현계옥 스토리 이면의 ‘또다른 신여성’ 윤덕경 연구 - 그 삶과 죽음의 여성사적 함의를 찾아서 -

Abstract

Behind the story of Hyun Gye-ock who was a Korean ex-kisaeng revolutionary against the Japanese imperialism and was simultaneously a fighter for women’s liberation along with Hyun Jeong-gun, the same revolutionary and her ardent lover, there was an alienated life and sad end of Yoon Deok-gyeong(hereafter ‘Yoon’), the abandoned wife of the latter Hyun. In this regard, the purpose of this article is set as to restore the particulars of Yoon’s life path and ending suicide, and to explore and examine their contexts and meanings. Through that investigation, it is found that Yoon transferred into the rank of New Woman during the 1920s through educational and vocational careers. Moreover, her attitude and life style afterwards were likely a trailer of the Modernized Woman which would come to the fore in 1930s. It is assumed that she was meanwhile led to the field of New Women’s activities by intricate encounters with Jeong Chil-sung who had been the best friend of Hyun Gye-ock and was thereabout a dauntless fighter for women’s liberation. Nonetheless for all that, Yoon committed suicide in 1933 shortly after the death from a sudden illness of the husband Hyun who had been reunited with her before six months as an ex-prisoner. It cannot be seen as a self-sacrificing death(‘殉終’) from the sentiments of love and fidelity just as the evaluative commentaries by the mainstream society of the day including the conservative eyes of her brother-in-law Hyun Jin-gun. Rather, it should be seen as a kind of recognition struggle intended to recover fully and firm up her own status of lawful wife, also as a desperate protest against the frustration of a newly cherished dream of constructing a modern style of normal family. Thus Yoon left the world after having become a somewhat peculiar New Woman in her own manners followed by taking in advance a rising portrait of the Modernized Woman. Though seeming to be plain and ordinary at first sight, Yoon’s life and death would emit abundant meanings when connected to and piled up with the story of Hyun Gye-ock, futhermore implying some meanings which could not be missed in a broad context of the Korean women's history during the colonial period.