Confucianization in family trees
Korea has known Confucianism for over 1,500 years. But Confucianism in Korea was not always the same kind of Confucianism.
Social practices changed over time: Initially Confucianism was adopted and adapted to fit Korean society of the Silla period (beginning roughly in the 4th century), but later, Confucianism conformed to the texts on ritual and social behavior and transformed into a totally orthodox — or as one of my readers likes to say — “fundamentalist” style of Confucianism.
The tipping point came in the late 17th century when, due perhaps to population pressures, and perhaps because of forever reading the texts and making excuses for not conforming, and perhaps due to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Korea’s “older brother,” Korea accepted a thorough-going, orthodox form of Confucianism.
Last week I showed two examples of “jokbo” — the typical Korean printed genealogical tables — showing how they were radically different in organization and in representation of their society in early and late Joseon. Today I want to address a special form of genealogical chart that was used, but fell out of use as Korea became “patrilineal” — or in Korean, when they developed the “bugye” system. Some like to call this “patriarchy.”
In early Joseon, kinship was “bilateral,” meaning a person recognized both sides of his genetic inheritance, the mother’s side and the father’s side. Later, of course, it became all “father’s side” — the bugye system. Or as some anthropologists say, a system in which the only people that count are “men related to men through men.” That is patrilineality, the opposite of bilaterality. There was never any matrilineality in Korea.
As an indication of bilaterality, and the reckoning of kinship in the early and middle Joseon periods, they created family trees — much like what we mean in the West when we use the term. Here is an example of one:
The “trunk” of the tree is the individual whose ancestry is listed above him. In the second section from the bottom are the father and mother. In the next section up are the two sets of grandparents. Then the four sets of great grandparents, and in the top section are the eight sets of great-great-grandparents. Thus the name of the chart in Korean is not “family tree” but rather “a chart of the eight great-great-grandparents — palgojodo.
This kind of chart was common until the 18th century. As mentioned in previous articles, inheritances were divided equally between sons and daughters, ancestral ceremonies were conducted by sons and daughters — and the ancestors honored were “bilateral” — on both sides of the family. The whole point of such charts is to keep track of who should be honored in the Confucian ancestor ceremonies.
Yes, Confucianism existed in Korea before the orthodoxy revolution at the end of the 17th century. But it was very different before — where this kind of chart was in common use. Later, after the late 17th century, Confucianism became Chinese style — patrilineal. And no longer would the palgojodo, the evidence of bilateral kinship, be found in Korea.