Literary Powerhouse from the Social Margins: Poetry Societies of Secondary Status Groups in Late Choson Korea.

• Author: Chu, Hwisang
• Position: Report

This article explicates how this cultural leadership by secondary status groups was possible in this particular moment of Korean history despite the rigid social stratification that lasted until the end of the Choson dynasty in 1910. Drawing upon sociological studies by Pierre Bourdieu and Ronald Burt, it focuses on the diverse connecting roles that secondary status groups played in the late Choson bureaucracy. It also discusses how these groups' monopoly on printing technologies, which had been the vocational marker of their social inferiority, fostered yangban elites' technological dependency on them when no other outlets for textual production remained available. Filling political, economic, and technological structural gaps, secondary status groups became cultural leaders whom yangban elites needed to perpetuate their social domination.

INTRODUCTION: POETRY SOCIETIES IN PREMODERN KOREA

The ability to compose exquisite poems was one of the literary skills that educated elites strove to perfect in prernodern Korean society, whose cultural norms were governed by the classical Chinese tradition. While expressing their thoughts and feelings in their poems, they could prove their academic and cultural sophistication by composing impeccable verses following complex rhyming rules. The indispensable role of poetry composition in political communication made it even more important for scholar-officials to learn how to write good poems. Diplomatic protocols were always accompanied by the participants' poems, which embodied both hierarchy and harmony between the two countries involved. The poems exchanged between Choson (1392-1910) and Ming (1368-1644) diplomats on such occasions, for instance, were compiled together as a collection (Hwanghwa chip [phrase omitted]). (1) Proficiency in poetry composition thus had both cultural and political significance. Korean literati were expected to compose and recite poems in flawless form in both private and public settings.

The practice of composing poems using the rhymes and metrical rules of those written by others promoted poetry exchanges that became the ideal mode for elite social networking. Physical and temporal separation between poets did not prohibit this kind of interaction, because they could add on to any poems only if they had composed their own poems by matching the rhymes. Nevertheless, physical gatherings could animate the practice of composition as a group. Poets could work on the same topics simultaneously. They could also compose interlinked poems: each group member could take a turn by using the rhymes of the poem composed by the person right before them. (2) The final product was a series of poems interconnected in both format and content. The oral recitation and aural appreciation of these poems made these meetings more invigorating. Social gatherings for composing poems together thus developed into a popular networking pattern for literati in premodern Korea.

Although we cannot confirm the exact origin of such cultural activities, precedents began to appear in the Koryo period (918-1392). (3) Educated male elites of the Chosen dynasty continued this tradition and developed poetry societies (sisa [phrase omitted]) to increase cohesion among the group members while distinguishing themselves from nonelites through a lifestyle saturated with literary refinement. Along with the bifurcation of the elite class into the prominent yangban [phrase omitted] and the lesser chungin [phrase omitted] since the late sixteenth century, (4) this particular mode of social networking trickled down to the secondary status groups during the late Choson period. (5) Poetry societies by secondary status groups particularly developed in the Seoul area, where members worked in government positions requiring special skills such as medicine and interpretation or as petty clerks in diverse offices. The popularity of chungin poetry societies peaked in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chungin poetry societies in Seoul prospered to the extent that yangban elites had no qualms about joining them. Emphasizing the diverse ways in which some yangban elites supported chungin writers in this context, Chong Okcha claimed that their literature (wihang munhak [phrase omitted]) could thrive under the aegis of some prominent yangban scholars. (6)

Yangban elites' patronization of chungin cultural leadership, however, demands more scrutiny. Although chungin poets did not develop a subversive culture threatening yangban domination, some of them did emphasize how unfair the social status system was by venting their grievances in their poems. (7) Yangban elites would have been concerned about these critical voices and wary about helping the chungin literary enterprise prosper. The incongruity between social status and degree of literary refinement could also have weakened their sociopolitical leadership, which was rooted in the Confucian classical tradition. Here, Norbert Elias's study of the ways manners and etiquette trickled down in early modern Europe offers a substantial basis for analysis. Elias demonstrates that nonelites imitated elite culture when they perceived that upward social mobility was possible, as when the French bourgeoisie emulated the lifestyle of the nobility; but when the chances for upward social mobility were negligible, as in the case of the German middle-class intelligentsia, nonelites tended to create their own subversive culture. (8) This seemingly persuasive analysis of sociocultural interactions between elites and nonelites, however, does not apply to the study of Choson poetry societies. The chungin poetic practices, modeled after elite culture, prospered in spite of the impossibility of upward social mobility; the rigid social stratification lasted until the end of the Choson dynasty. Yangban elites, moreover, shared their literary heritage with chungin groups at the risk of eroding their own cultural prestige and social privileges. (9) How can we understand this cultural partnership between yangban elites and secondary status groups?

This essay will address this question by examining the development of the Songsogwon Poetry Society [phrase omitted], generally regarded as the most successful poetry society led by secondary status groups, at the turn of the nineteenth century. By examining diverse factors that contributed to the society's success, this article will demonstrate that cultural leadership by secondary status groups does not necessarily attest to the destabilization of the social status system. Rather, it was instrumental in fostering the mutual dependency between yangban elites and their chungin counterparts in political, economic, and technological areas, which coordinated the best interests of the upper echelons of Choson society. Unlike in early modern Europe as analyzed by Elias, in Korea the converging cultural practices between elites and secondary status groups did not lead to the closure of the sociopolitical gap between them.

CHUNGIN AS CONNECTORS

The binary social status system in the early Choson law code--the commoner group (yangin [phrase omitted]) and the lowly group (ch'onin [phrase omitted])--was during the second half of the dynasty divided into four groups: the aristocracy (yangban), the secondary group (chungin), the commoners (sangin [phrase omitted]), and the lowborn (ch'onin). (10) According to the claims of chungin themselves, which we can corroborate through analysis of their genealogies, this group seems to have developed into a separate class in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. (11) The term initially referred to technical experts barred from moving up to key government positions filled by high-ranking officials. Chungin, however, served as an umbrella term that included diverse secondary status groups. Because the Choson legal system prohibited the secondary sons of aristocratic families, who were offspring of yangban fathers and commoner or slave mothers, from taking the civil service examinations, they entered low-ranking government positions by taking miscellaneous exams for various specialties, which included translation, medicine, law, arithmetic, and astrology. (12) Beginning in the late fourteenth century, even within the same elite clans, those who took official positions in the central government began to split from their clansmen who worked as low-ranking clerks in the local offices of their hometowns. Such divisions of lineage groups within the same clan based upon different positions in the Choson bureaucracy had taken root since the late sixteenth century and caused the formation of one chungin branch. (13) Another vocational group that joined the chungin class was military officers. Eugene Park has shown that the military examination system during the late Choson period satisfied the status aspiration of those who were marginalized from the political center. (14) As these positions had become hereditary toward the end of the dynasty, technical experts, petty government clerks, secondary sons from yangban families, military officers, and provincial clerks converged into one class. Sandwiched between yangban elites and commoners, the chungin class positioned themselves at the border between the downgraded yangban and commoners striving to move up the social ladder. (15)

Eligibility for government positions in the Choson bureaucracy in this way mirrored the social hierarchy. The bureaucratic eligibility reserved for yangban aristocrats violated the merit-oriented selection process in the civil service examination system based upon the notion of Confucian egalitarianism. (16) The Choson bureaucracy "reinforced" and "refined" the hereditary social status system by perpetuating the yangban aristocrats' domination of political power and social prestige. (17) The result was a mixture of merit and hereditary qualifications instead of the pure rationality, meritocracy, and...