By Mark Peterson
In my last article, I mentioned the Korean Institute of Confucian Culture (KICC), a one-year old, government-funded institute in Nonsan, North Chungcheong Province. I stated that it was the third of three similar institutes that preserve historical documents, sometimes by “entrustment” — where the owner retains ownership even though the document is kept in a safe storage environment at the institute. And sometimes by gifting. I have decided to gift my collection of old documents to KICC.
On my recent trip to Korea, I gave KICC most of the “gomunseo” — old documents — I have collected over my career. I still have some that I will probably gift to them later, but I gave them 123 documents that I have used as “show and tell” items in my classroom lectures for 35 years, and some I’ve used in my 4-year career as a YouTuber.
I acquired most of this set of documents when I was a grad student studying in Korea in the late 70s. I didn’t pay much for any of them — I was a poor graduate student after all. But they were available in the antique stores in Insa-dong and Cheonggyecheon 7-ga. The Cheonggyecheon area was where used furniture was sold, and often the used furniture came in with documents inside.
The documents were wills, other inheritance documents, census registrations, adoption documents, petitions to the government, government office daily records and personal letters. The most dramatic of the documents was a “hongpae,” a “red certificate”, the equivalent of a diploma or a certification of passing an exam. My hongpae was for a military exam; such was also presented to those who passed the civil exam.
I was delighted in my hongpae — I had it mounted in a glass frame where one could see both the front and the back of the document — only the name and status of the exam passer, one Baek Man-geum, could be seen on the reverse side of the document, but I didn’t want to obscure that, and I didn’t want it mounted in a way that attaches any framing material to the document. The document was only pressed between two panes of glass.
I had some questions about the authenticity of the document in that I could not corroborate with other sources that Baek Man-geum had passed the military exam — he was not on any of the rosters, but the military rosters were not as carefully kept as were the civil exam rosters, and he passed in the last year of offering the exams, 1894, where the old world was being eclipsed by the modern world, and it says he was number 345 of those who passed — it was by far the largest class of exam passers, and he may not have been recorded on the roster?
And his name was unusual — “baekmangeum” can mean “a millionaire” — one million dollars or won or ryang — whatever your unit of money may be. Was it a joke? Maybe, but people had the name “Man-geum” and it wasn’t necessarily a bad name or an impossible name.
Was it a forgery? If it were, it was not made a profitable one. I paid less for it than the cost of the paper it was written on. I bought it in a bundle at the used furniture store — a bunch of old documents that were thrown away in the chest as it was sold. I think I paid 20,000 won for the whole bundle — the hongpae alone should be worth 100,000 won. So, it was not forged to fool someone into paying a lot of money for it. I hope that by donating it to IKCC that they can examine it thoroughly — paper, ink — and determine whether it is genuine or not.
And I donated two inheritance documents. It was they, and the three more I still have, that were the core of one of my chapters in my Ph.D. dissertation. They, with hundreds of others, prove that as the Code says, property was divided among children equally, male and female — sons and daughters all got exactly equal shares of the property of the mother and the father when the older generation died.
And there were census registers that showed yangban famliles as extended families, with grandparents and two or more brothers and their wives and families in a large household that also housed slaves. The list of slaves for a household included those who lived at the main house, and those who were farmhands in remote locations.
And there were petitions to the government — sometimes for redress of unfair actions (usually taxation) — and sometimes for building a monument to honor a “loyal” subject, a “filial” son or a “faithful” wife — these three virtues were the heart of Confucianism as manifest in life on the ground.
These documents I donated to the Institute for Korean Confucian Culture. They were happy about the gift. I was extremely happy that they welcomed the gift.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
My gift of Korean documents
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19.12.2023
By Mark PetersonIn my last article, I mentioned the Korean Institute of Confucian Culture (KICC), a one-year old, government-funded institute in Nonsan, North Chungcheong Province. I stated that it was the third of three similar institutes that preserve historical documents, sometimes by “entrustment” — where the owner retains ownership even though the document is kept in a safe storage environment at the institute. And sometimes by gifting. I have decided to gift my collection of old documents to KICC.
On my recent trip to Korea, I gave KICC most of the “gomunseo” — old documents — I have collected over my career. I still have some that I will probably gift to them later, but I gave them 123 documents that I have used as “show and tell” items in my classroom lectures for 35 years, and some I’ve used in my 4-year career as a YouTuber.
I acquired most of this set of documents when I was a grad student studying in Korea in the late 70s. I didn’t pay much for any of them — I was a poor graduate student after all. But they were available in the antique stores in Insa-dong and Cheonggyecheon 7-ga. The Cheonggyecheon area was where used furniture was sold, and often the used furniture........
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