The changing faces of heroines: Korean women in folklore

Abstract

This article analyzes the many and changing faces of heroines in Korean folklore by interweaving the Korean cultural ethos of han and the action paradigm of resistance. Kim argues that feminist discourse often relegates alternative modes of resistance to the margins due to Western ethnocentrism and ideological politicization. She analyzes four types of heroines: archetypal, virtuous-but-not-virtuous, pioneering, and hanful resister. In doing so, Kim draws on Giddens’ knowledge and action theorem, which advances the simple equation between consciousness and resistance. Furthermore, Kim explores folklore’s validity as a legitimate commemorative medium. She introduces five memory units (storage/remembering, deletion/forgetting, retrieval, commemorative medium, and commemorative agency) and argues that the genre of folklore serves as a bridge between literature and collective memory scholarship. Since the field of memory studies validates lesser-known historical pasts, folklore deserves careful attention as a legitimate mnemonic medium. Korean folklore, a communal mnemonic result of production, retrieval, and transmission, shows diverse acts of resistance as women link presentism and traditionalism.

Keywords

Archetypal heroine consciousness feminism hanful resister knowledge Korean folklore memory units pioneering virtuous-but-not-virtuous

Introduction

The field of memory studies validates a lesser-known historical past. The “memory boom” (Winter, 2006) contributes to a more horizontal narrative construction, reflecting democratized historical consciousness. The memory field has become so diversified that not only have its socioanthropological roots become obscure (Coser, 1992), but the field as a whole lacks a clear sense of direction (cf. Assmann, 1995; Olick and Robbins, 1998). This article interweaves memory units and Korean folklore on women’s resistance. It argues both that unit ideas, as organizing concepts, are helpful to more clearly demarcate different directions in memory studies and that folklore is an entirely valid genre to examine the dynamic interactions among the mnemonic units at the cross section of presentism and traditionalism (Kim and Schwartz, 2010).

Transformation in substructure accompanies changes in worldviews and ethos. The relationship between super- and substructures is, of course, reciprocal and interactive. The dissolution of family and shifts in gender roles amid the 1990s financial crisis, for instance, testify to the close connection between individual lives and macrosocietal transformation in recent Korean memories (Mills, 1959). The massive influx of women workers into the manufacturing sector during the 1970s was another watershed moment, in which women experienced dramatic shifts in gender identity. How are women’s lived lives recollected in popular memory vis-à-vis conventional elite- and male-centric historiography? What are the mechanisms that can transcend temporal and spatial limitations to transmit their stories to future generations?

As discussed in the Editor’s Note, Korean cultural sentiment is often defined by the ethos of han. A study of Korean folklore on women’s resistance helps us find a critical balance between history and memory, and Western feminism and subaltern narratives (Spivak, 1988). Memory studies emerged as a cynical enterprise in the aftermath of World War I (Schwartz et al., 2005). The field departed from the conventional focus on the grandeur of a nation and its great leaders by validating individuals’ memories and their sentiments. Colloquial accounts were no longer relegated to the historiographical periphery for being “unimportant,” “unofficial,” and “anecdotal.” Work on the oral tradition of Korean women brings culturally diverse perspectives into the field.

Furthermore, work on the oral tradition of Korean women makes a critique of heroines in Western feminism, who are simply the gendered equivalent of patriarchal heroes. The logic behind heroization of either sex is strikingly similar: It advances a particular political ideology. The images of Korean women as reflected and recollected in popular literature challenge the usual modus operandi of heroines. In this article, I demonstrate the complicated association between consciousness and actions in women who engage in inconspicuous resistance against dominant norms. Before we move on to an empirical analysis of Korean folklore, I will introduce the concept of unit ideas to demonstrate a cross section between a particular manifestation of cultural memory and the universal organization of mnemonic entities.

Unit ideas in collective memory

The multidisciplinary nature of the field of memory studies is a blessing and a challenge (Hoskins et al., 2008: 6), largely attributable to mnemonic epiphenomena. Established disciplines have often simply applied their core assumptions to the topic of memory in an “add-and-stir” strategy.¹ The multifaceted field has come a long way, though, and it can benefit from the organizing concept of unit ideas.

“Unit ideas” were initially proposed by A.O. Lovejoy in 1936 and later reintroduced by Robert Nisbet (1966/1993). The unit idea helps to analyze a social phenomenon with a more clearly defined set of concepts. It is different from a hypothesis in that it is not theory driven, and it differs from a theory because it does not attempt to explain, predict, or delineate a behavioral pattern in parsimonious terms. In a nutshell, a unit idea is a conceptualized product of empirical observation that serves as a guide for systematic research.² Cultural memory involves five unit ideas: storage/remembering, deletion/forgetting, retrieval, commemorative media, and commemorative agency.

Storage and deletion mean essentially what gets remembered and forgotten. They are like opposite sides of a coin (Gillis, 1994: 7; Sturken, 1997: 7–8), but their workings are complex: Certain memories are often hard to retrace, while forgotten memories sometimes come back in various forms. Trauma studies extensively document the counterfactual storage and deletion of difficult memories as they are embellished, distorted, or even repressed. The need for self-protection contributes to the unpredictable workings of storage and deletion (see Lifton, 1999; McKenna et al., 2000).

Mediating between storage and deletion, negotiating between now and then, retrieval refers to mechanisms for remembering from today’s standpoint. It entails a presentist framework that endows the past with meaning when it is “usable” (see Bouwsma, 1990). Since the present milieu dictates what is deemed worthy of recollecting, the past is commemorated for its utilitarian value. Nostalgia, present longing for the past, is a good example of retrieval (see Atia and Davies, 2010; Davis, 1979). Retrieval depends on a sense of tradition, as it draws on stored, categorized memory.

Commemoration media describe the means of both tangible and intangible mnemonic representation. Tangible media include diaries, history textbooks, monuments, museums, family albums, and documentary films. Among intangible media are symbolic rituals such as religious services, ancestral worship ceremonies, and shamanistic rites (see Assmann, 1995: 139–154).

Finally, commemorative agency addresses the “who” question (see Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Spillman, 1997). An agent can be an individual, a group, an institution, or even a nation-state. Individuals embedded in goal-driven institutions often function as commemorative agents with culturally conditioned worldviews and ethos (see Fine, 2002; Schudson, 1993). The debate over agency tends to hang on a presentist framework, as does retrieval, because of its susceptibility to the contemporary political milieu. Schwartz (1990), for instance, analyzes the changing portrayals of US President George Washington, reflecting contemporaneous social tides. Agents equipped with cultural tool kits act out of ideological beliefs, which, again, are open to the overriding mood of the time. These unit ideas are archetypes. They often overlap because they do not function in a mutually exclusive way.

Folklore and unit ideas

The genre of folklore effectively links collective memory to literature. It blends contemporary emotions and social milieu, subjective perspective and group consensus, and individual representation and collective participation. As an orally transmitted literary genre rather than the end result of a single writer’s creative imagination, folklore is the organic product of a community, which makes, receives, interprets, embellishes, and transmits stories over generations (Jang, 1980; Kim, 1975: 123–136, 1981: 6–10).

Folklore interweaves presentism and traditionalism. In presentism, the events of bygone eras are (re-)constructed and (re-)interpreted from today’s standpoint. Traditionalism, in contrast, attempts to acknowledge the past as it was. While presentism negates the past for its lost empirical relevance, traditionalism respects the past for its culturally nuanced subtleties. Despite the fragmentation and rupture that take place amid radical sociopolitical transformations, certain things remain resilient even under insurmountable stress. Folklore synthesizes continuity and discontinuity, legacies and destruction, and mnemonic tenacity and its temporality (see Kim and Schwartz, 2010).

The correlation between women’s lived lives and the macrosocial milieu has been extensively studied (Kim, 1998). Using literary sources for a social science investigation, however, can invite controversy (see Bleiker, 2003; Holden, 2003), as the latter emphasizes objectivity and generalizability, while the former draws on creative imagination of fictionalized experiences (Han, 1997). In its communality and collectivity, folklore bridges this gap.³

Figure 1 applies the notion of unit ideas to folklore. As noted earlier, a community of commemorative agents participates in creation, selection, reproduction, and transmission of memories. The agents are living in a contemporary social milieu, and their position makes their narratives highly sensitive to the ebbs and flows of sociopolitical tides (see Fierke, 2006; Foster, 2006; Pingel, 2006; Rosser, 2006; Seraphim, 2006). The agents continue and sustain cultural tradition. Furthermore, the commemorative medium of oral tradition connects agency to retrieval of stored memories. The functional triangle made up of media, agency, and retrieval sets the storage or deletion of past events against the backdrop of now and then.

Figure 1.

Unit ideas and folklore.

Women’s resistance in folklore

Folklore allows the powerless to tell their stories in their own way: it is a genre of resistance and empowerment. Patriarchal culture glorifies virtuous, self-sacrificing women as heroines (Lee, 1987: 316–317). There are, however, folkloric narratives that depict women as resisting oppressive and dominant norms (Jang, 1980; Kang, 1995). In light of cultural conditioning, stories of rebels are bound to be fewer than tales of their honorable counterparts (Reagan, 1998). I reviewed more than 500 entries in four volumes of folklore and could locate only about 30 stories of women resisters.

As interpretations of women’s resistance vary, the heroine has many faces in feminist theory (Tong, 1989).⁴ Liberal feminism emphasizes the survival and success of women in a male-centered cultural context and capitalist economic structure (Schwartzman, 2006). By focusing mostly on political improvement, liberal feminism falls short in making fundamental and philosophical explications of female oppression. A systematized concept connecting female individuals to a category of women is therefore weak. An ideal woman in liberal feminism is the woman who achieves self-realization through personifying masculinity.⁵ Radical feminism reduces gender to the essential category of the woman’s body. As a consequence, it excludes men and some women by connecting all cause of oppression to a biological dimension. Due to this exclusive and reified idealism, radical feminism has failed to provide realistic and specific alternatives to gendered oppression. If socialist feminism has contributed to analyzing the combined causes of patriarchy and capitalism, its major shortcoming lies in its incapacity to provide specific solutions to the double bondage they represent for women.

Feminist discourse in general oversimplifies the correlation between consciousness and resistance by equating knowledge with action.⁶ Established research findings can be expressed in the following equation: R = f(C), where resistance (R) is a function of existence and strength of consciousness (C). According to this formula, a woman with critical consciousness resists against patriarchy. In other words, resistance is proof of existing critical consciousness. By conflating the relation between knowledge and action, the equation excludes many women who have their own modi operandi of resistance—subtle, nuanced, and invisible.⁷ Women in Korean folklore demonstrate various and ingenious modes of resistance, and the longevity of their stories suggests the validity, approval, and acceptance of those life stories as worthy of retrieving and transmitting.

Anthony Giddens’ analysis of knowledge and action has important theoretical implications. According to Giddens, there are two different forms of consciousness. One is discursive consciousness; the other is practical consciousness. In discursive consciousness, an actor articulates the motives behind his or her behavior, whereas in the case of practical consciousness, an observer can only assume an actor’s consciousness solely by watching his or her behavior (Giddens, 1982: 175–187). Most researchers have assumed the existence of consciousness only when performers themselves explain the motivations behind their resistance in logical terms. Yet, there are many instances, as demonstrated by women in Korean folklore, when actors do not or cannot clearly articulate the motives even though they engage in norm-defying resistance. Semiotic sensitivities permit the culturally sensitive decoding of actions.

Heroes and heroines

Heroes share similar characteristics across cultures (Campbell, 1968), and Korean heroes are no exception. The Korean literature during the Joseon dynasty (1392–1896), for instance, describes heroes as wholesome and godlike men of absolute perfection. Born under extraordinary circumstances and possessing unusual characteristics, they often save the country from major crisis. Some examples of heroes are as follows (Kim, 1989: 28–29):⁸

The baby is majestic and eccentric. His forehead is wide, showing an exceptional perception; the space between the eyebrows carries a vital force; his chest is wide, like moonlight embracing harmony between the earth and the sky; his Phoenix eyes brighten his royal face; the shape of the Big Dipper is dotted on both sides of his forearms, and the Belt of Orion is dotted on his back. (Yu Chungreol’jeon (The Story of Yu Chungreol), 16th–17th century)

The precious son was born after a ten-month pregnancy. His flesh and bones are extraordinary with the spirit of a hero. … The baby has grown and become an eight-year-old boy with unusual brightness. He learns fast enough to understand one hundred different ways after hearing just one. (Hong Gil-dong’jeon (The Legend of Hong Gil-dong), 16th century)

The son is born after a ten-month pregnancy. His appearance is extraordinary, with the shape of the Big Dipper dotting his back, dragon eyebrows, and the voice of a ringing bell and a drum. (Kim Yu-shin’jeon (A Record of Kim Yu-shin), 14th–19th century⁹)

Woong is only seven, and he has a handsome face with the demeanor of an adult. (Jowoong’jeon (The Story of Jowoong), 14th–19th century)

These examples are of proto-heroes. They do not stand up against the existing social order because most of them do not experience injustice. Instead, they follow and live by the script often described as their fate (Kim, 1989: 40–41). With few exceptions, the archetypical hero in Korean folklore goes through a particular life trajectory: He is born to parents of noble class after his mother goes through a difficult labor, or he is born after a long childless period; the hero’s birth is itself mysterious, or unusual events take place surrounding his birth; he is abandoned by his parents, banished from his hometown, or otherwise persecuted; the hero receives blessings from animals or slaves; and he performs miracles, makes his name in founding a city or establishing a clan and family, and is deified upon death. The journeys undertaken by Korean and European heroes are in fact very similar (Kim, 1981: 44–53).¹⁰ Then how are strong women depicted in Korean folklore? Are they different from the men?

Changing faces of heroines

The appearance of women exemplars is closely related to the ruling ideology of the time (Kim, 1989: 50–51). Not many stories about virtuous women exist from the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), but such stories do start to appear near the end of the period, as Confucian ethics began to settle in with the emergence of a literati class (Shinheong’sadaebu) (Kang, 1995: 60–80).¹¹ During the mid-Joseon dynasty (1392–1896), around the seventeenth century, the narrative structure featuring exemplary women became more sophisticated in content and plot. The stories of women protecting their chastity reached a peak during the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592–1598).¹²

Other than ideologically glorified stories about women, how does folklore portray women who do not fit the dominant ethos of the time? How are the pioneering women who defied and resisted the norm recalled in Korean collective memory? To answer these questions, in this article, I delineate four types of heroine: prototypical, virtuous-but-not-virtuous, pioneering, and resisting. I have selected the stories introduced below from four main sources: Shinhwa/Seolhwa (Myths and Folklore) (Kim, 1975), Hankuk’gubi’munhak’sunjib (A Selected Compilation of Korean Oral Literature) (Hankuk’gubi’munhak’hoe, 1977), Hankuk’eui Junseol (Korean Legends), (Kim, 1981) and Hankuk Gojeon Munhak Daegae 13’kwon (A Chronology of Korean Classic Literature) (Kim, 1981, vol. 13). There are about 30 stories about women in the four volumes, varying in wording, narrative construction, and chronological details primarily because of the genre’s oral tradition. The same story is shaped by regional variations, the narrator’s memory, and the way the story is dictated into the written record. Their overall similarities, however, override their differences.

Prototype heroine: Princess Baridegi

Baridegi is not much different from the conventional hero—born into a royal family, persecuted upon birth, and protected by animals—yet, she has a distinctly feminine experience. She is abandoned because of her gender and is able to save her father only after marrying the guardian of the water of life:

In a country called Bulla there lived the great King Ogu and his wife, Gildae who had six daughters but no son. Although they prayed devoutly for a son, they had a seventh daughter. The disappointed king orders that his youngest daughter be banished from the family. His wife names her Baridegi, and leaves her in the forest. But a crane saves and takes care of Baridegi.

Many years pass. The king falls ill, and there is no cure for him. The king is told that the water of life in India could help him, but nobody is willing to make the journey. In a dream the queen is told that Baridegi could save the king, and she looks for her daughter in the forest. With the help of the mystic power, Baridegi has been safely raised, and she meets her parents. Then she decides to set out on the long journey to India to find the water of life to revive the king.

Baridegi arrives in India after many twists and turns. The guardian of the water of life tells her that she can get the water only after she marries him. Baridegi marries the guardian, and they have three children. She returns home with the water of life and a mysterious flower. The king is already dead when she arrives in Bulla. Out of desperation, Baridegi pours the water into the king’s mouth and he is resuscitated. Baridegi is revered as a goddess and leads dead people to heaven. (Kim, 1981: 32–43)

The Princess Baridegi story is one of the best-known folktales in Korea, where she is worshipped as the head shaman who leads the spirits of dead people to another world. The roots of this story can be traced to Siberia, where shamanistic rituals are practiced for the dead. The longevity and popularity of the tale reflect a respect for uncompromising filial piety, perseverance, and loyalty. The narrative structure can stand on its own as a conventional hero’s tale. Princess Baridegi is a prototype heroine in her consciousness and action.

Virtuous-but-not-virtuous woman: “The Legend of Chilsung Bridge”

The “Legend of Chilsung Bridge”¹³ is the story of a widow who defies norms by having a love affair. Part of the original story goes, “The seven sons, realizing that their widowed mother has a lover across the river whom she sees every night while they’re asleep, build a bridge so that their mother can cross the river easily” (Kim, 1981: 131). Today’s version is narrated as follows:

There lived a widow with one son. The widow began leaving at night, and her outings became more frequent as time went by. The son followed his mother one cold winter night and saw her take her clothes off to cross the river. At first he was shocked to see his mother with her lover, but then he came to understand her loneliness. The son laid seven stepping-stones in the river so that his mother did not have to soak in the cold water at night on her way to her lover.¹⁴

The son’s act shows a lack of regard for his late father but caring toward his mother. When the focus is on the son’s action, it is categorized as “dutiful-but-not-dutiful,” acknowledging his care for his mother, which is at the same time disrespectful toward his father. When the focus is on the widow’s action, it is classified as “virtuous-but-not-virtuous.” This legend has been in Korean collective memory for more than a thousand years primarily because of sympathy for the widow. The community has a shared consensus that anyone could fall into a poor lot, and imposing social norms on an individual can be unfair. A social order can be maintained without making the deviations too explicit. The son’s illicit act helps his mother preserve her virtue in the community. Subtle resistance and communal complicity create a leeway without explicitly violating the social norms. The story evades the ethical dichotomy between the good and the bad by having no antagonist. This margin of freedom allows ordinary people to live their lives in their own way without being subject to ruling elites’ norms. The longevity and popularity of this tale demonstrate the accepted divide between what is advocated and what is practiced.

Pioneer heroine: “Two Grooms and One Bride”

Long ago, there lived a young man from a poor family who was to marry the daughter of a rich family. But an uncle who wanted to have the girl as his own daughter-in-law brought his nephew a fake letter calling off the marriage. Suspicious of the letter, the young man went to visit his bride-to-be. Seeing her silhouette on her chamber door and went to ask her about the letter. She did not know about it. She gave the young man a jade ring and asked him to put it on his hat on their wedding day. The young man met his uncle on the way home. The uncle, seeing that his plan had not worked, took the young man out for drink. The uncle had already told an old tavern lady to bring gosam’ju (a strong alcohol) for the young man and soju (a much weaker alcohol) for himself. After a few drinks, the young man was drunk, and the tavern lady and his uncle tied him up in a bundle of pine twigs and plunged him into a liquor jar. Suspecting something was afoot, the young lady went to the tavern disguised as a man. She ordered food, and the old lady brought her a rice cake. When she asked for some drink, the old lady tried to avoid opening up the bundle of pine twigs. The young lady got suspicious of the old lady’s behavior and threatening her with a dagger demanded that she open up the bundle. The old lady did so and took the young man out of the jar. The young lady resuscitated him, then instructed the old lady to tell the person who had tried to kill the young man that she had thrown the corpse away. She also told the young man to stay inside his house until he came to their wedding with the jade ring on his hat. On the way home that night, the young lady met a policeman and told him what had happened at the tavern. She asked the policeman to come on the wedding day and catch the person who had tried to kill the young man. On the gala day, the groom arrived, but the bride, knowing he was an impostor, pretended she had a stomachache and did not leave her room. Then another groom arrived. The guests were puzzled by the two grooms until the bride came out and revealed that the real groom had her jade ring on his hat. The police arrested the evil uncle and the fake groom. So the poor young man was able to marry the young woman from a rich family after all. (Kim, 1981: 66–67)

With an intriguing plot, hidden intentions, and witty reversals, this story describes a young bride-to-be who outsmarts an older man. The young woman in this legend, armed with cleverness and determination, punishes a wicked man in an authoritative position and manages to marry the rightful man. This story, then, goes beyond that of a poor man who weds a rich woman. Instead, it clearly depicts a heroine actively resisting unjust and authoritarian imposition. The young woman acts as an advisor to her future husband, a fighter in a man’s disguise, a strategist overcoming conspiracies, and a judge punishing the wicked. This legend is about a strong and pioneering heroine.

Hanful resistance: The Nightingale¹⁵

The nightingale cries

All night

Its throat choked with blood.

Our sister, who once lived near the River Jindu,

Comes to the riverside village

To cry all night.

Long ago my sister,

Who once lived near the river

In the farthest corner of this land,

Died from our stepmother’s jealousy.

Shall I call the bird my sister?

Oh, its sorrowful voice—

Our sister, who died of our stepmother’s jealousy,

Has become a nightingale after death.

Unable to forget even after death

Her younger brothers no less than nine,

At midnight, when all others are asleep,

She keeps crying, moving from hill to hill.

This widely cited poem by Kim So-wol is based on a fable from the Pyungbuk area, the northern part of the Korean peninsula. As the fable goes, a long time ago, there lived 10 brothers and sisters who were abused by their cruel stepmother. One of the grown-up sisters is betrothed to a wealthy man, Park Chun, and receives expensive wedding gifts. Jealous of her stepdaughter’s marriage, the stepmother locks her up in a closet and burns her to death. A nightingale flies out of the burned sister’s ashes, and the bird sings sorrowfully only around midnight at the window of her younger siblings. This folktale is about resistance against utter injustice, the resistance of the weak even after a grievous death. The girl in the story grows up in a patriarchal family and is abused by her stepmother, leading to her death, but her soul is sublimated into an immortal being. This mode of passive but persistent resistance is different from the usual hero narratives. It also differs greatly from the heroines depicted in Western feminist discourse. This mode of resistance that Korean women engage in under the ideology of sacrificial glorification demonstrates an often-overlooked dimension of women’s consciousness and action.

The four tales that I have outlined are about women’s lived lives and their resistance. The women prevail over the confines of particular temporal and social milieus. The folkloric genre, a commemorative medium, permits a woman’s space, where a whole mnemonic community, a commemorative agency, participates in storing, retrieving, and continuing their experiences as a collective memory product. The folkloric genre is thus an antithesis of elite-oriented historical praxis.

Korean heroines are still hidden in the shadows of heroes. Human history has been a “history of heroes” (Hook, 1980: 154),¹⁶ and “human” is not a universal category. The political ideology of feminism romanticizes explicitly discursive resistance, focusing on its heroine-making (Abu-Lughod, 1990). A redefinition of women’s resistance is necessary to universalize woman as an empirical construct, and this should bring an end to the blindfolded heroine search that excludes the absolute majority of women. Such efforts require external depoliticization and internal destratification within feminism.

The changing and diverse faces of Korean heroines call for a modification in linking knowledge and behavior, as expressed in R = f (MC, PE, C). In this revised equation, the “R” refers to resistance, “ME” to macroenvironment, “PE” to personal milieu, and “C” to critical consciousness. Each variable is qualified with subsets of ideas. “ME” entails historical context, sociocultural influence, political ideology, and economic situation; “PE” is explained by quality and quantity of direct and indirect experiences, educational level, and social class; and “C” is divided into discursive and practical consciousness, drawing on Giddens. A multivariate and recursive approach is necessary to better understand the action and mind of the weak. Korean folklore, at the mnemonic intersection of commemorative genre and communal agency, suggests the need for feminist discourse to go beyond a knowledge–behavior simplex. The modes of women’s resistance and their consciousness are much more complicated and subtle than often projected. Moreover, types of idealized figures, heroines, have been changing according to the ups and downs of ruling ideology (Kang, 1998).¹⁷ The heroines in Korean folklore do not simply imitate heroes (Gilligan, 1982). They have changing and diverse faces that preserve tradition while simultaneously challenging the oppressive norms.

Conclusion: introspection on memory studies and feminism

This article has two goals. It introduces the concept of unit ideas to cultural memory studies, where folklore serves as an example to demonstrate the functional relations among storage/remembering, deletion/forgetting, retrieval, commemorative agency, and commemorative media. Moreover, it calls for modification in conceptualizing the heroine in feminist discourse. Each of these is a mainly theoretical goal for the fields of collective memory and feminism, both of Western origin. Heroines take many faces across cultures. While the army of Amazon warriors is known to be mythical, the military government of Japan did in fact enlist women in army training as World War II was nearing its end (Hein and Selden, 2000: 66). The wartime US government beautified the images of war by caricaturing young, strong, brave, and caring women in its war propaganda (Enloe, 2000: 222; Goldstein, 2005).¹⁸ The women in Korean folklore are also constantly being made, revised, transmitted, and received.

In the 1970s, the stories about women featured factory girls amid export-oriented industrialization. The South Korean labor regime portrayed them as “industrial warriors.” The factory girls told different stories:

A Cup of Coffee//I drink a cup of hot coffee/Dispensed from a vending machine/A cup of coffee and one tablet of Timing¹⁹ keep my tired body awake/My head feels numb/My exhaustion feels numb/And the passage of time feels numb/Would a cup of coffee and a tablet of Timing make an industrial warrior?/The industrial warrior has to work all the time. (Jung, 1989: 83)

How the community of collective memory will remember the factory girls in generations to come will test the level of democratized mnemonic practice.

The turbulent socioeconomic milieu around the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the biggest national crisis since the Korean War, was another watershed moment for Korean women. The turbulence radically altered the conventional gender roles within the family. High unemployment rates due to economic restructuring refuted the traditional image of man as the primary breadwinner. As households went bankrupt and families broke up, many women had to find employment outside the home, and many were internally split as they confronted the contradiction between motherhood and workplace, household maintenance, and self-realization. In the process, neglected and abused children²⁰ emerged as another social problem.

Gong Sun-ok’s (1998) story about a woman who had to leave her child at an orphanage while searching for a job describes the ontological challenge she faces. However, Baek Ji-yeon’s (2000) autobiography tells of an urbane woman who chooses to end an unsatisfactory marriage in order to succeed in a capitalist economy by “managing herself.” Gong insists on moral authority as a victim of patriarchal capitalism, while Baek emphasizes a woman’s getting ahead by trying to position herself in the upper echelon of society. The stories continue, and the community remembers.

Footnotes

Notes

Author biography

Mikyoung Kim is Associate Professor at the Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan. She has published many referred articles and book chapters on human rights, peace, and memory in East Asia. Her most recent book is Securitization of Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia (Praeger, 2012). Kim coedited Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (with Barry Schwartz, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and she is a coeditor of North Korean Review (SSCI journal). She has been named Human Rights Section program chair of the 2013 International Studies Association annual convention and executive secretary of the International Political Science Association’s Human Rights Research Committee.

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The changing faces of heroines: Korean women in folklore

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Unit ideas in collective memory

Folklore and unit ideas

Women’s resistance in folklore

Heroes and heroines

Changing faces of heroines

Prototype heroine: Princess Baridegi

Virtuous-but-not-virtuous woman: “The Legend of Chilsung Bridge”

Pioneer heroine: “Two Grooms and One Bride”

Hanful resistance: The Nightingale 15

Conclusion: introspection on memory studies and feminism

Footnotes

Notes

Author biography

References

Hanful resistance: The Nightingale¹⁵