History & Area Studies / Thematic History / Social & Cultural History

How Enslaved Korean Women Defied Japan's Deadliest Shogun

Evangelizing Korean Women and Gender in the Early Modern World: The Power of Body and Text

Susan Broomhall

Think war captives were completely powerless? Think again. During the bloody Imjin War of the 1590s, tens of thousands of Korean women were captured, dragged to Japan, and sold into slavery. European missionaries saw them as targets for conversion, while Japanese warlords treated them as property. But what actually happened next shook the entire Tokugawa Shogunate to its core. Based on the groundbreaking book Evangelizing Korean Women and Gender in the Early Modern World: The Power of Body and Text by Susan Broomhall, an internationally acclaimed historian of early modern gender and cross-cultural history, this walkthrough reveals how displaced Korean women turned survival into ultimate spiritual rebellion. Slide 1: War Was Just the Beginning Tens of thousands of Korean women stolen as war loot. Sold across East Asia like livestock. Then European priests arrived with a radical message. Slide 2: Converting Trauma into Raw Power Priests wanted obedience. Instead, these women claimed direct authority over their own souls. They spoke in visions that male priests could not control. Slide 3: Defying the Greatest Samurai Alive Meet Julia Ota: captured as a girl, elevated to Tokugawa Ieyasus inner court. When the Shogun demanded she abandon her faith, she chose exile to a barren rock. She shaved her head, stripped off silk robes, and publicly humiliated the regime. Slide 4: The Ultimate Slap to Male Authority In court trials, women told judges: My body serves my master, but my soul belongs to no man. This destroyed both Confucian rules and samurai hierarchy in one single sentence. Slide 5: Why History Tried to Erase Them Too dangerous for Japanese records. Too uncomfortable for Korean Confucian history. Their defiance was buried for four hundred years until now. Discover how the most vulnerable captives in Asia weaponized faith and redefined freedom when they had nothing left to lose.