• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.37
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• pp.141-190
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• 2021

In early modern Korea, the founders of three main-stream indigenous new religions, Choi Je-woo (崔濟愚), Kang Il-sun (姜一淳), and Park Jungbin (朴重彬), were all ruined yangban, who could no longer maintain the social dignity of yangban. Prior to their regular religious activities, they earned livings as rural teachers, peasants, merchants, and fortune-tellers. They were marginalized for having declined from upper-class nobles to lower-class people. Due to their subalternal status, they religiously represented the inexpressible aspirations and resentments held by various subalterns. The millennial movements of marginal religions in the late Joseon Dynasty exposed and deviated from the fetters of the established order, but they did not propose a new alternative order to replace it. Unlike these millennial movements, Choi Je-woo, Kang Il-sun, and Park Jungbin all proposed utopian visions of post-subalternal alternative religions that systematically presented and practiced new alternative worldviews characterized by the "Great Opening of the Later World (後天開闢)." The world they longed for was one wherein anti-subalternal social regulation were overthrown, the oppression of various subalterns end, and the established social order was replaced. In this article, I have argued that three main-stream indigenous Korean new religions, Donghak (Eastern Learning), the Jeungsan-inspired religious movements, and Wonbulgyo (Won Buddhism) are utopian alternative religions. I made this argument by analyzing some aspects by which they represented subalterns and offered subalterns a new religio-social status.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.68
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• pp.107-150
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• 2021

Representation of an entity starts with recognition of its existence, and recording is mutually circular in that it acts as a means to enable the recognition of the existence. No record is left on an unrecognized entity, record is distorted if any, and the distorted reproduction represents the entity, reinforcing its invisibility. Spivak describes those who cannot speak on their own and cannot be represented as subaltern. This paper examines public record, the media and research records of female restaurant workers, identifies the subaltern characteristics and limitations of their records, and suggests the points to be considered and specific roles required for recording the subalterns. If it is possible to increase the possibility of representation by completely recording a person as an entity that contains the times and society, the accountability of the record to provide an account will extend beyond institutions to the times and society, and individuals and community will be established as political subjects.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.79-120
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• 2011

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the implication of feminist oral history from a postcolonial feminist perspective as critically reexamining the relationship between hearer and speaker, representer and narrator, the said and the unsaid, and secrecy and silence. Based upon oral (life) history of a U.S. military prostitute (yanggongju), I tried to show the experiences of a historically-excluded and marginalized 'Other,' and then critically reevaluate the meaning of encountering 'Other', not just through the research process but also in the post/colonial society in Korea. The narrative of an old woman in the "kijichon" (a formal prostitute in U.S. military base) shows how woman has navigated the boundaries between inevitability/coincidence, the enforced/the voluntary, prostitution/intimacy, and military prostitute/military bride while continually negotiating as well as having conflict with various myths and ideologies of the 'normative woman,' 'nationhood,' and 'normal family.' In addition, her narrative which causes the rupture of our own stereotypical images of a military prostitute not only proves the possibility of reconstructing the self-identity of a subaltern woman, but also redirects the research focus from the research object to the research subject (ourselves). Consequently, the implication in feminist oral history is that feminist researchers who whish to represent the experiences of other should first inquire 'what/how we can hear,' 'why we want to know others,' and 'who we are,' while simultaneously asking if subaltern woman can speak.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.210-226
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• 2018

This study was to explore the life history of an elderly woman who had six times of imprisonment and entered a Samchung re-education camp. This study of life history followed the analysis of Mandelbaum(1973) pointing three perspectives of life: dimensions, turnings, and adaptations. Participant's dimensions of life were exploitation of labor, hostess life for U.S. military, prison life, Samchung re-education camp, marriage with the disabled, life of a farm worker. Turnings of life were serving as a maid, confinement of prison, life of hostess for living, being remanded to Samchung re-education camp by state violence, marriage and divorce, denial of social welfare service. Adaptations of life were downright adaptation in early life, exaggerated act in juvenile reformatory, prostituted women as a simple fortune-maker, adaption as a good wife and wise mother after marriage, resistive adaption as a self-employed. and farm worker. Based upon this results outcome, discussions and implications were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.779-796
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• 2009

Pimat-gil is a bystreet over 600-years old of Jong-no in Seoul that originated in the early Joseon Dynasty. This Study defines Pimat-gol (a street village) that has developed centering around Pimat-gil (alley) as a typical backlane of modern city, traces the origin and landscapes of Pimat-gol through the historical geographies of this place, and tries to name and interpret the placeness of Pimat-gol from the angles of social and cultural geography, particularly on the basis of the concept 'place memory'. As a result, the author extracts the placeness of Pimat-gol in terms of juxtaposition of three-fold layers, ie., 'space of subaltern vs. space of escape', 'space of oblivion vs. space of recollecttion and generation', and 'space of fossil vs. space of living'. In addition, the author examines the place memories which have been sedimented in this place and the contest of the place-memories by investigating these three-fold layers, and makes a proposal which would constructs another spatiality of modern city on the basis of this case.