Korean Female Education, Social Status, and Early Transitions, 1898 to 1910

Abstract

Rather than treat Korean women’s education as a monolithic subject, this article examines the first schools for females established by the aristocratic yangban beginning in 1898 that reflected an effort to formalize elite female education and provide an alternative to the Christian missionary schools. Korean-founded schools adjusted their curriculum to include new subjects such as foreign languages, history, geography, and math while also offering erudite Confucian-based subjects vis-à-vis morals education, calligraphy, and literary Sinitic. These classical subjects were too advanced for the missionary schools to offer. The combination of these subjects was appropriate for women of elite households since they would marry government officials, diplomats, and scholars (also of yangban extraction), would need to be familiar with aristocratic etiquette and mores in a changing context, and would have to raise their children for their elite station in life. This changed after 1905 as Korean sovereignty became increasingly threatened and the mobilization of the female population, regardless of social class, became an urgent matter. Thus, all Korean women were called upon to perform their patriotic duties as wise mothers and good wives to contribute to the strengthening of the country.