SLAVERY 251ignored to secure an adequate number of male slaves for traditional low-status
occupations. Nevertheless, in Chon's view, the matrilineal rule acted as an incen-
tive for intermarriage because it offered an escape from slavery, reduced the
gap between slaves and commoners, and began the trend toward the abolition
of slavery.^163
On the other hand, Ellen Kim found that 6 percent of the slaves of the Sunch'on
Kim lineage in the Myodong subdistrict (myon) ofTaegu area listed in the house-
hold register were children of commoner mothers born after 1731, a violation
of the matrilineal rule that should have authorized commoner status for them.
She concluded that although the lineage was not ignoring the law, it was not
complying with it completely.^164 The matrilineal rule may have achieved its
intended purpose by the end of the eighteenth century, but it is hard to under-
stand why. given its past ineffectiveness, unless other factors were at work as
well.
At least we know now that for whatever reasons the slave population declined
sharply in the late eighteenth century, but not as sharply as the great pioneer in
the study of social change, Shikata Hiroshi, indicated. Shikata's article in 1938
presented popUlation tables for a cluster of villages in the Taegu area of
Kyongsang Province in four time periods: 1690, 1729-32, 1783-89, and
1858.165 Of approximately 3,000 households in each of the four periods, Shikata
showed that the percentage of slave households in the total household popula-
tion dropped from 37. I percent in 1690. to 26.6 percent in 1729-32, to 5.0 per-
cent in 1783-89, and finally to 1.5 percent in 1858. The population figures,
however, differed considerably from the household statistics. While the slave
population decreased in the first three periods from 44.6 percent to 33.3 percent
to 16.5, in the last period. 1858, it rose to 31.7 percent (or 4,189 slaves ofa total
of 13,195 persons), but they were divided into only 44 registered households. 166
Shikata explained the general reduction of slaves as the result of the desire for
upward mobility, and the small number of slave households in 1858 by the absorp-
tion of slaves into the households of the masters and problems created by false
registration. [07 The slave population figure for 1858, however, leads one to won-
der whether the slave popUlation at the end of the dynasty was really as low as
has been advertised by those who choose to focus only on the number of slave
households, such as Kim YOngmo, who found that the slave population dropped
in the Taegu area from 47.9 percent to 13.0 percent between 1684 and 1867. lOS
Chong Sokchong's study of population statistics in one of the subdistricts near
Ulsan (Nongso-myon) from 1729 to 1867 demonstrated that the outside-resi-
dent slaves (oego l1obi) virtually disappeared from sight by the end ofthat period,
but the service slaves (so/go l1obi)16^9 remained in slightly larger numbers. The
percentage of slave households to total households dropped from 13.9 percent
in 1729 to 2.0 percent in 1765 to 0.56 percent in 1867. These households rep-
resented a slave population of about 1,208 in 1729 that dropped to 466 in 1867.
Of these the number of outside-resident slaves decreased from 9.2 percent in
1729 to 0.3 percent in 1867, but the domestic slaves decreased only from 21.8