Peasant, Heiress, Writer, Whore: Korea's Early Communist Women

Ruth Barraclough, Senior Lecturer, School of Culture, History & Language, Australia National University 

In the 1920s some of Korea’s most famous communists were young women. Political suppression and exile obliged them to be transnational and multi-lingual as they moved between colonial Korea, China, the United States and the Soviet Union. This talk examines the lives of two legendary early communists, Hŏ Chŏng-suk (the heiress) and Chu Se-juk (the peasant). Beautiful, intelligent and notorious, they appeared in the social pages as well as arrest notices of the daily newspapers in Seoul. Far from being forgotten after their deaths, Korea’s early communist women continue to exercise a powerful hold upon the political imagination of divided Korea.