A History of Korea (44 page)

CONFUCIAN FAMILY LAW AND WOMEN’S STANDING

One must be mindful, however, that the Chos
n dynasty lasted over five centuries, and the historical perspective on Confucianism’s
impact on Korean civilization is closely tied to this durability. Had the Chos
n system ended with the lifespan of a typical Chinese dynasty—for example, if the Japanese invasions of the 1590s (
Chapter 9
) had led to a new sociopolitical order after only two centuries of the Chos
n—then Confucianization might have been judged as incomplete. In fact, in terms of the political or socioeconomic hierarchies, the dynastic changeover appears to have fallen far short of a major shift. Rather, the most pronounced impact of Confucianization came from the comprehensive approach to remodel Korean customs, religious practices, and human interaction, down to the level of the family itself. The signal transformation, in fact, came in the realm of family law, with the most dramatic effects felt in the familial and social standing of women. The intimate setting of the family, though, is also where entrenched customs naturally take the longest to change—as witnessed in modern Korea, for example, with the century-long, grinding progress to
overturn
Confucian family law.

The Chos
n dynasty eventually did manage to install a new family system as a central feature of the Confucian transformation of Korean civilization. The legislative blueprint appeared in the opening decades of the Chos
n dynasty at the turn of the fifteenth century, based largely on “Master Zhu’s Family Rituals,” written by the great twelfth-century systematizer of the Neo-Confucian renaissance in Song dynasty China, Zhu Xi.
Master Zhu’s Family Rituals
designated four such ceremonies and contained detailed instructions on how to carry them out: capping (a coming-of-age ritual), wedding, funeral, and ancestor worship. With the exception of capping, these rituals had long been practiced by Koreans, but the Neo-Confucian instructions integrated them systematically into a cosmology that extended to dictums on politics, society, religion, and other realms. Because of their divergence from previous practices and their centrality to the overall Confucian program, the propagation of Confucian family teachings received a lot of attention from the state. Korean scholar-officials and even female royal family members glossed Zhu Xi’s work, with a consideration of native circumstances, in order to disseminate publications on core Confucian principles. This effort was enhanced by the Korean alphabet beginning in the mid-fifteenth century.

The Confucian family laws also demanded a strictly patrimonial system, one that not only traced lineage identity and legitimacy through the males, but also required that all rituals conform to this orientation. While the intricacies of the new wedding rites seem to have faced the most difficulty in gaining complete acceptance, the Confucian ancestor worship requirements had the most far-reaching impact. The lifelong responsibility of descendants to observe regular sacrificial rituals carried an acute economic burden, for example, and this demanded that inheritance practices, too, be gradually modified.

Historical events and documentary evidence from the early Chos
n dynasty bear witness to the fits and starts of this wide-ranging effort to implement Confucian family law throughout the realm. Work on producing a final version of the dynastic code, or
Ky
ngguk taej
n
, which would serve as a kind of constitution for the remainder of the Chos
n, in fact took seven decades following the establishment of the dynasty, with promulgation coming finally in the 1460s. But the dynastic code represented just the first step, and the greater challenge of Confucianization lay in getting the people, beginning with the aristocratic elite, to follow the code’s instructions in their own family practices. This is why documents such as the Yi family inheritance testament of 1541 are so illuminating, for they reflect the ongoing, though not always smooth, transition to a Confucian family system that would eventually transfer privileges—as well as responsibilities—exclusively and permanently to males.

The Yi family inheritance document in fact suggests the resilience of older practices mixed with the demands of the new, even as late as the mid-sixteenth century. Strikingly, it shows a female, albeit a female aristocrat, holding considerable economic resources in her name and, apparently, at her disposal. This female, Lady Yi, would go down in history as the maternal grandmother of the great philosopher Yulgok, whose deeply affectionate biography of his grandmother provide all we know about her, aside from the information presented in the will. As to be expected for a local aristocrat, Lady Yi had impeccable family credentials, with both of her parents coming from prestigious lineages. She had grown
up in Kangn
ng, on the east-central coast, and had wed a young man from Seoul with the surname of Sin (pronounced “sheen”). Following long-established native practices, after her wedding the couple lived initially in the wife’s natal home before, in accordance with Confucian teachings, moving to Seoul to be with the husband’s family. But she quickly returned to her natal home, with blessings from her husband and in-laws, to care for her aging parents. She and her husband lived apart like this, interspersed with frequent visits, for over a dozen years. In Kangn
ng she raised their five children, all daughters, including the second daughter, Sin Saimdang, who would become the mother of Yulgok.