Joella History: Yang Ban Culture 

There is an old Korean story called Yangban-zhen, which describes “yangban,” the ruling class of the Joseon Era, in the following way. The story states that there were several types of yangban. Yangban who only read books were called classical scholars; those who worked in politics were called officers and those who had virtue were called gentlemen. At five o’clock in the morning, a yangban had to wake up, light a candle and sit properly looking down to the tip of his or her nose and bend the knees while supporting the hips with the heels. A yangban had to be able to write letters small enough to fit on sesame grains. They could not touch money with their own hands. They could not take off their socks when it was hot and had to wear a gat, a traditional Korean hat, when eating food.

Originally, yangban was a universal term used to address officers. When the king held meetings to decide government policies, the military officers stood on the left side and the scholarly officers stood on the right side. These two groups of officers together were called yangban, meaning the two sides. As time passed, the meaning changed to address the whole ruling class of the Joseon Dynasty.

Yangban hated to marry with those who were from lower classes. If yangban were to officially marry someone from a lower class, their children could not become yangban. In the worst-case scenario, yangban who intermarried with a lower-class member could lose his or her status as a noble. Thus many yangban men had an unofficial second or third wife. Children of second or third wives were taken in as part of a yangban’s family, but they were not treated as equals and were discriminated against. In other words, if one had an ancestor from of a lower class, one could not become a yangban.

For these reasons, genealogy became an extremely important tool in the lives of the yangban. The family tree showed that one was of a pure bloodline and was therefore certified to live as a yangban. In the past, both the sons and daughters were recorded in genealogies. However, with the growing tendency to compile larger volumes, the first son of the family became more important. Only the first son could continue the family bloodline, and only he would receive all the family properties, which explains why in the famous Korean story HeungbuJeon, the first son Nolbu and the second son Heungbu had such different amounts of wealth. The second in line was not given rights to continue the family. In some extreme cases, yangban families took foster sons to continue their family because they only had daughters or sons from the second or third wife.

Yangban were afforded all the privileges in the early Korean society. They were rich, prosperous and had the right to be involved in politics and work as artists. However, as Korea entered into war with Japan, the differences between yangban and the lower classes became less clear, allowing a new yangban class to arise. Eventually, yangban became more about wealth and influence than about class, family line and virtue, as described in the story Yang-ban-zhen.

This story will be described more in a future installment of Gwangju News.

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