Na Hye-seok
나혜석
Na Hye-seok (28 April 1896 – 10 December 1948) was a Korean feminist, poet, writer, painter, educator, and journalist.
Life
Na Hye-seok was born in 1896 in Suwon to a wealthy family. Her pen name was Jeongwol. After her graduation from Jinmyeong Girls' High School in 1913, Na majored in Western oil painting at Tokyo Arts College.
In 1919, Na participated in the March 1st Movement against Japanese rule. She was jailed for this, and the lawyer hired by her family to represent her soon became her husband. The following year, Na became one of the founding members of the literary magazine Pyeheo. Her poems Sa (사, Sand) and Naenmul (냇물 Stream) appeared in Pyeheo in 1921. Throughout the early 1920s, Na also contributed a series of articles to the first magazine for Korean women, Sinyeoja, on the subject of women's dress reform.
In 1927 Na Hye-sok and her husband went on a three-year tour of Europe. While in Paris, she was rumored to have had an affair with Cheondoism leader Choi Rin, and her husband divorced her on grounds of infidelity in 1931. It is not known whether she truly was unfaithful; in any case, she came to be thought of and stigmatized as a woman who used her artistic pretensions as an excuse for sexual abandon.
Despite the divorce and damage to her reputation, Na continued painting and won a special prize at the 10th Joseon Art Exhibition in 1931. She also published the essay Ihongobaekseo (이혼고백서 A Divorce Confession) in Samcheolli magazine in 1934, raising issues with gender inequality endorsed by Korean morality and tradition.
Na died alone on December 10, 1948 at a hospital for vagrants.
Writing
As well as being a painter, Na Hye-seok published fiction, poems, travelogues, and critical essays brimming with the spirit of the modern era. Writing across a spectrum of genres, she criticized the patriarchy and advocated for women's liberation, arguing that women were sexual beings as well and should be free to pursue relationships outside of marriage. Notable essays in this vein include her Silheom gyeolhollon (실험 결혼론 On Trial Cohabitation), published in 1930, Ihongobaekseo, and Doksinyeojajeongjoron (독신여자정조론 On the Sex Lives of Unmarried Women), published in 1935.
Na Hye-seok's most well-known work of fiction, Gyeonghui (경희 Gyeonghui), published in 1918 while studying in Japan, concerns a woman's self-discovery and her subsequent search for meaning in life as a new woman; it is the first feminist short story in Korean literature. Much of Na's work is written in a confessional voice, which was very much in vogue in 1920s-30s literature as well as being suited to exposing the oppression of women in a patriarchal society. Her 1921 poem, Inhyeongui jip (인형의 집 A Doll's House), criticized feudal, Confucianist family values that decreed the only roles for women were that of dutiful daughter, good wife and caring mother, comparing these roles to that of a doll. Na's short story, Eomeoniwa ttal (어머니와 딸 Mother and Daughter), published in 1937, was inspired by the tension between an old-fashioned mother and daughter with a modern education that she had observed while staying at a boarding house shortly before her divorce.
