The Endogenous Dynamics of Social Transformation in Traditional Korea

Abstract

The Confucian society of Korea which was characterized by the well established estate system, centralization of state power and private ownership of arable land entered a process of transformation after the Korea-Japan War at the turn of the 17th century. Technical innovation and commodity production in agriculture went hand in hand with the policy reforms by the state. Tax in kind began to be substituted either by coins or goods like rice or cotton, i.e. functional substitutes for money. These tax reforms accelerated the monetarization of social relations. The role of private merchants and local markets became more important in supplying every-day consumer goods. On the other hand, a new form of division of labor occurred in handicrafts, so that we see manufacture as early as the first half of the nineteenth century. These changes had a strong impact on the dissolution of the estate system. By consulting official household registers several historians succeeded in ascertaining an inflation of Yangban estate in selected southern localities. At the same time, the slave population decreased drastically, so that the state authorities had no alternative but to burn the registers for the state-owned slaves. The process of dissolution of the estate system meant the overall transformation of this closed Confucian society. We call this dynamics of social change long before the coming of Western imperial powers endogenous. Traditional Korea in this sense deserves attention by sociologists who are inclined to understand sociology as a discipline for the analysis of long-term social processes.