환향녀 서사의 존재 양상과 의미

초록

This study was inspired by difficulties with finding records and narratives about returning ladies despite their certain existence and fierce social disputes over them in the latter part of Joseon. Trying to address the difficulties, the study first reviewed records about Sokhwan ladies(returning ladies after payment) after Byeongjahoran in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. The study analyzed the divorce controversy over returning ladies and found that the ruling class and male subjects of Joseon transferred the accountability for lost fidelity to returning ladies to keep the Neo-Confucian order after Byeongjahoran, excluding them from official discourses. The study also analyzed records in Yeonryeosilgisul, Yurokjeon, and Iseocheonmanji in Gimunchonghwa, examining the hidden side of ladies that died in defense of their chastity, boundary between female Piroins(women abducted and taken to China) and returning ladies, and severity of lost fidelity. There was a choice forced by the patriarchal society working behind the suicide of ladies that died in defense of their chastity. Once taken to China, ladies had to kill themselves before reaching the border to prove their fidelity. After crossing the border, they were turned into unfaithful beings that belonged to neither Joseon nor Qing. Female Piroins that had their fidelity taken were recorded in documents only when they sacrificed themselves to ensure the return of their husbands back to Joseon and requested a favor for their fate to their husbands. Finally, the study analyzed the tale of Hoijeolgang, the records of Princess Uisun and the tale of the tomb of Korean bridal crowns in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, and the story of the origin of Yearning Rock, looking into the patterns of the narratives of returning ladies becoming tales since the modern times and the meanings of these narratives established through their reconstruction including distortion, transformation, and deletion by the subjects of memories. The narratives of returning ladies that were turned into tales since the modern times showed no understanding of their lives and did not reproduce their lives narratively from their own perspective. Instead, their stories were made into narratives in ways of incorporating them into the old male-dominant order and system and making virtuous women out of them from the perspective of nationalism. This explains why there are only rumors and traces of returning ladies left even though male subjects tried to find them only to ascertain no truth of returning ladies.

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