Ancient Korean Culture: Female Education in Choson Dynasty

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Choson Dynasty
The Education of Women in Choson Dynasty
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Communities across the world boast of cultural heritages that are presumably rich. Each ethnic grouping tends to perceive its own culture as superior to other cultures. However, the important aspects to understand about culture entail what it covers together with the essence of its being.

The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary defines culture as “the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group” (Para. 1).

The world is divided into a plethora of groupings in terms of races, nations, and ethnicities, which translate into a myriad of cultures for each of these groupings. The Korean culture is part of this vast diversity cultures.

This paper examines the Korean culture via three Korean dramas, viz. The Princess Man, Painter of the Wind, and Sungkyunkwan Scandal, whose setting and plot depict ancient Korean Culture. The paper’s focus is on the education of women during the Choson or Joseon Dynasty.

The Choson Dynasty

This dynasty existed in what is now known as Korea and it lasted for five hundred years (Sung-jin Para. 2). The Choson “society was one in which the Yangban (aristocracy) wielded tremendous power” (Hee-sook 113).

The literature that exists on this dynasty indicates that women were highly discriminated against. The ruling class of the Choson Dynasty applied Confucian philosophies to rule the dynasty (Hee-sook 113). The Choson culture demanded a lot from the womenfolk of the dynasty.

The Yangban women were expected to behave in a particular manner slightly different from a commoner woman, but still be a woman. For instance, they were prohibited from visiting the temple monastery, hosting shaman rituals, and engaging in direct contact with men (Hee-sook 115).

The ordinary woman was expected to play a subservient role to the men in all circumstances.

One the most dehumanizing restrictions of this dynasty was that women were never allowed to remarry after a husband’s death, a law that was enforced in the pretext of preserving the chastity of women on a national scale (Sung-jin Para.2).

Clearly, this dynasty was bent on making women’s life unbearable, which has been depicted quite clearly in the three dramas that are used to manifest the day-to-day lives of women in this dynasty.

The Education of Women in Choson Dynasty

Different classes of people were allowed into varying categories of formal education, but only men benefitted from meaningful formal education.

The aforementioned pieces, viz. The Princess Man, Painter of the Wind, and Sungkyunkwan Scandal paint a picture of the Korean way of life in ancient times.

An analysis of each of them separately and comparing it with what the annals say about the education will confirm that indeed what the script writers placed in those plays reflects what took place.

The Princess Man

The princess Man is a Korean drama series that was broadcast on several TV stations and was touted as being very good. It is plotted on a famous Korean historical event, Gyeyu Jeongnan, in the Choson dynasty.

The fine details of the plot development are not of much importance to this paper, but may be highlighted at points where they are necessary to elaborate a concept on the education of women during the Choson dynasty.

According the drama, Prince Suyang is a brother to the reigning king, King Munjong. He has a beautiful daughter named Lee Se-Ryung who has a cousin known as Princess Kyunghye. Prince Suyang covets the throne and hatches a scheme that would propel him to the throne some day.

He is a friend to the Prime Minister, Lee Se-Ryung, and since the premier has a son, Kim Seung-Yoo, Prince Suyang’s plan involves arranging a marriage between his daughter and the premier’s son.

The daughter gets wind of this arrangement and decides to disguise herself as her cousin, Princess Kyunghye, to attend Kim Seung-Yoo’s class since he is a teacher to Princess Kyunghye.

Right at this point, it is evident that Yangban women were entitled to some form of education. Education received by the Yangban women had an effect on commoner women (Hee-sook 114).

By noting that the education of the Yangban women had an influence on the other women it implies that there was some education for these women as depicted in the drama.

However, this form of education was just meant for women alone because in the class that Princess Kyunghye attended, they were only girls. In his first lesson, the teacher, Kim Seung-Yoo, talks about the three forms of obedience expected of a woman at different stages of life.

A daughter had to respect the father and a wife’s allegiance was to the husband, but since remarrying was out of question, in the event of a husband’s death, she was expected to respect her son unquestioningly. He further added that a woman is merely a shadow of a man.

The kind of education to women was not aimed at teaching any professional skills, but keeping them at home. Jyoung seems to agree with this position when he notes, “women were a repressed and suppressed group within the Chinese and Korean society” (206).

If the Yangban women received this kind of education, the common woman had no chance of education at all.

Painter of the Wind

This masterpiece is yet another Korean drama whose focus is to depict the restrictions that women faced in ancient Korea. Just like The Princess Man, this drama is also set in the Chosom Dynasty. It revolves around a talented female Korean painter, Shin Yoon Bok (Silkyjade Para.8).

This talented young woman has to pretend to be a boy in a bid to gain entry into Dohwaseo, a Painting Academy in the palace. This aspect plainly shows that during her time, women were not allowed to join the Dohwaseo.

Women were solely taught the basic life skills needed to run a household, which are the rules that governed their relations with the three most important people in their lives, viz. their fathers, husbands, and sons (Hee-sook 118).

This assertion explains the dilemma that this young woman and many of her like were in at that time; the dilemma of having the knowledge of an inborn talent needs to be developed yet being restricted by culture from developing the endowment.

Women, including those of the ruling class, were slaves in this dynasty. When at some point this extraordinary student paints the Queen Jung Soon by accident during Dohwaseo outdoor exercise, she almost gets into trouble, but the determined efforts of her foster father and brother rescue her from being discovered.

One does not even want to think of the kind of punishment she would have received together with her foster family. Professional training for women was out of question in Choson as depicted in this drama.

Sungkyunkwan Scandal

Sungkyunkwan Scandal is a love drama like The Princess Man and it shares a common setting, the Chosom Dynasty. The Sungkyunkwan was a highly esteemed educational institution in the Korean society.

The drama paints a picture of a society in which women are not allowed to acquire formal education (Silkyjade Para. 6). According to the drama, Kim Yun-Hee, who is forced to disguise herself as her brother, fends for her family after the father’s demise.

She is intelligent and studies while doing odd jobs at a local bookstore among them helping Sungkyunkwan students to do homework.

Hard economic times and life’s pressures force her to become a substitute test–taker for rich people to assist with the entry exams into the Sungkyunkwan.

What the drama puts across quite clearly is that the education system in the Chosom Dynasty discriminated against women yet if given the opportunity, they were so much capable.

This girl was a commoner and in the Choson Dynasty, such women would be expected to raise the silkworms until they made cocoons to yield the silk used for weaving among other domestic chores (Hee-sook 140).

This aspect shows just how brave some of these women were yet they were not given the chance to nurture their talents in a formal education system. Some of them were capable of doing far much better than the boys could do.

Conclusion

Women education in Choson Dynasty was highly restricted as depicted by the three drama pieces discussed in this paper. However, the women somehow found ways of acquiring the education albeit in disguise.

The dramas go to great depths to bring out a picture of how a woman’s life was in that dynasty.

The Choson Dynasty was unfriendly to all women in numerous ways, but for the three dramas to all focus on education, the implication given is that of all the restrictions that were imposed, by missing education the women of the Chosom Dynasty missed so much.

Works Cited

Hee-sook, Han. “Women’s Life during the Chosŏn Dynasty.” International Journal of Korean History 6.1 (2004): 113-160. Print.

Jyoung, Hyun. “Sociocultural Change and Traditional Values: Confucian Values among Koreans and Korean Americans.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 25.2 (2001): 206-7. Print.

Silkyjade. Painter of the Wind vs. Sungkyunkwan Scandal, 2011. Web.

Sung-jin, Yang. Choson Women Suffered Harsh Discrimination, 2011. Web.

The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary. Culture, 2011. Web.

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