Women in Joseon

[4] This change in society based on Chinese-influenced Neo-Confucianism can be correlated to an increasingly clan-based patrilineal focus on lines of male descent resulting in the printing of chokpo (genealogies) from 1600 onwards.

Women of the yangban could receive an education from within the family; for example, the 18th-century Crown Princess Lady Hyegyeong was taught to read and write hangul by an aunt-in-law.

Women were also denied the right to participate in the jesa, the ancestor honoring rituals, which is also a significant divergence from the original Chinese practices.

According to the neo-Confucian ideals, women had to obey their in-laws after marriage, and the birth family regarded it unnecessary to provide a daughter her inheritance in addition to the expensive dowry.

Men could divorce their wives based on the chilgeojiak (칠거지악), the "seven sins": disobedience towards in-laws, inability to bear a son, adultery, jealousy, genetic disease, talkativeness, and kleptomania.

[11] Members of the royal lineage were treated even more strictly, with Seongjong of Joseon ordering the execution of his cousin when he discovered she had cohabited with a male servant after being widowed, implying their sharing of the bed meant they were engaged in sexual activities.

Women were expected to protect their virtue at any cost, and by the late Joseon era they often wore small knives called paedo (패도; 佩刀) attached to the norigae (the colourful pendant hanging from the upper part of the hanbok), to take their lives rather than dishonor their families even by giving cause for gossip.

[13] The latter, who are often compared to Japanese geisha, could live a freer life than most women and often likened themselves to floating butterflies or wild dogs in their poems.

[4] The most famous gisaeng is probably Hwang Jin-yi, who lived in the 16th century and is considered a role model of progressive, liberal, strong, feminist, self-conscious women in Korea.

[14] Women physicians are rarely discussed in modern discourse because of the lack of scandalous stories surrounding them and interest in what Joseon did well, a phenomenon criticized as a form of Orientalism.

To ensure separation outside the home, certain hours of the day were marked by a ringing bell, this notified the times when only women would be allowed on the streets.