Gender, Politics and the Household in the Short Stories of Pak Wan-sô

Abstract

Pak Wan-sô (1931), though little known in the West, is perhaps the most notable female author currently writing in South Korea. Her works have not only received prestigious literary awards but have topped bestseller lists and, like Yi Ch'ôngjun and Yi Munyôl, writers who similarly enjoy both recognition for their literary skills and a mass following, Pak has seen her fiction successfully adapted for screen productions. In Pak's case, however, wide popularity (especially among a female audience), taken in combination with the author's own gender, have produced controversy in the critical reception of her work. If we grant that there exists a hegemonic ideology for women in Korea, and if, with Dianne Hoffman, who writes on blurred gender roles in Korea, we take it as axiomatic that "wherever there exists a dominant ideology for women, one finds a popular culture that shapes everyday life in ways that subvert or even contradict the dominant ethos", it comes as little surprise that Pak's works have at times been regarded as mildly threatening.