여성 교육 담론의 변화 양상 연구－『제국신문』을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changing patterns of women's education discourse in Jeguk Sinmun, which published its first issue on August 10, 1898 and discontinued in 1910. The issues available today are the ones from the first issue to the one published on February 28, 1909. The present study examined all of these available issues, analyzed their characteristics, and compared them by the period. Since the women's education discourse in the newspaper showed distinct changing patters according to its chief editors, the periods of comparison matched the tenures of chief editors. During the years when Lee Jong-il served the newspaper as the chief editor(August, 1898 ～ June, 1907), women, who used to exist outside the national discourse, were first called part of the people to fulfill the national missions. Since women had no new knowledge with which to carry out the new national discourse, a need was raised for women's education. This explains why the women's education discourse of the newspaper during Lee's tenure put an emphasis on a need for women's education. During the years, the women's education discourse of the newspaper was organized in diverse and multi-layered manners based on various arguments including editorials by the editorial staff and letters from the readers instead of highlighting a single topic. During the tenure of Jeong Woon-bok as the chief editor(June, 1907 ～ February, 1909), Jeguk Sinmun showed different patterns of women's education discourse from those during Lee's tenure based on changes to the social situations related to women's education such as the foundation of girls' high schools. During Jeong's tenure, the newspaper's female discourse changed topics from the old focus on women's education discourse to the new focus on custom reform. This shift means that the nationalistic tendency was almost removed from the female discourse of the newspaper during Jeong's tenure probably to reflect his political position. As the arguments for the legitimacy of women's education were withdrawn in the newspaper during his tenure, the amounts of articles increased about actual phenomena such as the operation of girls' schools and organizations for women's education. Another characteristic of the period was that articles about private schools and organizations were closely connected to Jeong's personal relations except for articles about girls' high schools established by the government.