본 연구는 일제강점기 조선 여성의 건강과 질병에 대한 역사를 그려본다. 우리의 일제식민지, 식민지 근대화, 그리고 민족주의의 경험에서 여성의 건강과 질병이 어떤 방식으로 의미화 되었는지 밝힌다. 19세기 이전 여성에 건강에 대한 개념은 주로 한의학에 기초해서 임 ...

본 연구는 일제강점기 조선 여성의 건강과 질병에 대한 역사를 그려본다. 우리의 일제식민지, 식민지 근대화, 그리고 민족주의의 경험에서 여성의 건강과 질병이 어떤 방식으로 의미화 되었는지 밝힌다. 19세기 이전 여성에 건강에 대한 개념은 주로 한의학에 기초해서 임신과 태아건강을 중심으로 이루어졌다. 개화기를 거쳐 일제식민지 시대에 접어들면서 근대 의학지식, 특히 해부학적 의학지식에 바탕을 둔 각종 부인병에 대한 지식을 접하면서 부인병과 여성의 몸에 대한 인식의 변화가 일어났다. 본 연구는 이 변화를 보여준다.
본 연구에서는 부인병이라는 용어에 초점을 맞춰 여성의 건강과 질병의 사회문화사를 전개해 나가는 작업이다. 부인병은 의학용어이자 또한 일상용어였다. 일제시대의 전문의학잡지는 물론이고 총독부잡지, 일간신문, 일본/조선의 기타 잡지자료에서 부인병이라는 용어는 일제 강점기에 가장 많이 쓰인 용어라고 할 수 있을 정도로 빈번하게 사용되어진 용어였다. 이 부인병이라는 용어는 일종의 완곡어법 (euphemism)이였다. 부인병은 산부인과 질환뿐만 아니라 여러 종류의 성(性)적인 질병을 통칭하는 용어이기도 하였다. 성적 재생산 (sexual reproduction) 에 관련한 질병으로 규정된 병들의 범주에 속하는 병들의 통칭이었다.
이러한 각종 부인병에 대한 담론과 부인병관리에 대한 관심은 다양한 식민지공간에서 나타났다.
경성제국대 산부인과 연구실에서부터 식민지감옥, 제약회사 신문광고, 총독부주최의 건강관련 켐페인에 이르기까지, 이 부인병이라는 용어는 광범위하게 사용되고 연구의 주제가 되어 있었다. 이러한 다양한 공간에서 형성된 부인병 담론을 분석해보면 부인병이 일종의 의학적인 지식으로만 자리 잡았던 것이 아니라 다양한 식민지공간에서 의학, 사회과학적 연구, 식민지미디어 논쟁의 주제가 되고 또한 지속적으로 불안 (anxiety)을 조장하는 대상, 그럼으로 식민지 국가적 차원에서 관리, 감시의 대상이 되었던 것을 알 수 있다. 본 연구는 이러한 과정에서 구성되어지는 부인병의 사회문화적 의미를 파악하는데 연구의 목적을 두고 진행되었다. 여성, 부인병의 사회문화적 의미를 추적해 나가는 작업은 후기식민지 연구, 여성사, 젠더사, 의학사의 측면에서 시도되어지지 않았던 역사적 접근으로써의 의미를 가지고 있다. 또한 비서구제국이었던 일본 제국주의의 역사적 진행과정에서 나타났던 여성의 정체성과 몸의 훈육, 통치 과정을 알아나가는 측면에서 매우 의미 깊은 작업이며 독창적인 연구로써의 성격을 가진다고 말할 수 있다.

Despite the critical attention paid in recent decades to the subject of colonialism, medicine, and the body, it remains typically focused on Western empires. This innovative project instead draws attention to non-Western imperial history by focusing o ...

Despite the critical attention paid in recent decades to the subject of colonialism, medicine, and the body, it remains typically focused on Western empires. This innovative project instead draws attention to non-Western imperial history by focusing on Korea under Japanese rule (1910–1945). It examines how colonial subjects and their health were investigated and governed in the East Asian imperial context, in which ruler and ruled, unlike in Western empires, shared a similar racial make-up and a common Confucian cultural background. This racial ambiguity and cultural proximity between colonizer and colonized produced some familiar yet nonetheless geopolitically specific types of knowledge and politics of the body in the formation of colonial modernity in Korea in the first half of the twentieth century. As a case study of non-Western, East Asian imperialism, in which the power of empire and medicine did not stem from white hegemony and Christian religious authority, the proposed study showcases how the scientific engineers, scholars, and journalists of Japanese imperialism manufactured cultures of dominance and superiority “from within a position of sameness” and in the absence of missionary medicine. Nowhere was this more evident than in the medical discourses and practices that pathologized Korean women’s bodies.

Examining a wide range of rich but until now unstudied both Korean and Japanese primary sources—such as state police reports, medical journals, popular magazines, and patent medical advertisements—this study examines the pathologization of women’s bodies and the colonial framing of women’s disease through a close examination of the meanings of puinbyŏng. With a keen interest on the emergence of biomedical as well as popular interests in women’s health in colonial Korea, this project draws attention to the striking presence of this particular medical term: puinbyŏng, loosely interpreted as “women’s diseases.” I focus on the colonial social condition that with the demise of the Chosǒn dynasty (1392–1910), the arrival of Japanese colonialism and Western-influenced Japanese biomedicine, and the rise of Korean biomedicine in the first two decades of the twentieth century, women’s diseases (often expressed through the Chinese compound word, 婦人病, pronounced puinbyŏng in Korean and fujinbyō in Japanese) became ubiquitous in colonial government health campaigns, medical publications, and the emerging Korean vernacular press. In this study, I demonstrate that in early twentieth-century Korea, the compound word puinbyŏng, as both a medical and quotidian term generally referring to women’s (婦人; puin/fujin) disease (病; byŏng/byō), became a convenient euphemism for a wide range of sexual pathologies and gynecological diseases—such as infertility, irregular menstruation, venereal disease, frigidity, hysteria, and neurasthenia—that were primarily concerned with sexual reproduction. In detailing how women’s pathologies became a subject of continuous anxiety, study, debate, and surveillance under the Japanese colonial regime, this project showcases that the pre-existing set of women’s diseases, including infertility and venereal disease, gained a new set of meanings, definitions, and systems of control among colonialists and nationalists, who both sought to intervene in women’s health and reproduction but for radically different purposes (reproduction for imperial ends and racial uplift, respectively).

Despite the critical attention paid in recent decades to the subject of colonialism, medicine, and the body, it remains typically focused on Western empires. This innovative project instead draws attention to non-Western imperial history by focusing o ...

Despite the critical attention paid in recent decades to the subject of colonialism, medicine, and the body, it remains typically focused on Western empires. This innovative project instead draws attention to non-Western imperial history by focusing on Korea under Japanese rule (1910–1945). It examines how colonial subjects and their health were investigated and governed in the East Asian imperial context, in which ruler and ruled, unlike in Western empires, shared a similar racial make-up and a common Confucian cultural background. This racial ambiguity and cultural proximity between colonizer and colonized produced some familiar yet nonetheless geopolitically specific types of knowledge and politics of the body in the formation of colonial modernity in Korea in the first half of the twentieth century. As a case study of non-Western, East Asian imperialism, in which the power of empire and medicine did not stem from white hegemony and Christian religious authority, the proposed study showcases how the scientific engineers, scholars, and journalists of Japanese imperialism manufactured cultures of dominance and superiority “from within a position of sameness” and in the absence of missionary medicine. Nowhere was this more evident than in the medical discourses and practices that pathologized Korean women’s bodies.

Examining a wide range of rich but until now unstudied both Korean and Japanese primary sources—such as state police reports, medical journals, popular magazines, and patent medical advertisements—this study examines the pathologization of women’s bodies and the colonial framing of women’s disease through a close examination of the meanings of puinbyŏng. With a keen interest on the emergence of biomedical as well as popular interests in women’s health in colonial Korea, this project draws attention to the striking presence of this particular medical term: puinbyŏng, loosely interpreted as “women’s diseases.” I focus on the colonial social condition that with the demise of the Chosǒn dynasty (1392–1910), the arrival of Japanese colonialism and Western-influenced Japanese biomedicine, and the rise of Korean biomedicine in the first two decades of the twentieth century, women’s diseases (often expressed through the Chinese compound word, 婦人病, pronounced puinbyŏng in Korean and fujinbyō in Japanese) became ubiquitous in colonial government health campaigns, medical publications, and the emerging Korean vernacular press. In this study, I demonstrate that in early twentieth-century Korea, the compound word puinbyŏng, as both a medical and quotidian term generally referring to women’s (婦人; puin/fujin) disease (病; byŏng/byō), became a convenient euphemism for a wide range of sexual pathologies and gynecological diseases—such as infertility, irregular menstruation, venereal disease, frigidity, hysteria, and neurasthenia—that were primarily concerned with sexual reproduction. In detailing how women’s pathologies became a subject of continuous anxiety, study, debate, and surveillance under the Japanese colonial regime, this project showcases that the pre-existing set of women’s diseases, including infertility and venereal disease, gained a new set of meanings, definitions, and systems of control among colonialists and nationalists, who both sought to intervene in women’s health and reproduction but for radically different purposes (reproduction for imperial ends and racial uplift, respectively).

An increasing number of scholars are examining the formation of Western medicine and science in the imperial metropole and its impact on indigenous nationalism in colonial Taiwan and semi-colonial China. My study provides a unique opportunity for appr ...

An increasing number of scholars are examining the formation of Western medicine and science in the imperial metropole and its impact on indigenous nationalism in colonial Taiwan and semi-colonial China. My study provides a unique opportunity for appreciating how colonial medical work was a fundamentally gendered process, by demonstrating a shared discourse of women’s disease by colonialists and nationalists in the concrete context of colonial Korea. Further, this project from a non-Western imperial standpoint, complicates the dominant framework of racial and cultural dichotomy common to most postcolonial studies of imperialism and colonialism. By addressing colonial power and the making of the colonial body and race in the imperial matrix of racial similarity and cultural proximity through the analysis of women’s illness, this study illuminates the anxieties of the Asian imperial power and the contradictions and ironies in the rhetoric and practices of the colonizers as they sought to manufacture categories of difference among people who outwardly looked very similar to them and with whom they shared a Confucian heritage.

I intend to publish the research results of this project in internationally renowned journals including Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies (A&HCI/SSCI) for an academic audience interested in interdisciplinary postcolonial studies and the history and cultural studies of empire, gender, and race; for scholars seeking to understand the history and cultural studies of medicine and science; and for scholars from a wide range of disciplines and fields interested in modernity, colonialism, the link between visual imagery and cultural meanings of disease and bodies, and modern science in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Korea and East Asia. I also seek to publish results of this study as a monograph through an academic press in North America. I expect that once it is published as monograph, it will be widely used in undergraduate classes and graduate seminars. It will help enhance an understanding of non-Western Japanese imperialism as well as Korea under Japanese rule. In particular, the book will shed light on women’s and gender history in modern Korea and East Asia.