Husband Murder as the "Sickness" of Korea: Carceral Gynecology, Race, and Tradition in Colonial Korea, 1926-1932

Abstract

So far, the feminist history of colonialism has been examined mainly in Western imperial settings characterized by the familiar racial duality of white and nonwhite. In this article, I draw attention to the East Asian imperial context, marked by racial proximity and ambiguity between ruler and ruled. I do so by focusing on Japanese physician Takeki Kudō's study of husband murderers in colonial Korea (1910-1945). A critical analysis of Kudō's meticulous research framework reveals that he had intended to frame husband murder as a peculiar pathology of the Korean race-a racial disease. This racialized framing of Korean female criminality betrays the anxiety and insecurity of Japanese imperial power at pains to construct and police racial boundaries between ruler and ruled. This, in turn, suggests that the construction of racial division was not exclusively the work of Western colonialism but that of colonialism as a world-wide phenomenon.