“It goes ill with the house where the hen sings and rooster is silent.” (암탉이 울면 집안이 망한다) is one of famous proverbs that Koreans are aware of.
Why am I mentioning this in GRSJ blog? Guess what! This is the proverb that indicates significant gender inequality in past Korea.Let’s analyze that proverb to specify why this indicates “gender inequality”.
Hen represents female or female members in the family. Rooster, then obviously represents male or male members in the family. The rooster itself is the one that makes noise in the morning to wake the people. Moreover, rooster is the leader that leads the hens. So it is symbol that shows when the female being noisy (a.k.a getting involved in politics or even family matter) was considered bad omen. Mainly because the role of women is being the “lady of the house”. Doing houseworks, chit and chat with neighbouring ladies of the house (in same status) and behave well and assist one’s husband well so they don’t lose their face in the society. So if they get involved in the “roles of male” then it was sign that the house would result in destruction.
Incident that is most closely related to this proverb happened to last empress of Korea, Queen MyeongSeong.
This is my own artwork that I produced from IB Art. This is based of the assassination of Queen Myeongseong.
http://mariachung.wix.com/artisp201415#!final-artwork/c1m72
The queen was assassinated by Japanese government, specifically soldiers who were ordered to murder the queen. She is one of the females that advocated different political issues of Korea to help the country to stay as the country itself. This involves the historical background regarding to invasion of Japan in 20th century. The queen was trying her best to rule out Japanese government from taking over Korea. Considering the queen being obstacle to their future aim, Japanese government set up Empress Assassination plan.
October 8th, Japanese soldiers invaded the castle and started killing massive amount of people who got in their way. When they finally reached to the bedroom of queen’s, they did most outrageous actions
to the queen and assassinated her. This is called Eulmi Incident. Currently, Japanese government is denying the fact that assassinated the queen (even with the eye witnesses) and trying to refuse to apologize.
Back to the point, Empress MyeongSeong was considered as one of the victims of “hen” that caused destruction to the household of hers, the kingdom of Korea. The cause was her passionate advocation in the politics. That’s what people think it is. I personally believe, that she was murdered due to the narrow perspective of ancestors toward women in general. If they have considered the opinions of the women and listened to them at least small bit, the history could have changed.
What do you think of it? Any opinions regarding to the proverb that I worked with since high school?
( The artwork is my own and it is created for the sake of gender inequality and the social injustice that happened in Korea 20th century. I consider this as one of interesting yet painful part of the history. If you want more information regarding to art piece, there is link up there that leads to my personal art blog or just leave comments~)
Hi Love your artwork! The blood on your work reflected the price people pay for justice movements. It is sad to read that when Queen is killed for protecting her country, her own people only regard her as a “hen.” It is humiliating not only on the level of gender equality but also on the level of human rights work. (well gender is part of human rights) It reminds me of Plato’s “simile of cave” that when the Queen is able to “see the view outside of the cave”/has a better perspective, everybody else is still “locked in the dark cave”/not able to catch up with her.
Very interesting. Indeed people did not respect the women at that time, so I feel like this event end up happening. Similar to the “cave”. As the queen is able to look out the future event so clearly but others are just blocked head or something and they are NOT willing to accept the “changes” in environment or what they believe in. This can be indicated as no progress made and not willing to deal with something new from happening.
Ironically, the event will eventually happen in the future but others except queen are just trying soooo hard to stop it from happening. But obviously, due to sudden outburst of something that were prevented, it causes more confusion and disruption to whole state. That’s what I think it is.
I really enjoyed reading your post on the history of Korean language. Although I hear Korean often in Vancouver, I have to admit I don’t know much about it at all. I also appreciate you bringing in the issue of gender and education into the discussion. It seems to be a common theme in history that women have been excluded from the public sphere, and confined to the private. And perhaps one of the most effective strategies to achieve that is to exclude women from being educated and preventing them from communicating in ways that have been decided to be more legitimate.
I found a Chinese proverb that ties in with the proverb you mentioned: “Words are women, deeds are men”. I think it goes to show how in many societies (even contemporary ones), women are seen as ones who stay home and “chit chat”, like you mentioned, while men are the ones who are meant to take charge.