1024 NOTES TO CHAPTER Iand siJin (commoners) used in apposition. But both Han and Yu have responded to the
charge and found a number of instances when the terms yang 'in or yang were apparently
used in a broad sense to include yangban. Yu Siingwon, ChosrJn eh 'ogi sinbunje yon 'gu,PP·5^0 -53·
- Yu Siingwon stated explicitly that in his view the hereditary aristocracy of the Koryo
period was obliterated and replaced by a new sadaebu elite that arose from the class of
small-to-medium landowners. Ibid., 50-5I. - Song June-ho, "Choson yangban-go," pp. 175-80, 200-2or, 222-23. Han Yong'u
specifically rejected the citation of Yang Songji's statement to prove that the great fam-
ilies or yangban were a status elite because Yang was mainly concerned with preserv-
ing their ownership of slaves and was advocating a new policy to grant them privileges
that they did not already possess. He also pointed out that since Yang proposed that men
from all social status groups, including the highest, be subjected to military service, he
was not a supporter of status. But this argument could be turned against Han by using
the same kind of argument used regarding yangban slave ownership. That is, if Yang
was advocating military service for high status groups, it must have been because they
were currently not subjected to it -an implicit recognition of the existence of a privi-
leged status elite! See Han Yong'u, "Choson ch'ogi sahoe kyech'iing yon'gu e taehan
chaeron," pp. 331-32.
3 I. Yu and Han rejected the idea, but John Duncan is apparently at work on this sub-
ject at present. See the section entitled "Marriage Relations of the Great Families" in
chapter 3 of John Duncan, The Koryo Origins qlthe Chosi'jn Dynasl}~ University of Wash-
ington Press, forthcoming. See Song June-ho, "Namwon chibang'iil yero hayobon
Choson sidae hyangch'on sahoe u kujo wa sonkyok" [The structure and nature of village
society in the Choson period as seen in the Namwon area), in idem, Chos()n sahoesa
yrJn 'gu (Seoul: Ikhogak, 1987), pp. 277-306; idem, "Namwon e tiirooniin Ch'angp'yong
ii Wolkusil Yu-ssi, Yangban segye e isso hon'in i iiimi hayotton'got [The Wolkusil Yu clan
of Ch'angp'yong that moved into Namwon, the meaning of marriage in the yangban world J,
in Cllos()n sahoesa yc'jn'gu (Seoul: Ikhogak, I987), pp. 307-25. - Song June-ho, "Choson yangban-go," p. 243.
- On the nothoi and the Poch'unggun, see ibid., pp. 249-59 et passim. In seeking
to refute Song's view that a prominent ancestor was necessary for the maintenance of a
family's yangban status, Yi Songmu claimed that if this condition were important, it would
have been mentioned in the late fifteenth-century law code, the Kydngguk taejiJn. Song's
discovery of just such a provision in the sources etlectively refuted Han's objection. - Ibid.
- Yi Songmu stated that the importance of a prominent ancestor disappeared by the
sixteenth century, ChosiJn ell 'ogi yangban y()n 'gu, p. 218. Song's study of the seventeenth
and eighteenth century yangban does not necessarily refute this and Han Yong'u's opin-
ions because both argued that by the seventeenth century the yangban had become a sta-
tus group. particularly in local communities. But Song's discovery of explicit provisions
for granting privileges to those with a prominent ancestor in the "four ancestors" (sajo)
in both husband and wife's families does refute this view. - Song June-ho, "Choson yangban-go," p. 248.