Organizer and Chair: Edward J. Schultz, University of Hawaii
Discussants: James B. Palais, University of Washington; Theodore Kornweibel, San Diego University

In the past twenty years scholarship has started to refocus on the nature of slavery in traditional Korea. In Korea the initial research was led by Sogang University professor Seung-ki Hong, and in the United States, James B. Palais of the University of Washington and Ellen Salem of Columbia University were among the first to scrutinize this issue. An understanding of the institution of slavery (or the nobi system as it is referred to in Korean) will lead to a sharper analysis of traditional Korean society. This panel will introduce the current issues under debate, focusing on the nobi of Koryô (918–1392) and Chosôn (1392–1910).

The subject is complex and further clouded by the research of earlier scholars who frequently coupled an ideological message with historical analysis. The three papers presented here will clarify the status of the nobi by marshaling evidence from previously unstudied sources. All three presenters are historians and through their current research into primary source material have already contributed novel insights into traditional Korea. Prof. Hong will lay the groundwork with a discussion of the nobi of Koryô. By drawing on examples from dynastic records and other primary sources, he will provide a clearer description of the nobi. According to Prof. Hong, faulty methodology may have led to a misreading of the role and significance of nobi in traditional Korea. The subsequent two papers will focus on nobi in Chosôn. Prof. Hejtmanek, like Prof. Hong, will address the socio-economic status of nobi and in addition stress demographic issues. Prof. Peterson will examine the changes in slaveholding, frequency of purchase and sales, the owners’ impact on the slaves’ lives in regard to marriage and residence, and issues concerning the limitations of freedom imposed by the owners. Our discussant, Prof. Palais, has studied slavery and is eminently qualified to focus the discussion. The panel will explore the unique role of nobi in Koryô and Chosôn and, by probing the issues concerning the significance of nobi in traditional Korea, will draw a sharper image of the nature of Korean history and society.

Historians today perceive such concepts largely through historical materials, but the meaning of these materials is not self-evident without interpretation by historians. Comparative studies can contribute to understanding terminology, but comparative research on the Korean nobi has not reached this stage. Rather than merging the Korean nobi into the world of Western slaves, studies should introduce contemporary ideas as viewpoints, not absolute historical concepts.

If one likens slaves to nobi, one should find much in common in the respective societies, but this usually is not the case as evolving processes in each society are quite distinct. For example, Koryô was a small kingdom based on peasant agriculture, and the United States in the mid-19th century could be called "a modern, industrializing country." Therefore it is not reasonable to compare Koryô nobi with American slaves. Comparative studies of nobi and slaves should be historical, not ahistorical.

Like Western slaves, nobi varied in their living patterns. Both nobi and slaves can be categorized into various types. For instance, in Koryô there were resident nobi along with non-resident nobi. Their legal status was not so different, and yet their socioeconomic positions were very different. Both resident and non-resident nobi in Koryô should be compared with a similar type of owned people in other societies.

Stressing principles reflected in legal systems tends to overlook stratification among slaves and nobi. Theory and practice do not always coincide, and history rests on the actual, not the theoretical. A comparative study of the Koryô nobi will be presented in terms of actuality and fact.

The use of sôwôn records to study the nobi class offers special advantages. Unlike slaveholding by individual families, academy nobi were not dispersed through inheritance; they remained a coherent group whose members were periodically recorded. On the other hand, unlike nobi owned by government institutions, whose disposition tended to be bound by bureaucratic inertia, nobi owned by sôwôn could be readily bought and sold upon the decision of the academy management to meet financial goals. Accordingly, sôwôn documents give us insight into the dynamics of slave transfer and manumission.

While documents available from these sôwôn are incomplete, they do provide substantial information on general issues of how nobi were used in the functioning of the academies. How important, for example, were sales and manumission of nobi to the operation of the sôwôn? Did the academy management take account of the rules of succession in their acquisitions and nobi marriages? When was the social status of nobi in the academies transformed from slavery into sharecropping? More detailed, if only partial, information is also available to help answer questions concerning demographic issues, e.g., changes in gender composition, life span, and fertility.

This paper will examine the movement of slaves between owners to some extent (difficult to trace in the available documents, purchase and sales agreements), within a household over generations (as revealed in inheritance documents), and within a neighborhood (to the extent such can be traced in census documents). Runaways are sometimes labeled as such in census documents, but in other documents there are numerous cases of slaves who are not listed in subsequent documents, which leaves us to assume that they were sold or, perhaps, they had run away.