Cold War Cosmopolitan Feminism

Opening with a brief discussion of Han Hyung-mo’s lesbian drama Jealousy, which features two S-sisters, this chapter explores the development of Cold War cosmopolitan feminism as a response to patriarchal Confucian gender norms and as an alternative to masculinist ideals of modernity espoused by cultural nationalists. It looks at how, as part of the cultural Cold War in Asia, Korean women were targeted by the USIS, the State Department, the CIA, the Committee of Correspondence, and the Asia Foundation as a potentially influential demographic. It explores the biographies of Helen Kim and Lee Tai-young, who carried the concerns of the colonial-era New Woman into the postwar era, and who fought to revise Korea’s patriarchal Family Law.