Slavery Resistance In Africa by Edward A. Alpers Gwyn Campbell Michael Salman

Author:Edward A. Alpers, Gwyn Campbell, Michael Salman [Edward A. Alpers, Gwyn Campbell, Michael Salman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415875813
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2009-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Korean Nobi Resistance under the Chosun Dynasty (1392–1910)

Bok-Rae Kim

Confucianism was introduced into the Korean peninsula around the B.C.E./C.E. changeover, almost at the same time as the earliest written Chinese material. It became the dominant ideology under the Chosun dynasty (1392–1910), after Confucian intellectuals had assisted in the overthrow of the Koryo dynasty (918–1392). The Chosun court, which in 1394 relocated from Kaesong, where Buddhist influence was strong, to Seoul, governed through a well-balanced and sophisticated political system based on Confucian principles. The latter dictated a division between rulers and ruled, and asserted that any attempt to change social status constituted both a ‘sin against heaven’ and a civil crime.1

In pre-modern Korea, there were four hereditary classes: the yangban, or scholar-aristocrat class, which dominated political and military power and wealth; the chungin (‘middle people’), or relatively petty officials; the yangmin or common people, mostly farmers; and finally the chonmin or ‘low-born’. Most chonmin were nobis (hereditary slaves), but also included in the chonmin class were actors, mudangs (female shamans), kisaengs (female entertainers) and butchers. Nobis comprised public nobis, who were government property, and nobis who were privately owned, chiefly by government officials and small to medium landowners. The nobi system, which dated back at least a thousand years to the time of the ‘law of Kija’, probably originated in indebtedness which remained a common cause of imprisonment and enslavement until the nineteenth century.2 Nobi status, officially abolished in 1894, lingered on in some regions through the Japanese Occupation of 1910–45 to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.

In general, nobis respected the existing social system. However, in times of emergency, when the state had need of manpower, as against the Japanese invaders of 1592 and the Manchu Ching in 1636, it liberated nobis en masse in return for nobi military service or grain contributions (napsok).3 This set a dangerous precedent, and a vision of liberation for nobis who, once such emergencies were over, were again subjected to the authoritarian domination of their masters and to the strict Confucian principles of subordination and obedience. However, as the proverb says, ‘tread on a worm and it will turn’; if exploitation became too harsh, nobis reacted against it.

This contribution examines the consequences of peaceful and violent nobi resistance to their servile status from the late seventeenth century (notably during the reign of king Sukjong, 1674–1720), explains the absence of nobi rebellion during the nineteenth century, at the height of popular agitation against late Chosun feudal society, and finally compares the relationship between ruling class ‘Neo-Confucianism’ and nobi allegiance to the ‘Maitreya’ cult.

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