A year ago on Round and Square (26 July 2012)—The Accidental Ethnographer: Meeting Geil
Two years ago on Round and Square (26 July 2011)—Longevity Mountain: The Road to South Peak
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| [a] Rocky RF |
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| [b] Endogamy RF |
East Asia (d)
Korea, Class, and
Ethnicity
Korea is a mountainous
peninsula that has been the continual home for a remarkably distinct and
largely endogamous ethnic group. Only twenty percent of the land is suitable
for cultivation, and the geographic dividers have played a far more prominent
role in Korea’s history than ethnic conflicts. The Korean people came from the
north—as far away as Siberia—and have distant roots in Manchuria and
Altaic-speaking tribes that were, in turn, linked to Mongolian, Turkic, and
other north Asian peoples. For two millennia, Korea served as a cultural
conduit between China and Japan, and has played a significant role in its own
right in the historical growth of both of those civilizations. The peninsula
was divided into a number of political units during its early history, but it
was in the early-modern era that the greatest contrast with our usual
conception of ethnicity can be seen.
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| [c] Hereditary RF |
Profound social and
economic changes shaped life on the Korean peninsula during the five centuries
of the Yi, or Choson, Dynasty (1392-1910). 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. Although the
wholesale adoption of the examination system made Choson Korea seem like the
Chinese empires of its time, one fundamental difference with China still
remained.
There were not just
educational, and therefore economic, limitations to those who could hope to
succeed; there were also class barriers. 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. As a result,
social status, land ownership, and political leadership were concentrated in
the hands of the yangban class.
Again, with ethnic similarity, class distinctions were exacerbated.
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| [d] DMZ 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. Although absolutely essential in the whole
operation of government, they had little opportunity to rise to high policy
posts. This essentially hereditary group 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. 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.
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Click below for other items in this essay:
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| [e] Flowering RF |
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