I Am a Wanderer: Paek Sin-ae (1908-1939) and Writing Travel

Paek Sin-ae (1908–1939) was a socialist activist turned woman writer whose career was cut short by early death. She lived in the era of New Women, typically identified as educated women in public or protestant missionary schools who sought women’s rights in domestic life and in society. But Paek was homeschooled and spent most of her life away from the social network of writers and intellectuals of her time. What made her a modern woman was substantial exposure to European and Russian literature, and her travels to Japan, Russia, and China provided opportunities for youthful fantasy and blind attraction to the exotic to mature into a woman of the colony and world citizen. Unlike conventional images of woman writers in the West whose independence is symbolized in a room of one’s own, the early generation of modern Korean woman writers were more typically on the road, carrying their sense of leadership as a badge of honor for her fellow women and men of Korea. In this way, leaving home and travelling became a hallmark of modern women in Korea. By focusing on Paek Sin-ae and her travel writings, this presentation suggests a more comprehensive and fair consideration of works by Korean women writers in the early 20th century, and reconsiders social and literary categories (including supremacy of fiction and poetry) that were upheld by the hegemonic powers and institutionalized literary networks of the time.