Recoding the chaste kisaeng in Yi Hae-jo's Kang myŏng-hwa chŏn

Abstract

ABSTRACTKorea’s abrupt transition into modernization was followed closely by Japanese colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century. With this social and political upheaval came the sudden hegemony of novel ideologies over an established traditional Confucian system. In public discourse and literary representations of early modern Korea, women figured as emblems of the country’s larger existential crisis. In addition, the kisaeng (generally known as female entertainers in pre-modern Korea) occupied a precarious ambiguity in the public sphere as innovators of new cultural trends and persistent obstacles to domestic morality. This study examines this ambiguity as a productive, creative deliberation regarding changing roles of women in Korea. I focus in particular on the hybridization of traditional imagery depicting female chastity (chŏngchŏl) in Yi Hae-jo’s fictionalized biography of the kisaeng, Kang Myŏng-hwa, which localized aesthetics of feminism and free love ideology for Korean reading publics. Through the biographical text of Kang Myŏng-hwa chŏn, the chaste kisaeng archetype relives the classical narrative of Ch’un-hyang and her virtuous wifely love for an aristocrat. In effect, Ch’un-hyang is remythologized in Kang Myŏng-hwa in the twentieth-century as a bridge between the past and modernity.