Traditional Korean Women

Living the life of a Korean woman in Yi Dynasty Korea was essentially joyless, especially if you were from an elite class.

For one, you were subjected to the "inner room", said to be your domain, but in reality your prison. And the higher your status, the more you "sequestered" yourself, and you'd have to wear a veil every time you leave the house.

But things were not half as bad if you were not from the upper class.

As Laurel Kendell and Mark Peterson pointed out, freedom of movement and absence of the veil defined "slave women" and "women in outcaste professions".

"Slave women, as they appear in antique genre paintings and in old photographs, accompany a lady's sedan chair, pound laundry beside a stream, or gossip together on the way home from the market. Insofar as modesty was a status attribute, the slave's costume - a brief jacket and short skirt over pantaloons - was a mark of degradation."

"As described in 1906, a decade after the legal abolition of slavery: "She will be seen carrying water home from the well on her head, and not only will her face be uncovered but there will be a startling hiatus between her short jacket and her waist band which leaves the breasts entirely exposed."

Given their inferior status, women were seldom mentioned in dynastic chronicles except occasionally as a virtuous wife, a devious consort, a scheming concubine, or a morally inferior being. And in the words of missionaries and travelers, "a wretched and depraved product of oppressive patriarchy."

The woman's only power, if it can be described as such, was as a mother-in-law, where "her sway is as despotic as any absolute monarchy on earth."

Little wonder since Korean men cite the Confucian homily "Namjon, yobi", or "Men are honored, but women are abased." And besides, a daughter had often been described as a "robber woman" (todungnyo) who carries household wealth away when she marries.