근대계몽기 여성 호명의 정치학 - 교육구국운동기(1905∼1910) 여성 독본·잡지 연구 = Rhetoric on Women’s Competence During the Modern Enlightenment Period - A study on Women’s Books and Magazines Published During the Period of National Education Movement (1905∼1910) -

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

For this study, efforts were made to look into the female subject in women’s magazines and books which were actively published focused on the period of national education movement in Korea in 1905∼1910, in order to more elaborately study discourses on women, including women’s education during the modern enlightenment period. A focus was placed on how women were ‘named,’ in particular, to highlight perception of reality contained in the rhetoric related to women’s competence and the process for forming the modern female identity during the modern period of enlightenment.
After 1905 when Japan began to invade Korea in earnest, people started to think that women should essentially advance into society to overcome the crisis facing Korea and develop a national society. At that time, the women’s education movement was swiftly incorporated into the institutional system as part of the patriotic enlightenment movement, and various commercial books and magazines were released under the task of the national revival movement and establishment of private schools until 1910. As an alternative to rescue individuals and the nation in crises, Christianity actively expanded its religious influence, and modern disciplines and Western knowledge were translated and introduced through Japan. Korea, during the modern enlightenment period, was in a rudimentary and unsystematic stage of accepting new knowledge.
In an active movement of women to catch the timely opportunity and a purpose of male intellectuals who tried to collect women as ‘comrades; and overcome the crisis together, women were called by various names. While the male writers of the Enlightenment Faction encouraged the ‘wives’ to come out of their rooms, the female writers urged their ‘sister compatriots’ to study together under their names. Enlightenment discourses emphasizing that it was time for the women to come out of their homes and live for the country began to be established. As they used the theory of equality between men and women based on Christian innate human rights as an ideological foundation but they still lacked understanding of women’s lives, such a situation led to limitation of women’s education and discourses. The Confucian intellectuals continued to stick to pre-modern values in order to correct rapidly changing social ethics, and in the process, a kind of value conflict that they had to perform traditional women’s roles and at the same time, they had to be actively engaged in social activities like Western women happened. Through the politics of addressing women in reading materials from this period, we can see at a glance the expectations, ideals, limitations, and contradictions of intellectuals regarding women’s enlightenment and education during the Education Movement.