한말 서양 여성의 저술과 한국 여성 인식

Abstract

The official start of westerners staying in Korea began as from United States-Korea Treaty of 1882. After diplomats and councilors hired by the Korean government during the time stepped on Korean peninsula, the westerners with various jobs came over to Korea. There were some western women among them, who were mostly either tourists for travelling or Protestant missionaries with the purpose of propagating the religion. The women left behind documents on their activities and works to report, or on their impression to introduce Korea to their own countries. The purpose of this paper is to look into how five western women, leaving their records on Korea, understood Korean counterparts. Their records were chosen because they could easily get close to Korean females than western males due to the social norm in Korea segregating females and males at the visiting time. In addition, they could closely see how the lives of their counterparts were led. The five selected westerners are named I. B. Bishop, Constance J. D. Tayler, E. G. Kemp, L. H. Underwood, and E. Wagner. Three of them were tourists from Britain and the two were missionaries from USA. Although their nationalities and the goals to visit Korea were different, they had common features of belonging to the middle classes and having Christian thought. They were also single when entering Korea. The range studied on this thesis covers, from their point of views, over marriage, housework, structure of the house, closed mind in dressing in connection with women in Korea as well as their living style affected by education and religion activities implemented by the westerners. Firstly, the western women felt sorry for marriage practices in Korea and labor burdens loaded to Korean women after marriage. Three British middle-class female tourists who were affluent and free from getting marriage had negative views on Korea's social norms because they were put before laws and worked in favor of males. The most Korean married women, they witnessed, who were burdened with housework after marriage belonged to the working classes. They, however, highly appraised assiduousness and faithfulness of Korean women attributed from the responsibilities for caring about housework and children all day. Secondly, they did not understand the Korean residence style of a main house system, which prevented Korean married woman from seeing any other man except husband. They did not also understand the Korean style chador covered over when they were out. They, though, respected the way of Korean women's thinking that the freedom enjoyed by western women came from husbands' indifference while Korean husbands' interference was the way to protect them. Finally, the activities for education and religion carried out by the missionaries had a big influence on Korean women. The schools established by the missionaries for Korean females who had taken only home education waked their consciousness and provided the ground for their social potential ability to be developed. Fathers especially in Songdo (current Kaesong) asked to establish a school to provide their daughters with the chance to be educated, promising teachers salary. The western female tourists would be deeply moved when Korean women, who depended on Korean shamanism, converted to Christianity. There was an occasion that a Korean woman approached to the missionaries in an unfamiliar country road to tell them about the Bible and to ask for shaking hands. At one church in Pyongyang a girl student recited all of the Bible. The events had the missionaries feel superiority complex for their nation. Even though the purposes of western women visits to Korea were different, their impression on Korean women were quite similar. Given the difficulty of conversation, short visiting period, and meeting of limited Korean women, the perception of those western females on Korean counterparts might be very fragmentary. Disinterment and supplement of more materials on this subject are expected in future.