The Trena Gillette Memorial Lecture honors PSU '93 alumna, Trena Gillette, and her pursuit of education, enthusiasm for learning, and keen interest in Korean and Asian Studies.
Establishing modern monogamous marriage based on gender equality emerged as one of the priorities for the state to construct a civilized nation-state in postcolonial South Korea. The state embedded the principles of gender equality in marriage in Article 20 of the Founding Constitution in 1948, aiming to eradicate the antiquated practice of concubinage. Article 20 upheld monogamous marriage grounded in marital fidelity, which demanded both spouses commit to exclusive sexual relations with each other. When the new Criminal Act was compiled in 1953, Article 20 played a crucial role in the passage of the gender-neutral adultery law. This groundbreaking law, for the first time in Korean history, not only mandated men to remain sexually faithful to their wives but also penalized them for adultery and taking concubines. It marked a significant shift in the marriage paradigm, foregrounding men’s sexual fidelity within a monogamous marriage. By examining the legal and public discourse surrounding adultery, this presentation argues that the gender equality provision outlined in Article 20 was pivotal in criminalizing the longstanding practice of concubinage. Nonetheless, women had to continue to fight against concubinage by confronting men’s resistance to gender equality in marriage and the ongoing subordination of women in postcolonial South Korea.
About the speaker: Jisoo M. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. She is Founding Director of the GW Institute for Korean Studies (2017-Present) and Founding Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center (2018-Present). She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Korean Studies (2020-Present). She specializes in gender, sexuality, law, emotions, and affect in Korean history. She is the author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2016), which was awarded the 2017 James Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled Criminalizing Intimacy: Marriage, Concubinage, and Adultery Law in Korea, 1469-2015. In 2023, she received a Distinguished Research Award from the Ministry of Education in South Korea. She received her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University.