Living as a Colonial Girl: TheSonyǒ(少女) Discourse of School Curriculum and Newspapers in 1930s Korea

Abstract This essay explores how the term ‘girl,’ or 少女 (sonyŏ), in 1930s colonial Korean society simultaneously created and resisted homogeneity. We analyze the different contexts and cultural forces that shaped the term ‘girl’ in colonial Korea in order to illustrate some phases of the relationships that historical girls of colonial Korea had with their nation and state, the nation, that is, to which they thought they belonged at births and the state for which they were mobilized while they were systematically otherized. In our examination, we scrutinize the ways in which the subjectivities of colonial girls were ideologically forged through educational and institutional interventions and cultural interpellation. The first section discusses the concept of the girl in colonial Korea. The second part analyzes the various ideological functions that school textbooks played in gender-specific inculcation of colonial state ideals. We then read the waysThe Chosŏn Ilbo(Chosŏn Daily) used the term the ‘girl’ in the 1930s, the period when the conceptual distinction between children and adults was further solidified, and the call on children was gender-specific in public. We finally elucidate the colonial processes of which girls of colonial Korea became part, albeit unknowingly.