Rootstech 2021

By Mark Peterson

Rootstech 2021 is an international conference on genealogical records. Originally, it was called "A World Conference on Records"; now it's called "rootstech" meaning technological studies of our "roots" ― genealogical and family history. The conference this year will be held online ― Feb. 25-27. I've been asked to make one of the "prime-time" presentations on Korean genealogy.

In the past, the conference has been held in Salt Lake City. Why Salt Lake? It's the center of the largest family history library in the world. Sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the conference claims to be the largest of its kind in the world ― there were 18,000 that attended last year. This year, with the conference completely online, they already have 200,000 attendees registered. It's free of charge and anyone can participate.

Korea has a big stake in the conference. The Family History Library in Salt Lake has acquired photocopies of many of the jokbo (Korean genealogies) from all over the world. They have cooperative arrangements with major Korean genealogy holdings in Korea and outside of Korea, for example, with the large holdings of Harvard University.

I reported earlier in this column that I've been approached for my opinion about Korea applying to UNESCO for recognition of Korea's multiple jokbo collections. I think they have a point ― that Korean jokbo may be unique in the world. Korea may have the largest collection, per capita, of genealogical materials of any country in the world.

Unfortunately, there is an inaccurate appraisal of jokbo as unreliable and plagued with forgeries. The reality is that jokbo are mostly accurate, and prior to the 20th century, historical jokbo are almost 100 percent accurate. The attempts to buy one's way into a jokbo by someone of a commoner or slave background did not come into play until the 20th century.

My presentation, since the conference will be online, has already been recorded. This past week I prepared and recorded the video that will be shown during the conference in late February, and will be available online afterward as well. My presentation is in Korean and aimed at assisting the Korean-speaking audience to know how to read a jokbo. My presentation has two parts ― in the future I might need to cover several other parts of reading a jokbo.

In this presentation I cover (1) the basics, and (2) how to find female ancestors in their own jokbo. This deals with the two biggest problems in reading a jokbo ― how to get started and how to move beyond one's own jokbo into the jokbo of the mother's and grandmother's lines.

As for the basics, one only needs to know five characters to figure out the basic data in a jokbo ― the characters for name, birth, death, marriage and burial. The data connected to each of these key points can be looked up online quite easily. I have proof that it is easy ― on my YouTube channel I have videos showing Korean Americans with zero or limited Korean ability reading their own jokbo. One young woman started in high school, and one young man taught himself how to read and look up Chinese characters. I have videos in English of each of them, three videos each, on my channel showing how they have been able to read the basics in a jokbo. If Korean Americans with no Korean ability, or limited Korean ability, can read a jokbo, anyone in Korea can do it. That's point number one: it's easy to read a jokbo.

Point number two is to fight the popular concept that women are absent from the jokbo. Women are very important in jokbo as mothers, as wives and as daughters.

The process in conducting family history research is to find ALL of one's ancestors, not just the men. The process will yield a "family tree" with female and male branches, looking up grandfathers AND grandmothers. To create such a family tree is what Korea did before the Confucianization phenomenon that led Korea, after the late 17th century, to create the "bu-gye" (patrilineal) family system that ignores the female lines. That kind of Korean family tree was called "Palgojodo" ― a chart of the eight great grandfathers.

But female lines can be traced upward. Grandmothers, wives of grandfathers, can be found not only in the grandfather's jokbo, but they can be found in their own family jokbo. You are a Jeonju Yi, and you have a great grandmother who is a Deoksu Yi ― she can be found in the Deoksu Yi genealogy. And I explained how one can do that. There are several processes but the best is to use a multi-family genealogy abstract (the best of which is the Manseong Daedongbo), as a guide to finding one's way through the grandmother's jokbo.

Searching one's family history, father's and mother's lines, is a great hobby found all over the world. Their yearly conference RootsTech2021 is online this year and anyone can participate.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.