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North Korea Chosn Dynasty Social Structure
In the Chosn Dynasty, four distinct social strata developed:
the scholar-officials (or nobility), collectively referred to as
the
yangban (see Glossary);
the chungin (literally,
"middle people"), technicians and administrators subordinate to
the yangban; the commoners or sangmin, a large
group composed of farmers, craftsmen, and merchants; and the
ch'mmin (despised, or base people, often slaves) at the
bottom of society. To arrest social mobility and ensure
stability, the government devised a system of personal tallies in
order to identify people according to their status, and elites
kept detailed genealogies, or
chokpo
(see Glossary;
The Origins of the Korean Nation
, ch. 1).
In the strictest sense of the term, yangban referred
to government officials or officeholders who had passed the civil
service examinations, which tested knowledge of the Confucian
classics and their neo-Confucian interpretations. They were the
Korean counterparts of the scholar-officials, or mandarins, of
imperial China. The term yangban, first used during the
Kory Dynasty (918-1392), literally means two groups, that is,
civil and military officials. Over the centuries, however, its
usage became rather vague, so the term can be said to have
several overlapping meanings. A broader use of the term included
within the yangban two other groups that could be
considered associated with, but outside, the ruling elite. The
first included those scholars who had passed the preliminary
civil service examination and sometimes the higher examinations
but failed to secure government appointment. In the late Chosn
Dynasty, there were many more successful examination candidates
than there were positions. The second included the relatives and
descendants of government officials because formal yangban
rank was hereditary. Even if these people were poor and did not
themselves serve in the government, they were considered members
of a "yangban family" and thus shared the aura of the
elite so long as they retained Confucian culture and rituals.
In principle, however, the yangban were a meritocratic
elite. They gained their positions through educational
achievement. Although certain groups of persons (including
artisans, merchants, shamans [mudang], slaves, and
Buddhist monks) were prohibited from taking the higher civil
service examinations, they formed only a small portion of the
population. In theory, the examinations were open to the majority
of people, who were farmers. In the early years of the Chosn
Dynasty, some commoners may have been able to attain high
positions by passing the examinations and advancing on sheer
talent. Later, talent was a necessary but not a sufficient
prerequisite for getting into the core elite because of the
surplus of successful examinees. Influential family connections
were virtually indispensable for obtaining high official
positions. Moreover, special posts called "protection
appointments" were inherited by descendants of the Chosn royal
family and certain high officials. Despite the emphasis on
educational merit, the yangban became in a very real sense
a hereditary elite. Thus, when progressive officials enacted the
1984 Kabo Reforms, a program of social reforms, they found it
necessary to abolish the social distinctions between
yangban and commoners.
Below the yangban, yet superior to the commoners, were
the chungin, a small group of technical and administrative
officials. This group included astronomers, physicians,
interpreters, and career military officers. Local functionaries,
who were members of an inferior hereditary class, were an
important and frequently oppressive link between the
yangban and the common people, and were often the de facto
rulers of a local region.
The sangmin, or commoners, comprised about 75 percent
of the total population. These farmers, craftsmen, and merchants
bore the burden of taxation and were subject to military
conscription. Farmers had higher prestige than merchants, but
lived a hard life. Below the commoners, the ch'mmin
performed what was considered vile or low-prestige work. They
included servants and slaves in government offices and
resthouses, jailkeepers and convicts, shamans, actors, female
entertainers (kisaeng), professional mourners, shoemakers,
executioners, and, for a time, Buddhist monks and nuns. Also
included in the category were the paekchng who dealt with
meat and the hides of animals; they were considered "unclean" and
lived in segregated communities. Slaves were treated as chattel
but could own property and even other slaves. Although slaves
were numerous at the beginning of the Chosn Dynasty, their
numbers had dwindled by the time slavery was officially abolished
with the Kabo Reforms.
Data as of June 1993
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