Joseon - Society - Social and Population Structure

Social and Population Structure

The population of Joseon Korea is controversial. Government records of households are considered unreliable in this period. One recent estimate gives 6 million at the start of the dynasty in 1392, growing irregularly to a peak of as many as 18 million by about 1750. Between 1810 and 1850, the population declined approximately 10% and remained stable. Before the introduction of modern medicine by the Korean Empire government in the early 20th century, the average life expectancy for Korean males was 24 and for females 26 years.

Joseon Korea installed a centralised administrative system controlled by Confucian scholars who were called Yangban. By the end of the 18th century, the yangban had acquired most of the traits of a hereditary nobility except that the status was based on a unique mixture of family position, gwageo examinations for Confucian learning, and a civil service system. The family of a yangban who did not succeed to become a government official for the third generation lost their yangban status and became commoners. For most part, the only way to become a government official was to pass a series of gwageo exams (One had to pass "lesser gwageo" exam (소과) in both of two stages to qualify for greater gwageo exam, which again one had to pass in both of two stages to become a government official.) The yangban and the king, in an uneasy balance, controlled the central government and military institutions. The proportion of yangban may have reached as high as 30% by 1800, although there was considerable local variation. As the government was small, a great many yangban were local gentry of high social status, but not always of high income.

Another 30-40% of the population were slaves (nobi), "low borns" (cheonmin) or untouchable outcastes (baekjeong). Slavery was hereditary, as well as a form of legal punishment. There was a slave class with both government- and privately owned slaves, and the government occasionally gave slaves to citizens of higher rank. Privately owned slaves could be inherited as personal property. During poor harvests, many sangmin people would voluntarily become slaves in order to survive. During the Joseon Dynasty about 30% to 40% of the Korean population consisted of slaves. However, Joseon slaves could, and often did, own property. Private slaves could buy their freedom.

Many of the remaining 40-50% of the population were surely farmers, but recent work has raised important issues about the size of other groups: merchants and traders, local government or quasi-governmental clerks (Chungin), craftsmen and laborers, textile workers, etc. Given the size of the population, it may be that a typical person had more than one role. Most farming was, at any rate, commercial, not subsistence. In addition to generating additional income, a certain amount of occupational dexterity may have been required to avoid the worst effects of an often heavy and corrupt tax system.

During the Late Joseon, the Confucian ideals of propriety and "filial piety" gradually came to be equated with a strict observance to a complex social hierarchy, with many fine gradations. By the early 18th century the social critic Yi Junghwan (1690–1756) sarcastically complained that "ith so many different ranks and grades separating people from one another, people tend not to have a very large circle of friends." But, even as Yi wrote, the informal social distinctions of the Early Joseon were being reinforced by legal discrimination, such as Sumptuary law regulating the dress of different social groups, and laws restricting inheritance and property ownership by women.

Yet, these laws may have been announced precisely because social mobility was increasing, particularly during the prosperous century beginning about 1710. The original social hierarchy of the Joseon Dynasty was developed based on the social hierarchy of the Goryeo era. In the 14th–16th centuries, this hierarchy was strict and stable. Since economic opportunities to change status were limited, no law was needed.

In the late 17–19th centuries, however, new commercial groups emerged, and the old class system was extremely weakened. Especially, the population of Daegu region's Yangban class was expected to reach nearly 70 percent in 1858.

In 1801, Government-owned slaves were all emancipated, and the institution gradually died out over the next century. The institution was completely abolished as part of a social plan in the Gabo Reform of 1894.