The Varieties of Women's Wage Work in Colonial Korea

Abstract

This discussion reveals that industrialization did not initiate Korean women’s work but merely differentiated between paid and unpaid forms of female labor. During the colonial era, a woman’s role in household production depended on her marital status. While the family remained a productive unit, the structural changes and transformations of labor brought on by modernization necessitated the familial adoption of the wage system. I review how colonial modernization influenced the work and living conditions of married and unmarried women. Apart from performing unpaid domestic duties, married women took on jobs flexible enough for simultaneous childcare, such as household industrial labor, agricultural wage work, urban service work, and labor in small- to medium-scale food processing and rubber factories. Despite a few exceptions, the majority of poor, single, young women entered factories, continuing their supportive roles in family economies. Thus, I examine the expansion of female labor intensive industries, particularly those recruiting single women, in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, I interpret why these women entered the factories, their rationales, and motivations, all of which strongly suggests that women’s contributions to political economies were moved by familial ties.