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Kim Wonju (1896-1971), better known by her pen name, Iryop (One Leaf), was one of the most outspoken and controversial feminist writers of modern Korea. This study presents a brief biography of Kim up to the time she became a Buddhist nun in the early 1930s, situating her life in the ideological, literary, cultural, and even political settings of her time. It then critically analyzes the structure, narrative strategies, and ideological implications of Kim's short story "Chagak" (Awakening, 1926), attempting to ascertain the story's place in the context of the time and in the author's development as a feminist writer.
Introduction
Kim Wonju (1896-1971), better known by her pen name, Iryop (One Leaf), was one of the most outspoken and controversial feminist writers of modern Korea, serving as a catalyst in the development of serious discourse on women's issues from the 1920s to the early 1930s.1 She usually shares a reputation as a torchbearer of Korean feminism with Na Hyesok (1896-1946; pen name, Chongwol `Crystal Moon'), her friend and Korea's first professional woman painter trained in Western-style oil painting. Compared with Na, however, Kim was far more actively and consistently involved in articulating and propagating feminist ideologies, at least up until her Buddhist confirmation in 1928.2 Kim's ideas about women's status and gender relationships, and her social criticism in general, were daring and radical. They clearly posed challenges to the prevailing Confucian patriarchal ethos and practices of contemporary Korean society. She denounced the sexual double standard, the inhuman treatment of women by men, and the insistence on submissiveness and sexual purity as the ultimate of female virtues. With equal passion, Kim advocated more opportunities for women in the realms of education, gender equality, and self-realization. Most of all, her dauntless battle against the notion that virginity and chastity be the highest good in women catapulted her onto the center stage of public debate in the 1920s, ultimately establishing her as an avant-garde figure on the feminist front and as an icon of the shin yosong (new woman).3
Because of the nature of Kim's feminist position-one of unprecedented provocation, novelty, and iconoclasm-her polemic presence in the chronicle of modern Korean cultural history cannot be ignored. However, for many years, most probably in deference to her...