FEUDALISM, SERFDOM, AND SOCIETY.
It is remarked by Palladius that the Fuyu race, the ancestors of the
modern Coreans, was the first to emerge from the desert under feudal
forms of organization. The various migrations of new nations rising out
of northern and eastern Asia were westward, and were held together
under monarchical systems of government. The Fuyu tribes who, by
turning their face to the rising, instead of the setting sun, were
anomalous in the direction of their migration, were unique also in
their political genius. Those emigrants who, descending from the same
ancestral seats in Manchuria, and through the peninsula, crossed toward
Nippon, or Sunrise, and settled Japan, maintained their feudalism
until, through ambitious desire to rival great China, they borrowed the
centralized system of court and monarchy from the Tang dynasty, in the
seventh century. The mikado, by means of boards or ministries like the
Chinese, ruled his subjects until the twelfth century. Then, through
the pride and ambition of the military clans, which had subdued all the
tribes to his sway, feudalism, which had spread its roots, lifted its
head. By rapid growths, under succeeding military regents, it grew to
be the tree overspreading the empire. It was finally uprooted and
destroyed only by the revolution of 1868, and the later victories of
united Japan’s imperial armies, at an awful sacrifice of life and
treasure.
That branch of the Fuyu migration which remained in the Corean
peninsula likewise preserved the institution of feudalism which had
been inherited from their ancestors. In their early history, lands were
held on the tenure of military service, and in war time, or on the
accession of a new dynasty, rewards were made by parcelling out the
soil to the followers of the victor. Provision for a constant state of
servitude among one class of the political body was made by the custom
of making serfs of criminals or their kindred. A nucleus of slavery
being once formed, debt, famine, capture in war, voluntary surrender,
would serve to increase those whose persons and labor were wholly or
partly owned by another. To social prosperity, religion, and the
increase of general intelligence, we may look as elements for the
amelioration of serfdom and the elevation of certain classes of
bondsmen into free people. The forms of Corean society, to this day,
are derived from feudal ranks and divisions, and the powers, status,
divisions, and practical politics of the nobles have their roots in the
ancient feudalism which existed even “before the conquest.” Its fruit
and legacy are seen in the serfdom or slavery which is Corea’s
“domestic” or “peculiar” institution.
Speaking in general terms, the ladder of society has four rungs, the
king, nobles, and the three classes of society, in the last of which
are “the seven low callings.” In detail, the grades may be counted by
the tens and scores. In the lowest grade of the fourth class are “the
seven vile callings,” viz.: the merchant, boatman, jailor, postal or
mail slave, monk, butcher, and sorcerer.
The “four classes of society” include the literary men or officials,
the farmers, the artisans, and the traders. Among the nobility are
various ranks, indicated by titles, high offices at court, or nearness
of relationship to the king. He is “neither ox nor horse” is the native
slang for one who is neither noble nor commoner. The nobles are usually
the serf-proprietors or slave-holders, many of them having in their
households large numbers whom they have inherited along with their
ancestral chattels. The master has a right to sell or otherwise dispose
of the children of his slaves if he so choose. The male slave is called
chong-nom. A free man may marry a female slave, in which case he is
termed a pi-pu. The male children by this marriage are free, but the
female offspring belong to the master of the mother, and may be sold. A
liberated slave is called pal-sin, and he speaks of his former master
as ku-siang. The native vocabulary for the slave in his various
relations is sufficiently copious. “Fugitive” slaves, “slave-hunters,”
and “slave-drivers,” are as common to the Corean ear, as to the
American in the long-ago days of “before the war.” A pan-no is a
bondsman trying to escape, and to attempt chiu-ro is to hunt the
fugitive and bring him back. The in-chang is the public slave of the
village. Yet such a thing as the bondsman’s servile love of place,
rising into swollen and oppressive pride that looks down on the poor
freeman, is a common thing, and cruel and overbearing treatment of the
peasantry by the minions of a noble is too frequently witnessed in
Corea. “Tek-pun-ai” (“By your favor,” equivalent to “Let me live, I
pray you”) is a cry, more than once heard by French missionaries, from
a man beaten by the swaggering serfs of some nobleman. It is not
exactly the feeling of the sleek and well-bred black slave of old-time
Virginia for “the poor white trash,” since in Corea slavery has no
color-line; yet, in essentials of circumstance, it is the same. Such a
phase of character is more likely to be developed among the serfs of
the old barons or landed proprietors who have longest occupied their
hereditary possessions, and who keep up a petty court within their
castles or semi-fortified mansions.
Slavery or serfdom in Corea is in a continuous state of decline, and
the number of slaves constantly diminishing. In the remote provinces it
is practically at an end. The greater number of serfs are to be found
attached to the estates of the great noble families of the central
provinces. The slaves are those who are born in a state of servitude,
those who sell themselves as slaves, or those who are sold to be such
by their parents in time of famine or for debt. Infants exposed or
abandoned that are picked up and educated become slaves, but their
offspring are born free. The serfdom is really very mild. Only the
active young men are held to field labor, the young women being kept as
domestics. When old enough to marry, the males are let free by an
annual payment of a sum of money for a term of years. Often the slaves
marry, are assigned a house apart, and bound only to a fixed amount of
labor. Although the master has the power of life and death over his
slaves, the right is rarely exercised unjustly, and the missionaries
report that there were few cases of excessive cruelty practised. An
unjust master could be cited before the tribunals, and the case
inquired into. Often the actual condition of the serfs is superior to
that of the poor villagers, and instances are common in which the poor,
to escape the rapacity and cruelty of the nobles, have placed
themselves under the protection of a master known to be a kind man, and
thus have purchased ease and comfort at the sacrifice of liberty.
Outside of private ownership of slaves, there is a species of
government slavery, which illustrates the persistency of one feature of
ancient Kokorai perpetuated through twenty centuries. It is the law
that in case of the condemnation of a great criminal, the ban of
Ui-ro-ui-pi shall fall upon his wife and children, who at once become
the slaves of the judge. These unfortunates do not have the privilege
of honorably serving the magistrate, but usually pass their existence
in waiting on the menials in the various departments and magistracies.
Only a few of the government slaves are such by birth, most of them
having become so through judicial condemnation in criminal cases; but
this latter class fare far worse than the ordinary slaves. They are
chiefly females, and are treated very little better than beasts. They
are at the mercy not only of the officers but even of their satellites,
servants, and grooms, or to whomever they are sold for an hour. Nothing
can equal the contempt in which they are held, and for an honest or an
innocent woman, such a fate is worse than many deaths. In the earliest
written account of the Kokorai people, the ancestors of the modern
Coreans, we find this same feature of ancient feudalism by which a
class of serfs may be continually provided. To Christian eyes it is a
horrible relic of barbarism.
The penal settlements on the sea-coast, and notably Quelpart Island,
are worked by colonies of these male government slaves or convicts. The
females are not usually sent away from the place of their parents or
their own crime.
In ancient times of Kokorai and Korai there were only two classes of
people, the nobles and their free retainers, and the serfs or slaves.
The nobles were lords of cities and castles, like the daimiōs of Japan,
and were very numerous. The whole country was owned by them, or at
least held in the king’s name under tenure of military service—a lien
which length of time only strengthened. In the long centuries of peace,
many of these old families—weakly descendants of vigorous founders—have
died out, and the land reverting to the sovereign, or possessed by the
people, is now owned by a more numerous and complex class, while nearly
all the cities and towns are governed by officers sent out by the
central authority at Seoul. The ancient class of serfs has, by industry
and intelligence and accumulation of rights vested in their special
occupations, developed into the various middle classes. The nobles are
now in a minority, though at present their power is on the increase,
and their ancestral landholds comprise but a small portion of the soil.
As in mediæval Europe, so in Corea, where feudalism, which rests on
personal loyalty to a reigning sovereign, or a particular royal line,
prevails, a more or less complete revolution of titles and possessions
takes place upon a change of dynasty. On the accession of the present
royal house in 1392, the old Korai nobility were impoverished and the
partisans of the founder of the Ni, and all who had aided him to the
throne, became at once the nobility of the kingdom, and were rewarded
by gifts of land. To the victors belonged the spoils. The honors,
riches, and the exclusive right to fill many of the most desirable
public offices were awarded in perpetuity to the aristocracy. The mass
of the people were placed or voluntarily put themselves under the
authority of the nobles. The agricultural class attached to the soil
simply changed masters and landlords, while the cities and towns people
and sea-coast dwellers became, only in a nominal sense, the tenantry of
the nobles. Gradually, however, those who had ability and address
obtained their full liberty, so that they were in no way bound to pay
tithe or tax to the nobles, but only to the central government. Under
peace, with wealth, intelligence, combination, trade-unions, and
guilds, and especially by means of the literary examinations, the
various classes of the people emerged into independent existence,
leaving but a few of the lowest of the population in the condition of
serfs or slaves. Between the accounts of Hamel in 1653, and of the
French missionaries in the last decade, there are many indications of
progress. Laborers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, etc., now have a
right to their own labor and earnings, and the general division of the
commonwealth is into three classes—nobles, common people, and serfs or
slaves.
Speaking generally, the peculiar institution of Chō-sen is serfdom
rather than slavery, and is the inheritance of feudalism; yet, as
Russia has had her Alexander, America her Lincoln, and Japan her
Mutsŭhito, we may hope to see some great liberator yet arise in the
“Land of Morning Calm.”
Under absolute despotisms, as most Asiatic governments are, it is a
wonder to republicans how the people enjoy any liberty at all. If they
have any, it is interesting to study how they have attained it, and how
they hold it. Politically, they have absolutely no freedom. They know
nothing of government, except to pay taxes and obey. Their political
influence is nothing. In Chō-sen, according to law, any person of the
common people may compete at the public examinations for civil or
military employment, but, in point of fact, his degree is often
worthless, for he is not likely to receive office by it. In a country
where might and wealth make right, and human beings are politically
naught, being but beasts of burden or ciphers without a unit, how do
the people protect themselves and gain any liberty? How does it come to
pass that serfs may win their way to social freedom?
It is by union and organization. The spirit of association, so natural
and necessary, is spread among the Coreans of all classes, from the
highest families to the meanest slaves. All those who have any kind of
work or interest in common form guilds, corporations, or societies,
which have a common fund, contributed to by all for aid in time of
need. Very powerful trade-unions exist among the mechanics and
laborers, such as porters, ostlers, and pack-horse leaders,
hat-weavers, coffin-makers, carpenters, and masons. These societies
enable each class to possess a monopoly of their trade, which even a
noble vainly tries to break. Sometimes, they hold this right by writ
purchased or obtained from government, though usually it is by
prescription. Most of the guilds are taxed by the government for their
monopoly enjoyed. They have their chief or head man, who possesses
almost despotic power, and even, in some guilds, of life and death. New
members or apprentices may be admitted by paying their rate and
submitting to the rules of the guild. In the higher grades of society
we see the same spirit of association. The temple attendants, the
servants of the nobles, the gardeners, messengers, and domestics of the
palace, the supernumeraries and government employes, all have their
“rings,” which an outsider may not break. Even among the noble families
the same idea exists in due form. The villages form each a little
republic, and possess among themselves a common fund to which every
family contributes. Out of this money, hid in the earth or lent out on
interest, are paid the public taxes, expenses of marriage and burial,
and whatever else, by custom and local opinion, is held to be a public
matter. Foreigners, accustomed to the free competition of
English-speaking countries, will find in Chō-sen, as they found in
Japan, and even more so, the existence of this spirit of protective
association and monopoly illustrated in a hundred forms which are in
turn amusing, vexatious, or atrocious. A man who in injustice, or for
mere caprice, or in a fit of temper, discharges his ostler,
house-servant, or carpenter, will find that he cannot obtain another
good one very easily, even at higher wages, or, if so, that his new one
is soon frightened off the premises. To get along comfortably in
Chinese Asia, one must, willy-nilly, pay respect to the visible or
invisible spirit of trade-unionism that pervades all society in those
old countries.
One of the most powerful and best organized guilds is that of the
porters. The interior commerce of the country being almost entirely on
the backs of men and pack-horses, these people have the monopoly of it.
They number about ten thousand, and are divided by provinces and
districts under the orders of chiefs, sub-chiefs, censors, inspectors,
etc. A large number of these porters are women, often poor widows, or
those unable to marry. Many of them are of muscular frame, and their
life in the open air tends to develop robust forms, with the strength
of men. They speak a conventional language, easily understood among
themselves, and are very profuse in their salutations to each other.
They have very severe rules for the government of their guild, and
crimes among them are punished with death, at the order of their chief.
They are so powerful that they pretend that even the government dare
not interfere with them. They are outside the power of the local
magistrate, just as a German University student is responsible to the
Faculty, but not to the police. They are honest and faithful in their
business, delivering packages with certainty to the most remote places
in the kingdom. They are rather independent of the people, and even
bully the officers. When they have received an insult or injustice, or
too low wages, they “strike” in a body and retire from the district.
This puts a stop to all travel and business, until these grievances are
settled or submission to their own terms is made.
Owing to the fact that the country at large is so lacking in the shops
and stores so common in other countries, and that, instead, fairs on
set days are so numerous in the towns and villages, the guild of
peddlers and hucksters is very large and influential. The class
includes probably 200,000 able-bodied adult persons, who in the various
provinces move freely among the people, and are thus useful to the
government as spies, detectives, messengers, and, in time of need,
soldiers. It was from this class that the Corean battalions which
figured prominently in the affair of December 4–6, 1887, were
recruited.