> Confucianism worsened the status of women who were not allowed to inherit property and whose "ordinary status . . . is a condition of shocking abjection and inferiority" (Behavior Science Translations 115). Subjugation of females to males was a common feature of many Asian societies but Korea's laws were among the most backward. For example, it was not until the Kabo reforms of 1894 that widows were permitted to remarry. Despite numerous constitutional and legal reforms in the post-World War II period, Kum-suk says that traditional "discrimination" against women by men "remains rampant throughout our society" (13). Koh says that Korea is "one of the few countries in the world where the preference for male children is still great" and arranged marriages are still not uncommon (165).
Another very strong legacy of the traditional period is the contempt and indifference of the upper class, the yangban, for the less fortunate. Reverend Gifford observed of this class in the 1890s: "they are ardent Confucians and are intensely conservative . . . They let their fingernails grow long to show their contempt for labor, and they despise the classes below them in the social scale" (55).
Korea's most popular folk tale, the Ch'un-hyang ka or The Song of the Faithful Woman celebrates some of these themes, the travails of women and the gruesome tortures that were associated with forbidden relationships across social class lines.
Laying the Foundations of Modernization, 1876-1919
Because of their xenophobia, cruelty and repression of Korean nationalism, the Japanese earned the genuine hatred and contempt of most sectors of the Korean population during their long period as an occupation force and colonial power, 1910-1945. After their defeat in 1945, most Korean political leaders and many Korean scholars went out of their way to deny that anything positive occurred during their rule and to condemn all Koreans who worked with or for the ...