Confucianization story in Korea

By Mark Peterson

I have spent several weeks writing about the transformation of Korea in the late 17th century. I have outlined seven major social practices that were completely turned upside down at the close of the 17th, and into the 18th century. And these are not insignificant social events: the disinheritance of daughters, dropping daughters from ceremonies, dropping daughter's posterity from genealogies, the all-consuming desire to have a son, and adoption of a son if one is not born, the location of the marriage at the husband's father's house, and the establishment of "clan villages" where everyone in the village is a member of the patrilineage, except for the women ― these were fundamental developments that changed Korea forever.

So fundamental were these changes that Korean society today looks back at the "traditional family system" ― meaning this Confucianized system ― and thinks that it has been this way "forever," or for at least as long as we can know. This is wrong. The Confucianized family system is relatively recent ― only 300 years or so. And it covered an indigenous Korean system that was much more harmonious, less exploitative of women, and in many ways similar to the modern family organization found in Korea today, and in most Western countries.

Yet women's organizations have looked to the West for inspiration and role models, ignoring the examples of the society of Shin Saimdang in earlier years in Korea.

I have argued in previous articles that Korea should look into its own roots to find answers to questions about how to treat women justly and fairly and equally, in today's society.

But today's article has another point. Why is this documented, easy-to-find transition so ignored in Korea today? Why is it not in the textbooks? Why don't people know about it?

I can only speculate. I don't think it is anything sinister. I don't think the Sungkyunkwan (the headquarters of Confucianism in Korea) or Confucians in general have conspired to hide the truth from the wider population. I don't know why the educational community has missed this. But they have.

I wrote a book on this Confucianization process in the mid-90s. It was published at a good American academic publishing house ― Cornell University ― "Korean Adoption and Inheritance: The Creation of a Classic Confucian Society." The book was based on my PhD dissertation at Harvard. And in the late '90s, in a desire to see this research disseminated in Korea, wanting my Korean colleagues, friends, students, everyone, to know about this, I worked with a wonderful young graduate student, Kim Hyejeong , who was then between her master's degree and a Ph.D. at Sogang, to get the book translated into Korean. In Korean it was called "The Emergence of Confucian Society" ― "유교사회의 창출."

My hope was that it would be read, and textbook authors and editors would read it and incorporate its findings into the textbooks.

It hasn't happened.

Why? I don't know the answer. I need to publish a piece in a Korean newspaper and see what people will say. But I have my suspicions. Again, I don't think it's anything sinister; there's no willful conspiracy afoot. I don't think it's laziness, although that could be part of the answer.

I think the answer is the high school exam ― the suneung siheom. I don't know how the science portions of the exam are written, but I suspect the history part ― and maybe literature and English and some other parts ― is written from the perspective of "truth never changes." More specifically, since history is history, and it's what happened long ago, it doesn't change. And if the exam is changed, reflecting a different interpretation of history, then there would be trouble. Because the exam is the standard. And we see what was written, after the fact, in previous exams, and if something new is added, it will shake up the whole system. How can a student prepare for the exam if he can't look at last year's example. And the textbooks are similarly locked-in. No changes in the exam.

I don't know. I'm asking you, dear readers, if you know.
Is the examination system so rigid, and so inflexible that new knowledge cannot be added. Such would seem imponderable. Yet, that is what I have seen.

The fact-based study of my own, and several other scholars, shows clearly that society changed in the late 17th century. It is then that we see the roots of the so-called bugye sytem ― the patrilineal social organization of traditional Korea.

It is, historically, a fairly recent phenomena. To know that makes a huge difference in how we see society and social change today. Yet, Korea has willfully ignored the evidence and most people assume that the traditional family system, the bugye system, has been around from a point in time that we cannot find? It's not true, but that's what most people think.

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