Kim Jun-Geun's genre paintings, produced for Western buyers at Korean open-port cities during the late nineteenth century, constitute an underexplored visual archive of Korean musical life. This paper contends that Kim Jun-Geun's paintings serve as rare and vital ethnomusicological documents of late Chosŏn Korea. Through close visual analysis of samhyun youkgak (traditional six-piece instrumental ensemble), kisaeng (female entertainer) performance, sadangpae itinerant entertainers, and religious and shamanistic ritual music, this paper reconstructs sonic practices, organology, and gendered musical space that written records have largely overlooked.

While these paintings have attracted some scholarly attention, existing studies have examined Kim Jun-Geun's work from art historical, postcolonial, and cross-cultural perspectives; the musical dimensions embedded in these images have remained rarely investigated, particularly in English-language scholarship. This paper addresses that significant gap, offering the first systematic ethnomusicological examination of music, gender, and ritual performance as documented in his visual archive.

Drawing on close visual analysis of specific paintings, this paper reveals how women musicians — kisaeng, sadangpae performers, and ritual specialists — occupied contested performance spaces that Confucian social order sought to suppress, yet Kim Jun-Geun's brush preserved. Beyond performance, this paper also investigates how music intersected with women's daily labor and marriage rituals, illuminating the broader sonic landscape of women's lives across social classes in late Chosŏn Korea. This paper reframes genre painting as primary ethnomusicological sources, advancing methodological conversations about visual evidence in music historiography while recovering silenced women's musical agency in Korean history.