ABSTRACT
In common with other East Asians, Koreans cite their Confucian tradition, either in blame or rationalization, as the source of women's subordination, both past and present. But both in the past and in the present, the lives of Korean women often confound the stereotypical expectations of a Confucian society. The Korean case bids us, once again, to look beyond an articulate ideology of female subordination to the varied and contradictory substance of women's lives. Significant dimensions of Korean women's experience have always fallen outside the Confucian gaze. In contemporary Korea, a selective reading of the past justifies women's subordination in transformed social circumstances, but this reading is actively contended by a lively women's movement.
