Shōjo sensibility and the transnational imaginary1917–1921 and 1926–1927) appeared, which was published by Korean female students studying
in Japan. It served as a platform of communication both among Korean students residing in
Japan and with those who remained in their home country (Eom 2011, 64). Graduates of Ewha
Missionary School founded in Seoul in 1886, as the first missionary girls’ school in the country,
issued the short-lived New Woman (Sinyeoja, 1920). Although the magazine was discontinued
after the publication of only five issues, it was envisioned as a Korean counterpart of the first
Japanese woman’s literary magazine Bluestocking (Seitō, 1911–1916). New Women (Sinyeoseong,
1923–1926; 1931–1934) targeted schoolgirls as its primary readers, although it was more inclu-
sive in its readership and circulation than Women’s World and New Woman. By the mid-1920s, the
number of Japanese residents in Seoul reached almost one-third of its population and Japanese
magazines, such as Girls Club, were widely circulated among residents in Korea (Kim 2009, 77).
Both the aim and readership of Korean women’s magazines differed from those of the shōjo
magazines of Japan, owing to the contributors and readers’ acute awareness of Japanese colo-
nialism in Korea. The term “schoolgirl” (yeohaksaeng, 女学生) was more commonly used over
“girl” (sonyeo, shōjo), the former envisioned as a modern intellectual in addition to being a
female subject (Eom 2011, 66). Yet, the transnational imaginary provided some writers, such as
male poet No Ja-yeong, who previously contributed to Women’s World, with a powerful trope to
underscore romantic love as a form of freedom from the social restrictions and gender norms
inflicted on schoolgirls. He published a collection of love letters, entitled Flames of Love (Sarangui
bulkkot, 1923), which attracted immense attention from readers and garnered criticism from
journalists for its excessive sentimentalism (Kim 2011, 86). No published the collection under
his pen name, Oh Eun-seo (whose first name continues to be associated with the female gender
in Korea). It has been suggested that No traveled to Japan for a short period in the mid-1920s,
yet there is no evidence to back up that claim (No 2010, 448). Further, the publication of Flames
of Love preceded his purported stay in Japan. If there had been an influence of shōjo writing on
No, it would have been an indirect one, through his exchange with other women contributors
to then Korean women’s magazines and exposure to Japanese girls magazines circulated during
the colonial period in Korea.
Flames of Love consists of 19 love letters, each attributed to a different “author.” The letters
are sent from various countries such as Japan, the United States, China, France, and Germany,
evoking a sense of both exoticism and nostalgia. Like Yoshiya’s Flower Tales, the letters employ
foreign icons as well as Christian metaphors—piano, mandolin, violin, oasis, lilies, perfume, the
garden of Eden—and the author mentions various places that would prompt the lovers’ memo-
ries of Korea. Such exotic imagery would indeed go in tandem with the concept of romantic
love (yeonae in Korean; ren-ai in Japanese) as foreign, carried over from both Japan and China
(Kim 2007, 121). In one letter from Hye-ja, who is studying at Yokohama in Japan, to her lover
U-yeong in Korea, she writes:
I am saddened at the thought of doing chores. After we get married, we should
become drifters. Why don’t we just travel holding each other’s hands! Thus, we can
see the snow piled in Siberia, appreciate the moon in Venice, drink the water from the
Yangtze River, and visit Niagara Falls. When exhausted from traveling, then we can
perhaps die together!
(No 2010[1923], 272, my translation)In her analysis of Flames of Love, Kim Yeon-suk claims that the extravagant itinerary in this letter
is indeed an unrealistic dream; it is rather a form of lamentation on the distance that prohibits
Hye-ja from seeing U-yeong in Korea, and her frustration at the thought of the obligation that