palms.
These qualifications took precedence over beauty and other feminine features typically associated with women. In contrast, there were twenty-nine physical attributes that were believed to indicate that a woman was unlikely to bear sons. These features included a fragile body, a small squeaky voice, small breasts with pale nipples, a flattened nose bridge, ears turned inside out, a small mouth with a broad face, yellow or red hair, thin eyebrows, thin lips that were pale, a small shallow navel, protruding lips, and unruly coarse hair.
In addition to attempting to follow these physical qualifications in selecting brides, parents provided their sons and daughters with written instructions on how to perform sexual intercourse so as to enhance the possibility of conceiving sons instead of daughters. These guidelines were based on the belief that the uterus had two openings, one that resulted in the conception of a male fetus and one that produced a female child. It was believed that if the male sperm entered the left opening a son would be conceived; if it entered the opening on the right side, a female child would be conceived. This resulted in wives lying on their left side and remaining very still after intercourse in the hope that the male sperm would enter the left opening.
It was also believed that intercourse on the first, third, and fifth days after the menstrual period was most likely to produce male children, while intercourse on the second, fourth, and sixth days would result in female children. In their obsessive desire to have sons, most couples avoided having intercourse on these latter days. There was a variety of other beliefs and rules pertaining to conceiving sons, including the best time of the day or night and the best positions for intercourse, all of which were depicted graphically on colorful charts provided to newlyweds by their parents.
Special prayers and a number of ceremonial rituals were performed by mothers-in-law, brides, and their husbands in an effort to ensure the conception of sons. One of these practices was to place a mixture of blue salts, musk powder, and ground-up mugwort in the sonless wife’s navel and set it afire. Records show that this cauterization process was sometimes carried out as many as two hundred times by husbands anxious to have sons—and that the custom was still widely practiced until the mid-1900s. Also until modern times, women could not serve as midwives unless they themselves had given birth to several sons, and the more sons a woman had the more highly she was esteemed as a midwife.
Families celebrated the birth of sons with special fanfare. One of the customs was to attach red peppers, symbolic of penises, to ropes and leave them hanging outside their homes for several days for all the neighbors to see. It was common for adults to ask small boys to show them their “pepper” (penis) as public proof of their maleness. In the case of girls, pieces of charcoal were tied to the ropes.
Most of the superstitions and practices involving efforts to have male children have gone by the wayside in modern-day Korea, but sons are still particularly important because males continue to play a dominant role in Korean society.
Aeyok 애욕 Aye-yohk
Eroticism in Korean Life
Prior to the ascendancy of Neo-Confucianism in Korean society in the early 1400s, historical records indicate that Koreans in general enjoyed a relatively robust erotic life, not only in keeping with their belief that large families were vital to the existence of the family and family clan but also because there were no religious, social, or political sanctions against extramarital sex as a pleasurable activity—at least for men.
Furthermore, Korean males had adopted many of the traditional erotic pastimes of China soon after large-scale contact between China and Korea began in 108 B.C. These early Koreans did not, however, let the Chinese male fetish with small feet persuade them to begin binding the feet of young girls, as happened in China. Historical records show that prior to the massive introduction of Confucianism into Korea from around A.D. 600, upper-class Korean women as well as men had considerable freedom of choice in establishing intimate liaisons with lovers and engaging in aeyok (aye-yohk), or “eroticism.” But for women this freedom dwindled in direct proportion to the growing strength of Confucianism.
With the founding of the Choson dynasty in 1392, and its adoption of Neo-Confucianism as the ideology of Korean society, women in all classes became totally subject to the will of men. Sexual activity outside conjugal relations undertaken by husbands and wives for procreation became the exclusive preserve of men, who were allowed to have concubines (second wives) and patronize the famous kisaeng (kee-sang), or “entertainment girls” (if they could afford them). It was also common for upper-class men to make use of maids and other female servants in their households—another custom widely practiced in China.
Outside of professional female entertainers and those who caught the eye of well-to-do men, the women of Korea were forced to repress their sexual desires, a system that resulted in emotionally and psychically induced illnesses becoming endemic among them. With rare exceptions (see Kisaeng) only virgins were acceptable as legal primary wives.
From the first generations of the Choson dynasty in 1392 until the beginning of the twentieth century, Korean women in urban areas lived as virtual prisoners in their homes. They could leave their homes and go shopping or visiting only at night during a special sodung (soh-duung), or “curfew,” period when men were required to remain indoors. This system did, however, provide an opportunity for braver women (almost always the wives of well-to-do officials) to establish sexual liaisons with men, usually young Buddhist monks whom they ostensibly visited for spiritual solace. Among the freest women in Korea during the long centuries of the Choson era were spinsters, widows, and women who had been cast out by their husbands for not bearing sons or for breaking one of the “wives’” commandments (see Yoja) and had taken up prostitution to earn a living.
Korean women have long been known—and prized by invaders—for their beauty and other attributes, but it was not until the introduction of democratic principles into Korean society following the end of World War II in 1945 that they began to have a choice in their sexual behavior. By the 1960s it was common to hear from international businessmen and travelers that the sensual attributes of Korean women were one of the best-kept secrets of Asia.
There is still a significant degree of public puritanism in Korea, but as in most countries that have different sexual standards for men and women, eroticism in all of its usual forms exists behind the public facade.
Amhuk Ki 암훅기 Ahm-huuk Kee
The Dark Period
In the 1870s, Japan began to take actions that would cast Korea into an amhuk ki (ahm-huuk kee), or “dark period,” the likes of which it had never before experienced. Within less than twenty years after its own self-imposed isolation from the West had been ended by American gunboat diplomacy, Japan began using the same approach against the weak and squabbling Choson court in Seoul.
The Japanese government, with its warrior mentality and a rapidly modernized army and navy at its disposal, began a systematic campaign to replace the traditional suzerainty of China over Korea. In 1876 the Choson court was forced to sign a treaty with Japan, opening the country up for trade and other ties that quickly became financial, military, and political.
In 1894 a rebellion by Korean dissidents against the weak Choson court prompted both China and Japan to rush troops to Seoul supposedly to protect the king. The Japanese got there first, seized the royal palace, killed the queen (Queen Min), deposed the king, and appointed a puppet regent in his place. This led to all-out war between China and Japan, with the Japanese victorious on land as well as at sea. Under the terms of the peace treaty, signed in 1895 and approved by most of the leading Western nations, Korea became a protectorate of Japan. Japan immediately began strengthening its presence in Korea, both overtly and covertly treating the country like a colony.
Nine years later Japan
