Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea interrogates the assumption that American Protestant missionaries pioneered modern womanhood in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Korea. By exploring what constituted modern womanhood for missionaries, Hyaeweol Choi addresses the gap between the “new public opportunities for women” made possible by missionary interventions, and Korean women's continued “idealized role in the private domain of the family” (p. 2). This gap, Choi argues, was intentional, a result of negotiations with Korean nationalism and gender practices that “reconfigured Confucian gender ideology for the modern era” (p. x). In short, the book examines the genealogies of Korean modern womanhood as intimately tied to Christianity in the context of encroaching Japanese imperialism.

To accomplish this, Choi focuses on three players in gender construction—American Protestant missionaries, Korean male intellectuals, and Korean women. It was in their encounters, Choi asserts, that ideal womanhood became closely associated with the West and with Christianity. It was also through these encounters that missionaries developed their understanding of modern womanhood. Choi's work thus counters simplistic models of the “Korean response” to new religion and suggests a “missionary response” to the population they served.

Moreover, Victorian visions of womanhood and gender inequalities embedded in patriarchal church structures limited the work of missionary women. Yet their social reforms, promotion of “women's work for women,” and “demonization of Confucian gender norms” (p. 24) in Korea were inextricably tied to the concept of “Christian modernity” (Choi's term), which prioritized “the moral, cultural, and spiritual role of Christianity” (p. 10). Missionaries sought to bring civilization to “heathens” by reforming perceived gender inequities. But that civilization was also to be based on Christianity, thus promoting a womanhood characterized by religious devotion, domesticity, and social service.

Choi's analysis relies on a variety of archival material, including official missionary records, Korean print media, and relatively unexplored literature, such as personal diaries and “missionary fictions” written by missionaries that “dramatize the local, private, intimate lives of people whom missionaries encountered” (p. 122) and thus serve as an interesting lens through which to explore missionary representations of womanhood. How Korean women, the very targets of mission female education and enterprise, understood, applied, and negotiated with Christianity is deftly displayed in one of Choi's final chapters, which provides detailed biographies of five high-profile women (Kim Hwal-lan, Kim Maria, Pahk In-duk, Kim Wŏnju, and Na Hyesŏk). Choi extends the current literature on these women by demonstrating how their diverse and sometimes opposing opinions and choices shattered “the homogenized image of New Women” (p. 175), the assumed privileged place of Christianity in forming modern womanhood and in their lives, and the view of their harmonious personal relations with American missionaries.

Choi affirms the challenges to the “male-centered social order” that these New Women posed and notes that their very characters were inevitably denigrated. She intriguingly suggests that the “male-dominant discourse . . . may have helped women create a ‘reverse discourse’ to promote feminist agendas” (p. 176). The question remains, however, whether feminist agendas were effectively promoted. The fact that organizations such as the Rose of Sharon Society (Kŭnuhoe) and female leaders such as Kim Hwal-lan retreated from more radical positions indicate otherwise.

Following recent publications in the field of gender and mission studies in colonial Korea, this book raises new questions, such as the role played by mission schools in the construction of the “wise mother, good wife” gender ideology, often attributed to Korea's colonial ruler, Japan, or relegated to a reified notion of Korean tradition or Confucianism (see, e.g., Theodore Jun Yoo, The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910–1945 [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008]; Janice C. H. Kim, To Live to Work: Factory Women in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009]; and Katherine H. Lee Ahn, Awakening the Hermit Kingdom: Pioneer American Women Missionaries in Korea [Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2009]). This leads to other suggestions that are not posed directly by Choi, but that emerge from her analysis. To what extent were current notions of Korean propriety, customs and ideals, and tradition constructed by missionaries?

Another question that remains is how these mission and gender encounters developed in comparison with those in other mission fields, such as Africa, Australia, or other Asian countries. Missionaries in Korea were part of and communicated with a larger global community of missionaries. Were notions of modern womanhood, views toward and activities surrounding female education, and mission strategy to start with women and marriage practices toward the establishment of ideal Christian homes, standard in mission communities? The issue here is not about making arguments for “Korean uniqueness,” but whether comparisons could highlight more specifically how Korean women and American missionaries negotiated womanhood with each other in their particular historical contexts.

Nevertheless, theoretically rich and well researched, Mission and Gender Encounters in Korea offers a fascinating account of the dynamic relationships between American missionaries and Koreans in the (re)construction of modern womanhood in Korea. Its accessibility renders it suitable for both undergraduate and graduate teaching. Scholars in religious and mission studies, gender, Asian, and colonial studies will find this book a welcome contribution to their fields.