Characteristics and Achievements of the Women’s Independence Movement in the Chungcheong Province
Authors:   yugwansun Research Center, Lee Myung Hwa 
Published: January 2024

The history of the Korean women’s independence movement was not only an anti-Japanese independence movement that sought national independence, but also a human liberation movement that sought to break away from feudalism within the nation. Ironically, it was only during the independence movement when the country was taken away that awareness of Gender Equality began to take root in society. In the course of Korea’s modern history, women’s activities have achieved remarkable growth compared to the previous era, but research results are still insufficient to give meaning.
In modern times, the Christian gospel brought about an awakening that women had not experienced in the pre-modern feudal era. Since the Bible women educated by Christian missionaries had a greater ability to spread the gospel than any other missionaries, the Bible women can be evaluated as the leading figures who achieved great results in the Christian gospel and women's liberation in the Chungcheong Province.
Women in Chungcheong Province were able to learn the Korean alphabet and overcome illiteracy by studying the Bible with female missionaries and Bible women from the Southern Methodist Church. Memories of learning and strong faith brought awareness and strengthened women’s inner self, giving them the strength to overcome any adversity.
Feudalism persisted in the Chungcheong Province for a long time compared to other regions, and women were dismissed as socially inferior and in need of education. It can be said that the process of enlightenment and modernization for women in Chungcheong was more painful than any other region due to the dominance of the patriarchal idea that women are subordinate to men. This is because the long tradition of Confucianism, which was built as a moral system, and the wall of conservatism were that thick. Modern enlightened women had the dual task of reforming feudal society internally and opposing the Japanese imperialist invasion force externally, but women who did not enjoy the benefits of education remained stuck in medieval thinking even into modern times. Nevertheless, in the colonial system, women fought for the value of national liberation above their own liberation, and entered the independence movement with the determination that women's liberation could never be achieved without national liberation.
Rather than staying in the Chungcheong province, women in Chungcheong left traces of an active independence movement by moving to other regions or abroad. Therefore, the Chungcheong region could not create an ecosystem for the independence movement where the women's movement could develop. At the time of the National Debt Compensation Movement in 1907, national debt compensation organizations were created by women in various regions, but they were not found in any of them in the Chungcheong Province. In addition, although the Geunwoohoe(근우회), which was founded in 1927 as the women’s only unified cooperative front organization, developed into a national organization, the fact that no branches were established in the South Chungcheong rigion speaks for this phenomenon.
Although the proportion of women who participated in the March 1st Movement and the student movement is significantly lower than in other regions, we can see that awareness of women in gender and class discrimination is changing significantly as we witness the dedication and sacrifice of Chungcheong women who led the March 1st Movement. Along with these changes of the times, women’s worldview and historical awareness also changed significantly, leading to the realization that an intact community could not be maintained without women’s participation. In this way, the vision of building an independent nation-state without gender discrimination could finally be unified.