Strengthening the inner circle: the marriage networks of elite families in Joseon Korea

ABSTRACT

Socioeconomic homogamy is a prominent process for reproducing the social structure in preindustrial societies including East Asian countries. Although Joseon Korea was a centralized bureaucratic state under a king, the stratification system was unique by its ambiguity such that the previlege of an upper class was not officially confirmed. Since the social status was rather conferred by the reputation of the family, the quality of marriage relation was important for a man to be ranked as a central official. In this paper, we investigate patterns of social homogamy among elite families in the early Joseon Korea through empirical evidence of the relationship between official rank and spousal family background.  We created a novel dataset by compiling the marriage network and official rank information of 14,508 individuals from the jokbos (族譜, genealogy) of 15 elite families and conduct an ordinal logit regression analysis to investigate whether spousal family background increases the probability of an individual being promoted in the bureaucracy. We find that the socio-political power of affinal kin has a greater effect on promotions than the descent and meritocratic effects. Particularly, the empirical evidence shows that marrying into a queen consort’s family increased the likelihood of an individual being ranked in a high position, which was beneficial for retaining the political power of him and the family.  The study shows that marriage as a means of managing the socio-political inner circle of elite families, shaping the elites’ socio-political inner circle, built on the marriage network around a queen consort’s family to benefit the royal authority and the elite group.

KEYWORDS:

• Joseon Korea
• elite families
• queen consort
• jokbo
• marriage relationship
• official rank

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Maas et al., 2011; Bull, 2005; Dribe and Lundh, 2005; Maas and van Leeuwen, 2005; Van Bavel et al., 1998 and van Leeuwen and Maas, 2002 study homogamy with respect to parental status during the 19^th century marriages in France and the Netherlands, whereas, Kalmijn, 1991; Kalmijn & Flap, 2001 and Uunk, 1996 cover the 20^th century.

2. We included individuals who lived in the years from 1345 (the Goryeo dynasty was interrupted by Yuan China during this period, late 13^th to early 14^th centuries) through 1544 (the 39^th year of Jungjong, the 11^th king, 1506–1544).

3. Baek (2008, p. 251).

4. The Great Code of Administration (Gyeongguk-Daejeon, 經國大典, promulgated in 1476) provides no official statement about restricting eligibility. However, a gwageo applicant had to submit their family records up to four generations (Bo-danja, 保單子) or, at least, one of his precedents within four generations must have been ranked in a bureaucracy (Hyeongwan, 縣官). Because of this norm, most applicants were yangban, although common people could have a chance to raise their social status as an official (Y. Han, 2013).

5. A clan under one progenitor could branch out multiple lines/families/pa(派)s. A line is typically distinguished by a person who made significant contributions to improving the family’s social or economic status such as receiving recognition from a king as a meritorious subject.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A5B6075104) and Ajou University Research Fund.