Kim Il-yeop and Christianity: The Influence of Christianity on the Life and Identity of Kil Il-yeop

Abstract

Kim Il-yeop is considered to have been a pioneering female writer in the history of modern Korean women’s literature, beginning in the 1920s; she was Korea’s first female editor and publisher of a magazine for women, Sinnyeoja. She was one of the first generation of Korean “new women” and “modern female writers.” More importantly, however, Kim Il-yeop had a close relationship with Protestant Christianity and was at one time in her life a devout Christian. This paper investigates what in fact Christianity meant to Kim Il-yeop in her own life, in other words, how exactly she understood the Christian religion and in what ways she experienced and practiced it. Christianity shaped the landscape of her childhood, which included a Christian home, a Christian education, and her father’s embodiment of a fine Christian character as a pastor. Concerning her personality in her childhood, Kim Il-yeop herself attributed her fine and optimistic character to her Christian faith. On the other hand, however, she characterized Christianity as a religion of “repressive ideas” whose doctrines operated as a moral force that compelled strict self-regulation. More importantly, Kim Il-yeop understood herself through her identity as a pastor’s daughter and according to the expectations of her father. She experienced and understood Christianity and the true Christian life through her father. Her father’s influence on her derived primarily from the lessons she learned in observing his sincere religious life, rather than Christian doctrine. Kim Il-yeop understood the lessons of his Christian life more broadly and practiced them in her religious life after she became a Buddhist monk. Later on in life, Kim Il-yeop began to present a growing skepticism about Christianity, and this resulted in the weakening and final rejection of her Christian faith. She ultimately repudiated all the beliefs and claims she had accepted before. The motivation behind her repudiation of Christianity was the fact that she was interested in “free love” and even enjoyed romantic relationships during her youth. Indeed, her life as a new woman went against strict and conservative Christian norms and ethics. Kim Il-yeop’s repudiation of Christianity was in a broader sense related to the traditional and patriarchal Christian churches of Korean Christianity at that time. For her, Christianity itself never became a real power and source of energy with which she could handle the reality and difficulty of life, and in the end, she failed to save her faith.