Session 6 readings

[Anonymous]

I was incredibly surprised by the reading on the Japanese occupation of Korea. I was always under the impression that the Japanese occupation of Korea maybe entailed Japanese leadership of various government positions regionally and giving reverence to the emperor, but I guess I never really gave much thought or question to how the Korean’s were impacted by Japanese occupation. I can say that I was surprised that principals at schools and all bosses were required to be Japanese. I did not realize that it was required of all Koreans to change their names, both first and last names. Or even that the names of school children were also enforced by officials watching classrooms and that students were beaten by the teacher when a mistake was made. I can imagine both teachers and students, parents and children, and society in general had quite a bit of animosity as a result of Japanese occupation leading up to World War II.

[Anonymous]

Marriage has been so different for most of history. This woman, Yu Hyegyong, got engaged in order to avoid being drafted into the Women's Service Corps. Yet, she still stayed married and had five children with her husband.
Also, how could people arrest a mother of four and put her in jail for having a random newspaper wrapped around her belongings? I sincerely hope that neither I, nor my children, ever have to live like that. A detective daily coming in to watch over a suspect in his own home, based on fear alone. This certainly causes me to appreciate 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...' I am amazed and appalled at the way people have had to live at times.

[Anonymous]

I see several messages in these cartoons: women are considered arrogant if they dare break from tradition; some women are capable continuing to perform their womanly/wifely household duties, while also reading, writing and thinking about new things/being academically productive and creative; some women are not capable of doing anything except putting on makeup and being fashionable; if women wear fashionable clothing and jewelry, then they must be shallow.

Overall, it is easy to make assumptions about a person's character, based on their outward appearance, but these assumptions could be dramatically wrong. Clearly, the cartoons made different assumtions, and they could not all be correct, if any.

[Anonymous]

The liberation of women and the reform of society was heralded as a global trend, to be similarly followed by Korean women. The rhetoric was strong then, and still resonates now, despite that these articles were written between 1914-1925. Verbally fighting against the evolutionary theory at the time that women were intellectually inferior to men because their brains were smaller. As I've stated in previous responses, even when I was growing up, the ideals were similar - "the fundamental desire or wish of any woman should be to become a wise mother and good wife." Hypocrisy existed then, as it does now, between what is morally acceptable for a man to do, compared to a woman. For instance, 'men could freely frequent brothels, but they want wives who are pure and chaste.' This was certainly still true when I got married in 1990, but I have seen a change in this in the last decade. I think there is still more room for equality, or at least less hypocrisy.

[Anonymous]

My first thought was that I understand how it feels to lose your name. I am now a Rosales. If I wanted to, I could legally change my name back to Alexander, but my three children are Rosales'. It is an almost scary thought to know that you are losing your name. When people have called you Elizabeth Ann Alexander for 22 years, and you know that you will never be called that again, it feels very sad and traumatic. It isn't that you don't respect your husband's name, it's that your name has been a part of you, and now it is gone. It is, obviously, a different matter for an entire group of people to be forced to give up their names and assume new ones, not chosen by them. They felt that it was the end of the world, and signified this by wearing black armbands. Along with losing their Korean names and choosing new Japanese names, they are now required to go to the Japanese shrine weekly to pay respects to the 'gods of the Empire.' The town is in mourning and it makes the boy angry to see their weakness, and behavior similar to the Japanese, bowing to dead ancestors.

[Anonymous]

When Japan took over Korea in 1910, Koreans were no longer able to be 'the boss of anything.' ( I really like the way this story and 'Lost Names' are written. They are short enough and written in a way that my third grade students can understand and relate to.) This is also a story of a Korean family who must go to the police station to register their new Japanese names. I read this to my daughter, who went to Japan this last summer. She says, "Hmmm..." 1910. Rachel, my daughter, was born in 1996. Only 86 years before she was born, there was a nation of people forced to give up their names and take the names of the invading nation. So many horrible things happened between 1900 and 2000. There are many bad things about the internet, the world wide web, but I can only hope that having instantaneous information will prevent these same, innumerable atrocities from recurring. I hope. Sun-hee is girl of brightness, but changed to Nobuo by simply pointing to a letter and randomly picking a new name. Illegal to fly the Korean flag. Men beaten for changing the Korean Olympic runner's name back to his Korean one in the newspaper. Gosh, I would rather lose my job and go to jail than cane one of my students. I couldn't do it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the extensive list of resources. I'm at the end of my day, today, but I am looking forward to checking out 'YMCA Baseball.' My uncle was a regional YMCA director, who moved to Oahu to run the YMCA there, some years ago.

[Anonymous]

I really enjoyed these readings. Issues of identity are fascinating and the concepts of the new woman and the ideal woman really resonates with the literature I teach. Students have a difficult time understanding what it feels like to be constrained by the boxes in which society places women. They believe tithe hype that women have already achieved parity with men, not realizing that the progress we have made still retains traces of a bygone era. The other readings about name changes was also appealing. Most East Asians I meet have western and ethnic names but go by their western names for the most part. This is not the case with south Asians who may have western nicknames but their identity remains entirely south Asian, legally and culturally. Maybe it's because we have never been forced to change our names- it's alway been a matter of choice.
edited by niruparmar on 10/18/2015

[Anonymous]

This was a very interesting piece. When we think about the war the Chinese had against Japan, we often forget about minorities or foreigners who were affected. Kang's narrative would be an ideal one to share with students because discrimination existed, and no one is considered innocent. Was Kang's Korean family sympathetic to the Chinese? The author had to spend her entire youth hood nearly proving that her Korean family were not sympathetic, to the point where her/his mother fasted in jail when she was illegally put behind bars. I wonder what kind of psychological and emotional scarring it left on the author and her family.

[Anonymous]

Cartoons 6 -7 were especially disturbing! Were they illustrated by men?! Cartoon 6 assumes that a woman does nothing, but expects her husband to do all the domestic work. This cartoon defeats Korean sterotypes where women often are subservient to men! The cartoon should be of a woman pulling the man on the cart and not the other way around! Cartoon 7 is even more disturbing. As fashion styles are changing and women's hem lines are getting shorter, the artist implies that women are helpless and use their sensualilty to attract men. Perhaps there was a global social movement going on at the time (roaring 20s) inspired by the west (note the western shoes and stockings) and it was becoming more acceptable for women to publicly question challenge their rights.

[Anonymous]

Wow! What a powerful reading! The core of this piece is cultural pride and identity, which was so strong in Kim's family. The story had strong symbolism of the black armbands, prevalent in Asian funerals. In this case, the Kim family was essentially burying their former Korean selves now that they've "become Japanese" by adopting a new last name. I couldn't but help connect this story to the modern figure of Caitlyn Jenner who buried his old self to become a new female version, including a new first name.

On another note, I often wonder why Western females generally drop their last name to adopt a new last name when marrying. Asian men and women keep their birth name their whole life, even when they marry. A person's name is their identity. I can not give up my identity and heritage, and for this reason, I have retained my given surname although I am married. (This act did not please my non-Asian mother in law!)

[Anonymous]

I enjoyed the narratives from this week's readings. THey gave insight to the Everyman's experiences.

THis piece was a nice companion piece to Kang's Lost Names. Again, it reiterates the strength of cultural pride, identity, and heritage. Students will enjoy this piece because it is written from a young person's perspective. A lasting visual was the description of Uncle when he returned home bruised from having rewritten the Korean marathon runner's name in Korean and redrawing the Korean flag over the runner's chest.

[Anonymous]

The theme of names was very interesting to me. I am really looking forward to the discussion on the topic tonight. The anger that revolved around forcefully having to adopt a new name resonated with me. Specifically, the part where the Korean marathon runner was referred to with his Japanese name garnered a lot of emotion within me. I really felt the rage of the character in the story. I think that was the part of the story where he spit because "the name tasted bad."

As I was reading this what came to mind are the various articles that I have read over the years of the cultural appropriation that occurs annually at the Coachella music festival. At this festival, it is common to see many people "dressed up" in native american outfits for fun. I do not identify as native american, but I can totally see how the practice of dressing up as a native american is offensive to native people. Historically, Native American people have not been allowed to exist with dignity on their land, but parts of their culture are commonly token-ized. I can see how that can be infuriating. That anger, in my opinion, is also seen in the character who was upset about how the Korean marathon runner was portrayed in the broadcast. Korean people in general were not allowed to live in dignity in their own land, and to add further insult to injury, the marathon runner, who was part of the Korean national identity, was stolen from the Korean people.

[Anonymous]

These series of essays about how women were regarded in Korea frustrated me, it reminds me a lot of how women are still treated in Latin America and the Middle East, an why not, even here in the U.S. with unequal pay based on gender. It’s extremely sad to see how women get called “weak,” “inferior,” and so on. We have always being treated as second class citizens regardless of women liberation and feminism movements. There is a lot to be done, how can we do it? I guess that has no answer.

[Anonymous]

It seems most essays advocate for the liberation of women for the sake of society’s improvement via marriage roles. For instance, Ham Sep’ung’s “Women’s liberation means social progress” advocates that women education in physiology and chemistry can lead them to be better mothers and housewives. This persuasion to educate women seems to be more aligned with tradition and not challenging traditional roles so much compared to the Western world around the early 1900s. In other words, it’s too conservative for its time compared to the western world. In this light I think these documents are valuable in order to compare women’s liberation movements in different parts of the world. In particular it would be insightful for students to compare these essays to the “declaration of sentiments” at the Seneca Falls Convention in the 1800s.
edited by rchang on 10/12/2015
edited by rchang on 10/12/2015

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