Na Hye-seok advocated social changes

By Kyung Moon Hwang

Na Hye-seok

I have often wondered why the South Korean film industry, with its high production values and keen marketing sense, has not produced a movie about the artist Na Hye-seok (1896-1948), one of the most interesting people in modern Korean history.

If done faithfully, such a film could highlight themes that are both historically important and highly appealing: love, romance, family drama, sexual scandal, faith and betrayal, art, politics, nationhood and modern social change amidst an epic backdrop.

These themes would be embodied in three main characters, each a major historical figure during the Japanese colonial period (1910-45). They also formed a fascinating love triangle.

Na was a painter, poet, novelist, essayist and one of the pioneers of Korean feminism, calling for changes in society far ahead of her time. Born in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Na was raised in a wealthy family headed by a father who served as an official in the Korean government, then in the succeeding colonial government.

He was, then, no anti-Japanese nationalist, and in fact he sent his daughter, in her teens, to study art in Japan.

In Tokyo, Na Hye-seok engaged in painting, writing, and publishing while forming close relationships with other Korean students spending their formative years in the land of Korea’s colonial overlord. Upon her return to Korea at the end of the 1910s, she worked as a teacher and continued to hone her craft as a Western oil painter.

Then, despite her time spent in Japan (or perhaps because of it), she participated in the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919. She was jailed for this, but eventually freed after a few months, and the lawyer hired by her family to represent her soon became her husband.

For this man, Gim U-yeong, Na would be his second wife. But like Na, he was not someone caught up in tradition. He courted her, and their “love marriage” stood out when most marriages were arranged. He even promised to let her keep painting and pursue a career, which bore fruit when, two years after the March 1 movement, her works were displayed in a special exhibition sponsored by the colonial government.

Gim would have gone down in history as a major figure even had he not married Na. From a family of hereditary clerks near Busan, Gim represented a very important social phenomenon: Many Koreans who, like Gim, came from non-noble backgrounds of the late Joseon Kingdom, took advantage of rapid changes in the early 20th century, especially in education, to rise to new heights in the new social order.

In the 1920s Gim was already a top official in colonial Korea, and eventually he became one of the highest ranking Koreans in the Japanese imperial government.

His connections and prominence allowed him and his wife to travel to Manchuria and, in the late 1920s, to America and Europe.

In Paris, where Na stayed for nearly a year while studying painting, she got involved in a scandalous love affair with a man 20 years her senior, Choe Rin. As a leader of the native Korean religion of Chondogyo, Choe had been one of the 33 signers of the March 1 Declaration of Independence, for which he too was incarcerated. Thereafter he became one of the best known social activists of the 1920s.

By the time he met Na, however, Choe had begun to retreat from his pro-independence passions, and by the 1930s he conspicuously turned into one of the pro-Japanese public figures calling for Koreans’ assimilation into the Japanese nation.

In this way, he came to represent a larger trend, one that remains painful for many Koreans to reflect upon today: A contributor to the formation of modern Korean identity and culture, Choe eventually succumbed to the pressures of colonial rule and betrayed the cause of Korean independence and nationhood.

For Na, however, Choe became the source not of national betrayal, but a personal one. Upon her return to Korea, her husband, stunned by the affair and probably even more by the public scandal that ensued, divorced her, which cost her custody of her children and hopes for a return to normal life.

True to form, however, Na did not passively accept this situation. In fact she sued her former lover Choe for violating her chastity and abandoning her, and she demanded monetary compensation for the enormous losses she suffered because of their affair.

Her point, as she would later explain in a published “confession,” was that Korean men, including her husband, faced no social condemnation or even shame for their sexual activities outside of marriage. Women, in other words, were subjected to a double standard.

But Na was not leveling this social criticism just because she suffered its consequences directly; she had been publicly airing such views throughout her adult life, writing repeatedly of the need to liberate Korean females through education and opportunity. Shockingly, she even targeted basic family conventions, speaking frankly of the debilitating effects of marriage, pregnancy, and even child rearing.

What Na expressed nearly a century ago, in other words, would be seen even today as uncomfortably forward. Perhaps she is still too far ahead of her time, and that is why a movie about her, which would otherwise be so appealing, has not been made.

Kyung Moon Hwang is associate professor in the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of, “A History of Korea ― An Episodic Narrative” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Korean translation was published as 황경문, “맥락으로 읽는 새로운 한국사” (21세기 북스, 2011).