Medicine meets red feminism: Yi Tǒgyo (1897–1932), a pioneering Korean feminist physician

Abstract

This article focuses on Yi Tǒgyo (1897–1932), a nurse-turned-doctor and one of the pioneering female physicians of colonial-age Korea. I aim to investigate how Yi’s medical practice and her understanding of public health and hygiene reflected both the general ideology of “medical modernity” and more specifically Yi’s socialist leanings, as well as her quest for a more gender-equal society. Furthermore, the article will explore the meanings of gender equality in Yi’s journalistic writings and public utterances, as well as her ways of practicing the ideals of socialist feminism in both personal and public life and her attitudes towards lesbian intimacy and bisexuality. Additionally, the article examines the complicated context of Yi’s varied interactions with the Japanese colonial authorities and their press organs and identifies the overlaps between Yi’s ideals of socialist “medical modernity” and the modernist public health practices of colonial-period Korea’s imperialist rulers. Overall, by focusing on Yi’s life, beliefs, writings, and practices, this article aims to improve our understanding of modern socialist feminism, modern medicine, and the interactions between these two domains in colonial Korean society.