Na Hye-seok (, 28 April 1896 – 10 December 1948) was a Korean feminist, poet, writer, painter, educator, and journalist. Her pen name was Jeongwol (). She was a pioneering Korean feminist writer and painter. She was the first female professional painter and the first feminist writer in Korea. She created some of the earliest Western-style paintings in Korea, and published feminist novels and short stories. She became well known as a feminist because of her criticism of the marital institution in the early 20th century. Early life Na Hye-seok was born into the Naju Na clan (나주 나씨, 羅州 羅氏), an aristocratic family, in 1896 in Suwon as the fourth child to Na Gi-jeong and Lady Choi Si-ui. She was called Na Ah-ji (나아지, 羅兒只) and Na Myeong-sun (나명순, 羅明順) in her childhood. Hyeseok is the name given to her when she started attending Jin Myeong Girl's High School. Na Hyeseok demonstrated her artistic talent from an early age and graduated at the top of her class at Jin Myeong Girl's High School in 1913. Career As a young woman, Na Hyeseok was known for her high spirits and outspokenness, making it clear she wanted to be a painter and an intellectual, rejecting the traditional "Good Wife, Wise Mother" archetype. Her major written work, Kyonghui (), published in 1918, concerns a woman's self-discovery and her subsequent search for meaning in life as a "new woman;" it is the first feminist short story in Korean literature. After her graduation from Jinmyeong Girls' High School in 1913, Na Hyeseok majored in Western oil painting at Tokyo Arts College. As a student, Na wrote several essays critiquing the standard "good wife, good mother" Korean archetype, saying she wanted a career as an artist. In April 1915, Na became the main organizer of the Association of Korean Women Students in Japan. It was around this time that she fell in love with Choe Sung-gu, a student at Keio University and the then editor and publisher of the magazine Hakchigwang. The relationship between Na and Choe was highly publicized among Korean students in Japan, as was Na's close literary and personal association with Yi Gwangsu. In the spring of 1915, Na's father summoned her back home and pressured her to accept a marriage proposal from a well-established family. Na was able to escape this by accepting a teaching position in a primary school, according