일제강점기 신여성과 일본유학에 관한 고찰

Abstract

Korea in the early colonial period first came to experience Japan’s modernity thanks to the socioculturally vigorous activities of those previously educated in Japan who, while studying there, had then been influenced considerably by Japan’s yearning and envy for modernist movement that started to emerge from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, given such a situation that Japan was also quite busy adopting in a passive manner a plethora of Western/European culture and values, the modernity infused into colonial Korea turned out to be that of westernized modern Japan, not of the traditional one. Considering that a majority of the Korean New Women (Sin yŏsŏng) in the 1920s experienced studying abroad in Japan, the New Women’s movement in Japan must have made an considerable impact on the equivalent one in colonial Korea. It can thus be assumed that a select group of elite women educated in Japan played a leading role in colonial Korea’s New Women’s movement, just as active participants in Japan’s New Women’s movement consisted mainly of women of the upper and upper-middle classes. And with the passing of time did the New Women’s preferred study-abroad destinations become gradually – though very occasionally – expanded into Western countries including the United States and some in Europe, away from Japan as the hitherto all-time popular destination for them to study abroad. The “New Women” in this period were defined as those willing to challenge feudalistic, male-dominated traditions and customs of the past, thereby actively participating in the women’s liberation movement aimed at promoting women’s rights demanded by the then society and gender equality. And this new definition of women enabled the discourse on a newer concept or image of women to emerge naturally in this period, that is, the image of those who admirably uphold freedom, equality and free love into which it developed from that of traditional hyonmoyangcho (wise mother and good wife) socially demanded to look after her in-laws and continue to stay subservient to her husband. It was therefore a newer social role that became more and more stressed to women in this new period, completely different in character from that socioculturally demanded to them in the previous “old and traditional” period. Which also means that they began to identify themselves individually as an independent entity formed in multifarious day-to-day relationships with other similar entities, away from the idea of them perceived collectively as part of the family-centered “depdendent” traditional relationships they formed with the male as mothers, wives and daughter- in-laws.