles."18 The Korean Buddhist patriarchal monastic system was further compounded by neo-Confucian orthodoxy, thereby doubly marginalizing and silencing nuns in premodern times, during the colonial period, and well into the post-colonial era.19
This is the patriarchal monastic system that Iryŏp entered. She took a monk as her master, and her later writings reveal how she internalized his teachings and the androcentrism of the monastic system. This gradual adoption of traditional Buddhism is exemplified in her shift away from supporting clerical marriage toward advocating clerical celibacy. In fact, she made a concerted effort to advance the cause of a faction of pro-celibacy monks, at war with the married monks, in the 1950s and 1960s, participating in what was called the Buddhist purification movement (pulgyo chŏnghwa undong). Despite nuns' crucial role in helping the celibate camp wrest power from the married monks, once the movement was over nuns were forced to return to their second-class status and were denied the leadership roles that had been promised in return for their help. At this turn of events, Iryŏp was silent, producing no written objections nor advocating for nuns in any way that was commensurate with her vociferous and public support for the purification movement. As with repositioning herself in relationship to Paek, Iryŏp's deployment of the genderless big I gave her a philosophical stance in which she could obtain spiritual advancement as a female monastic within a patriarchal system. At the same time, this rhetoric may have led her to not see how nuns continued to be marginalized by Korean Buddhist institutions.
SEARCH FOR TRUE LOVE AND MARRIAGE
Iryŏp was born to a devout Christian family in south P'yŏngan; she attended Christian-affiliated schools, including the Sungsil and Ewha Hakdang mission schools,20 and majored in nursing. As a New Woman, Iryŏp bucked the tradition of arranged marriage, much to the disapproval of her contemporaries. She dated a number of men, which again was revolutionary in her time, in search of true love. In 1918, at age twenty-two, she married the forty-year-old Yi Noic (dates unknown), a graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University and professor of chemistry at Yŏnhui Junior College (later Yonsei University). With her husband's support, [End Page 54] she went to Japan to study at the Nisshin School.21 While there, she befriended and had romantic liaisons with a number of Korean and Japanese intellectuals, including the writer Yi Kwangsu (1892–1950),22 the novelist Im Changhwa (dates unknown), and a law student named Ōta Seijō (dates unknown). In fact, Kim Wŏnju got her pen name, Iryŏp, from Yi, who named her after the Japanese feminist writer Natsuko Higuchi's (1872–96) own pen name, Ichiyō. Due to her affairs, she and Yi divorced while she was still in Japan. Freed from her unhappy marriage, she fell in love with Ōta and sought to marry him. However, Ōta's parents disapproved.23 Iryŏp returned to Korea in 1920 and began her career as a writer and feminist activist. Her feminist ideas were radical for her time. She argued that old customs harmful to the status of women should be eradicated and that women should have rights equal to those of men. She proposed that women should pursue education, that they should be allowed to choose their partner based on love rather than by arrangement, and that they should be free to modernize their attire.24 Some years later, Iryŏp wrote that women should not be satisfied with being equal to men but would "have to go one step further"to "contribute to Korean society"and should "try to become great figures in the world."25 These objectives are representative of colonial Korean feminism broadly.
In the early 1920s, her faith in Christianity weakened as a result of a series of tragic events, including deaths in her family, as well as her increasing questions about some of the tenets of Christianity.26 When she became interested in Buddhism is not clear. Yi Kwangsu and the writings of Natsuko, both Buddhists, might have influenced her. In 1927 she contributed a piece to the Korean Buddhist journal Pulgyo and soon after was hired as the editor of the literary section. Although the editor in chief Kwŏn Sangno (1879–1965) was a monk and occasionally taught her Buddhist doctrines, she remained unfamiliar with Buddhism: "I cannot say that I understood Buddhist teachings at that time,"she wrote.27
However, her interest in Buddhism changed after she met Paek, who had just become president of the journal later in 1927, when Paek was thirty-one and Iryŏp was thirty-two. Iryŏp believed that in Paek she had found the person who would fulfill her vision of an ideal marriage. He met all her expectations, especially as a member of an elite group of Koreans who had received a modern education. He had graduated from high school in France and received a PhD in philosophy from Würzburg University in Germany in 1925.28 When he returned to Korea that year, he landed a job as a professor at a well-known Buddhist college and quickly rose to become an influential leader. Paek possessed another qualification that drew Iryŏp to him: he was a Buddhist monk. He had been ordained at age fourteen at Pongguk Temple in his native Seoul and had studied at a Buddhist school.29 They fell in love instantly. Paek introduced her to Buddhist philosophy and taught her practices that would help her mature. Because clerical marriage had become common by that time, Iryŏp had no qualms about envisioning marriage with him as a monk. Although Paek was, she wrote, "not overly interested in creating a happy family life,"she "longed for the day"that she could officially announce him "to the world as my husband."30 [End Page 55]
Less than a year into their intense romance, Paek abruptly left her with no more explanation than a small note saying, "Our affinity has reached its end."She was further devastated on hearing a rumor that Paek had left her to spend time with another woman at a temple on Mount Kŭmgang.31 Son Hyejŏng (or Son Sŏkche, 1882–1959) was a charismatic laywoman sixteen years Paek's senior. Son is believed to have been one of Paek's spiritual teachers, and she continued to guide and support him until her death in 1959.32 Yet, the age difference did not stop Iryŏp from suspecting that there was something more to their relationship.
Although historians believe that Paek took a ten-year absence from public life so that he could undertake serious spiritual practice as a reclusive, there were a number of other reasons he needed to leave Seoul in 1928. He had been deeply involved in the internal politics of the Korean Buddhist Central Office, which was trying to galvanize young monks to reform Korean Buddhism. Paek and several other nationalist monks had held a historical conference to create a new, centralized institutional structure. The Japanese colonial government perceived this move as a threat, and Paek soon became a person of interest.33 Challenges also came from within Buddhist circles: a powerful group of monks began criticizing how the organizers had handled the conference and various reforms.34 Under these circumstances, Paek's relationship with a controversial figure like Iryŏp was not helpful, and his residency in colonial Seoul became problematic. But an even more compelling reason for his departure came from elsewhere. As he confessed twenty years later, Paek's parents had been pressuring him to marry a woman they had chosen for him, and he ultimately acquiesced.35 He later admitted this to Iryŏp, writing that "you trusted me . . . but I betrayed you."36 From the extant sources, it does not appear that Paek married Son, although their relationship was clearly more than one of teacher and disciple: it seems more likely that he married someone else during or after his years-long retreat. Indeed, Paek had already been married once, before he and Iryŏp met,37 although to whom and for how long are not known.
At the time, however, Iryŏp believed that Paek was in a relationship with Son. She later wrote, "I am positive, though, that you had another woman at the time."38 She also admitted,
A friend of yours once told me that he, a woman [namely Son], and you had studied Buddhist scriptures under a dharma master named Master Hwan at the Sin'gye Monastery on Kŭmgang Mountain, and that he saw the woman at your place. He also told me that your relationship with her seemed to be more than a friendship. He even told me that she had a mysterious power to attract men.39
Iryŏp was "seriously disappointed"by the news of Paek's "going off with that woman."40 Still, despite all she had heard about Paek's whereabouts and conjugal status, Iryŏp maintained that Paek had left her because of his devotion to meditation. [End Page 56]
After a period of bewilderment and depression marked by feelings of anger and betrayal, Iryŏp met another monk, Ha Yunsil (dates unknown). Indeed, Ha had worked with Paek to organize the monks' conference. Although Iryŏp did not find Ha as charismatic or as attractive as Paek, he nevertheless possessed a similar elite background and standing.41 After majoring in English at Waseda University in Japan, Ha taught at a Posŏng Buddhist High School.42 Ha had known Iryŏp for some time and provided emotional support for her after her breakup with Paek. Over time, she came to consider him as someone who could fill the vacuum left by Paek. Moreover, Iryŏp believed that she might be able to resuscitate her dream of an ideal marriage, as Ha approximated the qualities that Paek had possessed.
In late 1929 Iryŏp and Ha married.43 When people ridiculed her for marrying a monk, she said she did so because he was "trained in the Buddhist culture of bringing benefit and happiness to people"and because he had "comforted"her. Unlike "other men who possessed latent tyranny,"Ha would not hurt her by "deviating from marriage."44 She claimed to be "very happy,"45 and she did seem so, for a time. She and her new husband worked as a team, supporting each other's careers. When Ha became the principal of Posŏng Buddhist High School, Iryŏp decided to teach at the same school to help him.46 However, Ha could not provide the love and the intellectual companionship that Iryŏp had had with Paek. This emerged early on when Iryŏp wrote, "I feel assured and satisfied about my marriage to a monk . . . but it is a pity that although I am dying to know the Buddhist truth abundant in the universe, I cannot get a satisfactory answer from my monastic husband."47 At this point, Iryŏp started spending more time at temples, doing intensive meditation retreats under the guidance of the prominent master Mangong (1871‒1946).48 Ha was aware of Iryŏp's discontent, and more painfully of the fact that Paek was her true love. He knew that Iryŏp still missed Paek and remained bitter about his leaving.
Iryŏp vented her feelings about Paek in a novel, Avoiding Sexual Desires (Aeyok ŭl p'ihaya), which she wrote while still married to Ha and published in 1932. Although presented as fiction, the story was a thinly disguised account of Iryŏp's relationship with Paek. The novel's male protagonist, Hyŏngsik, pines away with desire for Haeyŏng and ultimately commits suicide. When Haeyŏng visits the temple where he lived and practiced after leaving her, the abbot shows her a letter she had sent her former lover a few years earlier and says, "This letter killed Hyŏngsik."He also shows her Hyŏngsik's will, in which he confesses that after he read her letter his love and desire for her became so unbearable that he had to end his own life.49 Iryŏp was processing her suffering by rewriting her experiences in a narrative that inverted the dynamics of her romance, symbolically enacting retribution on Paek or attempting to rebalance their lopsided love through fiction. The novel also reads as an attempt to convince herself that Paek's love for her was as deep and intense as her own for him.
Ha became restless and distrustful, their marriage faltered, and they divorced in 1933. He was devastated and never recovered from the breakup.50 Once again, her [End Page 57] plans for marriage and a spiritual life with a monk had fallen apart. Iryŏp decided to leave lay life and become a nun. She initially desired to join the monastery where Paek was residing on the Mount Kŭmgang, but instead she moved to the temple of her master, Mangong, in 1934, and became his monastic disciple.51 It was common practice at the time that, in the absence of well-trained female monastics, female novices pursued ordination and practice under the aegis of male masters.
AMBIVALENCE
Despite her decision to pursue celibate monasticism, Iryŏp continued to pine for Paek. Shortly before being ordained, perhaps as one last attempt to see if he was available, she sent a letter to Paek expressing her steadfast love. She received no response.52 In 1935 Iryŏp was fully ordained with the monastic name Hayŏp (Lotus Leaf).53 In an essay she wrote soon after, she said that she became a nun "to abandon all attachments,"to "break off all relationships,"and to follow the Buddha's teachings, which were "a light that could lead her to the stage of complete love."54 She desired, she wrote, to transform her small, worldly love into a greater, spiritual love.
However, even after six years of practice, Iryŏp had not relinquished her attachment to Paek. In 1941 she unexpectedly received some gifts from him through the mail. After ten years in a rural monastery, Paek had returned to Seoul in 1938 and delved back into Buddhist activities.55 Several years later, he sent Iryŏp some books, medicine, and candies.56 She took them as an expression of Paek's love for her, and she sent a letter thanking him and confessing her great excitement. She wrote that she "could not help but sighing deeply with a feeling of mixed anguish and joy on account of an unexpected message of affection from you."She continued, "This feeling must be a revival of my affection and yearning for you."She confessed that, "if you could come smiling and give me, just once, the joy of being caressed with your smooth hands, I would be happy to delay my path to enlightenment."57 She was willing to break her vows and return to lay life to be with him again.
Paek's response quickly threw cold water on Iryŏp's excitement. He admonished her, writing that her feelings were "a sign of weakness in endeavor"and recommended that she "repent and pray"more diligently. Dejected, Iryŏp sent another letter, saying, "This sentient being [Iryŏp] is your victim."She continued, "If this agonizing bundle of affection is not untangled, it will cause great damage to [my] progress in practice." "As my last wish,"she beseeched him, "I am pleading for a glass of wine in farewell."58 Iryŏp received another frosty remonstration from him. "I hope you know that you should seek the love of ten thousand years by overcoming a temporary passion."He urged her to "sacrifice the love of a small 'I' in order to obtain the love of a greater 'I'."59 As a married monk, Paek might have written all this to push Iryŏp away and to avoid complicating his marriage. [End Page 58]
At this point, Iryŏp gave up. She wrote back, "Even though I now understand you are not to be the object of my love, I still consider you to be the best person for me. But I will neither expect you to give me any affection nor look into your giving affection to others. . . . I just want us to be companions in seeking enlightenment."She painfully tried to accept Paek's rejection of her, but her remarks reveal her difficulty in finding closure. It took Paek ten years to respond. He explained, "The reason why you, Iryŏp Sunim, felt such sorrow over me leaving you is because you felt as if a table laid with a full meal was taken away when you were extremely hungry."He justifies his leaving by adding to the metaphor: "But the rice contained poison!"He presented his seeming ill treatment of her as a matter of spiritual expedience: "At any rate, do you think our [worldly] love has now reached the peak of [true, spiritual] love?"Paek also expressed approval of her practice, saying, "It makes me happy to think of you, Iryŏp Sunim, smiling and making a change of heart."60
IRYŎP'S SILENCE ON KOREAN BUDDHISM'S PATRIARCHY
If Iryŏp's persistent love for Paek is one continuity between her secular and monastic lives, the complications of bringing feminism to bear on each is another. Though she departed from the patriarchy of secular society, she entered a Buddhist monasticism that was equally male centered. Over the years, Iryŏp gradually became more traditional as a Korean Buddhist monastic. This change can be seen in her shift in position on the issue of clerical marriage. Whereas as a laywoman and even into her early years as a nun she supported what was seen as the modern, progressive practice of clerical marriage, she slowly shifted to the traditional, conservative view that only celibate monks were legitimate clerics. While this change in view is not patriarchal itself, her adoption of this aspect of the institution of Korean Buddhism suggests that she internalized traditional values that stood at odds with her earlier feminism. Nowhere is this clearer than in her striking silence in the aftermath of a second wave of marginalization of nuns in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In the early 1950s a small group of celibate monks had sought to oust married monks from major head temples and leadership positions. Numerically inferior to the married camp, the celibate camp desperately needed the support of the nuns, who agreed to join their cause. Iryŏp was a leading voice of these nuns. Despite the significant role of nuns in what was called the purification movement, once the celibate monks assumed power the nuns were denied the leadership positions promised to them and were pushed back to the margins. In contrast to Iryŏp's uncompromising feminist voice in protest of patriarchy and in support of women's education, free love, and leadership before her ordination, she did not write about the deeply entrenched androcentrism in Korean Buddhism in general or about the monks' betrayal of nuns after the movement. [End Page 59]
Looking back to the early colonial period illuminates the broader context of what shaped Iryŏp's views. In the early 1900s Korean monks began taking wives, partly in the name of modernity and the socialization of Buddhism, and partly in emulation of Japanese Buddhism, which had already institutionalized clerical marriage.61 However, according to the Temple Ordinance promulgated by the Japanese colonial government in 1911, one needed to be a fully ordained, celibate monastic to be eligible for an abbotship position. In 1925 a group of abbots of head temples, many of whom had been educated in Japan and who had wives, petitioned the colonial government to legalize clerical marriage.62 After considerable deliberation, the government eventually allowed married monks to qualify for abbotships. Within this new legal framework, Korean monks began marrying even more freely, and it is believed that by the time Iryŏp married the monk Ha the majority of Korean monks had wives.63
Iryŏp's training under her master Mangong, himself a celibate monk, gradually influenced her views on clerical marriage. In an interview in 1935, a year after she had become his disciple, Iryŏp answered a question from a traditional Buddhist perspective about why she had to leave her secular life: "To pursue a life-long practice to reach enlightenment—one cannot accomplish it as a family person."The reporter asked her why she followed the traditional way: "Unlike in the past, aren't there monks who eat meat and have wives and children?"In reply, she said, "There are two branches in Buddhism, the Sutra Study School and the Sŏn School. Monks in the Sutra Study School lead the life [of meat eating and taking families] but it is strictly prohibited in the Sŏn School."64 Her moderate stance at that time accommodated both modalities.
However, by the 1950s her position hardened: she adopted the uncompromising stance that all monks should be celibate and that there was no place for married monks in Korean Buddhism. In response to increasing tension between the married and celibate factions, she wrote two articles in 1955 in which her master's position on clerical marriage predominated. She reminisced about how her master had challenged Governor-General Minami Jirō (r. 1936‒1942). During a meeting in 1937, Korean Buddhist leaders unanimously praised Minami for his great work on behalf of Korean Buddhism. Mangong was reported to have stunned everyone, including Minami himself, by then admonishing his colleagues for lauding Minami's effort to make Korean monks abandon celibacy and thus "Japanizing"Korean Buddhism. Mangong further maintained that the previous governor-general, Terauchi Masatake (r. 1910‒1916), who was responsible for the current laicization of Korean monks, should be suffering in hell.65 According to Iryŏp, her master then said that "we should drive away all pro-Japanese monks [those who took wives] as soon as possible and recover the traditional Sangha [celibate monastic community] of Korean Buddhism to save the Korean nation and promote world peace."66 Iryŏp's recounting of this incident became the springboard for the argument she made in favor of the celibate monks. [End Page 60]
When the pitched conflict reached the Korean Supreme Court in 1959 and the final verdict was about to be delivered as to which side would have control over the majority of the temples, Iryŏp wrote three additional articles with final arguments in support of celibate monks. She made clear that monastic life begins with "leaving home"and that this "is prerequisite to becom[ing] a disciple of the Buddha."She argued, "If it reaches the point where someone who has a wife and children claims that he is a monk, it is proof that Buddhism does not exist anymore."67 She allowed no space even for those Sutra school monks who were married; in her opinion, anyone claiming to be a monastic should be celibate.
Sounding as if she were unfamiliar with the very practice of clerical marriage, Iryŏp recounted an episode from around 1944–45, ten years into her life as a nun. She had been visiting Seoul on business and "ran into a married monk,"which prompted her to "think about the condition of the celibate monks and nuns."She challenged the married monk: "Even if one pours one's entire energy into practice, one is not guaranteed to accomplish the goal [of nirvana]. How could one lead a monastic life while taking on responsibility as a wife or a husband?"Iryŏp said that the married monk admitted that he felt like "he was struck with a stick,"68 meaning that he was unable to refute her point.
Iryŏp showed a glimmer of sympathy for the married faction by expressing her displeasure and pity whenever "the celibate monks show their contempt for the married monks."Still, her criticism of married monks predominated in her writing. She stressed that, "There were not many among the married monks who are respectable."Furthermore, she ascribed the dire situation of Korean Buddhism to the mistake Korean Buddhists had made during the colonial period in believing that their religion could survive by relying on married monks, who were considered to be adept in administrative and executive functions. To Iryŏp, this naive idea no longer worked, and a thorough purification was needed, including the expulsion of married monks from the temples. She concluded her article by pleading with the Supreme Court to give a rational, positive verdict and even thanked the judges, as if they had already decided in favor of the celibate faction.69
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nuns joined celibate monks in massive street protests, leading that faction to gain control of Korea's temples. Initially, the monks assigned four of the twenty highly prized head monasteries to nuns to recognize their decisive role in the purification movement. However, as soon as the celibate camp achieved their goals with the help of the nuns, the monks quickly took these monasteries away, and the nuns were relocated to several branch temples.70 The purification movement was clearly primarily intended for the benefit of the male monastics. Nuns were soon forced back to the margins of Korean Buddhism. Eventually, not a single head monastery was apportioned to the nuns for their contributions to the movement. As Sponberg, Gross, and Levering have observed of the androcentric nature of Buddhist monasticism, the nuns continued to live as second-class members of the monastic community, utterly betrayed by the celibate monks. And yet, there appear to be no articles, letters, or any other writing [End Page 61] from Iryŏp protesting or voicing concern on this core feminist issue within Korean Buddhism.
To provide contrast with the peculiarity of Iryŏp's lack of writing on the marginalization of nuns, one might look to the eminent scholar-nun Chŏng Suok (1902–66), Iryŏp's contemporary. For example, while studying in Japan from 1937 to 1939, Suok wrote a scathing article titled "Naeji pulgyo kyŏnhakki"("Record on a Trip to Observe Japanese Buddhism"). Compared to the standing of nuns in Japan, the condition of Korean nuns, numbering over a thousand, was dismal. She attributed Korean nuns' lack of social status to the disregard and disdain meted out by Korean monks. She admitted the nuns' own inability to see how poorly they were treated should be considered. Nonetheless, she argued that "the monks' crimes are greater"than the nuns' since they had "oppressed, mistreated, belittled, and looked down upon the nuns."71 Iryŏp's writings contain no comment on the problem of inequality. This lack is even more surprising given her earlier, extensive writings on feminism.
Just as Iryŏp's views on celibacy became more closely aligned with traditional Buddhism, so too did she seem to have taken on a somewhat male-centered perspective. She wrote, "A young monk allowing himself to fall for a woman's sweet charms faces graver danger than a child attracted to a leper offering candy."72 Iryŏp's characterization of women as dangerous and harmful to men's spiritual journey resonates with how Buddhism traditionally characterized women. Notably, the statement stands in contrast to the feminism of her early years. After decades as a nun she internalized some of the misogynistic monastic culture, even though in many writings she presented her understanding of Buddhist teachings in a way that suggests that she had gone beyond the binary of male and female.
Her silence can possibly be understood as an outgrowth of her primary focus on the ultimate truth rather than on the conventional one. According to her teachings on Buddhist philosophy, once one obtains a true, great, and wholesome "I,"existing gender disparities and inequalities become irrelevant. Her view reflects Sponberg's two egalitarian positions of Buddhism toward women: soteriological inclusiveness and soteriological androgyny. In a sense, Iryŏp's Buddhist philosophy and practice, shaped by her life experiences, disabled her feminist voice. Additionally, Iryŏp was constrained by the politics of Korean Buddhism: making public statements would have seriously compromised her monastery and her position as a leader of the nuns, due in part to her infamous premonastic career.
RECONCILATION WITH PAEK
Around the time Iryŏp was deeply involved in the movement to purify Korean Buddhism of married monks in the 1950s,73 both Iryŏp and Paek became prominent in their own worlds: Iryŏp as a religious leader and Paek as a political and [End Page 62] business leader. This is when her relationship with Paek shifted significantly and they came to terms with each other.
In 1938, a few years after Iryŏp took up residence at a monastery a hundred miles from the capital, Paek returned to Seoul from his monastery. Paek's career took off as soon as Japanese colonial rule ended in 1945 and a postcolonial government was established in 1948. The first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee (s. 1946‒1960), invited Paek, who was one of his former nationalist colleagues, to join his cabinet. This decision surprised the public, as Paek was not well known in political circles. A newspaper reporter described him as a former recluse from the deep mountains who "came out of the blue like a comet"and was "like a new Zarathustra."74 Paek was introduced to the public as a celibate monk, which means that his marriage was not public knowledge. After serving briefly as a minister, he became the CEO of the Korean Mine Development Company and then the president of Dongguk University. With his political and economic clout, he later ran, unsuccessfully, in a general election for the vice presidency of the Korean government. As a married monk he could not avoid involvement in the fight between the married and celibate monks. Although Paek did not support the married camp outright, from the celibate camp's perspective he was seen as part of it by default, and his candidacy was thus unsupportable in their eyes. According to one news report, when the abbot of Kwanŭm Temple in Pusan was walking through the city with a bag containing a list of signatures supporting Paek's candidacy, a man alleged to belong to the celibate camp seized it, ran off, and later discarded the names.75 Now devoted to secular politics and business, Paek avoided making any public statements on the issue of clerical marriage and tried to stay out of Korean Buddhist politics.
As Paek's life transitioned from spiritual to worldly, Iryŏp moved from lay to monastic. Previously, when their roles were reversed in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it was Paek who convinced her that she had found true love through Buddhism; it was Paek who provided a serious introduction to Buddhism and set her on a path to finding the most efficacious solutions to her existential questions; and it was Paek who frequently reminded her to overcome worldly limitations by redirecting her passion and love toward a larger spiritual goal. However, by the late 1950s it was now her turn to repay Paek—with a slight tone of reprimand—for not meeting monastic expectations. Directly contradicting his own earlier advice to her, he had become deeply involved in public, secular life as a married man, educator, politician, and entrepreneur. In contrast, Iryŏp was living a celibate monastic life in search of a complete and awakened I, the very ideal that Paek had set for her (and for himself). She had failed in worldly love, but he had failed, by their standards, in his spiritual life. Paek was no longer the idealized mentor she had trailed and tried to emulate. Rather, he was now the recipient of her spiritual guidance.
This repositioning is most apparent in a letter she wrote in 1959 after receiving a package from Paek. He had realized that Iryŏp's temple, Kyŏnsŏng'am, had [End Page 63] been suffering financially and sent her some money. But this time she returned the donation with a chilly response, adding notes of spiritual instruction and admonition. It mirrored Paek's own distant reply to her thank you letter of 1941, nearly two decades before. In her letter, Iryŏp admitted that his letter had taken her off guard: "My hands are shaking as I read your letter; I am trying hard not to lose my composure. . . . The former self of this nun, which was terribly devastated by the separation from you thirty-some years ago, appeared before my eyes like an image of a tragic woman in an old movie. The image scared me."76 However, she followed that admission by reproaching Paek that his donation had not come from his sense of faith. She lauded his business success and extensive charitable activities even while devaluing his accomplishments, writing, "The spiritual ground should be well established before any material business begins."In other words, as long as one has not understood one's true self, one's life is illusory and full of suffering. "When I realized this reality twenty-seven years ago, I made up my mind to join the monastery and took the path back,"77 she wrote, and she reminisced about her "silly"and "crazy"past. Now that the monastics at her temple had a clear sense of "our selves"and "the creativity of the universe,"Iryŏp proudly pronounced, "we here at this Zen center realize our self-sufficiency and thus feel wealthy."Iryŏp threw a punch, describing their respective situations as, "You are the one who is constrained by depravity, and yet you try to offer your sympathy to us, the affluent?"Dismissing Paek's life as delusional and transient, Iryŏp advised him, "You need to carry on with this practice [of finding your true self] until you experience it for yourself."78
Paek's letter in reply is surprisingly humble. He willingly admitted his lack of spiritual maturity, writing, "I am just an ordinary man occupied with secular affairs."He continued by saying that he was "a hopeless jerk,"acknowledging his betrayal of her. Now feeling apologetic and nostalgic, and aware of antagonism in Iryŏp's letter, Paek asked her to return to him. He wished for Iryŏp to arrive as an old woman, who would rest on his bosom, rather than coming to him as a dignified nun. He knew this was not feasible, however: "The sin of causing the downfall of a celibate nun is as big as the size of Mount Sumi [Mount Sumeru in Sanskrit, meaning the center of the universe]."He was full of admiration for Iryŏp's accomplishments as a nun occupying "a high religious position,"and he characterized himself as a "worthless old man"blubbering about his "worldly feelings."79
Paek sounds much like the younger Iryŏp had in pleading with her to accept him. When he wrote this letter, he was single again: "My wife died five years ago."80 Perhaps to signal his availability, he wrote that his friends recommend he marry again and that some women even "flirted"with him. He assured Iryŏp that he was not interested in them, and he promised to spend the rest of his life in a remote place. His intention is apparent: "I've learned that if I want to reach a state where I can be with you forever, I must be on the same path as you are."81 Iryŏp's old dream of being reunited with Paek was now a real possibility, albeit spiritually rather than physically. She had been vindicated at least verbally in [End Page 64] this exchange of letters, and through this it seems she finally came to terms with Paek. These letters were eventually compiled into a book, Ŏnŭ sudoin ŭi hoesang (Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun), which Iryŏp published in 1960 to raise funds for her temple. The book was highly unusual both because it was written by a nun and because it included an extensive chapter on her intimate relationship with Paek, her former lover. It became a best seller. In many ways, by including the letters from the prominent figure Paek in which he kneels down before her with respect and to seek her spiritual guidance, Iryŏp receives the ultimate validation.
Despite the air of triumph surrounding the publication of these late letters between Iryŏp and Paek, Paek knew what he was getting into. He appears to have willingly participated in Iryŏp's book project as a way to redeem himself for the heartache he had caused her. He acquiesced to the character she created for him in her life narrative, which had been framed as a transformation from suffering to happiness and from a small I to a big I. Iryŏp was conscious of this arrangement, and it might have been a last bid on her part for his acceptance.
In all likelihood, Iryŏp and Paek communicated about which letters were to be included in her book and how they were to be edited for publication. Their negotiations and reconciliation were amicable. Iryŏp extended an olive branch to Paek within the book by expressing her gratitude to him, despite the pain he had caused her: "How can I ever thank you enough? I must become the kind of person who can make it up to you."82 By publishing both her own and Paek's letters, Iryŏp also brought closure to their relationship, particularly through equalizing their previously asymmetrical relationship by symbolically placing Paek under her spiritual authority. Reflecting this, her letter to Paek, which is largely autobiographical, occupies the largest portion of the book. Together they performed a well-choreographed dance to accomplish multiple goals: promoting sales of the book to support her temple, turning her life story into a tool of propagation, and most crucially, proclaiming to the public her victory over worldly love.
Iryŏp published her last book in 1964 and passed away in 1971. Despite his promise not to marry again, Paek remarried, this time to Chŏng Hyŏngjae (dates unknown), in the mid-1960s. His new wife was thirty years his junior, and they had two daughters before he died in 1981 at age eighty-four.83 It is unclear whether he married before Iryŏp passed away; if he did, we do not know how Iryŏp reacted to his third marriage or how he would have justified it.
CONCLUSION
My analysis of these two additional features of Iryŏp's life and her work is by no means aimed at undermining her accomplishments and significance as a feminist, Buddhist leader, and philosopher in modern Korea. Her bravery in sharing her love story and her honesty in detailing her complicated relationship with Paek, both of which are extremely rare among both monks and nuns in recounting [End Page 65] their lives, makes this investigation possible. Her disclosure enables us to see a fuller picture of the inner life of a monastic. In addition, her evolving position on the clerical marriage issue bring to light how nuns, who inexorably resorted to the androcentric monastic community to pursue a spiritual awakening beyond gender, navigated through and negotiated with Korean Buddhism in a way that made their lives meaningful within the strictures of the institution.
One final point is necessary. There is a tendency in the scholarship of Buddhism in general and of Korean Buddhism in particular to pay disproportionate attention to the intimate lives of female historical figures, especially in relation to male historical counterparts, but not necessarily vice versa. What this case study reveals—and the gift that Iryŏp gives us in disclosing her personal life—is that intimate relations deeply inform the philosophy, politics, and religion of these actors. Such cognizance is equally relevant in the study of monastic lives, in which it is presumed that romantic feelings are the most attenuated and therefore irrelevant. It is important that the future scholarship of Buddhist figures attend more to examining the intersection of monasticism and love, particularly for those in the modern period in which love, sexuality, and marriage became a major discourse among Buddhists. Thus, it is useful to examine the romantic relationships of prominent male monastic figures of modern Korean Buddhism, such as Yi Hoegwang (1862–1933), Paek Yongsŏng (1864–1940), Han Yong'un (1879–1944), and even Iryŏp's lover, among many others. Analyses of their relationships will avoid re-creating hagiographic narratives and elicit the richness of their writing, practice, and teachings. [End Page 66]
Hwansoo Kim is associate professor of Korean Buddhism and culture in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. His primary research concerns Korean and Japanese Buddhism in the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in the context of colonialism, imperialism, and modernity. He is the author of Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912 (2013) and The Korean Buddhist Empire: A Transnational History, 1910–1945 (2018).
NOTES
This article was supported by a generous grant of the Academy of Korean Studies through the collaborative project "Laboratory for the Globalization of Korean Studies"(AKS-2013-LAB-2250001).
1. Tong'a ilbo, November 4, 1959.
3. Elfving-Hwang, Representations of Femininity, 38.
5. Tong'a ilbo, November 4, 1959. For Yun's death, see Lee, "To Challenge the Conventions of Colonial Korea,"275‒276; and Yoo, Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea, 1–3.
8. Elfving-Hwang, Representations of Femininity, 38.
9. Representative works include Y.-H. Kim, "From Subservience to Autonomy"; Choi, New Women in Colonial Korea; Kim K., "Kim Iryŏp Pulgyo ŭi chaeinsik"; and Kim M., "Kim Iryŏp ŭi sŏnchŏk munhakkwan koch'al."
10. J. Y. Park, Women and Buddhist Philosophy, 2.
11. Kim Iryŏp, Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun, 20‒21. Park makes a similar point in an article in "Gendered Response to Modernity."
12. Kim Iryŏp, Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun, 195.
13. Representative scholarly works on this topic include Cabezón, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender; Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy; Tsomo, Innovative Buddhist Women; Faure, Power of Denial; and Gross, Buddhism beyond Gender.
14. For example, one of the Eight Special Rules (Garudhammas) stipulates that "a bhikkuni (nun) of even a 100 years standing should rise, greet respectfully, and bow down before a bhikkhu (monk) ordained even that day"(Bhikkhunī Kusuma, "Inaccuracies in Buddhist Women's History,"6).
15. The most representative story of this aspect is seen in the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Flower Sutra. The Buddha's chief disciple, Sariputta, admonishes the girl that women cannot reach enlightenment: "Why? Because the body of a woman is filthy and impure, not a vessel for the Dharma. How could you attain unexcelled awakening?"Undeterred, the dragon girl transforms herself into a man to prove that she can also reach enlightenment. See Gene Reeves, Lotus Sutra, 252–53.
17. Levering, "Lin-chi (Rinzai) Ch'an and Gender: The Rhetoric of Equality and the Rhetoric of Heroism,"141.
20. Choi, Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea, 165–66; J. Y. Park, Women and Buddhist Philosophy, 7.
22. Kim and Kim, "Mapping a Hundred Years of Activism."
23. Although she and Ōta did not marry, she may have given birth to a son, Kim T'aesin (1920–2014), who later followed in Iryŏp's footsteps by becoming a Korean monk. According to an interview with Kim T'aesin, Ōta pursued Iryŏp by changing his career so that he could work for the colonial government in Korea. He continued to search for her, only to find that she had already become a nun. See Wŏlgan Chosŏn, "Hwasŭng Kim T'aesin."I thank Jooyeon Hahm, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale's Council on East Asian Studies, for sharing this information. However, J. Y. Park questions the authenticity of Kim's claim that he was Iryŏp's son. Park bases her suspicion on Iryŏp's disciples' testimony and Kim's inconsistencies of his stories about Iryŏp's life in his autobiography, Kim, Lahula ŭi samogok. See J. Y. Park, Women and Buddhist Philosophy, 39–42.
24. Iryŏp, "Yŏja kyoyuk ŭi p'iryosŏng," Tong'a ilbo, April 6, 1920; "Kŭllae ŭi yŏnae munjae," Tong'a ilbo, February 24, 1921; "Puin ŭibok kaeryang e taehaya han'gaij ŭigyŏn ŭl tŭrinaida," Tong'a ilbo, September 10–14, 1921.
25. Iryŏp, "Chosŏn ŭi yosŏng ŭn chagi lŭl anŭn saram i tweoja," Chosŏn ilbo, January 16, 1933.
27. Quoted in J. Y. Park, Women and Buddhist Philosophy, 85.
28. Kyŏnghyang sinmun, February 8, 1950. Also see Kim Y., "Kŭndae inmul t'amgu 7."His dissertation was titled "Buddhistishe Metaphysik."
31. Ibid., 168.
32. For more detail on Son Hyejŏng, see Kim T., Hwalbul ro ch'uang pattŏn Paek Sŏng-uk; and Chŏng C., "Paek Sŏng'uk ŭi pulgyo sasang."
36. Ibid., 204.
37. Ibid., 199.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., 168.
40. Ibid., 168–69.
42. Tong'a ilbo, March 28, 1930.
43. Chungwae ilbo, November 1, 1929.
45. Pyŏlgŏngon 24 (December 1929); and Chungwae ilbo, November 2, 1929.
46. Tong'a ilbo, March 28, 1930.
51. Tong'a ilbo, November 4, 1959.
57. Ibid., 152.
58. Ibid., 153.
59. Ibid., 153‒54.
60. Ibid., 155.
61. Giang and Starling, "Clerical Marriage Problem in Early Meiji Buddhism."
65. Tong'a ilbo, August 2, 1955.
66. Tong'a ilbo, August 3, 1955.
67. Tong'a ilbo, March 22, 1959.
68. Ibid.
69. Tong'a ilbo, March 24, 1959.
71. Chŏng Suok, "Naeji pulgyo kyŏnhakki,"48: 7. Also see Cho, "Chŏng Suok's Tour of Imperial Japan."
74. Tong'a ilbo, February 13, 1950.
75. Tong'a ilbo, April 6, 9, and 22, 1956.
77. Ibid., 201, 202.
78. Ibid., 198, 203.
79. Ibid., 199, 203‒4.
80. Ibid., 204.
81. Ibid., 203‒4.
82. Ibid., 171‒89, 198.
83. Tong'a ilbo, September 19, 1981.
