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newsfromthelaundryroom · 1 year

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Understanding Hojŏk (census register) entries

Since I am working on my MA thesis again and finally got back to one of my favorite sources, I got inspired to actually blog about it for once!

So here is a little introduction into how to read census entries from Chosŏn.

Hojŏk (census registers) were recorded every 3 years, aiming to register every household (in theory) in one county for taxation purposes. Household were registered using the "five household system" (oga-t'ong, 五家統), which registers the population according to their location within one village, with every five households (ho, 戶) composing a unit (t'ong, 統). In the register the households in one unit are given a number, with the head of the unit (t'ongjang, 統長 or t'ongsu, 統首) being recorded first and the rest appearing in sequence of their numbering. The register goes through every unit like this until the village is complete, then moving onto the next village.

Now for the individual entries, each consists of the name of the head of the household, occupation or title, age, clan seat (pon, 本), and four ancestors (sajo, 四祖) of the household head and his wife. Then follow the names of the children, ages, occupations or titles, wives etc. If a household owns any nobi, names and ages are recorded, names and status of their parents and children, as well as name, status and residence of the owner. In the case of woegŏnobi (nobi who live outside their owner's estate), they usually have their own entry.

Let's look at one of these entries together because there are some peculiarities to still understand.

This is the 1717 census entry of Kim Hŭng-bal, a commoner from the village of Koŭptae in Tansŏng-hyŏn, Kyŏngsang-do. The book I am pulling this entry from kindly provides a transcription into Han'gŭl for us non-Hanmun-reading plebs:

고읍대촌 제1통 통수 어영청 보인 김흥발

제1호 어영청 보인 김흥발 나이 49세 기유생 본관 김해

아버지 납속통정대부 수봉 조부 어련 증조부 이동 외조부 이금금 본관 영동

부인 변소사 나이 43세 을묘생 본관 초계

아버지 통정대부 해금 조부 해룡 증조부 덕수 외조부 사노 정립

아들 벽계역 김귀봉의 보인 김이달 나이 17세 신사생

며느리 주소사 나이 17세 신사생

아들 금철 나이 5세 계사생

Now going from what we said above, this entry starts out with the village (Koŭpdae-ch'on), the unit (unit nr.1) and the name of the head of the unit (Kim Hŭng-bal). It then proceeds with the details for this specific household, the household of the t'ongsu Kim Hŭng-bal of household nr.1. It gives us the occupation or title (Ŏyŏngch'ŏng poin, a type of military official) and the name of the head of the household (Kim Hŭng-bal), his age (49) and clan seat (Kimhae).

The age is not recorded with the usual number Hanja (which would be 四十九), but with a separate set of Hanja (肆拾玖), which also have secondary meanings of numbers but primarily mean something else. I do not know why this is but this seems to be the case for all recornings of ages in Hojŏk at least. After the age they also record the specific year in which someone is born. For Kim Hŭng-bal he is born in the kiyu year, which is the 46th year in the sexagenary cycle, the year of the earth rooster, which would be 1669. (Now do keep in mind though that the recorded birth year and ages can vary between different census years, as this is self reported and falsification of ages was a very popular tactic to shave off some years from the military service one still had to serve.)

Another thing to know is that wives were recorded with their last name only. In the above entry we have two examples, one is Kim Hŭng-bal's wife recorded as Pyŏn-sosa and the other one is his son's wife Chu-sosa. As Chosŏn society considered the public to be the male domain and the private the female domain, it was usually not seen as proper for the names of women to be recorded in official documents, as those were a part of the public domain. Because of this, every woman of the yangin (良人), the "good" people as opposed to the ch'ŏnin (賤人, low/vulgar people), would be recorded as "last name + class signifier". There were three different class signifiers to differentiate between the three main classes which comprised the yangin: ssi, 氏 for yangban women (of the upper class), sŏng, 性 for chungin women (of the "middle" class comprised of physicians, interpretors etc.), and sosa, 召史 for p'yŏngmin/sangmin/yangmin women (of the peasant and artisan class) ((there is too many goddamn words for this class)). Kim Hŭng-bal's wife is recorded asPyŏn-sosa, denoting her as his wife of p'yŏngmin status, same as his daughter-in-law.

The last interesting thing from this entry is the title of Kim Hŭng-bal's father Su-bong being Napsokt'ongjŏngdaebu. T'ongjŏngdaebu is a civil official title of the senior 3rd grade (정3품), but the napsok at the beginning indicates, that this title was acquired through a substantial donation of grains (napsok) in famine times. The prefix "napsok" was added to differentiate those with "real" titles from the ones with honorary titles. From this we can learn that although Kim Hŭng-bal was a p'yŏngmin, he came from a family wealthy enough to donate significant amounts of grain to the government.

Let's look at one more entry, this time from the 1678 census of Su-bong, Kim Hŭng-bal's father, where we will find something interesting.

The entry reads:

사노 수봉 나이 32세 정해생 본관 김해 주인 단성현 거주 심정량

아버지 사노 갓봉 조부 증조부 모름 어머니 사비 숙향 외조부 사노 단문 본관 안동

부인 사비 자목 나이 27새 임진생 주인 성주 거주 군관 도시담

아버지 사노 금금이 어머니 사비 애춘 조부 이생 외조부 금복

아들 반노 금학 나이 4세 을묘생

From this entry we learn, that Su-bong was actually a nobi, making this family a case of recorded upward mobility in society with hereditary status. We know this because in place of a title or occupation in front of Su-bong's name it says sano for "private nobi" (no being a male nobi and bi being a female nobi). His wife was also a private nobi, as indicated by the sabi in front of her name. Their son Kŭm-hak is indicated as banno, which to my knowledge means a yangban's nobi and should be referring to his mother's military official owner. Though I am quite unsure about this and the author of the book doesn't explain it to my knowledge.

As you can see, in the case of nobi, who made up the bulk of the ch'ŏnmin class (the rest comprising of butchers, shamans, entertainers and such), the names of women were recorded. This had on one hand to do with confucian principle surrounding "vulgar" people not falling under the same societal notions of propriety and thus women's names being "fair game", but on the other hand was also important because of ownership law and the general lack of surnames in nobi. For nobi, the mother was actively recorded (which is not done for yangin in the most part), which we can see above in the case of Su-bong's mother Suk-hyang. for yangin, the name of the father-in-law would suffice. But in the case of nobi, the mother's name being recorded is important, as her children go to her owner and not to the owner of her husband (in the case that they are from different households). It is also important to record the names of female nobi for the case of runaways and the subsequent search for and collecting of these runaways.

Another common thing in nobi household census registers is the absence of names for grandparents, as those were often forgotten quickly over the generations. They then get recorded as puji, 不知 (unknown), which you can see in the case of Su-bong's grandfather and great-grandfather (transcribed as 모름 in the Han'gŭl version). In the case of paternal lines with surnames, the surname is frequently added like this "Chŏn puji".

Now getting back to why Kim Hŭng-bal is not registered as a nobi, considering the whole ilch'ŏnjŭkch'ŏn thing and both his parents being nobi. Kwŏn Nae-hyun (the author of this book I am pulling these entries from) explains it like this:

Su-bong must have had a substantial amount of land to cultivate for himself, as nobi were also allowed to purchase and own land (which makes them different from the western concept of slaves and is also the reason why I and many other scholars refrain from using the word slave when we mean nobi) and could procure wealth in this way. His title of Napsokt'ongjŏngdaebu shows that he had enough wealth to contribute a lot of grains to the government and thus also enough to buy his way out of servitude. Kwŏn Nae-hyun also talks about the reality of Su-bong having to pay his owner in labor and surpluss grain, since he married a nobi woman from a different household and thus lost his owner a few more nobi children. I assume that the escape from nobi status through substantial compensation for his owner was a better alternative than this, and the official title bestowed on him by the government only helped to cement the new commoner status for his family. Kim Hŭng-bal and his brothers then went and changed some information in their family tree (like adding last names to their father, making up new names for their grandfather etc.) over a few iterations of census registers and thus could more easily sustain their new status as commoners.

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Ok so this post kind of got out of hand and is now way more than just a simple "how to read census registers", but I still hope this conveyed some usefull and interesting information! I also managed to procrastinate reading further sources for two hours so I count that as a win as well.

(Admin S)

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Sources:

Karlsson, Anders. „Famine Relief, Social Order, and State Performance in Late Chosŏn Korea“. The Journal of Korean Studies 12, Nr. 1 (fall 2007): 113–41.

Kwŏn, Nae-hyŏn. Nobi-esŏ yangban-ŭro, kŭ mŏnamŏn yŏjŏng: ŏnŭ nobi kagye 2-paek nyŏn-ŭi kirok. Sŏul-si: Yŏksa Pip’yŏngsa, 2014.

Somerville, John N. „Stability in Eighteenth Century Ulsan“. Korean Studies Forum, Nr. 1 (Autumn-Winter 1976-77): 1–18.

#korean studies #korean history #chosŏn #census registers #hojŏk

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wooseok018 · 5 years

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