Women’s Voices in Romance Fiction and Women’s Magazines in Transwar Korea

Professor Kim, Su Yun   (Principal Investigator (PI))

30

2019-05-10

2021-11-09

93200

Women’s Voices in Romance Fiction and Women’s Magazines in Transwar Korea

female author, female readership, Korean popular literature, transwear, women's literature, women's magazines

LiteratureArea Studies (including Japanese Studies, China Studies, European Studies)

201811159061

Seed Fund for PI Research – Basic Research

2018

Completed

Research Proposal: The proposed project aims to investigate women’s voices in romance fiction and women’s magazines in Korea during the transwar period (mid-1930s to 1950s). In the past, romance novels and women’s magazines were traditionally associated with lowbrow culture, and therefore dismissed as unimportant in literary studies. This project challenges the notion of the female voice as a marginal element in wartime colonial literature, and underscores the importance of women’s magazines in constructing women’s experiences in postwar South Korea. I argue that both romance fiction and women’s magazines acted as cultural centers for representing and constructing images of women as strong stakeholders in wartime society and postwar reconstruction. My work brings overdue scholarly attention to women’s voice in transwar Korea. For this Seed Funding Project, I am investigating two moments in the transwar period. First, I focus on a specific female author, Kim Malbong (1901–62), for her romance novels in the 1930s and post-liberation (1945) period. Kim published 31 novels and 25 novellas and short stories during her career. Many vernacular Korean-language novels enjoyed a broad readership in Korea in the late colonial period, despite the rise of Japanese-language print culture. Kim’s romance novels did not merely comprise a so-called lowbrow sub-genre, but portrayed diverse images of women as an active part of the youth culture that dominated wartime discourse. The second moment I am investigating is the postwar era following the Korean War (1950–53), particularly images of women in a popular women’s magazine: Yŏwŏn (1955–70). Yŏwŏn was a pioneering women’s magazine in the postwar period for newly educated middle-class women. I will focus on the discourse surrounding housewives and Après-Girls (girls of the postwar era). This project diverges from previous research on Korean literary and cultural analysis in two distinct ways. First, it covers a broader period of time than most research, creating a transwar framework to highlight the continuity of women’s voice from the late colonial and early post-liberation periods. Second, it adopts a gender studies approach to emphasize representations of women in the romance narratives of literature and magazines. It argues that female figures were portrayed as active agents in the transformation of Korean society. This project acts as a renewed focus for my three-year funded research, the RGC Early Career Scheme, completed May 2018. I submitted a GRF proposal as continuation to RGC’s ECS in October 2018. The research materials and output of these projects are distinct and do not overlap with previous ECS. In the ECS project, I collected data from the early twentieth century to 1950s, while this project will allow me to continue my overall research with a focus on women writers and women’s magazines. For this project, I will also produce additional research output: conference papers and two journal articles on new materials to be included in a six-chapter monograph. The monograph will include findings from the previous ECS project and this Seed Funding project. A monograph will be completed with a new successful GRF funding. If my 2018 GRF submission is rejected, this Seed Funding will be used as the basis of my 2019 GRF proposal. Objectives and Research Questions: I aim to tackle the following interrelated questions: How did authors view romance fiction during the wartime mobilization period (1937–1945)? What were the key points in contemporary literary debates on popular fiction? How were women represented in popular romance fiction entail during the wartime mobilization and post-Korean War periods, when authorities and elite male writers were promoting women’s careers in society? How did affect, feelings, and emotions in romance stories and women’s magazines shape the narrative on women? What were the key points of debates in the 1950s and 1960s in women’s magazine regarding the new middle-class women readers? How did these debates change the readership and reading practice in the postwar period? Answers to these questions will have an enduring impact on perceptions of the role of women in Korean popular literature and magazines and on cultural change in general. The objectives of this project are: • to promote a transwar framework in Korean popular culture studies, broadening the understanding on connection between the local ""hot"" war and the global ""cold"" war period. • to underscore the importance of vernacular Korean language literature for the masses in literary studies during the colonial period. • to analyze representations of women in romance fiction and magazines and connect these representations to the demands of women’s new roles in society. • to examine the changing and/or continuing concept of romantic love in the pre- and post-1945 periods. • to introduce socio-political implications of popular literature and magazines in my teaching courses.