My Korea - Kevin O'Rourke

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can no longer behave with the arrogance of the past.’

      The magistrate was filled with wonder by all he heard.

      ‘This rich man is truly a wise man, a yangban. No meanness in the accumulation of wealth: a man of righteousness. Takes the urgency of another man’s predicament as his own: a man of benevolence. Hates the low, loves the high: there’s wisdom here. This man is truly a yangban. At the same time if people sell the yangban title by private agreement, without a proper deed, there’ll surely be lawsuits in time to come. This transaction will only be accepted if I call the people of the village together, appoint witnesses, and draw up a proper deed. I’ll sign the deed in my capacity as magistrate.’

      So spoke the magistrate.

      Accordingly the magistrate called all the ranking men in the town to a meeting. He also called the farmers, artisans and small traders. He sat the rich man on the right of the dais in the place of honour, and he put the yangban in the courtyard. Then he drew up the deed and read it aloud.

      ‘This deed is drawn up on such-and-such a day in the ninth month of the tenth year of the reign of Ch’ienlung.

      The yangban title has been sold to repay a debt in government rice; the price is 100 bags of rice.

      There are several divisions of yangban. There is the scholar sŏnbi; there is the official who participates in government; there is the man of virtue known as kunja or wise man. The muban (military nobility) stand to the west; the munban (civil service nobility) stand to the east. Hence the yang or double branch of the nobility. You must choose from among these divisions.

      Henceforth, you must perpetrate no base deed. You must imitate the men of old and respect their will. You must rise at the fifth watch, light a candle and sit with your eyes trained on the tip of your nose, knees bent, heels supporting your buttocks. You must recite fluently from The Writings of Tung-la, and your voice must sound like a gourd sliding across ice. You must endure the pangs of hunger, put up with cold and never let the word “poor” pass your lips. You must grit your teeth, tap the back of your head with your fist and with a gentle cough swallow your saliva. You must clean your official hat with your sleeve, but the dusting movement must be as smooth as water waves. When you wash your hands, you must clench your fist and refrain from scrubbing. When you rinse your mouth, make sure there is no offensive odour. Call your servants with a long, easy drawl; walk slowly, drag your feet. In copying from the True Treasure of Classical Literature and the Anthology of Tang Poetry, make sure you use tiny sesame seed lettering, a hundred characters to the line. Don’t soil your hands with money; never ask the price of rice. No matter how hot it is, you mustn’t take off your thick pŏsŏn socks. Don’t eat with your topknot uncovered. When you eat, don’t begin with the soup, and don’t gulp your food. Don’t work your chopsticks like pestles and don’t eat raw leek. When you drink wine, don’t slurp on your beard; when you smoke don’t suck in your cheeks. No matter how angry you are, don’t beat your wife; no matter how vexing affairs may be, don’t throw dishes. Don’t hit the children with your fist. Don’t call a servant a rotten so-and-so. When you’re annoyed by an ox or a horse, don’t curse the owner. Don’t warm your hands over a brazier. When you speak, don’t let your spittle fly. Don’t butcher beef or eat it. Don’t gamble. If any of the hundred provisions are at odds with appropriate yangban decorum, you must bring this deed to the government office and have it corrected.’

      His Lordship the magistrate of Chŏngsŏn affixed his signature to the deed; the chief clerk and the inspector signed as well. The usher then took out the seals and attached them here and there across the deed. The sound of the seals rang out like the beat of a big drum; the seals on the deed were like the stars in the sky. When the local headmen had all read the deed, the rich man, visibly discountenanced, thought for a while and said, ‘Is this what a yangban is? I always heard a yangban was like one of the Immortals. If this is all there’s to it, it’s not very attractive. Can’t you correct it, give the rank a little more substance?’

      Whereupon the magistrate wrote a new deed.

      ‘When Heaven created our people, it made four divisions. Of these four divisions, the most prestigious was the sŏnbi scholar; the sŏnbi was yangban and there was nothing better. He had neither to farm nor engage in trade. With a little learning, he could advance in the civil service. At worst, he had the rank of chinsa. The red certificate of the civil service is no more than two feet long, but it holds a hundred things. It is the sŏnbi’s money bag. If a chinsa gets his first appointment at thirty, every other post in the bureaucracy is open to him. His sideburns can grow white sitting under a sunshade; his stomach can swell to a chorus of “yeas” from his servants. In his room he can seat a kisaeng beside him; he can breed cranes in the trees in his garden. An impoverished sŏnbi, resident in the country, can do as he pleases. He can take a neighbour’s ox and plough his own fields first; he can call the villagers to weed his fields first. No one can curse him for behaving thus; no one can express resentment, not even a man who is hauled in and has lye stuck under his nose, not even if he is strung up by the topknot in punishment.’

      The rich man took the deed, stuck out his tongue and said,

      ‘Stop, please! This is unbelievable! Are you trying to turn me into a thief?’

      The rich man covered his head with his hands and took to his heels. Until the day he died, he never mentioned the word yangban again.

      You now understand the sublime importance and unimportance of the yangban concept, as well as the niceties of the class system in Korea. You will have perceived that the sŏnbi scholar class is best of all; that the farmer is reasonably respectable; that the artisan is a step lower; and that the merchant ranks last of the four. Of course, a few doghouse professions have not been mentioned, notably, kisaeng, monk, mudang (shaman), slave and butcher. The butcher is the bottom of the barrel, but even here there are gradations: the beef butcher is superior to the pork butcher, who in turn outranks the dog butcher. So if someone calls you a dog butchering son-of-a-bitch, you’ll know that you have given great offence. Ex-pat merchant types should not feel too unhappy. At least you are not listed among the doghouse professions, although in Confucian terms you are not much better.

      At the beginning of Chosŏn, the king stood on top of the social pyramid. The nation was composed of king and people (paeksŏng). The people, with the exception of the slave class, were yangmin (the yang character meaning good). A yangmin who passed the kwagŏ civil service examination became yangban upon taking up an official appointment. The yang character in yangban is different from the yang character in yangmin. Yangban means the two services, civil and military; yangmin simply means the good people. The term yangban was restricted to those in public office. Gradually yangban began to think of themselves as a separate class. To a yangban, everyone else was sangmin, meaning ordinary people, which included peasants and merchants. As time went on, however, sangmin became sangnom, and the sangnom label is very definitely pejorative. In late Chosŏn, landlords among the yangmin – self-styled sŏnbi (literati) – began to adopt the yangban style of living. Gradually the families of literati and office holders called themselves yangban and did not marry sangmin (ordinary people). This in turn served as a spur to wealthy sangmin to doctor their family registers so that they appeared to be yangban. Public office did not follow automatically from claiming yangban status. One had to pass the kwagŏ civil service exam AND take an official post. Even then, those who took the exam often encountered discrimination in the kind of post that was available to them, particularly so in the case of people from the north and the west.

      The yangban/sangnom distinction is part of Korean folk history. When a yangban drank from Yŏngwŏl’s ‘Chuch’ŏn’ (Wine Spring), he got refined rice wine, but makkŏlli was as much as a sangnom could squeeze out of it. An irate sangnom borrowed a yangban cloak

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