1The problem of “vacant succession,” even though universal, may not be solved in all societies in the same way. In premodern Korea, it does not seem to have been as important and contentious an issue as it was, for instance, in countries of Western Europe. The main reason is likely the fact that Korean society was a kin-based society and regulated succession from within the group without much outside interference. As the group derived its momentum from ancestral empowerment, it was socio-ritual rather than legal or economic criteria that remedied succession or rare cases of abeyance.

2Korean society was a highly stratified society that sharply differentiated between an aristocratic elite and a non-elite (the latter consisting of commoners and slaves). Only elite society will be taken into consideration in this article because practically no historical documentation exists that details the social organization of the non-elite.

Succession and Inheritance in Koryŏ (932-1392): The Pre-Confucian Regulations

3Prior to the advent of Neo-Confucianism at the end of the fourteenth century Korean elite society was organized on the basis of bilaterally structured descent groups. Such a group, which could be large and segmented in several branches, was a collectivity of kin focused on common ancestry. Ancestral empowerment formed the socio-political foundation of elite legitimation, and elite status was consequently determined not legally but socially. A man needed impeccable bilateral descent credentials in order to claim access to top ranks in state and society. In other words: the social, that is birth and descent, determined the degree to which a man could hold political office.

5Equal inheritance led to marriage patterns that did not necessarily disrupt a common household. On the contrary, uxorilocal marriages were common so that a sister did not inevitably leave the household upon marriage; if she died without offspring, her share was not allowed to pass into the hands of affines and was demanded back by her kin. As a member of his wife’s household, an in-marrying man had for himself usufructuary rights over his spouse’s property and also established his children as potential heirs of her group. At the beginning of the dynasty (late tenth and eleventh centuries), when times were unsettled, consanguineous marriages (for example between patrilateral and matrilateral cousins or even among siblings with different mothers) were widespread for keeping an estate intact.

6Another specific aspect of Koryŏ marriages was the fact that a husband could have several wives (“visiting husband”), apparently all of more or less equal status. This was possible because these wives were economically independent. Since the wives often continued to live in their native households in which they were co-heirs, they did not depend on their husbands for their upkeep. The impartial treatment of a man’s plural wives was decisive for their children: all were their father’s rightful heirs and thus could also expect to inherit equal shares of his property.

The Adoption of Neo-Confucian Social Norms in Early Chosŏn

8Koryŏ society underwent massive changes when Neo-Confucian socio-ritual norms and values were adopted at the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). To be sure, under the influence of legal practices of Tang China, the intrusion of patrilineal rules started as early as the Silla period (sixth century) and gained ever greater significance toward the end of Koryŏ, but the state was unable to reach more than the public realm. It was the application of Confucian-inspired legislation and the occasional perusal of The Great Ming Code that in the early centuries of Chosŏn decisively shifted the indigenous descent group from bilaterality to a patrilineal mode with primogeniture. This transformation was a unique feat of social engineering that over time altered the socio-political premises of the Korean descent group and its succession and inheritance practices.

9By consulting the Chinese classics, the early Chosŏn legislators –learned high-ranking scholar-officials belonging to the elite stratum of society– gained the conviction that the Confucian socio-political ideology would restore the purportedly corrupt social and economic system of late Koryŏ and establish the “natural order” of Chinese antiquity as the new moral order of Chosŏn. The Confucian transformation of Korean society propagated a strong agnatic ideology that gave rise to tightly organized unilineal descent groups. The ancestral cult expedited the implantation of agnatic consciousness and structure. Indeed, it was the place assigned genealogically to an individual in the ritual hierarchy of agnates that determined his rights and duties within the descent group and consequently his chances of ritual and economic succession.

10The implantation of the lineal (agnatic) principle. This new organizational principle changed the organization of the indigenous bilateral descent group in crucial respects. First, it introduced a clear differentiation between superordinate and subordinate descent lines within a descent group. The former was to become the socio-ritual backbone of the descent group, headed by the eldest son who functioned as the ritual heir. The latter were headed by his younger brother(s) who did not have specific ritual obligations. The religious and social preeminence of the eldest son of the main line (chongson) was determined genealogically and therefore was inviolable and unchallengeable.

12In short, although descent was henceforth reckoned exclusively through the patriline, i.e., the male descent line, status ascription continued to be determined bilaterally. Both parents of a man had to belong to a certified elite descent group for him to be considered a genuine member of elite society and a suitable servant of the state. This unique combination of patrilineality and bilaterality was expressed in the distinctively Korean formula of the “four ancestors.” This formula, which included a man’s three lineal agnatic ascendants and his matrilateral grandfather, identified him as a member of the elite and, importantly, qualified him for sitting the civil service examinations. Because secondary wives were perceived as lacking such social qualifications, their sons (sŏja) were excluded from bona fide membership in their elite father’s descent group: as minor heirs they were not only barred from domestic ancestral rites but also disqualified from taking the civil service examinations and, by extension, from political participation. Clearly, principal wives played a decisive role in guaranteeing their offspring’s legitimacy and perpetuating elite status.

14The hierarchization of ritual duties created multiple problems. In 1428, for instance, the most pressing question was the distribution of ritual obligations among brothers who held offices of different ranks. What if a younger brother’s rank was higher than that of the first son? Would this not lead to the usurpation of the main line by a cadet line? In their attempt to defuse possible conflicts among brothers, ritual experts found the solution in the ritual classic, the Liji (Records of Rites): in the above case, a younger brother would be allowed to take charge of ritual duties, but only temporarily, since the shifting of the eldest son’s ritual prerogatives to a cadet line would not be tolerated. Nevertheless, a short time later this ruling was amended to the effect that the number of ancestral generations to be worshipped should be determined by the highest official rank attained by any of several brothers. Clearly, traditional considerations of prestige and social standing hindered the unequivocal acceptance of the agnatic rule that put the eldest son in charge of the ancestral rites.

15Lineal succession and ancestor worship. While intergenerational pressures threatened the acceptance of the lineal principle, linearity was often challenged even more seriously across generations. Zhu Xi’s Domestic Rituals prescribed primogeniture to regulate the generational transition of the main descent line, but Korean indigenous custom was based on fraternal succession. Here lay one of the most intractable issues of early Chosŏn legislation. Heirship not only involved the continuation of the descent group, it also entailed jural as well as ritual obligations. After lengthy deliberations, in 1437 the government laid down for the first time the principle of lineal succession: if a real son was lacking, a closely related kinsman of appropriate generation had to be chosen as successor. Titled “to establish an heir” (iphu), this procedure (henceforth glossed as “jural succession”) regulated the jural transfer of the household headship, titles, and property rights, and also limited ritual obligations. The sticking point was the scope of the jural heir’s ritual obligations because an earlier law regulating ritual succession (pongsa) had prescribed fraternal succession in case the direct lineal heir was without issue.

17Sooner or later the legislators had to find a formula to reconcile “jural succession” with the already codified “ritual succession.” The latter was essentially concerned with recruiting the most senior agnatic descendant as ritual heir in charge of the ancestral services for more than one generation of ancestors. Given the respect paid to earlier legislation, the ritual succession law could not simply be scratched, and therefore both rules in the end were inscribed in the dynasty’s first law code, the Kyŏngguk taejŏn of 1471 (extant only in the version of 1485). The law read: “One establishes as heir a ‘branch son’ of the same descent group.” This was interpreted as meaning “if the direct lineal descendant has neither a primary nor a secondary son, the son of a younger brother must be made heir; he then can worship the grandfather as well as more distant ancestors. A collateral agnate of appropriate generation is acceptable, but he cannot perform services for the grandfather and more remote ancestors.” Clearly, the concept of jural heir was tightened as he had also to be qualified to conduct services for a wider range of ancestors.

20Cases of arbitrary choices of heirs continued to be discussed in the mid-sixteenth century. As long as the relationship between jural heir and ritual heir was not conclusively determined, such occurrences were inevitable. Because, besides ritual considerations, economic interests were involved, quarrels between established heirs and later-born rivals were frequent. Nevertheless, with the passing of time, lineal consciousness deepened, and the “right” choice of heir became a matter of social acceptability. Socially sanctioned ritual propriety thus eventually won over the legal discourse.

23Property inheritance. At the beginning of Chosŏn, the land reforms were based on the premise that all land belonged to and was administered by the state. This dictum was clearly manifested in the state’s efforts to secure the central officialdom’s livelihood by introducing a prebendal land system. According to his official rank a recipient was entitled to collect, instead of the state, the land tax. After the recipient’s death prebendal land had to revert to the state in order to prevent its alienation from state control. Administrative difficulties and irregularities in handing the prebend back to the state, however, led to the gradual breakdown of the system toward the end of the fifteenth century. The state’s attempt to gain control over land that in earlier days had been in private hands failed, and with the expansion of existing landholdings and reclamation of waste land, the elite was able to attain a significant degree of economic independence from the state.

24Inheritance of land and slaves was, therefore, principally a private matter. The early Chosŏn legislators did, however, lay down some guidelines within the newly established framework of linearity. The emphasis on agnatic succession necessitated a fresh definition of the group within which the patrimonial property was to be divided. A fully developed law of inheritance was codified in the Kyŏngguk taejŏn (1485). This code, which retained its normative power throughout the rest of the dynasty, reaffirmed the tradition of equal inheritance of sons and daughters, but newly introduced the lineal principle by excluding collateral heirs. It also determined differential shares for secondary offspring. Significantly, it allotted to the ritual heir at least one share more than his siblings.

25The patrimony came to be recognized as the economic mainstay of a descent group, and its transmission from one generation to the next was therefore taken as a purely private affair. As long as the lineal principle was not fully understood, parental wills at times arbitrarily preferred some heirs over the others, giving rise to familial discords. The final legal fixation of equal division, however, deprived such documents of their discretionary powers and thus rendered them ineffectual.

26The patrimony was either divided as long as one parent was still alive or after both parents’ death. Documents of the early fifteenth century do at times show differential apportionments citing “according to the father’s wish,” but on the whole give evidence of equal division among sons and daughters, occasionally forestalling disputes by referring to the law. Central was the concern that the patrimony would not be passed on to outsiders beyond the group of statutory heirs. If the main line remained without heir, not just any member of a descent group was considered proper inheritor of such heirless property. The law singled out one specific segment of kin only: siblings and relatives of the second and third degree – kinsmen who were wearing mourning for each other. This was a large pool of people so that the problem of abeyance may have only rarely arisen. When it did arise, adoption was the remedy. Early in the dynasty, following Chinese models, either a child under age three, who came from either the husband’s or the wife’s stock, or an abandoned child (of uncertain background) could be selected for adoption (suyangja), and both had to be treated as natural child. Such adoptions, however, provided a childless couple with an acceptable heir to their property rather than to their descent line.

27The tricky point, it was found later in the fifteenth century, was to determine the relationship between an “established heir” (iphu) and an “adopted son” (suyangja). Since the latter was most often a non-agnate, he was not deemed qualified to perform ancestral rites for his adoptive parents and therefore could not become a bona fide heir. His social downgrading also diminished his economic expectations. In short, such adoptions were thus of little value and were eventually superseded by establishing heirs who possessed the proper social, economic, and ritual qualifications. As discussed earlier, for the lineally conscious elite it was social and ritual rather than economic considerations that eventually made agnatic adoption mandatory.

28Clearly, in Korea the laws regulating the transmission of economic property from one generation to the next, eventually codified in the Kyŏngguk taejŏn, were principally conceived in terms found in China’s ritual rather than legal literature. The state was involved only in so far as the early lawmakers, members of the elite, were also high officials. As ritualists, they were intent on finding ways to impose the new concepts of agnation and lineal succession without, however, discarding indigenous traditions of equal inheritance and fraternal equality. The elite was legislating for the elite.

Lineage-Building as Social and Economic Safeguard in the Second Half of Chosŏn

29The implantation of agnation and the building of a Confucian-style social order was a long process that extended over several centuries. It was in the seventeenth century that this process came to maturation, and a combination of political, economic, and ritual factors created the preconditions for the growth of Confucian-style patrilineages. By that time, the majority of the elite was living in the countryside and gradually lost its vital connection with the political life at the center. Without continually sending members to sit the civil service examinations and to enter the government, state approbation of high status diminished, threatening localized descent groups with loss of elite status. Building lineages as status-protecting organizations thus made sense. Equally important for advancing the growth of lineages was the critical economic situation: after an initial period of vigorous land reclamation and founding of extended landed estates, by 1650 land shortage forced a rethinking of the inheritance system. Agnatic thinking provided motivation as well as practical patterns to restructure the property-holding group.

30Emergence of the patrilineal descent group. From the beginning of the dynasty, the government propagated Zhu Xi’s Domestic Rites as the authoritative ritual handbook and incorporated many of its prescripts, especially linearity and agnation, as legal norms in the dynasty’s first law code. Educated members of the elite began to peruse the Domestic Rites in their ritual performances and recognized the pivotal role of the eldest son as ritual heir in charge of the ancestral rites. They consequently allotted him an extra inheritance share to bolster his economic standing. Indeed, the amount of landed property set aside for the rites determined the degree to which a kin group could fulfill a Confucian-conforming ritual program. Zhu Xi’s Domestic Rites furnished the ideological justification for eventually concentrating the ancestral wealth exclusively (or nearly so) on the eldest son, the ritual heir (chongson). By 1650, then, the growth of ancestral trusts started to threaten equal inheritance.

32Economic necessities were forcing the tightening of the contours of the descent group, and the agnatic ideology provided the structural framework for doing so. It elevated the eldest son as the primus of an agnatically restructured group and propagated the notion that he was the only one who possessed the “right substance” to deal with the group’s ancestors. As the primogeniture heir (chongson) of the ancestral main descent line, he was the most important link between the generations. He inherited his father’s rights and duties and represented the sibling group. As his standing derived from his genealogical position, his authority in lineage affairs was unassailable. He was the chief officiant in the ancestral shrine; his brothers and cousins –the descendants of a common great-great-grandfather– were mere onlookers. In support of his elevated status, he also enjoyed economic privileges. He lived in the ancestral homestead and was in charge of the ancestral trust that in the eighteenth century rapidly increased at the expense of his younger brothers’ inheritance shares. Clearly, the institution of primogeniture broke with the tradition of fraternal equality and disadvantaged his siblings both ritually and economically.

35Succession and inheritance in the second half of Chosŏn. The maturation of the lineage system in the second half of the Chosŏn impacted succession and inheritance practices. While earlier both sons and daughters had customarily obtained equal portions of the parental wealth, and, in absence of natural children, collaterals had been acceptable recipients, the introduction of patriliny narrowed inheritance rules: the offspring of the primary wife alone were bona fide heirs of their parents’ wealth, while the inheritance shares of children of secondary wives were smaller and variable. There was a clear shift from horizontal to vertical inheritance channels with the mother’s social origin determining individual portions. Accordingly, if a primary son existed, the commoner secondary son received one in seven shares, the lowborn secondary son one in ten. As the preferential treatment of the ritual heir, who initially received at least one share more than his siblings to perform his ritual duties, culminated in primogeniture and the creation of ancestral trusts, the other heirs –younger sons and daughters– found themselves eventually excluded from inheritance.

36The main line as the social backbone of the entire descent structure was under pressure to perpetuate itself, if only for one reason: to continue the observance of the rites for the group’s ancestors. As soon as a legitimate heir, the first son by the primary wife, was born, lineal continuation was secure. If no direct lineal descendant existed, succession became a central issue of concern endangering a descent group’s socio-religious survival. “Vacant succession” –leaving the descent line without an heir– was a legal as well as a ritual impossibility, in particular in the case of the main descent line. Lineal succession involved several issues. To guarantee the continuity of the group from within, a substitute heir had to emulate the characteristics of a son as closely as possible. A close relative of the deceased, preferably a nephew, was therefore an ideal replacement. Heirship, after all, entailed jural as well as ritual obligations. While jural heirship meant the transfer of household headship, titles, and property rights, ritual succession included the discharge of ancestral rites not only for the deceased father but also, in principle, for more distant generations of ancestors. The balanced consideration of all these issues was a precondition for choosing the “right” heir who would not only be acceptable to the living but who would also have the necessary rapport with the ancestors.

38In the seventeenth century, thus, it was still tolerable to let a main line shift to a collateral line – in violation of the lineal principle. Indeed, far into the second half of the Chosŏn there were practices, called “local customs,” that went against linearity. When, for instance, direct male descendants were lacking, non-agnatic grandsons were often put in charge of the rites for their maternal grandparents or even great-grandparents and were even rewarded with land grants. Nevertheless, the involvement of a daughter’s offspring in ritual affairs was soon condemned as a grave violation of Confucian prescriptions and gradually phased out.

39An especially sensitive and controversial issue was the question of whether or not the son of a secondary wife (sŏja) was qualified to take the place of a primary son and precede his father’s brothers and their sons and substitute for his father as well as for the patrilineage. Opinions and practices on this question differed widely. Emphasizing the lineal principle, some prominent ritualists pleaded that if an eldest son did not have a primary son, a son of his next younger brother, i.e., a nephew, would have to be adopted as the main line’s successor and ritual heir; a secondary son would be unacceptable as lineal-ritual heir to the main descent line. A contrary opinion, however, held that in case of primary issue lacking a secondary son of commoner status (i.e., with a commoner mother) could well be chosen as lineal-ritual heir.

40Nevertheless, even if out of sympathy a secondary son was made heir, his heirship was often only temporary as the main line later tended to switch to a younger primary son of a collateral line. Deathbed wills at times even stipulated that no secondary son of either commoner or base background should be allowed to become the ritual heir lest the distinction between elite and non-elite become blurred. In care of a secondary son, moreover, it was feared that the rites would soon come to an end, dooming the line.

41In rare instances, however, a secondary son was preferred as heir over an adopted son in violation of ritual prescriptions for purely economic considerations, in particular when land was becoming scarce. Even though such a secondary heirship might later be challenged by primary kin, a secondary son, it was reasoned, was nevertheless “blood-related” and thus presumably a better steward of his father’s wealth than an adoptee with split loyalties. Such manipulations seem to have been rare and not deemed fit to guarantee their fathers’ descent group’s physical and sociocultural reproduction; a secondary son as heir of his father was therefore often forced to form his own frequently short-lived secondary descent line, which was excluded from the ancestral cult of the primary descent group.

45The rise of single-surname villages. An outcome of the extended process of lineage formation was the development of single-surname villages in the course of the seventeenth century. Lineages kept kin together –ritually, economically, and socially– and bound them to a certain locality, a named village. Indeed, the village name came to be an important component of an elite lineage’s identity. The Ŭisŏng Kim who settled in Naeap (Andong area, Kyŏngsang North Province), for instance, came to be known as the Naeap Kim. Naeap was not only the place where the Kim resided from generation to generation, it was also their economic basis. Naeap, moreover, identified the Kim as members of the local elite. Ward rosters, focused on a single village or cluster of villages, listed the names of those who had the right to settle in the ward and exploit the ward’s common resources: in the first place, the elite lineage members who resided in the main settlement, in the second place, the non-elite (mostly secondary sons) who lived in “lower hamlets.” The ward roster thus reflected a village’s social and territorial divisions.

46Villages with strong single-surname dominance became nuclei from which “satellite” villages branched off. While a lineage’s main heir (chongson) continued to live in the ancestral village to take care of the ancestral shrine, his younger brothers and cousins often moved out and established their own settlements. Even when they eventually founded their own sub-branches, they remained attached to the original ancestral shrine as the focus of their social and ritual life. As a collectivity of kinsmen, they formed part of a far-flung higher-order lineage organization.

47Single-surname villages were strictly exogamous and preferentially exchanged spouses among a small, more or less constant number of social peer groups who lived within a restricted marriage radius, rarely crossing provincial boundaries. Multiple marital ties spun over generations among a limited number of kin groups enmeshed single-surname villages in durable affinal networks, always ready to come to one another’s assistance.

48Strong and well-organized lineages inhabiting single-surname villages controlled major land holdings that were usually organized in corporate trusts. These trusts not only financed the ancestral rites: they also guaranteed a lineage member, who might have fallen on hard times, a livelihood. For an individual, moving out of the village community because of conflicts or debts or being expelled for lawless acts usually meant loss of ties to kinsmen, social isolation, and economic destitution. Indeed, in late Chosŏn elite status in the countryside had to be continually articulated within the lineage group. Outside the group, elite status was threatened by social humiliation and poverty.

49Localized lineages were thus self-ruling and self-perpetuating corporate entities that managed problems of succession and inheritance, as described earlier, without much state interference. Most elite villages lay in remote areas safely distant from administrative centers, and local magistrates were usually reluctant to get involved in adjudicating intra-lineage conflicts, except homicide cases, or inter-lineage strife.

50The state’s weak control of elite villages. From the beginning of the dynasty, the state tried to extend its control over rural areas by imposing a fine administrative grid over the entire country that was meant to furnish population data for assessing taxes, corvée labor, and military service. Such early attempts, however, failed because of the weakness and administrative inexperience of the state and the impossibility of enforcing a fixed system on widely separated villages. Differences in social status of households, moreover, hampered the summary execution of such a policy, in the capital as well as in the countryside.

Conclusions

52In conclusion, then, the descent-group model persisted throughout Korean history despite various organizational changes, the most important of which was the emergence of patrilineages during the Chosŏn dynasty. With the political conceptualized by tradition as a complement of the social, it was social rather than political or state-sponsored criteria that guided this process. The early dynastic founders of Chosŏn derived inspiration for re-ordering society not from contemporary Chinese law but from what they called the “heritage of the Three Dynasties,” that is, from Chinese classics such as the Zhouli (Rituals of Zhou) and the Liji (Records of Rituals). As members of the elite, they translated their ideological insights into legal statutes that benefitted principally the elite in their conduct of daily life in the domestic as well as in the public realm.

53It was foremost ritual concepts that structured the Chosŏn-dynasty lineage: patrilineality was introduced by enacting ancestral rituals in front of the ancestral shrine as outlined in the Jiali. Ancestral rites were thus the principal instrument for imposing patrilineal patterns, above all primogeniture, upon the bilateral matrix of Korean society. The introduction of agnatic criteria of group formation defined new collectivities from which affines, non-agnates, women, and secondary sons were unsurprisingly excluded. Despite women’s material disinheritance and ritual degradation, primary wives retained, however, their crucial function of transferring elite status on their offspring. Clearly, the patrilineal paradigm streamlined the indigenous descent group, but native elements remained sufficiently prominent to make the Korean lineage not functionally but certainly culturally distinctive from the Confucian model.

54It is within this ritual context that the regulation of succession and inheritance must be understood. If a lineage conferred enduring social identity and prestige and, as property-holding trust, economic security upon its members, it was ideologically as well as legally inconceivable to leave the main descent line without heir in case a primary son was lacking. Indeed, succession and inheritance were intimately linked to the main heir’s obligation to perform ancestral rites. This was a permanent obligation calling for mechanisms to secure its uninterrupted continuity. As a lineage was a large human resource, it was not difficult, although at times contentious, to find a suitable substitute among collaterals. In late Chosŏn, agnatic adoption became the norm. For the same ritual reasons, equal inheritance was eventually skewed to support the eldest son in his ritual role, while individual shares were absorbed into ancestral trusts. The latter not only subsidized the ancestral rites but also functioned as charitable trusts for destitute lineage members.

55The imposition of the patrilineal rule upon traditional fraternal equality did give rise to conflicts among brothers, with younger sons opposing economic degradation more than ritual demotion. General unhappiness was clearly disturbing enough to motivate community leaders to create a new assembly of kinsmen that was larger than the narrowly structured ritual lineage. Called munjung, this new institution was focused on a specific ancestor beyond four ancestral generations and functioned as a collaterally and generationally enlarged ritual lineage. It was the munjung that represented a lineage to the outside world.

56The multi-functional lineage thus safeguarded the lineage members’ social prestige and their economic upkeep. On the basis of ritual and moral principles, it regulated succession and inheritance practices as “private” affairs, which the state could at most endorse.

58In China, Zhu Xi’s Jiali played only a minimal role, and primogeniture never became a structural principle. Equal inheritance among sons thus remained the rule, and ritual heirship was not as strictly regulated as in Korea. In contrast to China, where the state regulated succession and inheritance practices, in Korea the state played a limited role in elite affairs. Although an exacting version of Confucian ritualism became the norm in late Chosŏn, socially determined characteristics of the pre-Confucian past nevertheless persisted and gave the Korean lineages and their institutions their distinctive character.