(Modern) Palace Women in Colonial Korea

Abstract Crucial to the operations of the Korean court, palace women possessed special status during the history of this institution: the marriage prohibition placed them outside the traditional kinship network, and their lives, in contrast to those of most other women, were defined by the professional skills they acquired through service. This article conjures palace women as unlikely subjects of Korean colonial modernity—the early twentieth-century transformation of the capitalist public scene that opened limited pathways for women’s self-fashioning and public role. Dismissed from service after a series of colonial palace reforms in the early twentieth century, palace women remained unable to forge independent professional identities, in stark contrast to other palace workers, such as painters or female entertainers. Using the scant available archive—palace women’s petitions, diaries, and contemporary newspaper reportage—this article maps the trajectory of former palace servants across the terrain of colonial gender politics. The extant petitions submitted by palace women constitute an especially revealing site for understanding their self-perception and self-presentation. The lives of palace women—unconventional in the traditional kinship society—constitute another paradox in the context of women’s modern education and professionalization in the early twentieth century.