Korean Studies Internet Discussion List KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW
Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period, by Theresa Hyun, 2003. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 256 pp. (ISBN 0-8248-2677-9).
Reviewed by Janet Poole
New York University
Theresa Hyun's Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period takes up the intriguing and fresh theme of the woman translator in colonial Korea. Although it is commonplace to argue that Western notions of feminism were translated into Korea at the turn of the twentieth century, this is the first study to examine this process through the historical figure of the woman translator. Translation here is no metaphor, but a material practice through which women transform themselves and Korean writing. Women, the author argues, made a decisive contribution to the development of modern Korean nationalism and feminism through their translation activities and their own fiction writing, which developed in correlation with their translation practice.In order to pursue the question of translation and feminism, Hyun focuses on three bodies of material which enable her to consider the relationship between gender and writing in the colonial period. First, she looks at the ways that translators and writers (of both sexes) wrote about women, ranging from an early twentieth century focus on European heroines such as Joan of Arc, who might offer not merely a new notion of a feminine role but, more importantly, comment upon the state of the nation on the eve of colonial rule, through to the elaboration of the "New Woman" subjectivity in the 1920s. Secondly, in what is by far the most original part of the book, she looks at the work of women translators in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, she takes a closer look at three specific writers--Pak Hwasông, Mo Yunsuk, and Kim Myôngsun--in order to consider fictional writing by women in the 1920s and 1930s, with specific reference to its relationship to translations of Western forms of writing. By examining such a wide range of material, Hyun attempts to reconstruct the figure of the woman writer in colonial Korea. Her stated aims in doing so reach beyond the significance of recovering the history of the Korean woman writer to argue the "central role of translation in creating new gender and national identities" and thus to find a place for Korean literary activities in feminist and cross-cultural studies (xii).
This is an ambitious and exciting agenda, but one which is only partly fulfilled in this well-researched and clearly organised book. For the reader looking for a bibliographical source on women writers of the first half of the twentieth century, this book will prove a valuable tool. A long bibliography is divided into two halves: "primary materials" covering not only literary works but articles pertaining to women writers from colonial period journals, and "secondary materials" listing the major works from the recent boom in studies on women's literature. The author also includes an appendix that lists women translators from the 1920s and 1930s, the works they translated and place of publication. The clear presentation of such research will be invaluable for scholars in the field of Korean literature looking for bibliographical sources.
Given a context in which there is almost no secondary work on Korean literature in English, this book is certainly welcome. Added to that the fact that so many English-language translations have focused on the work of women writers (albeit from the postcolonial period), then this book could be useful to supplement such readings. However, the bibliographical nature of this book tends to overwhelm its narrative, making it hard to see it successfully placing Korean literary activities in cross-cultural context, for it is precisely the context that disappears in such a narrowly empirical focus. As the sweep of history of writing is rewritten to center women's writing, instead of enhancing our understanding of history it obscures it.The author does attempt to provide historical and social context, both in an opening chapter entitled "cultural background" and in various sections later on in the book, but the historical narrative provided rarely rises above the commonsensical and oftentimes is simply misleading. To claim that Japanese colonialism brought about the "ruin" of the "middle classes" (49) hardly makes sense, particularly in a book which focuses upon that paradigm of emergent female bourgeois subjectivity known as the "new woman." The working presumption that gender is overwhelmingly the predominant factor in the life of the woman writer works to further expel social and political context. Kang Kyongae, for example, is said to be interested in the situation of women but no mention is made of communism and the important fact that many of the 1930s women writers were committed to political changes, which they demanded reach far beyond the realm of women's rights. As Kang's explanation of the title of her long novel "Human Problems" (In'gan munje; 1934) suggests, she conceived of her interests not as women's problems but as human problems.
The greatest contribution of this book is undoubtedly the unearthing and cataloguing of translations by women, but this would have been enhanced by more discussion of the linguistic context. Comments such as a translation being "wordy" or "simple" do not mean much to the reader unless some broader context of literary language from the time is given. This would necessarily involve looking more broadly at the writing context rather than just focusing on pieces written by women, but the result would enable us to appreciate these women's achievements more clearly. Similarly, a closer reading of translations and fiction might be able to draw out the significance of these writing activities in a way that would enable us to consider the relationship between translation and feminism in a more theoretically nuanced way.
As it is, this book proves decisively and in great detail that women in colonial Korea were vigorously involved in the literary field in multiple capacities. Anyone who is familiar with Korean literature and seeks information on women writing in this period will find this book useful.
Citation:
Poole, Janet 2004
Review of Writing Women in Korea: Translation and Feminism in the Colonial Period, by Theresa Hyun (2003)
Korean Studies Review 2004, no. 11
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr04-11.htm
Return to Index of Reviews
Return to Entry Page