일제시대 여성 출분(出奔) 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the social implications of women’s abscondence(running away from home) in the Japanese Colonial Era, with reference to the articles on abscondence in 「the Maeilshinbo」「the Chosun Ilbo」「the Donga Ilbo」「the Shidae Ilbo」「the Joongeui Ilbo」「the Joongang Ilbo」 and 「the Chosunjoongang Ilbo」 which had been published for the Japanese Colonial Era. Articles on women’s abscondence frequently appeared on the major dailies from the early 1920s and the number of the articles sharply increased in 1930s Most of women who ran away from home at the Japanese Colonial Era were young in their 20s. Since most of women used to marry quite young, the number of married women were 20% more than that of single women, who did abscondence, and more poor women in rural areas than in urban areas did abscondence in terms of their background. Women ran away from home to free themselves from still strong Confucian home precepts because of a variety of desires and conflicts, for example,economic hardship and domestic violence, yearning for modern culture, free love, and free marriage. Modernized women were not the only women who could enjoy the modern culture, and poor women in rural areas yearned for the modern culture and were also conscious of their ego to do abscondence. The effect of abscondence by ‘Norwegian Nora’ had reached Chosun’s workers and poor women in rural areas at the Japanese Colonial Era However, ‘Nora of Chosun’ confronted the real hard world of Chosun at the Japanese Colonial Era. Women who did abscondence had usually been involved in crimes to be a victim, or committed suicide to pay the severe cost of abscondence. As modernized women did it, women’s abscondence was ‘unprepared escape’without a social-economic base. The society condemned the women who did abscondence as ‘personal breakaway’ from home rather than true understanding that the special circumstance of Colonial Chosun triggered their abscondence. Nonetheless, a significant social implication is found from women’s abscondence at the Japanese Colonial Era. It is because women’s abscondence was an exit for freeing themselves in the step before extreme self defence, for example, husband murder resulting from early marriages, arson and suicide. Furthermore, their abscondence means liberalism and modernism led by some modernized women reached poor women living in rural areas, so that they wanted to live as a human being in the modernized world, even in the ‘colonized modernity’