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Some years ago, in my study of Korean history and culture, I came upon a document that was revealing on many levels. It was a 1688 will or inheritance document of the Buan Kim family. In the preamble to the document it states they are going to change their procedure of giving property to the next generation.
In the West, inheritance documents are called "wills" or the intention of the property-owning parent generation in giving their property to the next generation. In Korea there is a kind of "will" that is called a "heoyeo mungi," which is translated as a "documentation of a gift" or a special allocation of property while the owner is alive. But most divisions of property occur after the parents die and is determined by the next generation, not the parent generation.
Such documents are called "dongsaeng hwahoe mungi" or literally "a document of the peacefully assembled siblings." The purpose of the document is like that of the "will" in the West, but it is the siblings who decided which piece of property and which slave would go to which of the siblings. It's interesting that the title includes the idea of "peacefully assembly" to make the decisions. Peacefully! One can imagine siblings fighting over an item of property: "Father, said he was going to give this to me!" argued by two siblings each saying it was promised to him or her.
The legal basis for the documents was set forth in the Gyeongguk Daejeon, the constitutional law code of the Joseon Kingdom. Therein it said property was to be divided equally between siblings regardless of gender or birth order. This, of course, changed in the late Joseon period when orthodox Confucianism took over and property went to the eldest son to the near exclusion of younger siblings and the total exclusion of the daughters. The number of these inheritance documents are very few in the 15th century, quite a few in the 16th century, an abundance in the 17th century, and next to none from the 18th century and none at all in the 19th century. This, showing something happened at the end of the 17th century.
That something was the complete Confucianization of the family and society in the 1680s and 1690s. This takeover of the social order by a sweepingly appealing re-interpretation of Confucianism ― what one of my readers calls fundamentalist Confucianism ― changed society at its core, but did so without changing the law. It was custom not law that changed.
It became customary to "divide" the inheritance by no longer giving it all to the eldest son. He could farm out, literally, smaller portions to younger sons for their livelihood, and he as eldest son was responsible for helping younger male siblings, but he was to keep the estate intact. Female siblings were married off to be taken care of by their husbands and their husbands' property. Women would often be given dowries, but they had no claim on the estate or the farmlands and slaves of the parents which now fell into the hands of their eldest brother.
As this change took place, the 1688 document of the Buan Kim family was revealing. It said, "Our family is different from other families, in that, daughters, once married out, will no longer participate in family rituals on a rotational basis. And thus it is our intention that daughters be given only a one-third-sized share of the land and slaves."
Thus it began, the disinheritance of daughters. The rationale, that daughters receive a one-third share was explained that since the ritual texts of Confucianism, the Li Ji and the Chou Li, stated that sons mourn for three years, at the passing of a parent, daughters were to mourn only one year. Thus, they were to be giving a one-third share, meaning one-third the size of the son's share.
The phrasing "our family is different from other families" is revealing. It shows this family, which we see in other documents was an office-holding elite family, was in the vanguard of the change. Once this family, and other elite families stop giving inheritances to their daughters, other families would follow suit. There's no sense giving off your property to daughters when the wives marrying into the family don't come in with a load of property. To preserve "our estate" we need to hold onto our property, thus "we" won't give property to our women folk who leave in marriage.
Thus, "our family is different from other families" shows the beginning of the end for female inheritance rights. Once the ball starts rolling it soon changed every family in Korea, and daughters lost their inheritance rights and rights to separate property ownership.
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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