Yangban

Yangban
	This picture shows the two gentlemen of yangban class playing janggi, misidentified in the photo's caption as go-ban, in 1904.
Korean name
Hangul	양반
Hanja	兩班
Revised Romanization	Yangban
McCune–Reischauer	Yangban

The yangban were part of the traditional ruling class or nobles of dynastic Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. The yangban were either landed or unlanded aristocracy who comprised the Confucian idea of a "scholarly official." In reality, they were basically administrators and bureaucrats who oversaw ancient Korea's traditional agrarian bureaucracy until the Joseon Dynasty ended in 1910. Unlike the European and Japanese aristocracy where noble titles were conferred on a hereditary basis, the yangban title was conferred to those individuals who passed state-sponsored civil service exams. Upon passing such exams ("과거"), which tested one's knowledge of Chinese characters and the Confucian classics, a person was usually assigned to a government post. In theory any member of any social class could take the exams. In reality, only the upper classes, i.e., the children of yangban possessed the financial resources and the wherewithal to pass the exams, as years of studying and considerable wealth were required to support successful candidates. These barriers and financial constraints effectively excluded non-yangban families and the lower classes from competing for yangban status.

A tiny group of highly regulated mid-level functionaries existed in dynastic Korea called the Chungin. The Chungin were essentially petite bourgeoisie, whose appointment as lower-level functionaries, skilled tradesmen and clerks entitled them to better treatment and a higher status than slaves, but ultimately destined them to a life of servitude to the yangban. Legions of scribes, poets, musicians, artists, dancers, singers, cooks, etc. were drawn from this class as well as the yangban. Class solidarity was maintained through generations of intermarriage, which enabled the formation of distinctive social classes that existed throughout Korean pre-modern history.

Throughout Joseon history, the monarchy and the yangban existed on the slave labor of the lower classes—particularly the sangmin -- whose bondage to the land as indentured servants enabled the upper classes to enjoy a perpetual life of leisure, i.e., the life of a "scholarly" gentleman. These practices, in toto, effectively ended in 1910 upon Japan's colonization of Korea. In modern Korea today, the yangban or sajok legacy of patronage based on common educational experiences, teachers, family backgrounds and hometowns, continues in some forms, both officially and unofficially. While the practice exists in the South among Korea's upper class and power elite, where patronage among the conglomerates tends to predictably follow blood, school and hometown ties, in the North, a de facto yangban class exists that is based mostly on military and party alliances.

Etymology

The word yangban, literally meaning "two ranks," refers to two different types of bureaucrats; one being munban (문반;文班), of the literary or scholarly rank, and the other being muban (무반;武班), of the martial rank. Since the sixteenth century, the word yangban underwent a semantic change and began to include the family members of the literal yangbans, thus blurring the difference between yangban and sajok. Sajok (사족;士族) is a term that is similar in meaning to yangban. However sajok used to be a much broader term than the former in that jok (족;族) always refers to family members and descendents of the office holders including the officials themselves. In that sense there is a limited similarity with Europe's hereditary aristocracy. However, the yangban continue to be associated with a class of professional civil servants.

History

Yangban were the Joseon Dynasty equivalent of the former Goryeo nobles who had been educated in both Buddhist and Confucian studies. With the succession of the Yi generals within the Joseon dynasty, prior feuds and factions were quelled through a decisive attempt to instill administrative organization throughout Korea, and create a new class of agrarian bureaucrats. While the individual yangban included members of this new class of bureaucrats and former Goryeo nobility, their reorganization and the resultant yangban system itself did in fact owe a great deal to the Ming dynasty's system of Mandarins (bureaucrats) ^{[citation needed]} which it modeled; among the number of other things the neo-Confucianist Joseon Dynasty borrowed from the Ming includes the system of standardized civil service exams based on the Chinese classics (via making them the sine qua non to entering the civil service during what is called "Joseon's Golden Era").

While ostensibly open to all, the "civil service exams" ("과거") catered to the lifestyle and habits of the yangban, which created a semi-hereditary meritocracy, as yangban families overwhelmingly possessed the minimum education, uninterrupted study time and immense financial resources to pass such exams. The yangban, like the mandarins before them, dominated the Royal Court and military of pre-Modern Korea and often were exempt from various laws including those relating to taxes.

Sadly, the fact that there were at most only 100 positions open with thousands of candidates taking the exams, competition which was originally supposed to bring out the best in each candidate gave way to the importance of familial relationships. Luckily due to the fact that the Joseon Court was constantly divided between the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western faction members, which they themselves were divided into subsections, resulted in an weird divided system of where corruption was very difficult. With each faction constantly probing for an excuse to kill off the other faction, if one faction was proven to be corrupt then the other 3 factions would immediately jump on the chance to purge them. The attempt to receive or give bribes on a massive scale was suicide. It wasn't until the reign of King Sunjo that the Eastern Faction's Andong Kim's finally obtained full control over the court after purging their rivals that the Joseon bureaucracy degenerated into corruption.

In modern-day Korea, the yangban, as a social class with legal status, no longer exists, in the north or the south. Nevertheless, those who are well-connected in Korean society are sometimes said to have "yangban" connections, and though these claims may have some merit, such references are not usually intended to suggest any real yangban lineage or ancestry (though given the fact that many descendants of those in the yangban class live today, and that the changing fortunes of those in that class rendered so many individuals of "former" yangban status, it is not a stretch to assume that many, if not most, Koreans today have at least some connection to the yangban class, if not any direct descent; in addition, the acquisition/outright theft of clan lineage records or jokbo during tumultuous times in Korea's history has thrown some doubt on to the veracity of some claims of yangban descent). Today, the yangban have been replaced by the Korean ruling class, i.e., an elite class of business and governmental elites, who dominate the country through their wealth, power and influence channeled through their familial and social networks (this applies to both the north and the south, though the north's elite class is largely military-based). The word itself is also used, at least in south Korea, as a common reference (sometimes with distinctly negative connotations, reflecting the negative impression the class system and its unintentional but nonetheless heinous abuses left on Koreans as a whole) to an older, sometimes cantankerous/stubborn man.

Ranks

State Council of Joseon

Yeonguijeong, Chief State Councillor
Jwauijeong, Second State Councillor
Uuijeong, Third State Councillor

Gallery

A young man of yangban class hunting.
A group of yangban women attending a family ritual.

References