The Implementation of Naeseon Gonghak(內鮮共學) during the Wartime Regime and Kyongsong Muhak Public Girls’ High School

​Author: Park Hyunok

Page: 57-100

Abstract

This study aims to illuminate the practices and realities of Naeseon Ilche(內鮮一體) education under the Government -General of Korea through the case of Gyeongseong Muhak Public Girls’ High School, founded in 1940. Muhak was the first secondary girls’ school in Gyeongseong to select an equal number of Japanese and Korean students and to provide them with an identical curriculum, functioning both as a model school of naeseon gonghak(內鮮共學, integrated Japan– Korea schooling) and as a practical embodiment of this policy. By examining the educational activities, career trajectories, and memories of those involved at Muhak - an encounter and “fusion” space for Japanese and Korean women - this study seeks to reconstruct the realities of women’s education aimed at cultivating “Imperial Women(皇 國女子)” during the wartime regime.

Muhak actively implemented Naeseon Ilche education and the cultivation of “Imperial Women”. Through distinctive educational programs such as the Monthly National Language Sessions(國語常會) and the Peer Friendship System(學友制), students were encouraged to internalize the use of Japanese naturally in daily life. The school also sought to extend its influence into the private sphere of the home, promoting various forms of interaction between school and family to reinforce ideological education. As the wartime regime intensified, the space for women’s education - originally aimed at producing the Japanese ideal of the “Good Wife, Wise Mothe” - shifted to serve as a vanguard for labor mobilization. In this process, individual students’ aspirations were subordinated to the survival needs of the wartime state. The career paths of graduates -who had once dreamed of becoming “Good Wives, Wise Mothers” or professional women -were increasingly redirected and transformed under the slogan of Naeseon Ilche toward the figure of the “social wife(社會婦人)” envisioned by the state.