Reshaping Gendered Boundaries: Buddhist Women’s Monastic Experience in Korean Buddhism

Abstract

During the Chosŏn period (1392–1910) and the colonial period (1910–1945), in Korean Buddhism, Buddhist monks’ and nuns’ monastic experiences were influenced not only by the existing social norms but also by the androcentric monastic regulations, such as the eight “heavy rules”. Despite the androcentric monastic rules and misogynist aspects of practice, Buddhist nuns invariably strived to increase their visibility in monastic communities and secure their position by adopting the existing social norms or customary law; in this way, they challenged male-centered monasticism. To examine Korean Buddhist nuns in the Chosŏn and the colonial periods, this study used secondary scholarship as well as primary sources, such as the story of Queen Chŏngsun, a colonial government document, and a related civil case, to present the various ways in which Buddhist nuns consolidated their position, including coopting the practice of property succession from a master-nun to a disciple-nun and receiving official recognition of the abbess position from the colonial government.

1. Introduction

When Buddhism originated in ancient India and subsequently spread to East Asia and Tibet, it took several different stances on the issue of gender. From its inception, Buddhism was one of the first religious traditions in Asia that allowed women to join monastic communities as fully fledged monastics and acknowledged women’s spiritual awakening in the same capacity as men’s. According to Alan Sponberg, who analyzed the four attitudes toward women in Buddhism, this so-called “soteriological inclusiveness” is the most basic and critical element in the identification of Buddhism as a revolutionary religious movement that radically rejected the Brahmanic social discriminations of the day in India (Sponberg 1992, p. 8).

However, as Buddhism developed its celibate monastic order of monks and nuns, which was an unprecedented institution in India, Buddhist textual and monastic traditions were gradually influenced by the existing gender norms in patriarchal and androcentric societies. A notable example of this is the eight “heavy rules” (gurudharmas), a set of additional rules that Buddhist nuns were meant to follow. These eight rules can be traced back to Mahāprajāpatī, the first Buddhist nun, and the Buddha’s aunt and stepmother, who lived in the sixth or fifth century BCE (Chiu and Heirman 2014, p. 242). When Mahāprajāpatī asked the Buddha for full ordination, the Buddha ordained her and other women as fully fledged members of the sangha on the condition that nuns must observe the eight “heavy rules”. One of the eight rules states that a nun is required to pay homage to a monk, even if she has been ordained for many years and the monk is newly ordained. Another rule requires that, in order to be a fully fledged nun (bhikṣuṇī), a novice nun must receive a dual ordination: one from the nuns’ order and one from the monks’ order (Tsomo 2020, p. 29). The eight rules requiring nuns’ orders to be subordinate to monks’ orders, mirroring the patriarchal and androcentric social values of early Indian society. Ever since then, these rules have been used to justify female monastics’ secondary position in the monastic community.

Sponberg regards the eight “heavy rules” in Mahāprajāpatī’s story as an example of “institutional androcentrism,” the second attitude toward women identified in his theory of multivocality in Buddhism. He interprets Mahāprajāpatī’s story as “a symbolic, mythologized expression of a compromise negotiated between several factions of the order” (Sponberg 1992, p. 16), a compromise between the Buddha’s soteriological inclusiveness of women and the patriarchal social values of the day. According to Sponberg, the eight rules represent an uneasy but necessary compromise, undertaken in order to make the nuns’ order acceptable in the monastic community as well as in Indian society (p. 16). On the other hand, from a historically long-term perspective, the eight rules that prohibited the independent existence and development of the bhikṣuṇī order eventually led to the decline of the bhikṣuṇī order in most South and Southeast Asian countries (Gyatso 2003, p. 91).

Sponberg explains the third and fourth attitudes toward Buddhist women among the four attitudes: ascetic misogyny and soteriological androgyny. Ascetic misogyny is obviously antifeminine, arising out of a psychological “fear of the feminine, and a fear specifically of its power to undermine male celibacy” (Sponberg 1992, p. 20). Male monastics’ fear of female creativity and the ensuing concern over the threat to male celibacy resulted in the association of women with pollution (p. 20).

Misogynistic aspects of Buddhism were more sophisticatedly elaborated in East Asian Buddhism. For example, the Blood Bowl Sutra (Ch. Xuepenjing 血盆經), an “apocryphal” text, appeared in medieval China. In this sutra, blood related to menstruation or childbirth is viewed as pollution, thereby categorizing women as inferior to men and viewing the female body as a manifestation of bad karma in previous lives (Meeks 2020). The fourth and last attitude in Sponberg’s theory, “soteriological androgyny,” which celebrates all beings’ interactive modes of femininity and masculinity, represents a new voice that appeared in the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) literature and, later, in the Vajrayana literature (Sponberg 1992, p. 26).

As can be seen in Sponberg’s analysis, there is no single voice regarding women in the textual and monastic tradition of Buddhism. As for the nuns’ position in monasticism, some people might argue that they do not see any ostensible differences between monks and nuns, given that the monastic life looks gender-neutral or gender-void: monks and nuns have the same tonsure, wear the same robes, and assume similar religious duties such as preaching, meditating, and conducting rituals. Nonetheless, regardless of the androgynous appearance of Buddhist monastics and the soteriological inclusiveness/androgyny found in early and late Buddhist literature, gender discrimination is deeply embedded in everyday monastic life (H. Kim 2021, p. 53). There is no gender-neutral aspect in any human experience, including the Buddhist experience, because humans exist “as sexual and gendered beings” (Cabezón 1992, p. viii). In Buddhism, monastic life always features a gendered experience.

Ever since Buddhism arrived in Korea in the fourth century CE, Korean Buddhist women have had to cope with the different attitudes related to the gender issues that exist in both Buddhist literature and monasticism. For instance, the aforementioned eight “heavy rules” were incorporated into the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, which was translated into Chinese as the Four Part Vinaya (Ch. Sifen lu 四分律) in the fifth century CE. Since Korean Buddhism followed this Vinaya, the eight rules were used to buttress the male-centered authority in the Korean Buddhist community. Still, the Blood Bowl Sutra did not have a great impact on Korean Buddhism because, unlike in China and Japan, customs and hygiene culture regarding women’s blood and its association with pollution were not dominant in Korea. Nevertheless, the implicit message of women’s inferiority in enlightenment was deeply instilled into monastic communities.

In the history of Korea, Buddhist monks’ and nuns’ monastic experiences were not only influenced by the social norms and values of the day but also by the androcentric monastic rules. During the Koryŏ period (918–1392), when the high position of women in the public and private spheres was ensured, the institutional system of Buddhist monasteries was still seamlessly structured and maintained on a patriarchal basis (Kwon 2005, p. 181). Furthermore, since the Chosŏn government (1392–1910) adopted Neo-Confucianism as the state ideology, women’s status, as well as that of Buddhist clerics, became the lowest in the entire history of Korea. Even during the colonial period (1910–1945), which witnessed an increase in the visibility of the monastic communities, nuns’ position in monasticism remained marginalized.

Despite these androcentric and misogynist aspects, the examples and cases that will be explored in this paper suggest that Buddhist nuns invariably strived to increase their visibility in monastic communities and to secure their position within them by adopting the existing social norms or customary law, thereby challenging male-centered monasticism. The goal of this study is to revisit the position of Buddhist female monastics and present the ways that they challenged gendered monasticism. This study explores Buddhist women in the Chosŏn period and the colonial period. It uses secondary scholarship as well as primary sources published in the colonial period, including a written judgment from the Kōtō hōin minji keiji hanketsuroku 高等法院民事刑事判決錄 (A Collection of Civil and Criminal Trial Records of the High Court), to attest to Buddhist nuns’ autonomy and agency in terms of economic decision-making.

2. Queen Chŏngsun’s Story in the Chosŏn Period (1392–1910)

It is well known that the early Chosŏn government gradually weakened the institutional power of Buddhism using various methods, including the abolition of the monk examination (sŭnggwa) and monk certificates (toch’ŏp) that gave a religious or sectarian identity to a monk. Additionally, in order to enhance the political authority of the new dynasty through the creation of a strong centralized bureaucracy and to ensure access to financial resources, the government also confiscated temple property from the major temples that had been patronized by the royal families and aristocrats of the previous Koryŏ dynasty (K. Kim 2007, p. 24).1 In this process, monks had to find their own way to secure their religious identity and financial resources. As a result, and despite the anti-Buddhist atmosphere among the ruling elites and the ensuing anti-Buddhist policies, new practices emerged among Buddhist monks: the first was the linear transmission of dharma from a monk to his disciple (Y. Kim 2010, p. 79), and the second was monks’ right to possess private property and bequeath it to a legitimate heir of dharma transmission (K. Kim 2007, pp. 155–56).

According to the Korean scholar Kim Kapchu, the early Chosŏn government did not stipulate any specific regulation prohibiting Buddhist clerics from having private property in its national law code, the Kyŏngguk taejŏn (K. Kim 2007, pp. 154–55). The lack of governmental supervision enabled Buddhist monks to formulate their own ways of supporting temples and themselves.2 Even though monks began to possess farmland through various activities, it seems that they did not regard it as their own private property in the early Chosŏn period (pp. 110–11). Beginning in the seventeenth century, however, in order to increase state revenues, the government officially recognized monks’ private property. In addition, monks internalized Confucian norms such as primogeniture and the agnatic principle (chongpŏb), bequeathed their private property to their senior disciples, and created successive dharma lineages between themselves and their disciples. In this way, monks began to have private property that was separate from temple property (pp. 155–56). Scholars in Korean and English scholarship have used various sources as historical evidence to explore the creation of dharma lineages or monastic families among Buddhist monks (Y. Kim 2010; Park 2019; Stiller 2023).

Utilizing new primary sources, some scholars have uncovered stories about Buddhist women’s positions in monasteries pertaining to dharma lineages and property bequests, practices that, until recently, were thought to be exclusive to monks. Maya Stiller (2023) examined monks’ and nuns’ portraits in the late Chosŏn period, in which an eminent monk’s portrait was commissioned by his dharma descendants in order to consolidate a lineage identity. She presented a vivid picture of some nuns, who used various strategies to maintain their secure positions in monasteries and to express the identity of their dharma lineages. The Korean scholar Tak Hyo-jeong (Tak 2017) published a research paper on an interesting topic related to the property succession between a nun and her disciple in the 15th and 16th centuries. Tak’s research is worthy of special attention given that it is the first presentation of Buddhist nuns’ property succession from their deceased masters in the Chosŏn period, in the field of Korean Buddhist scholarship.

According to Tak’s research, the first historical record of a Buddhist nun’s right of property ownership was found in the property succession documents related to Queen Chŏngsun’s property ownership (Tak 2017). Queen Chŏngsun 定順王后 (1440–1521) was the queen consort of King Tanjong (1441–1457). Later, after she was deprived of her queen consort status, she became a Buddhist nun at the Chŏngŏbwŏn 淨業院 temple. Queen Chŏngsun’s life unfolded in three stages: as an elite yangban (gentry class) woman who was born into a Confucian family and became queen consort of the monarch; as a widow who was deprived of her royal status and found shelter in a sangha as a nun; and as an abbess who sought to care for both her nuns at the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple and her deceased husband’s posthumous well-being by securing property.

Queen Chŏngsun was born into a Confucian literati family in 1440. At the age of 15, she married 14-year-old King Tanjong, the sixth monarch of the Chosŏn dynasty. But, one year later, Tanjong was forced to abdicate by his ambitious uncle Grand Prince Suyang (1417–1468; later King Sejo), exiled, and put to death in 1457. As a result, Queen Chŏngsun lost her status as queen consort, was expelled from the palace, and became a nun at Chŏngŏbwŏn, which had once served as a royal nunnery whose members prayed for the prosperity of the royal family and the posthumous salvation of the royal ancestors. The Chŏngŏbwŏn temple, located in the precinct of the royal palace in Seoul, was supported and maintained by the devout Buddhist women in the royal court. Some Buddhist queen consorts, princesses, royal concubines, and yangban women who were widowed chose to remain as nuns at the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple near the palace to pray for the peace and prosperity of the royal family and posthumous well-being of their deceased husbands.3 It seems that, until the early fifteenth century, abbesses and nuns there continued to live luxurious and privileged lives under the patronage of their wealthy and prestigious secular families.

The Chŏngŏbwŏn temple became the target of criticism by Confucian scholar-officials, who constantly presented written opinions to the kings recommending the abolition of the Chŏngŏbwŏn. In 1448, the Ministry of Rites (yejo) finally asked King Sejong to dissolve the temple, saying

“After being widowed, some yangban women took the tonsure and became Buddhist nuns to preserve their chastity (chŏngjŏl 貞節). However, it is not necessary for them to leave home, renounce their families and relatives, and live together with other mediocre women. In addition, it is definitely wrong that the abbess’s ordination name is not distinguishable from that of a monk. We ask Your Majesty to laicize the nuns at the Chŏngŏbwŏn so that they will return to their family and observe female virtues (pudo 婦道). In addition, the temple buildings, slaves, and land must be confiscated by the government”.4

This request shows the general view of Buddhist nuns. From the perspective of Confucian literati, women should follow female virtues, including widow’s chastity, which prohibited remarriage.5 Because they understood that temples provided shelter for poor, orphaned, or widowed women, Confucian literati might overlook a widow’s renunciation as a nun if she lived in a temple in a humble way on her own. However, they did not tolerate Buddhist nuns’ luxurious lives at the royal nunnery of Chŏngŏbwŏn near the royal palace because a lot of land and many slaves had been granted to them by women in the royal court. When the government abolished Chŏngŏbwŏn, it confirmed that the total number of slaves owned by the temple was 484 in Seoul and 3025 in the outlying areas (Hwang 2011, p. 277). King Sejong accepted this suggestion and the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple was forcibly closed. The government confiscated its slaves and land and ordered that the building be reused as a Confucian school. It reopened as a temple in 1459 with the support of the devout Buddhist King Sejo, but it was eventually closed again in 1504 due to the persistent anti-Buddhist policy of the government.6

Even though Chŏngŏbwŏn was abolished as the royal nunnery in the mid-Chosŏn period, it survived as an ordinary nunnery located in the eastern region of Seoul7 and, as such, it no longer enjoyed the prosperity in the form of the number of nuns and the size of its property that it had under the patronage of Buddhist women of the royal family. It functioned as a nunnery consisting of an abbess and other nuns who had master–disciple relationships and supported themselves through the succession of the master-nun’s property (Tak 2017, p. 48). The first evidence of property inheritance between Buddhist nuns was found in the property succession document (hŏyŏ mun’gi) that was written in 1489 by Madame Yun 尹氏, who identified herself as the former abbess of Chŏngŏbwŏn and who hoped to transfer property that had been given to her by the previous abbess and her master-nun Madame Yi to her own dharma sister, Queen Chŏngsun (p. 47).

During the Chosŏn period, a property owner who wished to leave a bequest created an inheritance document generally called punjaegi 分財記. Several types of documents were categorized as punjaegi, depending on certain criteria. For example, if a property owner wished to leave all their assets after their death, this type of inheritance document was called hŏyŏ mun’gi 許與文記. If a property owner wished to bequeath part of their assets to a designated person(s), this type of the document was named pyŏlgŭp mun’gi 別給文記. Usually, the father or mother created an inheritance document for their children. For example, Madame Yi 李氏 (fl., late 15th and early 16th centuries), a widow of the Confucian scholar Sin Myŏnghwa (1476–1522) and the mother of five daughters, including the poet and artist Sin Saimdang (1504–1551), wrote Yi-ssi punjaegi 李氏分財記 (Madame Yi’s Inheritance Document), in which she distributed her assets to her five daughters. In addition to her daughters, Madame Yi left an ancestral ritual allowance to her grandson, Yi Yulgok (1536–1584), son of Sin Saimdang. Because Madame Yi did not have a son, she chose Yulgok as a ritual heir to perform ancestral rites for her deceased husband and herself (Jungmann 2018, pp. 50–51).

In a similar way, Madame Yun, the former abbess of the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple, created the hŏyŏ mun’gi (inheritance document of an entire portion) in 1489 for the purpose of transferring her property to her dharma sister, Hyeŭn 慧誾 (Queen Chŏngsun’s dharma name) (Tak 2017, pp. 47, 53). Madame Yun wrote that her deceased master-nun, Madame Yi 李氏, had left her a house and several farm fields in the Inch’angbang village in Seoul’s Tongbu (Eastern District) to ensure ancestral ritual performance for Madame Yi’s master-nun, Madame Ku 丘氏. The original owner of property written about in this document was Madame Ku (fl., 15th century), who handed her property over to her disciple Madame Yi. Then, Madame Yi handed her master-nun’s property to her disciple Madame Yun to ensure that she, Madame Yun, would perform ancestor rituals for Madame Ku. This shows that property was handed over from one nun, Madame Ku, to her dharma descendants, including Queen Chŏngsun, at the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple starting in the fifteenth century (pp. 56–57). This property became an important financial resource for nuns at Chŏngŏbwŏn after the temple building, land, and slaves were expropriated by the government as one of their anti-Buddhist policies.

Interestingly, when Queen Chŏngsun was the abbess of Chŏngŏbwŏn, the royal court bestowed timber on her as an ancestral ritual allowance for her deceased husband, King Tanjong.8 Queen Chŏngsun rebuilt the building with this timber and prepared an ancestral hall (sadang) for Tanjong in the new building (Tak 2017, pp. 56–57). This indicates that the property transferred to her by the previous abbess was combined with the secular property left to her deceased husband.

In her old age, Queen Chŏngsun wrote two inheritance documents with the same title—Nosan’gun puin pyŏlgŭp mun’gi 魯山君夫人別給文記 (The Document of Prince Nosan’s Wife Regarding Partial Portion Inheritance)—in 1511 and 1518 (Tak 2017, p. 45).9 The 1511 document was written with the purpose of leaving a portion of her property to Chŏng Misu 鄭眉壽 (1456–1512), the only son of Tanjong’s sister, Princess Kyŏnghye. In this document, Queen Chŏngsun stated that she had already left a portion of her property to her three nun-disciples and wished to leave the remaining portion to Tanjong’s nephew because she and King Tanjong did not have a child, and wanted to designate Chŏng Misu, the closest relative among Tanjong’s lineal family member, as the ritual heir to perform ancestral rites. However, Chŏng Misu died in 1512 without any male heir, and Queen Chŏngsun had to write another inheritance document in 1518 at the age of seventy-seven. In this second document, she left the portion to Chŏng’s wife, Madame Yi, who later adopted a son from among Chŏng Misu’s male relatives (pp. 56–57).

Queen Chŏngsun strove to fulfill both religious and secular duties by leaving property to both her religious and secular family members. Although she renounced her secular life upon entering the sangha, she remained respectful of Confucian values and did not abandon her duty as Tanjong’s wife. She continued to perform ancestral rites for Tanjong as well as for the dharma ancestors, including Madame Ku. In addition, she divided her property and left one portion to her disciple-nuns and another to the closest relative of her husband for the purpose of the succession of ancestor rites (Tak 2017, p. 61). In this way, Queen Chŏngsun combined her dual duties as a member of a religious family and a secular family.

However, these examples are not meant to indicate that property succession among Buddhist nuns at the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple represents the general practices of Korean Buddhist nuns in terms of their rights of ownership and succession. As seen in the case of Queen Chŏngsun, most nuns at Chŏngŏbwŏn in the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries were widowed women from yangban families or from the royal court. They had already owned or inherited property from their deceased husbands or secular family members. For example, Tak Hyo-jeong assumed that Madame Yun, the former abbess of the Chŏngŏbwŏn temple and dharma sister of Queen Chŏngsun, was the widow of the high-ranked official Yu Chahwan (d. 1467) (Tak 2017, p. 53). It can be speculated that Buddhist women at Chŏngŏbwŏn were strongly aware of their rights of property ownership and succession, as well as their duties to choose ritual heirs for their deceased husbands.

During the Chosŏn period, due to the anti-Buddhist policies of the government, which abolished the monk examination (sŭnggwa) and monk certificates (toch’ŏp), Buddhist monks had to use new practices—the creation of dharma lineages and property succession from the teacher to the disciple—to consolidate their religious identity. Queen Chŏngsun’s inheritance documents were among the earliest examples displaying how nuns sustained themselves and maintained a religious identity as Buddhist monastic members. Even though we should be prudent in examining the inheritance documents of the Chŏngŏbwŏn nuns and not jump to any conclusions, it can be assumed that, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, some nuns owned property and transferred it to their disciple-nuns for the purpose of performing ancestral rites for dharma ancestors. Due to the lack of primary materials produced in the late Chosŏn period, we cannot reach an overall conclusion about property ownership and succession among Buddhist nuns at that time. Nevertheless, despite androcentric social norms and historiography, Buddhist women’s devotion to their monastic community, including the care of dharma ancestors and dharma descendants and their compliance with the existing social norms, played a key role in maintaining the religious identity of Chosŏn Buddhism.

3. The Status of Buddhist Nuns During the Colonial Period (1910–1945)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s social status was slowly elevated in terms of education and social activities, although these changes were limited to women with superior social statuses. Through the Kabo Reform in 1894, the Chosŏn government prohibited child marriage by setting the minimum age for marriage at 20 for men and 16 for women and allowed widow remarriage. The first school for women, Ehwa Hakdang, was established in 1886 in Seoul by Mary F. Scranton (1832–1902), an American Methodist Episcopal Church missionary. The first women’s organization, Ch’anyanghoe, was organized by approximately 400 yangban women in 1898 and supported girls’ education by establishing the Sunsŏng Girls School in 1899 (Yuk 2015, p. 61). With the increase in women’s participation in education and social activities, new concepts and terms were introduced to emphasize women’s agency. The traditional generic words for a woman were punyŏ and puin, both of which literally translate to “married woman” and implicitly emphasize women’s role as housewives and deny women’s capacity as independent individuals. A new word, yŏsŏng, which translates simply as “woman” and does not convey a social norm, appeared in newspapers and journals in the 1920s (S. M. Kim 2016, p. 143). Some Korean elite women who were educated in modern schools in Korea or in Japan raised their voices for gender equality, free love, and love-based marriages. This became a new phenomenon called “New Woman” (sin yŏsŏng) and symbolized the women’s movement in the colonial period.

However, despite the social changes challenging traditional gender roles, Buddhist nuns encountered difficulties in expanding their role in society, as well as in monastic communities. Unlike their male counterparts, who participated in the society as poets, journal contributors, reformers, political activists, or educators, Buddhist nuns experienced double marginalization and multiple forms of discrimination.

Regarding the Buddhist women’s reform and modernization movement, Buddhist nuns were excluded by elite Buddhist laywomen. For example, when the Chosŏn pulgyo yŏja ch’ŏngnyŏn hoe (Young Women’s Korean Buddhist Association) was established in 1922 as the first women’s organization in modern Korean Buddhism, Buddhist nuns were excluded from membership and activities (Lim 2010, p. 182). Another example illustrating Buddhist nuns’ marginalization can be found in the Namnyŏ sŏnu hoe (Meditation Society of Buddhist Men and Women), founded in 1931. It consisted of Buddhist monks and Buddhist laywomen and numbered 70 members in total. However, there was no room for Buddhist nuns in this modern Buddhist organization (p. 182).

The Korean scholar Lim Yi Rang suggests that Buddhist nuns were not invited to join these modern Buddhist organizations because of their low social status (Lim 2010, p. 184). Although there were a few elite Buddhist nuns, such as Kim Iryŏp, who renounced her passionate life as a “New Woman” and became a Buddhist nun in search of spiritual advancement,10 many Buddhist nuns were widows, orphans, or of the low social status. This included female entertainers (kisaeng) (p. 184). Most Buddhist laywomen who participated in these Buddhist organizations were from the elite gentry class and were educated in modern schools. Even though they were reform-minded Buddhists, they did not want to work with Buddhist nuns whose social status they considered too low compared to their own (p. 184). For this reason, in the Namnyŏ sŏnu hoe, Buddhist laywomen rather than Buddhist nuns acted as monks’ counterparts.

Buddhist nuns were also marginalized in monastic communities in terms of their relationship with Buddhist monks in both personal and collective ways. Sometimes, newspapers and magazines delivered various incendiary accounts of nuns who were beaten or sexually exploited by monks (Lim 2010, p. 179). One of the most scandalous events involved a head monk’s abusive relationship with a nun. On 23 April 1923, the Maeil sinbo newspaper reported that Kim Kuha, the head monk at the T’ongdosa Temple, was accused of sexual exploitation by a Buddhist nun named Yi Tohwa (p. 179).11 Even though this newspaper article used sensationalism and somewhat theatrical expressions, such as “saengma ŭi hwansaeng” (reincarnation of a sex maniac), to describe Kim Kuha’s secret affairs and delivered only Yi Tohwa’s perspective, it is worth noting that this is how some female monastics were treated in the monasteries in the colonial period.

To provide some background on this story, Yi Tohwa became a nun at the Mit’asa 彌陀寺 temple in Seoul in 1918 when she was 26. In the same year, she heard from another nun that Kim Kuha, the head monk at the T’ongdosa 通度寺 temple, was offering a chance for nuns to study (Maeil sinbo 23 April 1923). As head monk of T’ongdosa from 1911 to 1925 and chairperson of the Council of the Thirty Head Monks from 1917 to 1918, Kim Kuha (1872–1965) was an influential figure in the Korean Buddhist community during the colonial period.

According to the Buddhist magazine Chosŏn pulgyo ch’ongbo, in 1918, the T’ongdosa temple opened “nisaeng kangdang” 尼生講堂, a nuns’ monastic school, at its branch temple known as the Ongnyŏnam 玉蓮庵 hermitage.12 As one of the largest monasteries in Kyŏngsangnam-do Province, the T’ongdosa temple was a monastic complex consisting of the T’ongdosa temple and several branch temples, including the Ongnyŏnam hermitage. The nuns’ school was established at Ongnyŏnam as the first educational institute for nuns in the history of Korean Buddhism, although it did not yet have a systematic curriculum and had only one teacher (Ha 2009, p. 147). Aspiring to learn, Yi Tohwa went to the T’ongdosa temple because it was the only temple where nuns could learn from a dharma teacher.

It is not clear how their relationship began and the nature of the relationship, although the newspaper article hints that Kim Kuha sexually abused Yi Tohwa. Regardless of the nature of their relationship, it can be concluded that it was not a healthy one. Clerical marriage was not officially accepted until 1926, meaning that their relationship had to be kept secret. In addition, the two were not equals at the temple: Kim Kuha was the head monk and supervised other branch temples including the Ongnyŏnam hermitage; Yi Tohwa, on the other hand, was a new student-nun who was at the bottom of the monastic hierarchy, even among nuns. Yi Tohwa finally reported Kim Kuha to the police on the charge of sexual exploitation (Maeil sinbo 23 April 1923).

It seems that Yi Tohwa’s disclosure of Kim Kuha’s sexual misconduct triggered a movement against Kim Kuha among hundreds of monks in the T’ongdosa head-branch temple parish. Several months later, monks at the T’ongdosa temple discovered further misconduct: Kim Kuha had also forged the voter list for his re-election as head monk and had embezzled temple money for ten years (Maeil sinbo 1 December 1923). There were no further newspaper articles regarding Yi Tohwa, and her story was completely forgotten. Kim Kuha, however, occupied the position of head monk of the T’ongdosa until 1925, when his secret marriage in 1923 was disclosed and he had to resign.13

Nuns were also subordinate to monks in a collective way, as seen in the aforementioned eight rules. One of the examples illustrating nuns’ standing in the monastic community is the story of the nun Pŏphŭi 法喜 (also known as Myori 妙理, 1887–1975), who is regarded as the reviver of the Korean Buddhist nuns’ traditions in modern times. She received the śrāmaṇerī ordination in 1901 and the bhikṣuṇī ordination in 1910 (Han’guk piguni yŏn’guso 2007, p. 65). At the age of thirty, Pŏphŭi attained awakening during intense meditation and finally received a dharma transmission from the eminent Sŏn (Jp. Zen) monk Man’gong 滿空 (1871–1946) in 1916. This was the first instance of a nun’s dharma transmission in modern Korean Buddhism (H. Kim 2022, p. 166).

Because there was no female dharma master at that time, nuns had to seek guidance from male dharma masters. Although there were some reform-minded monks who argued for modernization, most monks did not accept nuns as disciples due to their traditional androcentric view. Only a few monks, such as Man’gong or Hanam 漢岩 (1876–1951), allowed nuns to study and meditate under their guidance. In particular, Man’gong taught many nuns, including Pŏphŭi, at the Kyŏnsŏngam 見性庵 hermitage, the first nun’s meditation hall (Haeju 2007, p. 132). For this reason, Man’gong was regarded as the most important monk in the revival of Korean Buddhist nuns’ meditation tradition (Cho 2022, p. 120).

In general, after a Buddhist monk or nun has attained awakening, which is regarded as the most precious and rarest moment for Buddhists, their experience must be approved by a Sŏn master. After approval, the monk or nun is recognized as a legitimate successor of dharma and is permitted to preach and transmit dharma to disciples.14 However, despite his approval of Pŏphŭi’s awakening experience, Man’gong instructed her not to preach in the public because a nun’s dharma talk could provoke jealousy among monks (Han’guk piguni yŏn’guso 2007, p. 68). Pŏphŭi followed her master’s guidance and never preached publicly in her life, and so, though she taught many nuns at the Kyŏnsŏngam hermitage, there are no records of her dharma talks. Man’gong’s seemingly androcentric instruction and Pŏphŭi’s stance—a nun is to be humble, moderate, subordinate to a monk, reticent, and to lie low in a monastic community despite her awakening experience—reaffirmed the deep-rooted gender stereotypes and inequality which continued to affect Korean Buddhism and still remain prevalent today.15

Another interesting point that should be highlighted is the position of abbess. During the colonial period, the government supervised and intervened in the appointment of abbots at Buddhist temples. The temple laws (sabŏp) of each Buddhist parish stipulated both the qualifications of abbots and the process of appointment. The temple laws, consisting of around 100 provisions, were drafted by the colonial government and required all thirty head-branch temple parishes to call for the same qualifications for abbots. In the early colonial period, however, the qualifications for the position of abbess became a perplexing issue because it was the first time in the history of Korean Buddhism that the government had to deal with an abbess in a Buddhist temple, and some temples could not find candidates who met the proper education and ordination requirements.

An unpublished official document, entitled Niji jūji sentei hōni kan kansuru ken 尼寺住持選定方ニ關スル件 (Method of Choosing the Abbess of a Buddhist Nunnery), was created by the Department of the Interior (Jp. naimubu 內務部) of the Government General of Korea on 9 February 1915.16 This document is noteworthy in that it reflects the overall situation of Buddhist nuns at the time. It includes an inquiry from the governor of Hamgyŏngnam-do Province, the answer from the Department of the Interior, and the previous governmental notification (Jp. kantsūchō 官通牒) No. 376 as a reference. According to governmental notification No. 376, which was previously circulated by the Department of the Interior to each province on 22 November 1913, abbots were required to be over twenty-five years old, to have received both bhikṣu and bodhisattva precepts, to be over five dharma years,17 and to have completed at least the intermediate level called sajipkwa 四集科18 or graduated from an elementary school (Chōsen sōtokufu naimubu 9 February 1915, pp. 895–96).

However, it seems that, in the early colonial period, a temple run by the nuns had difficulty finding a proper candidate for the abbess position. In an inquiry created on 1 February 1915, the governor of Hamgyŏngnam-do Province asked about the qualifications of the abbess candidates. The inquiry states the following: “We have found that the abbess candidates were either under five dharma years or did not graduate from an elementary school according to their resumés. If we can’t find a qualified candidate for abbess, we would like to ask whether it would be fine if we make an exception for the nuns, thereby using the old method to choose them”. (Chōsen sōtokufu naimubu 9 February 1915, p. 897). According to the temple laws, candidates for a branch temple abbot could be chosen in each temple’s traditional ways: for example, through a master–disciple succession, discussion among monastics who shared the same dharma lineage, or by invitation from other temples (Yi 2003, pp. 256–57, 276). The abbot candidate was required to meet the minimum qualifications. It was the head monk of a head-branch temple parish who chose the final candidate for the abbot position from among several candidates. Then, final approval of the abbot candidate was in the hands of the governor of the province in which the temple was located. If the final candidate did not meet the requirements, approval would not be received from the provincial government.

As seen in the full ordination requirement for the abbot or abbess position, in the early colonial period, many major temples, including the Sŏnamsa or the Hwaŏmsa temples, performed ordination ceremonies for novice monks and nuns and fully fledged monks and nuns. Within the two years from 1912 to 1913, fifteen major temples conferred precepts, including bhikṣu precepts for fully fledged monks and bhikṣuṇī precepts for fully fledged nuns (Park 2017, p. 148). However, given that the first nuns’ meditation center was formed at the Kyŏnsŏngam hermitage in 1916 and the first nuns’ school was established at the Ongnyŏnam hermitage in 1918, we can assume that there were few nuns who could meet all qualifications, including the completion of the intermediate courses.

Regarding the inquiry cited above, the Department of the Interior wrote an answer and sent it to the governor of Hamgyŏngnam-do Province, stating that, if only one or two Buddhist nunneries had difficulties in finding qualified abbess candidates, those nunneries should notify the head monk in the temple parish and ask that the requirements be reduced. The reply also added that this special exception should not, however, be applied to other nunneries because it violates the temple laws and undermines the legal system of the Buddhist community (Chōsen sōtokufu naimubu 9 February 1915, pp. 892–93).

Queen Chŏngsun’s inheritance document Nosan’gun puin pyŏlgŭp mun’gi and the colonial government’s document Niji jūji sentei hōni kan kansuru ken indicate an important aspect regarding Korean nuns: in the Chŏson period, some abbesses were able to transfer their property to disciple-nuns for the purpose of maintaining the ancestral rites of dharma ancestors. This shows their economic independence, as well as their clever compliance with a social norm. In addition, in the colonial period, for the first time in the history of Korean Buddhism, a woman was officially recognized as a leader of a temple, although the government had difficulty in finding female candidates who, due to the poor education conditions, properly qualified for this position. A woman’s capacity for the abbess position was examined and guaranteed by the government using the same criteria required for her male counterparts who applied for an abbot position. Taken together, although there were androcentric aspects in Korean Buddhist communities that led to Buddhist nuns’ double marginalization experiences, the Buddhist nuns’ position was slowly consolidated in various ways, including the official recognition of the abbess position.

4. The Lawsuit at the Tongsansa Temple

Regarding the abbess position, there was an interesting lawsuit recorded in the early colonial period. In 1914, a civil case entitled “Den suiden shoyūken kakunin hikiwatashi seikyū ni kansuru ken” 田畓所有權確認引渡請求ニ關スル件 (“Claim about the Verification of the Ownership of Farmlands”) was dismissed by the High Court of Colonial Korea (Kōtō hōin shokika 2006, p. 348).19 This case appealed to the High Court concerning a property dispute between the abbot of the Tongsansa temple and the four landowners who had purchased temple farmlands from Kim Sihong 金時弘, a former abbess of Tongsansa. It is worth noting that the lawsuit dealt with the Buddhist nun’s legal capacity as the head of a temple.

Tongsansa 東山寺 was a temple in Sukch’ŏn County, P’yŏngannam-do Province and, according to the Temple Ordinance of 1911, was one of the branch temples of the Pŏphŭngsa 法興寺 head-branch temple parish. The Japanese colonial government promulgated a set of Buddhist regulations and introduced the head-branch temple system in order to systematically supervise and effectively control the entire Korean monastic community. Through the Temple Ordinance and the Enforcement Regulations of the Temple Ordinance in 1911, the Korean monastic community was divided into thirty head-branch temple parishes. This head-branch temple system created a hierarchal relationship between the head monk (i.e., abbot of the head temple) and branch temple abbots in the parish. According to the temple laws of the Pŏphŭngsa head-branch temple parish, the Pŏphŭngsa, as the head temple, oversaw thirty-two branch temples in its parish, including Tongsansa.20

Before the colonial period and until 1911, the Tongsansa temple was run by the nun Kim Sihong, who sold the temple farmland sometime between 1910 and 1911. However, after the promulgation of the Temple Ordinance, the monk Hwang Ilsŏn was appointed as the abbot in January 1912 (Kanpō No. 425, 31 January 1912). It is not known why Kim Sihong was not appointed as abbess at that time, but it can be speculated that either she did not meet the strict requirements for the abbess position or, given that the lawsuit record uses the word noni 老尼 (elderly Buddhist nun) to refer to Kim Sihong (Kōtō hōin shokika 2006, p. 355), it might also mean that she was too old to assume that position. Less than a year after Hwang Ilsŏn took office, he was dismissed (Kanpō No. 101, 30 November 1912). According to Kanpō, the official gazette, the reason for this dismissal was his violation of the fifth clause of the Enforcement Regulations of the Temple Ordinance, which stated that the appointment of an abbot could be canceled anytime if the abbot committed a crime or neglected his duties (Yi 2003, p. 255). The vacant abbot position was then filled by the monk Yi Sunyŏng 李順永 (Kanpō No. 101, 30 November 1912), who brought this case as the plaintiff.

Yi Sunyŏng held three positions concurrently at that time: head monk of the Pŏphŭngsa temple (Kanpō No. 392, 16 December 1911); abbot of the Tongsansa temple; and abbot of the Tonggŭmgangam 東金剛菴 hermitage (Kanpō No. 96, 25 November 1912). As branch temples, Tongsansa and Tonggŭmgangam belonged to the Pŏphŭngsa head-branch temple parish that the head monk Yi Sunyŏng supervised. In the early colonial period, head monks often took the position of branch temple abbot in the parish.21 We can assume that they held multiple positions because some temples could not find proper candidates for the abbot position or because other temples may have required reliable abbots to solve issues, such as financial problems.

Although it is not known whether the Tongsansa temple was a traditional nunnery or not, according to the lawsuit record, it was run by the nun Kim Sihong before 1912. To pay off a legal expense, which was not clearly explained in the lawsuit record, Kim Sihong had to sell some farmland that belonged to the temple to four people. This occurred sometime between 1910 and 1911 before the promulgation of the Ordinance (Kōtō hōin shokika 2006, p. 353). The legal dispute occurred when Yi Sunyŏng was appointed as the abbot of Tongsansa and filed a lawsuit against four landowners for the return of the farmland (p. 351). However, he lost the civil case, and so he appealed to the High Court.

According to Yi Sunyŏng’s appeal, the nun Kim Sihong did not have the right to sell the temple property. He claimed that the judge in the original trial was confused about Korean Buddhist customary law. According to Yi, a nun was not able to be a chuji 住持 (the head of a temple)22 and this was the reason that Kim Sihong was referred to, instead, as pangju 房主 (the Buddhist cleric in charge of managing the temple overall) (Kōtō hōin shokika 2006, p. 351). Yi Sunyŏng argued that not only did the nun Kim Sihong, as the representative of the temple, have no right to sell temple-owned farmland but, because she was only a nun who resided at the temple, Tongsansa could not be considered an independent temple. He claimed that the nun Kim Sihong should have gained approval from the head temple Pŏphŭngsa when she had planned to sell the temple property (p. 352). In short, the grounds for his claim were twofold: first, a nun is not equally capable of managing and maintaining the temple as a head of the temple, and second, a nun’s temple is not independent and approval must be received from the head temple when making important decisions. Based on these two arguments, Yi Sunyŏng appealed against the original verdict, but the judge had acknowledged Kim Sihong as the legitimate head of the temple and confirmed her sale of temple farmland to be a valid action.

The High Court dismissed Yi Sunyŏng’s appeal and upheld the original verdict, explaining that the term pangju was used interchangeably to refer to the head of a small temple in some regions of P’yŏngannam-do, P’yŏnganbuk-do, and Hwanghae-do provinces. The decision also mentioned that Tongsansa was an independent temple at the time that Kim Sihong sold the temple farmlands because it happened before the promulgation of the Temple Ordinance and that, according to the Buddhist customary law, Kim Sihong, as the representative of the temple, had the right to sell the temple-owned farmland (Kōtō hōin shokika 2006, pp. 351–52).

In this sense, the main point of the dispute was the status of Buddhist nuns in Buddhist customary law. When Japan occupied and colonized Korea in 1910, due to the huge differences between Korean and Japanese society and culture, the colonial government did not apply the Japanese civil law to Korea but rather relied on Korean customary law in matters of legal capacity, kinship, and succession (Matsutani 2014, p. 246). The colonial government published the Kanshū chōsa hōkokusho 慣習調査報告書 (Report on the Survey of Customary Law) twice, once in 1910 and once in 1912; gathered new information regarding Korean customary law during the early colonial period; and circulated it to government officials and even to the public through administrative replies (Jp. kaitō 回答), administrative notices (Jp. kantsūchō 官通牒), and a series of publications entitled Rules by Examples (Jp. reiki 例規) (Jung 2013, p. 29). If there were still disputes over customary law, the final and most authoritative decision would be made by verdicts of the High Court of Colonial Korea (p. 29). Therefore, when the High Court dealt with Yi Sunyŏng’s case related to the legal capacity of the nun Kim Sihong, the judge made the final verdict based on Korean customary law.

The monk Yi Sunyŏng, in this case, thought that a nun could not be the head of the temple because she was a woman, and that the nun’s temple should be subordinate to the monk’s temple. His view on Buddhist nuns can be seen as the general condescending view of Buddhist nuns. However, the High Court used customary law and admitted the nun’s legal capacity and independence. This indicates that, before the colonial period (i.e., in the late Chosŏn period), an abbess was able to exert independent and autonomous economic authority as a head of a temple. In an interesting twist, the monk Yi Sunyŏng tried again to gain reapproval of the head monk position from the colonial government, but failed because he sold off the temple-owned farmland and ran away with the money (Yi 2003, p. 181).

Customary law contained various cases and examples about the autonomy of Buddhist nuns, which had been unspoken in the patriarchal and misogynistic monastic community. Along with Queen Chŏngsun’s inheritance document, this lawsuit regarding the Buddhist nun’s legal capacity based on customary law implies that Buddhist nuns had autonomy and agency in terms of economic decision-making, allowing them to maintain their position and challenge male-centered monasticism.

5. Conclusions

Sponberg’s analysis on the four attitudes regarding Buddhist women provides a framework through which we can look at the multi-faceted perspectives on women encountered in textual and monastic traditions. However, by arguing that gender hierarchy between bhikṣu and bhikṣuṇī orders was “a symbolic, mythologized expression” and that female monastics should be shielded from any threats in an androcentric community (Sponberg 1992, p. 16), he overlooked the deeply ingrained nature of misogyny in monasticism. As can be seen in the various cases in Korean monasticism, androcentric monasticism was a barrier to the development of the bhikṣuṇī order.

In Korean Buddhism, Buddhist nuns were marginalized in both society and the monastic community through the existing social norms as well as the patriarchal monastic system. Their voices were silenced and subdued in the monastic community because there was no proper channel for them to tell their stories. They also felt ambivalence regarding their religious duty and their secular duty. Even after Korea entered the modern era through a series of reforms in the late nineteenth century, Buddhist nuns were still subordinate to monks in the monastic hierarchy.

However, as examined in this study, Buddhist nuns’ views on, thoughts about, and expressions of their agency were not completely forgotten. There is evidence of their autonomy, independence, and legal capacity in various sources, including Queen Chŏngsun’s inheritance document Nosan’gun puin pyŏlgŭp mun’gi, the colonial government’s document Niji jūji sentei hōni kan kansuru ken, and the High Court verdict “Den suiden shoyūken kakunin hikiwatashi seikyū ni kansuru ken” related to the lawsuit involving the nun Kim Sihong. During the Chosŏn period, nuns maintained their monastic community through the master–disciple relationship secured by the succession of property. Abbesses also exerted independent and autonomous economic authority as a head of the temple according to customary law. In the colonial period, even though Buddhist nuns were still subordinate to monks in the monastic hierarchy, they maintained their position in various ways, including procuring official recognition of the abbess position from the colonial government.

In Korean Buddhism, nuns’ monastic experience was largely gendered. However, at the same time, through their devotion to their community and skillful compliance with the existing social norms and policies, they challenged and reshaped the monastic community’s gendered boundaries.