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In my last article, I argued that the traditional social order of Korea, that defined as "Confucian" and marked with features of male dominance, was not that old. I pointed out that there was a quiet revolution in the late 17th century whereby basic social and family practices changed.
But the important point for us today was not that the changes took place, but that when those changes took place is a "knowable." And yet throughout Korean society today, nobody knows about it. It's like a great secret ― unknowable, but in full sight.
I wrote a book on the topic, in the late 90s. I wrote it in English ― it was published by the Cornell University Press, titled, "Korean Adoption and Inheritance: The Creation of a Classic Confucian Society" and then I made sure that it was available to the Korean academic community by personally seeing to the translation and publication in Korean ― "Yugyo sahoe eui changchul" (The Emergence of Confucian Society).
I wanted the book to be read in Korean so that it would become part of the, what we call, "academic discourse." And indeed, from time to time, professors and students would tell me they had read it. But that has not made up for the huge disappointment I've felt from failure to see my work show up in Korea textbooks.
That is the academic process ― a Ph.D. dissertation or other original research is published, and then other scholars read it and then it shows up as a paragraph in a textbook. That is a jocular way of referring to it ― that a Ph.D. dissertation become one paragraph in a high school or college textbook, but that statement is often more truthful than jocular.
All the years of work of a graduate student is designed to prove one point, a major point or a minor point, but one point to be included in the corpus of knowledge of that discipline. If the work is worthy of a PhD degree, it's worthy of a paragraph in the textbooks, generally.
My research has definitively described the process of what we can call Confucianization of Korean society. It shows conclusively that society went through major changes in the late 17th and into the early 18th century. In the previous installment, I briefly outlined seven major changes in society at that point. (In a subsequent posting I will give my reasons for the changes, but for now, let us accept that these seven changes took place.)
These changes completely changed Korean lifestyle by changing the core behavior of families and individuals in social settings. They were: disinheritance of daughters, emergence of son preference, increase in male adoptions from within the extended family, exclusion of daughters from jesa (ancestor) ceremonies, severe limitations on recording daughters in jokbo (genealogies), changes in marriage practice to center life in the husband's home, and restructuring of villages to the point of creating single-surname, same-clan villages.
These seven major phenomena occurred at roughly the same time and as linked phenomena all involved in what we can call Confucianization of the Korean social order. This is knowable.
Yet, because this knowledge is not yet included in core curriculum for high schools and is not yet included in basic textbooks, it still is an unknowable for most people in society. For most people, if you ask, "When did Korea become so male dominated?" Or if they know the sociological terminology, "When did Korea become patrilineal in its family structure?" Or if you're speaking Korean, "When did Korea adopt the bugye system?" ― the answer for the overwhelming majority of people is: "I don't know; maybe at the beginning of the Joseon Kingdom." That answer is off by 300 years.
But it is "knowable." And the answer is the late 17th century and into the beginning of the 18th century.
That was not that long ago, given the long history of Korea. This tells us that the tradition of male dominance is not that old in Korea. Korea changed due to influences from China, only 300 years ago, and it can change again. In fact, Korea is changing again. But today, instead of looking to Western nations, as most reformers do in Korea, we can look into Korea's own history to see examples of equal treatment and a better way.
To understand correctly that before the Confucian-inspired changes in family and society Korea had a much more balanced power dynamic for the genders will help Korea to develop a fair and balanced society today where our daughters, sisters and wives will have a fair chance to move in society. For Korea, the answer is not in the example of other countries as much as it is the example of its own history. And it is a "knowable."
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
