Women’s Time? Turn-of-the-20th-Century Travel Writing on Korea

Following its forced opening to the West in the late 19th century, Korea experienced a turbulent period of transition toward modernity. Many Westerners who visited Korea at the turn of the 20th century wrote about an unusual, gender-specific curfew system: for anywhere from a couple of hours after sunset to the entire night, only women were allowed to walk in the streets of Seoul, the capital city of Korea then and now. A traveller named MacKenzie dubbed this practice 'the women's hour'; another named Savage-Landor called it 'women's hours'. Upper-class women were addressed using special terms of respect, and men and women of lower classes stepped aside to let them pass. Hulbert, an American politician who lived in Korea for over two decades, offered an alternative perspective of women’s seclusion, observing that among upper-class Korean women it corresponded to an exclusiveness in which upper-class American or European women took pride.