Abstract

This paper uses “A Travel to Diamond Mountains” (1930) and its author Jo Aeyeong (1911–2000) to explore gender and modernity, community and individuality, and distinctions between tradition and modern in a literary genre. It starts by juxtaposing Jo and her contemporaries, especially Baek Sinae (1908–1939), to examine the complexities of a woman writer situating herself in the early twentieth century. Noting the contexts and opportunities that affected each woman’s path forward, it challenges the usefulness of established stereotypes or slogans such as “New Women” and “Wise Mother Good Wife” in understanding this era. The paper then reads Jo’s travelogue alongside other travelogues by women, including those communally written in kasa form. In doing so, it complicates the implicit contrast between tradition and modern and illuminates changes to the “traditional” form of kasa. Along with Jo’s “Diamond Mountains,” women writers and their writings featured in this paper as a whole embody a moment of adaptation, flourishing, and decline within the evolution of women’s literature in Korea.