Principal Investigator: Patricia Chica

Members: Antonio J. Doménech, Aurelia Martín, Eun Kyung Kang, Alicia Relinque, Fernando Wulff, César Ribas

Korean gisaeng slaves played a unique dual role in social and cultural realms. Although belonging to the lowest stratum of society, they interacted with the Korean aristocracy in their daily lives as dancers or artists, fulfilling the cultural and sexual demands of this group of men. They are also an extremely interesting figure to analyze because, at a time when women were in a position of absolute inferiority in rights compared to men, they enjoyed a different status regarding access to education and the arts, activity outside the home, and even moral and chastity norms, among others.

Research on gisaengs is almost exclusively limited to Korean historiography, studying them during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) and in the field of performing arts. However, there are barely any publications that study the figure of gisaengs from a historical and anthropological perspective throughout Korean history. Internationally, geishas of Japan are relatively familiar, but the role of Korean gisaengs, which had certain parallels with geishas but also marked differences, remains unknown. This research project focuses on investigating primary and secondary sources (in Korean and Chinese) about the daily lives of these artists from a gender perspective, studying, for example, the difference in portraits of gisaengs made by aristocrats or accounts left by the gisaengs themselves. The ultimate goal of this research is to analyze the lives of gisaengs, publish and disseminate relevant life stories of these women, and disseminate the results through academic articles, as well as various outreach activities to society.