근대초기 ‘여권女權’의 유입과 유교의 재구성

Abstract

This paper researched the change of concept of women in terms of the transformation and reconstruction of “traditional women” in early modern Korea. It tended to be explained that Korean women were modernized only by western knowledges and countries. They argued that modernization of Korean women was possible by replacement of the notion of traditional women by the concept of western women. This explanation tends to miss the self-reconstruction process of traditional women by communication with western knowledges. It is true that the concept of “traditional women” transformed by notion of “western women” was the motor which produced concept of “modern women.” In early modern Korea, the conception of traditional women were criticized by comparison with western women. Factually the image of western women in civilizing discourses was invented by Korean society. It was a means of contrasting the “civilized West” and the “primitive Korea.” But the women's rights consciousness was reconstructed by Korean intellectual and cultural background. In other words, the truth of gender equality was understood by the theory of yin and yang(陰陽論), and also women's rights was reconstructed by interdependence and cooperation rather than autonomy and independence.