By Mark Peterson
When I was a student in Korea in 1977 I met a man introduced to me as the last living eunuch from the 1392-1910 Joseon Kingdom. At that point, I understood there was one other living eunuch as well, but the man I met was in his 60s and he had become a eunuch and was a young child in the last-gasp years of Joseon before 1910.
I met him and his wife at his home on the outskirts of Seoul in a rural area at the foot of a hillside that climbed upward behind his home. He seemed in good health but complained of back pain.
I'm thinking of him now in this series of articles I've been writing here on Korean surnames, because the thing that struck me most about meeting a living eunuch was the revelation about his family and ancestors. He had left his natal home ― usually there is a payment involved ― or in blunt terms, he had been sold into the eunuch home ― but he had not left his surname behind. He was adopted to his eunuch father and he succeeded a long line genealogically, so to speak, of eunuch ancestors.
Point number one: Eunuchs lived in families consisting of a eunuch with a wife and adopted children.
Point number two: Eunuchs were adopted into a family line of eunuchs and entered into a new jokbo (family genealogical table) to continue the generations of the eunuch families.
Point number three: The eunuchs did not give up their natal surname! This was the real surprise.
He showed me his jokbo (and subsequently I've seen a eunuch jokbo in a library), and the surprising thing was each generation in the genealogical table retained his original surname. I can't remember my contact's name, but I think it was Yi. His adoptive father was a Song, if I remember correctly.
But regardless of the specifics, the point is each generation retained their original surname. For example, the grandfather was a Yun; the great grandfather, a Pak; the next generation, a Hong; the next, a Kim; the next, a Kwon, and on and on up the pages of the jokbo. The jokbo in other contexts contains only the given names; everyone has the same surname and there is no point in repeating the full name for each entry. Here, in the eunuch jokbo, each generation listed the full name of each entry. The impression is striking if one is used to seeing an ordinary jokbo.
I was amazed to find this was the case. It says a lot about the tenacity of the surname in Korea. If you are born a Kim, you are always a Kim. Nothing can happen to change that. The inborn, inherent quality of the family name is forever part of the Korean body, psyche, persona and identity.
After visiting in his home and learning about his jokbo, he said we could climb the hill behind his home and see his ancestors' tombs. And in the typical yangban ideal format, the tombs climbed the ridgeline behind the house with one generation after another, one above the next climbing the hill.
The eunuch host did not feel up to climbing the hill with our little group of three visitors, but he gave us directions for climbing the hill. His dog came with us. We came to a fork in the trail, each side looked equally inviting. We weren't sure which way to proceed. The dog looked at us, seemingly curious at why we were hesitating, and then led out on the left fork.
We thought, okay, the dog seems to know; we'll follow him. And we did and soon found the first of the series of tombs with magnificent, traditional shindobi, the royally authorized tombstone. You see them all over the countryside. They are the tombstone at the side of the grave mound that has a white granite foundation, a black stone inscribed with the information about the dead, and then capped in white granite cut into a roof-like design. These shindobi were only erected with royal permission and patronage in traditional times; these days, if you have money you can buy one.
Each tombstone, as we climbed the hill, had a new surname. This too, like the jokbo, was highly unusual.
Usually, when you run into a series of tombstone on the hill ridge, they are all the same surname. Here, each successive tombstone bore a new name: Song, Yun, Pak, Hong, Kim, etc.
Again, as was the testimony on paper in the jokbo, here on the hillside, the testimony was in stone, and was saying the surname is immutable. The family can be perpetuated by adoption, but the name cannot change. Tenacious surnames.
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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I met him and his wife at his home on the outskirts of Seoul in a rural area at the foot of a hillside that climbed upward behind his home. He seemed in good health but complained of back pain.
I'm thinking of him now in this series of articles I've been writing here on Korean surnames, because the thing that struck me most about meeting a living eunuch was the revelation about his family and ancestors. He had left his natal home ― usually there is a payment involved ― or in blunt terms, he had been sold into the eunuch home ― but he had not left his surname behind. He was adopted to his eunuch father and he succeeded a long line genealogically, so to speak, of eunuch ancestors.
Point number one: Eunuchs lived in families consisting of a eunuch with a wife and adopted children.
Point number two: Eunuchs were adopted into a family line of eunuchs and entered into a new jokbo (family genealogical table) to continue the generations of the eunuch families.
Point number three: The eunuchs did not give up their natal surname! This was the real surprise.
He showed me his jokbo (and subsequently I've seen a eunuch jokbo in a library), and the surprising thing was each generation in the genealogical table retained his original surname. I can't remember my contact's name, but I think it was Yi. His adoptive father was a Song, if I remember correctly.
But regardless of the specifics, the point is each generation retained their original surname. For example, the grandfather was a Yun; the great grandfather, a Pak; the next generation, a Hong; the next, a Kim; the next, a Kwon, and on and on up the pages of the jokbo. The jokbo in other contexts contains only the given names; everyone has the same surname and there is no point in repeating the full name for each entry. Here, in the eunuch jokbo, each generation listed the full name of each entry. The impression is striking if one is used to seeing an ordinary jokbo.
I was amazed to find this was the case. It says a lot about the tenacity of the surname in Korea. If you are born a Kim, you are always a Kim. Nothing can happen to change that. The inborn, inherent quality of the family name is forever part of the Korean body, psyche, persona and identity.
After visiting in his home and learning about his jokbo, he said we could climb the hill behind his home and see his ancestors' tombs. And in the typical yangban ideal format, the tombs climbed the ridgeline behind the house with one generation after another, one above the next climbing the hill.
The eunuch host did not feel up to climbing the hill with our little group of three visitors, but he gave us directions for climbing the hill. His dog came with us. We came to a fork in the trail, each side looked equally inviting. We weren't sure which way to proceed. The dog looked at us, seemingly curious at why we were hesitating, and then led out on the left fork.
We thought, okay, the dog seems to know; we'll follow him. And we did and soon found the first of the series of tombs with magnificent, traditional shindobi, the royally authorized tombstone. You see them all over the countryside. They are the tombstone at the side of the grave mound that has a white granite foundation, a black stone inscribed with the information about the dead, and then capped in white granite cut into a roof-like design. These shindobi were only erected with royal permission and patronage in traditional times; these days, if you have money you can buy one.
Each tombstone, as we climbed the hill, had a new surname. This too, like the jokbo, was highly unusual.
Usually, when you run into a series of tombstone on the hill ridge, they are all the same surname. Here, each successive tombstone bore a new name: Song, Yun, Pak, Hong, Kim, etc.
Again, as was the testimony on paper in the jokbo, here on the hillside, the testimony was in stone, and was saying the surname is immutable. The family can be perpetuated by adoption, but the name cannot change. Tenacious surnames.
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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