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The embroidered Guunmongdo (Illustrations of The Cloud Dream of the Nine) folding screen in the collection of the Seoul Museum of Craft Art is a rare work that renders the novel Guunmong in embroidery. Given that embroidery was an art practiced by women, the embroidered Guunmongdo may represent a case of the re-creation of Guunmong in which women were involved. Accordingly, this study first examines records concerning the royal needlework bureau and the reception of folding screens, in order to establish the strong likelihood that women were involved in the circumstances of its production. More significant, however, are the distinctive features of the embroidered Guunmongdo and their meaning. Chapter 3 finds that the particular delicacy characteristic of the embroidered Guunmongdo extends to a further feature: each female figure is granted an individualized form. This resonates with Yi Ulsan-daek's reading of Guunmong, and can thus be understood as reflecting the perspective of a female creative agent. Furthermore, through the scenes that foreground Jin Chae-bong, it can be argued that this attentiveness to female figures carries an expanded significance as ‘a gaze directed toward all that has been marginalized.’ Chapter 4 turns to the representation of space in the embroidered Guunmongdo. Buildings are depicted with unusual frequency in the work. In particular, the meticulous depiction of interior architectural spaces and the recurrent representation of walls and courtyards constitute the salient distinguishing features of the embroidered Guunmongdo. These appear to reflect a female concern with the domestic interior. What is important is that such features generate a three-dimensional sense of space. The courtyard in particular, precisely because it is empty, produces a sense of depth, thereby helping to draw the viewer across the boundary of the pictorial surface and into the world of the narrative. This bears affinity with Kristeva's concept of the chora, which reads the feminine within space, as well as with the Daoist notions of the “valley spirit” (goksin, 谷神) and the “mysterious female” (hyeonbin, 玄牝). Within this framework as well, a connection between the spatial representation of the embroidered Guunmongdo and the feminine could be drawn out.

This study examines Yi Ok’s (李鈺) Jijubu (蜘蛛賦), focusing on the transformation of the spider figure and the human reflection embedded in that transformation. In Jijubu, the spider is not presented from the outset as a positive being. Yi interprets the spider’s web-making as an act driven by calculating intention and defines the spider as a “thief among insects.” He therefore attempts to destroy both the web and the spider. The spider, however, explains that its web is merely a means of survival and compares its own act of capture with human practices such as fishing with nets, hunting, and legal punishment. Through this counterargument, the spider questions the consistency of human judgment. It thus moves from being an object judged by humans to a speaking subject capable of explaining its own behavior and, ultimately, of questioning the very standards by which humans judge other beings. The spider’s argument extends beyond self-defense. By describing the characteristics of butterflies, flies, cicadas, bees, mosquitoes, and dragonflies, the spider associates their behavior with various forms of human desire, including ostentation, flattery, pursuit of profit, self-display, the discrepancy between public justification and private desire, covert exploitation, and frivolity. The spider’s web therefore develops from a simple device of predation into a broader image that reflects both human mechanisms of capture and the structures of desire. The significance of Jijubu lies not in transforming the spider from a negative being into a positive one, but in shifting the position from which judgment is made, thereby compelling humans to reconsider their own behavior and standards of evaluation. To clarify this feature, the study also examines earlier representations of spiders and Yi Ok’s Damchung (談蟲), while using the Ming-dynasty works Hilseodae (黠鼠對) and Mundae (蚊對) as limited comparative references. In Hilseodae, the rat contrasts its minor theft with the far greater acts of plunder committed by humans, thereby criticizing the selective application of punishment. In Mundae, the mosquito does not speak directly; instead, a human interlocutor uses the mosquito as a point of departure for criticizing anthropocentric perception and violence among members of the same human community. These differences make the distinctive structure of Jijubu more visible, particularly the fact that the creature initially subjected to human judgment acquires its own voice and turns human language and standards of judgment back upon humans themselves. The study further considers writings on spiders by Yi Deok-mu (李德懋) and Nam Gong-cheol (南公轍). Their works show that close observation of spiders’ movements and habits was not unique to Yi Ok. What distinguishes Jijubu, however, is the way such observation is transformed into the spider’s self-defense and into a broader critique of human judgment and desire. The originality of Jijubu, therefore, lies not simply in its detailed observation of a small creature, but in its transformation of such observation into a reflective mode of writing through which humans are led to reconsider their own values and conduct. In this sense, Jijubu may be understood as a work in which the close observation of small things in late Joseon literature converges with Yi Ok’s distinctive mode of human reflection.

This article examines the narrative configuration of Jasimunsuga and reassesses its literary-historical significance. The work is notable for bringing together the speaker’s personal misfortune and the crisis of the state within the interpretive order of unsu(運數, fortune or ordained destiny). Rather than attributing adversity to particular persons or external circumstances, the speaker understands it as part of an order decreed by Heaven. Consequently, the text is oriented less toward resentment or antagonism than toward acceptance and endurance. Yet unsu is not presented as simple fatalism. By repeatedly interweaving its negative and affirmative dimensions, the poem figures unsu as a principle through which life may be sustained and recovery imagined. The understanding of unsu in Jasimunsuga unfolds simultaneously on two levels, the individual and the state, while ultimately converging on the restoration of the natal family line. The work reveals a consciousness of family lineage centered not on the husband’s household but on the natal home, which the speaker regards as the ground of her life and identity. Male figures in the poem are therefore represented largely as absent figures, incapacitated by illness or death, while the husband’s family, or siga (媤家), barely functions within the narrative. Instead, the speaker, her mother, and women in similar circumstances occupy the narrative center. Until the elder brother’s return, the crisis and continuity of the family are articulated through women’s experiences and perceptions, and the memory and recovery of the lineage are likewise interpreted from women’s perspectives. In particular, the “old family home,” or guga (舊家), serves as a space in which the speaker’s childhood memories and affective attachments accumulate and as the locus where personal and national fortunes intersect. In this respect, Jasimunsuga differs from contemporary women’s gasa that are organized around the husband’s household or patriarchal authority. At the same time, Jasimunsuga presents a dual structure in which the female subject recognizes the conditions of reality but cannot fully voice that recognition. Although the speaker perceives the limits of the male-centered order and calls women who share her situation her bungu (朋友, friends or companions), such awareness does not develop into critical action; rather, it remains within the bounds of controlled utterance. This structure may be read as an instance of the gap between reality and consciousness characteristic of women’s gasa in the hwajeonga lineage. Thus, Jasimunsuga integrates personal and national crises under the single order of unsu while disclosing both a natal-family-centered consciousness of lineage and the female subject’s perception of reality. At the same time, its inability to fully depart from patriarchal norms reveals the work’s complex position in the history of Korean women’s gasa.