From Round to Square (and back)

For The Emperor's Teacher, scroll down (↓) to "Topics." It's the management book that will rock the world (and break the vase, as you will see). Click or paste the following link for a recent profile of the project: http://magazine.beloit.edu/?story_id=240813&issue_id=240610

A new post appears every day at 12:05* (CDT). There's more, though. Take a look at the right-hand side of the page for over four years of material (2,000 posts and growing) from Seinfeld and country music to every single day of the Chinese lunar calendar...translated. Look here ↓ and explore a little. It will take you all the way down the page...from round to square (and back again).
*Occasionally I will leave a long post up for thirty-six hours, and post a shorter entry at noon the next day.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Asian Ethnicities (3b)—Korea

A year ago on Round and Square (15 July 2011)—Le Tour de la France: Clouds on the Mountain
Click here for other posts dealing with East Asian ethnic majorities:  
China 1       China 2       China 3       Japan 1       Japan 2       Japan 3       Korea 1       Korea 2       Korea 3
[a] Adapted RF
The first three entries (each in several segments) for the Round and Square series "Asian Ethnicities" deal with the majority ethnic groups in China, Japan, and Korea. We are starting with these groups precisely because they permeate all of the nooks and crannies of their respective histories. Indeed, the history of China is often taught (and this is especially true in Chinese schools) as the history of the Han ethnicity. As we shall see, this is particularly problematic in China, since the history of China can better—this is my opinion—be taught as a constant set of interactions with ethnic groups to the west, south, and especially north. It is no less important in Japan and Korea, however. The relative homgeneity of those populations exacerbate the problems, and engagement with various ethnic groups tends to be even further marginalized. I hope to give, in these introductory posts, a way of thinking about majority ethnicity in China, Japan, and Korea. These are by no means my last word on the subject(s). As you can see from the introduction to this series, these are works in process and are meant to be essays in every sense of the term.
[b] Regions RF
Social and Economic Life
Profound social and economic changes shaped life on the Korean peninsula during the five centuries of the Yi, or Choson, Dynasty (1398-1910). Not the least of these was the structuring of economic success and prestige—for individuals and families—according to the rules of an examination system that was borrowed from China and adapted to Korean social and economic conditions. The Chinese examination system had been used to some extent by Koryo in selecting its bureaucracy, but under the Yi dynasty it became, as it was in China, the chief route to high government office and the key differentiation between members of a relatively homogeneous ethnic group.

Most villages in Korea developed their own little private schools to start promising students on the path to education. The end result of the literary examination—after many years of study— led to the highly prized chinsa degree, which was a stable predictor of social and economic success. A sequence of military examinations paralleled the civil service examinations. There were also government schools and special examinations for candidates for positions in such technical fields as medicine, law, astronomy, and foreign languages.

Although the wholesale adoption of the examination system made Choson Korea more fully Sinicized than earlier Korean states had been, one fundamental difference with China still remained.  There were not just education, and therefore economic, limitations to those who could hope to succeed; there were also class barriers.  In fact, Korean society retained its clear hereditary class divisions, which all along had contrasted sharply with the greater openness of Chinese society during the same period. China’s ethnic blending was far more fluid at this time, even as Korea’s class distinctions within a homogeneous ethnic grouping become more rigid.

[c] Calligrahic RF
Successful candidates in the examinations were limited for the most part to the hereditary ruling class, which came to be known as the yangban, a term meaning literally "the two groups"—that is, the civil and military branches of government. By dominating the exams, the yangban families were able to monopolize political leadership and high government office. They also came to own most of the land. Although in theory all of the land was state-owned, in reality private landholdings became enormously influential stakes in yangban-government relations.  As a result, social status, land ownership, and political leadership were all concentrated in the hands of the yangban class. Again, with ethnic similarity, class distinctions were exacerbated.

While a wide gulf separated the yangban from the lower classes, there was no corresponding gulf between them and the king, who was regarded as little more than a "first among equals." As with their predecessors, Choson kings lacked the semi-religious aura and unique status of the Chinese Son of Heaven or the concept of an unbroken line of emperors tied to the figure of the Sun Goddess, as in Japan.

[d] Rice RF
Below the yangban was a relatively small and legally undefined class that has been called the chungin or "middle people."  These served as petty government functionaries and performed various specialized roles in government.  Though absolutely essential in the whole operation of government, they had little opportunity to rise to high policy posts.  This essentially hereditary group predated the founding of the Yi, but received new "recruits" from among the large numbers of "illegitimate" offspring of the yangban. It is telling that this dynamic—aristocratic “extras” being relegated to a lower status—took place as a class, and not ethnic, process.

The vast bulk of the population was made up of commoners, or yangmin, who were for the most part tax-paying, corvée-serving occupiers of government lands or semi-serfs on yangban holdings.  They were more closely bound to the soil than in earlier times, but still basically controlled their own day-to-day existences.  Rents were often assessed at fifty percent of the yield, so opportunities for them to rise to new statuses were severely curtailed.

As in Koryo times, the lowest class was called ch'onmin, or "base people."  These were government or private slaves, workers in industries, and professional categories, such as butchers (originally despised because of the Buddhist prohibition against the taking of animal life), actors, and kisaeng female entertainers comparable to the Japanese geisha of a later date. The ch’onmin came the closest to being treated as though they were ethnically separate from other Koreans. This was not, of course, the case, and it represented rather a particularly severe form of class differentiation based on occupation rather than ethnicity.
[e] Floating RF
Click here for other posts dealing with East Asian ethnic majorities:  
China 1       China 2       China 3       Japan 1       Japan 2       Japan 3       Korea 1       Korea 2       Korea 3

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