Factory Women in the Socialist Imagination

Abstract

This chapter examines Kang Churyong's association with the communist movement in the region, which at the time was concentrating its resources on the task of organizing industrial workers into revolutionary unions. A women's movement activist, Cho Yŏngok, served as a link between Kang and communist organizers. The chapter explores how the contemporary women's movement positioned itself toward women industrial workers and labor issues and surveys the rise of a new generation of educated “new women,” some of whom were, like Cho Yŏngok, joining underground operations to organize women workers at rubber and textile factories. The surge of women worker militancy provoked intense interest not only from communist activists but also from radical writers who began to compose activist yŏgong characters in their literary works. The chapter ends with an exploration of some of these works, stories that portray rubber workers in particular.