Social Construction of Idealized Images of Women in Colonial Korea: the “New Woman” versus “Motherhood”

Abstract

In contemporary Korea, motherhood is much respected and glorified. What Chizuko Ueno states about Japanese motherhood can also be applied to Korea; according to Ueno, the word “mother” connotes “a cultural representation rather than a clearly defined female sub-group”; an idealized crystallized personification which is characterized by “devotion to children, parental affection, and self sacrifice.” However, motherhood is not the only virtue that has been expected of women historically, nor is the modern cultural construct of motherhood inherent in women. As Edward Shorter states, “[g]ood mothering is an invention of modernization.” Different sociopolitical conditions require different roles for women, and the image of an ideal woman is constructed and reconstructed as an ongoing process according to society’s needs at any given era. Research in this field argues that a society requires and endorses certain types of women depending on its stage of modernization, industrialization, and/or international/political environment. This is clearly reflected in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Korea.