Upon her release in 1919, Na connected with the other women of Sinyoja over the idea to start a magazine by and for new women, inspired by the radical politics of the moment and with the express goal of interrogating women’s traditional roles in Korea’s extremely patriarchal society. The five women were from elite, wealthy families and had been afforded the rare opportunity to go to college, where they were exposed to these radical politics. They believed the work of liberating the Korean nation was inextricably linked with liberating women from the Confucian gender roles perhaps best encapsulated by the aphorism hyeonmoyangcheo, or “wise mother, good wife.” This was the primary goal that girls and women were to aspire to in order to keep society and their families functioning.

The Korean feminist literary and political work that Na pioneered was inspired by the Western first-wave feminisms of Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Harriot Beecher Stowe. Early Japanese feminists adopted the moniker “bluestockings” to describe their progressive organizing, and that name spread to Korea, taking on a nationalist flavor once it crossed into the colonized peninsula.

With Sinyoja, Na aspired to foster a Korean feminist literary tradition that would be well-known worldwide; this is clear from an early essay published in the magazine called “What We Face Now”:

“Korean newspapers and magazines are created and managed by men, and there are only two or three created by women. But none of them is wholly penned by women. Out of such need and to fill this lack, the first issue of Sinyoja was published last month, and its purpose is to help show the praiseworthy work by Bluestockings, and at the same time, to bring buried talents to light.”

Japanese authorities shut down Sinyoja after only four issues, but by the time that happened, Na was a media darling in Korea, especially among intellectuals and politically radicals. Her art career took off too — in 1926, one of her paintings won the highest award at the Chosun Exhibition, a prestigious show. She began traveling on a world tour showing her work. She married a wealthy man named Kim Woo-young, had four children, and continued painting and writing.

Her whirlwind success began to flag in the 1930s. Critics fell out of love with her work, and they began panning her art shows in reviews, comparing her paintings to “withering flowers” that lose “light and fragrance.” Then, in 1931, her husband accused her of having an affair with a religious leader and divorced her. In 1934, she published an article in response to rumors about her personal life in Samcheolli magazine called “A Divorce Confession.” In it, she admitted to the affair and also wrote that her husband had failed to satisfy her sexually.

Though Na had worked tirelessly to change Korean culture’s treatment of women, the laws remained rigid in regard to divorced women.

The article was intended as self-defense, but the jury of Korean society was not generous. Though Na had worked tirelessly to change Korean culture’s treatment of women, the laws remained rigid in regard to divorced women. They lost everything: their children, their money, and their status. By writing honestly about her sexual desires — and by casting the blame of her infidelity on her husband — she gave Korean society even more reason to disown her. She had violated the gender norms she had worked her whole life to help dismantle. Na lost everything and became a pariah. Her art commissions dried up, and her birth family rejected her.