Abstract

Understanding the Korean specific context of gender inequality and any search for a solution to these inequalities must be approached from a conceptualization of relationships. The concept of relationships possess a double function as a source to enable a Korean explanation for the experience of womens oppression, and also a means for us to feel out the possibilities for womens liberation. In this paper I undertake an analysis of the foundations of the knowledge that has constructed Korean gender relations from a historical perspective, and search for a revolutionary transformation of gender relations on this basis. As existing gender relations have been maintained on the mechanism of segregation and separation (bulli and hwahap) and the (baeje and donghwa) which are greatly influenced by yeakiron (li-yue theory), I have paid attention to the feminine characteristics that construct these relationships. These aspects called the feminine characteristics in relationship construction do not rely upon factors external to the relationships, but rather according to the internal attributes of the which are in fact the source of a relationships change and maintenance and have the power as intimacy to enable the creation of the self. In order for intimacy to operate as a positive new resource for a new gender relations, we must undertake an analytical critique of the cultural and historical contexts that made possible the existing means of relating and reinterpret these.