Tag Archives: Korean

Wash place was women-only space!

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I found a painting from the late 18th century during Jo Seon Dynasty, when it was very Confucius society in Korea. The painting by Hong Do Kim (see above) is about the wash place. The most represent characteristic of his painting was “true-view landscape painting”. He illustrated the everyday lives of ordinary people in his paintings. In this painting, he actually satirised “scholar gentleman class’s Confucian society”. There are various paintings about the wash place in Korea but I chose his work because I thought this painting describes the wash place of the past vividly.

This painting is about the wash place, but as you can see, that guy (yang ban, scholar gentleman class) is looking at the women secretly hiding behind the rocks because he wanted to know what happens in the place of only women are allowed. In the late 18th century in Korea, (actually it was called Jo Seon Dynasty), these scholar gentleman class were usually known as being respectable and being laid off women. This painting is about the wash place, but at the same time it is actually about satirising the voyeurism of ‘scholar gentleman class’s Confucius society’ in Korea.

Also, it can be emphasised that the wash place was a space of women where men were prohibited to come tacitly. This painting is supposed to be one of the relevant references to support the idea that the wash places were women’s space where men are restricted to come in except children.

Kakao Talk and Ajumma (3)

Yes, there are so many things that I would like to talk about Kakao Talk (Ka-Talk). And plus, the relationship between Kakao Talk and Ajumma is much more interesting to talk about. Through survey and focus group interview, I realised that Kakao Talk became one of the key mobile communication apps among ajummas in Korea. More than 95% of ajumma participants responded that they’re using Kakao Talk the most among various other apps on their smartphones. They were allowed to choose multiple answers for the question of ‘Which applications do you use the most’ in the survey. Anyway Kakao Talk ranked the top application among ajumma participants for my research. They use the Kakao Talk mostly due to its convenience and instantaneity. They usually use the group chat room where many people can talk together in the same place at the same time. I can’t say all of ajummas in Korea are now using Kakao Talk as their primary communicative application, but I can say that some of ajummas bought smartphones to use Kakao Talk. My mom also did.

So, ajummas are having communication in both offline (e.g. cafe, restaurant, etc.) and online (e.g. Kakao Talk’s group chat room, blog, etc.). This means that their spaces for communication are extended from offline to online (mobile). And at the same time, they do have more opportunity to meet their contacts (friends or family) through various spaces (offline/online) without having barriers of time and space today. In other words, Kakao Talk’s group chat room allows ajummas to keep having their offline meetings continuously even though they cannot meet with each other face-t0-face. Also the communication in Kakao Talk’s group chat room leads ajummas to plan to have following offline meetings. So Kakao Talk’s group chat room is like a bridge which links between offline meetings and online meetings and pre-meetings and post-meetings.