Courtesans in Military Uniforms: Martial Spectacles by Cross-Dressing Courtesans of Ŭiju in the Late Chosŏn Period

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the martial spectacles that the courtesans of Ŭiju, a town on the border of Chosŏn and Qing, offered to envoys and government officials of Chosŏn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Courtesans were deployed in the border towns by the Chosŏn government in order to provide entertainment honoring the envoys. Their performances, however, do not appear to be strictly aligned with their official obligation to glorify royal authority, as they developed into a repertoire of martial spectacles including a sword dance, horseback riding, a pseudomilitary inspection, and a group hunt. The article examines how the courtesans of Ŭiju cultivated their own performance repertoire by appropriating the heterogeneous resources of the local culture, which were often beyond the grasp of the dominant Confucian values, the hierarchies of gender and social status, and the dehumanizing power of state slavery.