병자호란 직후 속환부녀(贖還婦女)의 이혼 문제

This article investigates the debates over the divorce proceedings against the Bought-back Women(贖還婦女), showing the ideological shock of the Choson literati and their post-war measures after their defeat of the second Manchu Attack in 1636. At issue were young married women of the literati families, who were suspected of having lost their chastity during their stay in Manchuria as war prisoners. The families of their husbands could not allow these women to remain as their daughtersin- law(or wives), and eventually sought to obtain permission from the Choson government to file for divorce against them. After a series of controversies, the government finally officially approved their divorce. The issue of the Bought-back women can be explained in two different ways: continuity and discontinuity. Choson society in 17th century was on the track of Neo-Confucianization, so it is in this sense that Neo-Confucian characteristics of the Choson dynasty were related to and influenced this issue. But on the other way, it may be seen as very unusual, considering various precedents － the divorce cases in the early Choson period and the official measures taken against the female prisoners who returned from Japan after Japanese Invasion. The Seven Valid Causes for Divorce(七去), which was the only grounds for divorce in the early Choson period, was not applicable to the cases of the Bought-back Women. Moreover, there was no official divorce permit for women who were captured and returned after the Japanese Invasion. Under these circumstances, the brand new ground for divorcing Boughtback women p resented b y a political g roup that insisted on allowing t he divorce against the Bought-back Women was "Losing Chastity(失節)" cited in Sohak. Although this was originally used as a basis for the prohibition of widow’s remarrige in the early Choson period, anti-Bought-back Women group hid the context of this text and cited it. However, the context even affected the issue of the official appointment of the descendants of Bought-back Women. The divorce action against the Bought-back Women, was one of the symbolic acts to overcome the ideological crisis in the Choson society after the defeat of Manchu Invasion, which left a group of victims of wartime sex crimes as scapegoats. In this process, the Choson elite group, Sallim, presented the “chastity” rationale from the Sohak to support their opinion. Their logic, however, was based on the grounds cited in disregard of context, and had a fundamental self-contradictory that its order of logic was reversed.