By Mark Peterson
This is No. 7 in my top 10 list of what I call "Peaceful and Stable Korean History." Here I want to feature what in Korean can be called "seonbi culture."
A "seonbi" was a scholar, or a scholar-official. At its core, seonbi culture is focused on study, not study in the abstract, but study of the Confucian classics with the aim of passing the state exams to qualify a person to be appointed to a government office. Seonbi who did not pass the exam were scholars; seonbi who passed the exam took the roles of coveted scholar-officials. The seonbi are in contrast to the warrior, the soldier, or specifically, in contrast with Japan, the samurai.
Seonbi culture has two foci ― study of the classics, and service in the government. And both of these cultural factors are still very strong in Korea today.
Korea has one of the highest educational standards in the world, maybe it is No. 1. Some objective studies place it as No. 1 or No. 2, or elsewhere in the top 10 internationally. And as for service in the government, I don't know how to find an objective study of serving in the government, but I have a strong intuitive sense from living in Korea that government officials are higher on the pecking order of occupations in Korea than are officials in America. And students heading for government service are higher on the academic prestige scale.
Korea does not suffer from the American affliction of anti-government attitudes. Americans disparage government service in all kinds of ways. Surely, Koreans, too, are critical of government, but the respect for the government official is really much higher in Korea. Evidence? Well, it's mostly anecdotal and based on my conversations with all levels of Koreans over the past 55 years. I'll leave it at that. If any of you want to argue this point, we can revisit it again at some time, but I think most of my readers who know Korea and know America will agree. Let's go on.
The seonbi was a scholar first and a scholar who was prepared to serve in the government. But his government service was limited. It was somewhat like the concept of "term limits" that you find in the U.S. There were some officials that got into service and stayed and stayed and got promotion after promotion, but the ideal was to serve for a time, then humbly resign, and go home to study again.
Sometimes the release from government service was not voluntary ― the king would move people around as he wished. It was common for an official to be unemployed for a time, and then called back to serve later. To understand traditional government service, you must realize that it was a real "revolving door." The average term of service for middle and high officials in any one position was around six months.
For example, that was the average term of service for the mayors of Seoul ― we have that documented. And it was similar for other positions. "That's no way to run a railroad," yes, that's true, but to see how it worked, you have to see the clerks ― a class in society that could never take the high civil service exam and never be high government officers but who were always there, in the government office, to serve the official in charge.
More important than actual government service, then, was the study to prepare to pass the exam. Although the purpose of passing the exam was to qualify to be employed by the government, only a small fraction of those who studied actually passed, and the study took on a life of its own.
If you never passed the exam ― and some did not pass until their 60s or 70s ― one could do other things with one's study. There was a great educational system with teachers at the village level, the regional level, and the national level. And the exams had several layers, local, regional, national, and ― only if you passed the final level in front of the King at the court ― were you considered to have passed the exam.
But even taking an exam was a worthy accomplishment and that often qualified one to claim he was a scholar. And to pass even one of the local exams was a great honor, further evidence that he was indeed a scholar. But to pass the national exam, limited to only 33 every year, was the greatest of all accomplishments.
The seonbi then was a man of education and that tradition has laid the foundations for Korea's great educational accomplishments today. The seonbi was not a man of war and conflict. By contrast, the seonbi was the opposite of the samurai, or the warrior, or the general, that we find in control of other countries. The seonbi was one of the keys to understanding Korea's peaceful and stable history.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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A "seonbi" was a scholar, or a scholar-official. At its core, seonbi culture is focused on study, not study in the abstract, but study of the Confucian classics with the aim of passing the state exams to qualify a person to be appointed to a government office. Seonbi who did not pass the exam were scholars; seonbi who passed the exam took the roles of coveted scholar-officials. The seonbi are in contrast to the warrior, the soldier, or specifically, in contrast with Japan, the samurai.
Seonbi culture has two foci ― study of the classics, and service in the government. And both of these cultural factors are still very strong in Korea today.
Korea has one of the highest educational standards in the world, maybe it is No. 1. Some objective studies place it as No. 1 or No. 2, or elsewhere in the top 10 internationally. And as for service in the government, I don't know how to find an objective study of serving in the government, but I have a strong intuitive sense from living in Korea that government officials are higher on the pecking order of occupations in Korea than are officials in America. And students heading for government service are higher on the academic prestige scale.
Korea does not suffer from the American affliction of anti-government attitudes. Americans disparage government service in all kinds of ways. Surely, Koreans, too, are critical of government, but the respect for the government official is really much higher in Korea. Evidence? Well, it's mostly anecdotal and based on my conversations with all levels of Koreans over the past 55 years. I'll leave it at that. If any of you want to argue this point, we can revisit it again at some time, but I think most of my readers who know Korea and know America will agree. Let's go on.
The seonbi was a scholar first and a scholar who was prepared to serve in the government. But his government service was limited. It was somewhat like the concept of "term limits" that you find in the U.S. There were some officials that got into service and stayed and stayed and got promotion after promotion, but the ideal was to serve for a time, then humbly resign, and go home to study again.
Sometimes the release from government service was not voluntary ― the king would move people around as he wished. It was common for an official to be unemployed for a time, and then called back to serve later. To understand traditional government service, you must realize that it was a real "revolving door." The average term of service for middle and high officials in any one position was around six months.
For example, that was the average term of service for the mayors of Seoul ― we have that documented. And it was similar for other positions. "That's no way to run a railroad," yes, that's true, but to see how it worked, you have to see the clerks ― a class in society that could never take the high civil service exam and never be high government officers but who were always there, in the government office, to serve the official in charge.
More important than actual government service, then, was the study to prepare to pass the exam. Although the purpose of passing the exam was to qualify to be employed by the government, only a small fraction of those who studied actually passed, and the study took on a life of its own.
If you never passed the exam ― and some did not pass until their 60s or 70s ― one could do other things with one's study. There was a great educational system with teachers at the village level, the regional level, and the national level. And the exams had several layers, local, regional, national, and ― only if you passed the final level in front of the King at the court ― were you considered to have passed the exam.
But even taking an exam was a worthy accomplishment and that often qualified one to claim he was a scholar. And to pass even one of the local exams was a great honor, further evidence that he was indeed a scholar. But to pass the national exam, limited to only 33 every year, was the greatest of all accomplishments.
The seonbi then was a man of education and that tradition has laid the foundations for Korea's great educational accomplishments today. The seonbi was not a man of war and conflict. By contrast, the seonbi was the opposite of the samurai, or the warrior, or the general, that we find in control of other countries. The seonbi was one of the keys to understanding Korea's peaceful and stable history.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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