State, Rural Women, and Domestication in Korea

The Aspiring Middle Class

Jaok Kwon

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English

Routledge
26 December 2025

Regional studies; Asian history; Gender studies: women; Sociology; Economics

Series: Routledge Advances in Korean Studies

This book explores the dynamic interactions between the state and society during the industrialization of South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on rural women as a marginalized social group.

By illuminating rural women’s interactions with the state and their aspirations for entering the middle class, it effectively reveals insights into the gender and class perspectives of industrialization in South Korea. Utilizing an analysis of personal letters from peasant movement activists, documents and periodicals issued by the Korean Catholic Peasant Women’s Organization, as well as in-depth interviews with farmers, housewives, activists of the peasant movements, and governmental officers, this book represents a reconsideration of state-society relations, as well as a reinterpretation of housewife ideology theory.

Highlighting the often-invisible experiences of marginalized rural women, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies, Women’s Studies, and Rural Studies.

By: Jaok Kwon
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780367627225
ISBN 10: 0367627221
Series: Routledge Advances in Korean Studies
Pages: 134
Publication Date: 26 December 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jaok Kwon is a research fellow in the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her research interests include the sociology of development, labor and gender in East Asia, and transnational labor migration.