Introduction
On 10 October 2017, the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service’s series Finding Your Roots featured an episode concerning an American performer named Fred Armisen, who had until then believed that his grandfather Masami Kuni (1908–2007) was Japanese.Footnote 1 The episode revealed not only that Masami Kuni was in fact a Korean whose Korean name was Pak Yŏng-in, but also that the Pak family genealogy (chokpo or sebo) accurately traces his ancestors as far back as Armisen’s fifth great grandparents, who lived in the seventeenth century. More strikingly, host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. disclosed that the Miryang Pak family genealogy identifies as its progenitor Pak Hyŏkkŏse, a mythical figure said to have founded the Silla kingdom (57 BCE?–935 CE), making Armisen a royal descendant.Footnote 2 As Armisen put it, “How does that happen?” His shock might perhaps be attributed to his ignorance of Korean history, but compilers of Korean genealogies commonly claimed that their lineage’s founding ancestors (sijo) were prominent personages such as dynastic founders, kings, princes, high-ranking officials, and generals, or Chinese rulers and migrants from far back in ancient times.Footnote 3 Many contemporary Koreans accept such genealogical claims as fact rather than myth, unaware that such questionable claims became popular only in the Chosŏn period (1392–1910).Footnote 4
This paper examines how the members of the Yu family—whose ancestral seat (pon’gwan) is Kigye, an administrative unit in the southeastern Korean peninsula dating from the Silla kingdom—perceived their ancestry differently over time and documented it in various writings during the Chosŏn dynasty. It also explores how their desire to establish a deep and prominent ancestry led them to invent their founding ancestors.Footnote 5 As learned scholars and officials working to restore their ancestry, the members of the Kigye Yu utilized documentation and textual evidence, but their empiricism was malleable, susceptible to shaping by forces of hearsay and speculation. I argue that haphazard “genealogical research techniques” enabled the invention of elite ancestries—a political, social, and cultural trend also prevalent in other parts of the world such as early modern China and Europe.Footnote 6
This study differs from many existing studies that mention, mostly in passing, that the founding ancestors were imagined, presumed, or invented sometime in the Chosŏn dynasty, but provide no historical analysis of the invention.Footnote 7 Detailed studies to contextualize such inventions are rare due to a lack of sources, but also probably because they would attract hostile criticism from the members of the lineage being studied. An exception is Kim Mun-t’aek’s study of the recovery of two ancestral tombs—the founding ancestor and the third-generation ancestor—of the Chinsŏng Yi descent group, which shows that the members of the Chinsŏng Yi, like the Kigye Yu, relied on lawsuits, hearsay, and geomantic evidence to verify their ancestral tombs in the seventeenth century.Footnote 8 Yet Kim does not make a point that the case of the Chinsŏng Yi is an invention of the early ancestors, and instead characterizes it as a “recovery” (ch’usim). There is a greater chance that the founding ancestor, a thirteenth-century person whose name appears in the 1600 edition of the Chinsŏng Yi Genealogy, and the third-generation ancestor, who was a great-great-grandfather of Yi Hwang (1501–1570), one of the most revered Neo-Confucian scholars of Chosŏn and a member of Chinsŏng Yi, are historical persons, since many elite families in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries kept their ancestral information reaching as far back as the twelfth or thirteenth centuries.Footnote 9
Unlike the case of the Chinsŏng Yi, there is no doubt that the case of the Kigye Yu is one of invention, since it was not until the mid-seventeenth century that Kigye Yu members made any claim that their founding ancestor was either Yu Ŭi-sin, a loyal Silla subject at the time of the dynastic change from the Silla to the Koryŏ periods (918–1392), or Yu Sam-jae, a Silla noble. To trace when, how, and why the Kigye Yu invented its founding ancestors, this study will draw upon not only private writings such as biographies (haengjang), tombstone inscriptions (myobimyŏng or myogalmyŏng), mortuary plaque inscriptions (myojimyŏng), spirit path stele inscriptions (sindobimyŏng), genealogical records, and various types of essays preserved in literary collections (munjip), but also official records such as the histories of Koryŏ and Chosŏn, examination rosters (pangmok), and gazetteers (chi).
The Rise of Genealogical Interests in Chosŏn Korea
The rise of and deepening interest in genealogical records expressed by the social, economic, and political elite called yangban or sadaebu or sajok in the first half of the Chosŏn dynasty provides the historical context within which the Kigye Yu began to invest heavily in comprehending their founding ancestors, starting in the seventeenth century.Footnote 10 Beginning in the Koryŏ period, many elite families kept various types of family records, including household registers, genealogical diagrams (chokto), and commemorative writings. They were often records of just three or four generations of selective paternal and maternal ancestors, although more extensive accounts are offered by a few extant genealogical diagrams, such as the “Haeju O Genealogical Diagram” (Haeju O ssi chokto) dated 1401, and the “Andong Kwŏn Genealogical Diagram” (Andong Kwŏn ssi chokto) dated between 1454 and 1456.Footnote 11
As for genealogies compiled and published in book form, the Andong Kwŏn Genealogy (Andong Kwŏn ssi chokpo), published in 1476, is the oldest extant genealogy in Korea. It should be noted, though, that its compilers had already made various interventions to glorify their founding ancestor and to highlight a linear connection between the asserted founding ancestor and various lines of descent. First, it records as its founder Kwŏn Haeng, who allegedly assisted Wang Kŏn (877–943) in founding the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392), but no historical evidence supports that claim. Second, the genealogy provides only one son’s name in each of the first seven generations after Haeng, raising questions as to its veracity. Sŏ Kŏ-jŏng (1420–1488), though, in his preface to the 1476 edition, seems to rationalize the lack of a record by saying that the family declined for seven generations from Haeng’s grandson Ch’aek, then regained its vitality from two tenth-generation descendants, Su-p’yŏng (?–1250) and Su-hong.Footnote 12 Third, in 1449, a few decades before the genealogy was published, Kwŏn Che (1387–1445), who earlier participated in revising the History of Koryŏ (Koryŏsa), was punished for his effort to fabricate his ancestor Su-p’yŏng as a direct descendant of Haeng: unfortunately for him, earlier records showed that Su-p’yŏng’s ancestry was unknown.Footnote 13 Despite that incident, the three compilers of the genealogy—Sŏ Kŏ-jŏng, Pak Wŏn-ch’ang, and Ch’oe Ho-wŏn (1431–?), who were descendants of the Andong Kwŏn through the daughters’ lines and succeeded Kwŏn Che as the genealogy’s compilers––directly linked Haeng and Su-p’yŏng, already displaying their shared ethos that a deeper ancestry enhanced their social standing.Footnote 14
Genealogy (chokpo) in a book form was conceptually different from other family records in that it placed the founding ancestor at the top and traced and recorded male and female descendants by generation—twenty-one generations in the case of the Andong Kwŏn Genealogy of 1476. Although Chinese genealogies, whose form Korea adapted, were compiled on the principle of patriliny, genealogies compiled before about 1600 traced the descent of both sons and daughters, because maternal lines were also important for determining social standing, and family properties were divided equally among sons and daughters.Footnote 15 That said, they did not record all the members across the twenty-one generations, reflecting the incompleteness of available source materials and a decision to exclude politically problematic lines of descent.Footnote 16 At the same time, having some blood relation to the founding ancestor was the key recording criterion, and it excluded children of a son-in-law who had married a woman who had no Andong Kwŏn blood.Footnote 17
Why did these fifteenth-century elites want to have a genealogy, whose form and scale differed so strikingly from the family records they traditionally kept? In early Chosŏn, as in Koryŏ, genealogical records were used and sometimes required for verifying ancestry when taking the civil service examinations or receiving official appointments, especially through ŭm protection privileges.Footnote 18 They also played a key role in clarifying inheritance of property rights, especially when ownership disputes developed into lawsuits. In addition, they informed the range of ritual obligations and marriageable partners.Footnote 19 That said, ancestral records of three or four generations would usually have been sufficient to meet these practical purposes. Song Chun-ho observes that from the Koryŏ through Chosŏn periods there was a progressive strengthening of an elite culture that honored prominent ancestry (munbŏl ŭisik), which prioritized a person’s family background over their ability or talents as determinants of their success in government and society.Footnote 20 Kwŏn Ki-sŏk’s study confirms that the early Chosŏn genealogical records were largely compiled by high-ranking central government officials and consequently embodied a sense that they shared prominent ancestry.Footnote 21 A statistical analysis of the Andong Kwŏn Genealogy of 1476 reveals that social status was the key criterion for inclusion, since those who held mid- to high-level government posts, and their descendants, had a better chance of being recorded.Footnote 22 In addition, Yi Su-gŏn notes that Chosŏn elites became more conscious of genealogy as they envisioned a society ordered by the Neo-Confucian principle of patriliny and patriarchy.Footnote 23 Because a Confucian transformation of Korean society and culture took a few centuries, however, the first genealogies reflected Korea’s traditional values such as the importance of maternal lines.Footnote 24
Other historical contexts that motivated early Chosŏn elites to pay attention to their ancestry might have included changes in the scope and nature of yangban elites. The previous Koryŏ dynasty was fundamentally an aristocratic society, in which only limited categories of people could assume government posts and enjoy elite status. From the very beginning of the dynasty, powerholders of the country were reorganized as territorially based aristocrats collectively called hyangni, who were identified with Chinese-style surnames and took their place of origin as an ancestral seat. Top-ranked hyangni, such as township headmen (hojang), had opportunities to participate in central bureaucracy either through the civil service examinations or other channels.Footnote 25 Over many centuries and in particular from around the fourteenth century, such territorially based aristocratic elites transformed into more bureaucratically oriented ones who put more emphasis on their identity as scholars and officials. In addition, major disruptions such as the thirteenth-century Mongol invasions, and in the fourteenth the Red Turban invasions and rampant pirate attacks, forced elites to leave their places of origin permanently. Uxorilocal marriage practices across county and provincial boundaries in the early Chosŏn also dispersed elites all over the country. These social and political changes may have created an environment in which elites sought ways to trace their ancestry and clarify their blood relations, leading them to compile genealogies.Footnote 26
Another factor that might have encouraged early Chosŏn elites to study their ancestry was that previously unknown sources became available, as in the case of Kwŏn Che. Dozens of scholars and officials who participated in the compilation and multiple revisions of the History of Koryŏ in the early fifteenth century had access to historical records handed down from Koryŏ.Footnote 27 Also throughout that century, the new Chosŏn dynasty instructed each county and province to survey its own history, including by identifying indigenous surname groups (t’osŏng) and historically prominent persons, and to compile county-level gazetteers. Many local elites must have participated in this, as shown in the Gazetteer of Kyŏngsang Province (Kyŏngsang-do chiriji) compiled in 1425, the earliest surviving provincial gazetteer.Footnote 28 These efforts culminated in the compilations of dynasty-wide gazetteers in the form of the Geographic Survey (Chiriji) as an appendix to the Veritable Records of King Sejong (Sejong sillok) in 1451, and the Survey of the Geography of Korea (Tongguk yŏji sŭngnam) in 1481. While the Geographic Survey was stored in royal repositories and was not viewable by the public, the Survey of the Geography of Korea and its 1530 revised version Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea (Sinjŭng Tongguk yŏji sŭngnam) were available to consult. This unprecedented access to historical information was instrumental for Chosŏn elites to trace their ancestry.Footnote 29
And yet, it seems that not all elites took part in this genealogical pursuit until the seventeenth century, when genealogical compilation and publication became fashionable. According to Kwŏn Ki-sŏk’s study, just forty-four genealogical records were compiled between 1400 and 1600, while more than a hundred were composed in the seventeenth century alone.Footnote 30 Given the key role that elites played in rebuilding hierarchical society after the devastation and confusion caused by two major invasions—by the Japanese in 1592–1598 and then the Manchus in 1627 and 1636—they must have felt that their family histories should be restored to reinforce their elite status.Footnote 31 Elites also paid more acute attention to their social and cultural practices to meet the Neo-Confucian prescriptions of patriarchy and patrilineality, for which genealogy proved to be an essential tool.
A demographic/structural analysis is also helpful in understanding the elites’ intensified genealogical pursuits to secure, maintain, and enhance their ascribed social status from the seventeenth century onward.Footnote 32 The general increase in the elite population throughout the Chosŏn, with no recruitment system to absorb the rising numbers of aspirants, led to more competition for positions and prestige. For example, the number of graduates from the higher civil service examination (munkwa), the main route into the bureaucracy, rose from about fifteen annually in the first half of the fifteenth century to twenty-nine in the seventeenth, and forty by the latter eighteenth. The number of lower civil service examination degrees (saengwŏn and chinsa), which did not guarantee access to bureaucratic employment but boosted one’s elite status, increased from about fifty-two annually in the sixteenth century to ninety-seven in the seventeenth.Footnote 33 And yet, throughout the Chosŏn period the number of civil bureaucratic positions did not increase. This structural condition led to heightened competition among aspiring elites and also motivated existing elites to seek strategies to consolidate their political power and social standing, whether through factional politics at the court, marginalization of and discrimination against certain members of the elite, or investment in ancestral distinction.
In reconstructing their ancestral records, Chosŏn elites sought out and relied on existing family archives. The woodblock editions of the History of Koryŏ and the Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea, published in 1613 and 1611, respectively, provided much needed historical detail and context.Footnote 34 While textual evidence was valuable for illuminating their ancestry, elites also worked to loosen the requirements of textual proof and even to forge evidence. The invention of glorifiable ancestors, once unleashed, took on a life of its own and ventured into uncharted territory.
Pre-Chosŏn Ancestors of the Kigye Yu Appearing in Verifiable Records
Despite the general increase in interest in genealogical compilations, the members of the Kigye Yu showed little concern with compiling their genealogy or identifying their founding ancestor until the mid-seventeenth century. And yet today, the Kigye Yu lineage association identifies as its founding ancestor (sijo) Yu Sam-jae from Kigye, a Silla official who held the sixth-rank position of Ach’an.Footnote 35 Wang Kŏn (877–943), the founder of the Koryŏ dynasty, designated one of Yu Sam-jae’s descendants, Yu Ŭi-sin, as township headman (hojang) of Kigye County, although Ŭi-sin remained loyal to Silla and did not submit to the new Koryŏ dynasty. From then on, Ŭi-sin’s descendants took as their ancestral seat Kigye, which had become a district (myŏn) of Kyŏngju County sometime during the Chosŏn period, and then became incorporated into P’ohang City.Footnote 36 When did this well-established ancestry of the Kigye Yu emerge?
Neither Yu Sam-jae nor Yu Ŭi-sin appear in pre-1600 sources, including the History of Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi) compiled in 1145 and the History of Koryŏ compiled in 1451. Acknowledging this, members of the Kigye Yu in late Chosŏn suggested that the name “Sam-jae” could be either their founding ancestor’s given name or a common noun referring to the three highest government posts. Yu Myŏng-hong (1655–1729), for example, opines that “Sam-jae,” literally meaning “three top ministers,” captures a similarity of status between the three highest positions in Chosŏn and the Ach’an position, which was the highest that non-royal members could attain in Silla.Footnote 37 Likewise, the Kigye Yu also noted that the name “Ŭi-sin” might not be the person’s given name but simply a reference to a “righteous subject” (ŭisin), in recognition of his unwavering loyalty to Silla and his unwillingness to submit to the new dynastic founder.Footnote 38 They repeatedly lamented their lack of family records (poch’ŏp), which they said had been mostly destroyed during the Japanese and Manchu invasions, and their consequent inability to specify people’s years of birth and death or which government posts Sam-jae and Ŭi-sin held. Nobles in early modern Europe often made similar claims that they had lost family records due to war or some unfortunate accident.Footnote 39 Despite the scarcity and fragmentary nature of family records, the Kigye Yu nonetheless recorded the two as their known, prominent ancestors to be celebrated and commemorated, as the 1704 edition of the Kigye Yu Genealogy clearly illustrates (figure 1).Footnote 40
Founding and Early Ancestors of the Kigye Yu Descent Group. Yu Sam-jae’s entry as founding ancestor is on the top right of the first row, and Yu Ŭi-sin’s is on Sam-jae’s left. Yu Sŏng-mi, recorded below Yu Ŭi-sin in the second row, is noted as Ŭi-sin’s son; Yu Chin-gyŏng in the third row is Sŏng-mi’s son, and so on. Source: Yu Myŏng-ham, comp., Kigye Yu ssi chokpo (1704), 1: 1a–b.Courtesy of Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University.
The same 1704 work records about forty-five men from the founding ancestor to the eleventh-generation Yu Hyo-t’ong, and because Hyo-t’ong passed the higher civil service examination in 1408, it is reasonable to assume that most of them lived during the Koryŏ dynasty. The History of Koryŏ records at least twenty-five men with last name Yu (兪).Footnote 41 Of the forty-five men from the 1704 genealogy, only one, Yu Yŏ-hae, appears also in the History of Koryŏ. His record was duly noted by Yu Kye (1607–1664), a prominent Neo-Confucian scholar who compiled Kigye Yu’s first genealogy in 1645.Footnote 42 The other twenty-four men might have had different ancestral seats, since there were at least seven Yu (兪) descent groups with different ancestral seats, including the Kigye Yu, according to the Origins of Descent Groups (Ssijok wŏllyu) compiled by Cho Chong-un (1607–1683) in the latter half of the seventeenth century.Footnote 43 In contrast, other Koryŏ era ancestors such as Yu Tŭk-sŏn, Yu Sŏn, and Yu Sŭng-gye, who reportedly held second- or third-rank positions in the 1704 edition of the Kigye Yu Genealogy, do not appear in the History of Koryŏ. From these details, one surmises that the compilers of the 1645 and 1704 genealogies, who must have had access to the History of Koryŏ, did not insert twenty-four Yus from the History of Koryŏ arbitrarily into the Kigye Yu genealogy. Rather, they seem to have followed whatever accumulated family records—including copies of household registers, which usually record four generations of ancestors for both husband and wife—or oral traditions they had at the time of compilation.Footnote 44 Even if the family kept multiple such records produced by their immediate ancestors such as grandparents, the earliest available records likely did not go back beyond a few hundred years. Viewed as a whole, moreover, such family records were probably fragmentary since each individual family kept its own.
Commemorative writings dedicated to prominent figures who lived before 1600, such as biographies, tombstone inscriptions, mortuary plaque inscriptions, or spirit path stele inscriptions also help us learn Kigye Yu’s understanding of their ancestry. These essays were penned by either descendants of the person to be commemorated or eminent scholars and officials they asked to do so. In the latter case, the requestor often supplied existing family records to the author. Higher civil service examination rosters (munkwa pangmok) also usually provide the records of a successful candidate’s four ancestors—in this case, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and maternal grandfather.
The earliest verifiable record concerning Kigye Yu’s ancestry is the aforementioned Yu Hyo-t’ong’s 1408 examination roster, which records three of his ancestors: his father Yu Hyŏn (1365–1428), grandfather Yu Sŏng-ni, and great-grandfather Yu Sŭng-gye––the ancestors included in the 1704 edition genealogy (figure 2).Footnote 45 The next earliest record comes from the 1504 examination roster of Yu Yŏ-rim (1478–1538), whose three recorded ancestors include his father Yu Ki-ch’ang (1437–1514), grandfather Yu Hae, and great-grandfather Yu Chip. However, Yŏ-rim’s spirit path stele inscription, written by Hong Ŏn-p’il (1476–1549) in 1540 on the request of Yŏ-rim’s son Yu Chin, provides ancestral information as far back as Yu Sŏn, identified as Yŏ-rim’s sixth-generation ancestor from the Koryŏ era (figure 2).Footnote 46 From then onward, Sŏn is mentioned consistently as a remote ancestor (wŏnjo) in other commemorative writings from the latter part of the sixteenth century (table 1).
Commemorative Writings Dedicated to the Members of the Kigye Yu Written before 1600.
Koryŏ-Early Chosŏn Ancestors of the Kigye Yu Descent Group. Source: Yu Myŏng-ham, comp., Kigye Yu ssi chokpo (1704), 1: 1a–10a.
In 1565, while serving as Kyŏnggi provincial governor, Yu Kang (1510–1570), another son of Yŏ-rim, reportedly erected a tombstone at the tombs of Yu Sŭng-gye, Yu Sŏng-bok, and Yu Chip—Sŏn’s succeeding generations—all located in Ansŏng, Kyŏnggi Province.Footnote 47 In his biography of Yŏ-rim’s grandson Yu Hong (1524–1594), composed between 1594–1598, Sŏng Hon (1535–1598) mentions Yu Yŏ-hae as an ancestor who appears in the History of Koryŏ but he does not clarify the relationship between Yŏ-hae and Sŭng-gye, who was recorded as the seventh-generation ancestor of Yu Hong (figure 2).Footnote 48
Not until 1569 did a statement appear claiming that the Kigye Yu had origins in the Silla kingdom. The tombstone inscription dedicated to Yu Hae, composed by a magistrate of Hongju named Kim Ŏng-ryŏng (1529–?) at the request of his superior and Ch’ungch’ŏng Provincial Governor Yu Hong, makes such a claim before naming Hae’s four ascending ancestors (Chip, Sŏng-bok, Sŭng-gye, and Sŏn).Footnote 49 Take note that this is the first time this unbroken ancestral link from Sŏn to Hae (and thus Hae’s sixteenth-century descendants) was recorded in writing (figure 2). Kigye Yu’s Silla origin is mentioned one more time in Yu Kang’s mortuary plaque epitaph, written by his nephew Hong in 1570.Footnote 50 According to a later report made by Yu Myŏng-roe (1652–1712), a Kigye Yu man who served as the provincial governor of Kyŏngsang Province in the late sixteenth century attempted to pay homage to the tomb of the founding ancestor of Kigye Yu during his appointment.Footnote 51 This must have been either Yu Kang, who was appointed governor of Kyŏngsang in 1556, or Yu Hong, who was appointed to the same post in 1577.Footnote 52 It is quite plausible that either man had access to books such as the Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea (1530) and the Gazetteer of Kyŏngsang Province (Kyŏngsang-do chiriji, 1425), which contain information that the Kigye Yu originated from Kigye, and tried to learn more about his ancestry by visiting Kigye.Footnote 53
Before 1600, the Kigye Yu had only a vague idea that their founding ancestor might be from Silla—a speculation possibly deduced from the Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea and/or the Gazetteer of Kyŏngsang Province, which record that Kigye’s history goes as far back as the eighth century and that Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor hailed from there.Footnote 54 The information from the History of Koryŏ provided a reference to one Yu Yŏ-hae of the thirteenth century, but no further link was made at that time between him and any other Koryŏ ancestors such as Sŏn. Only later in the seventeenth century was Yŏ-hae recorded as Sŏn’s grandfather. By the end of the sixteenth century, though, the Kigye Yu had established an unbroken ancestral line descending from Sŏn. Yu Tŭk-sŏn, later identified as Yŏ-hae’s son and Sŏn’s father, appears in Yu Kang’s spirit path stele inscription, which Yi Chŏng-gwi (1564–1635) composed in 1634 on the basis of both Kang’s biography and a mortuary plaque inscription composed earlier by Yu Hong. In this essay, interestingly, Yi mentions that Tŭk-sŏn, who held the senior second-rank position of Chwabogya, was the founding ancestor (pijo) of the Kigye Yu.Footnote 55
Yu Kang and his nephew Yu Hong were most instrumental in historicizing and commemorating their ancestry in the late sixteenth century.Footnote 56 Kang passed the higher civil service examination in 1541 and served as minister of taxation (Hojo P’ansŏ, Sr. 2), while Hong earned the examination degree in 1553 and served as second state councilor (Chwaŭijŏng, Sr. 1). Hong’s career highlight was when he brought back a copy of a volume from the Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty (Tae Myŏng hoejŏn; Da Ming hui dian), which had entries on Chosŏn, after he visited Ming China (1368–1644) as an envoy. This was a monumental event in Chosŏn because the copy resolved one of the most serious diplomatic issues between Ming and Chosŏn, dubbed the “dispute about the royal descent” (chonggye pyŏnmu)––Ming’s erroneous understanding and recording of the Chosŏn founder Yi Sŏng-gye (1335–1408) as a son of the late Koryŏ power-monger Yi In-im (?–1388). For Yu Hong’s achievement, King Sŏnjo (r. 1567–1608) enfeoffed him as the Lord of Kisŏng (Kisŏng referring to Kigye) and also appointed him a first-rank Kwangguk Merit Subject in 1590.Footnote 57 Both Kang and Hong took advantage of their exalted positions to either confirm the locations of their ancestors’ tombs or influence illustrious scholar-officials to generate commemorative essays dedicated to their ancestors. Known for his voracious appetite for reading, Hong had a library of over ten thousand books. The knowledge he accumulated as well as his deep involvement in resolving the issue of the royal ancestry no doubt nurtured a keen interest and expertise in his own ancestry.Footnote 58
Invention of Yu Ŭi-sin
By 1600, the Kigye Yu were able to trace their ancestry back to Yu Yŏ-hae of the thirteenth century, and also had an idea that their founding ancestor was from the Silla kingdom. Yet, they had no name. There was no mention of any Kigye Yu, to say nothing of an actual name, who was loyal to Silla and did not submit to Koryŏ. The earliest record of a righteous person refusing to submit to Koryŏ is in the preface to the first genealogy of the Kigye Yu, written by Yu Kye, who also served as its compiler. This 1645 edition does not seem to be extant, but Kye’s preface is preserved in his collected literary work, Sinam sŏnsaeng munjip. In it Kye calls the righteous person the founding ancestor but does not name the person. In exalting this ancestor’s quality, however, Kye states that he did not bend his loyalty despite being demoted to “a local clerk” (pusŏ), a position recorded as “a township headman” (hojang) in the genealogy’s second edition, compiled in 1704. Kye adds that this ancestor’s righteous spirit remained as a family legacy and influenced his descendants for generations.Footnote 59
Kye’s understanding that the founding ancestor of the Kigye Yu was a hyangni (or pusŏ or hojang) of early Koryŏ coincides with that of other descent groups whose early Chosŏn genealogical records also often identified their founding ancestor as a hyangni. Footnote 60 Kye’s claim that this founding ancestor was demoted to a local clerk reflects his presentism, though, since the hyangni in Koryŏ were local powerholders, unlike the hyangni in Chosŏn, who were local administrative clerks.Footnote 61 During the dynastic transition from Silla to Koryŏ, the Koryŏ founder designated local strongmen as county headmen of several different ranks, collectively called hyangni, as a way to reorganize the countryside and also to make sure that the local powerholders stayed loyal to the new dynasty and kept the local society in order. Along with this reorganization of local areas, the Koryŏ bestowed Chinese-style surnames and had hyangni keep their place of origin as the ancestral seat.Footnote 62 Therefore, hyangni (with hojang being the highest rank among them) of the Koryŏ period were de facto local powerholders, and some became central aristocrats through the civil service examination system or other privileges available to them. The self-differentiation of hyangni between centralized aristocratic descent lines and those who remained in their ancestral seat and provided administrative expertise continued throughout Koryŏ. The dividing line and resultant contrasting identities between the prestigious scholar-official group, called yangban or sajok, and local clerks, called hyangni or ijok, became clear as the status of the hyangni was drastically denigrated by a series of reform measures in the early Chosŏn. These stripped them of privileges such as access to civil service examinations and placed them under the tight control of county magistrates and local yangban. Although some of these hyangni (or pusŏ in Yu Kye’s word) shared their ancestral roots with the yangban, they eventually formed one of the middle-status groups called chungin, below the yangban in Chosŏn.Footnote 63
Although there is no way to confirm whether Ŭi-sin’s name is encoded in the 1645 genealogy, it is safe to assume it is because a few commemorative writings Kye composed before he died in 1664 clearly mention Ŭi-sin as the founding ancestor of the Kigye Yu (table 2). In the tombstone inscription dedicated to Yu Tae-jin (1554–1599) and written between 1659–1664, for example, Kye specifically states that the family’s genealogy shows that the Kigye Yu originated from Ŭi-sin.Footnote 64 Once that information was invented, scholars and officials who were not members of the Kigye Yu repeated it in their commemorative essays, thereby solidifying the link (table 2). In the latter half of the seventeenth century, then, the members of the Kigye Yu as well as other prominent Chosŏn elites shared the firm belief that Yu Ŭi-sin, a loyal subject of Silla who did not submit to Koryŏ, was the Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor.
Yu Ŭi-sin in the Seventeenth-Century Sources.
* Cho Ik, P’ojŏjip [Collected works of Cho Ik] (n.p., 1688). I used the online edition in Han’guk kojŏn chonghap DB: https://db.itkc.or.kr/ (accessed 9 Jan. 2023).
As briefly noted earlier, some members of the Kigye Yu believed that “Ŭi-sin,” meaning a righteous subject, was not the name of the person who resisted submission to the new dynastic founder but rather a reference to the person to honor his righteous deed.Footnote 65 That is, while this person’s given name had not been transmitted, the referenced appellation became his personal name. Why did the Kigye Yu, or more specifically Yu Kye, want to make a person of righteousness its founding ancestor in the mid-seventeenth century? Loyalty and righteousness were key Confucian values that any Chosŏn scholars and officials would desire to internalize and practice.Footnote 66 Chŏng Mong-ju (1337–1392), who was assassinated because of his objection to the dynastic change from Koryŏ to Chosŏn led by Yi Sŏng-gye and his followers, had been regarded as the emblem of these values and enshrined in the Confucian Shrine (Munmyo) in 1517, the highest honor that a Confucian scholar could attain. He was the first person to earn that honor during the Chosŏn period. More importantly, the second Manchu invasion of 1636 resulted in the Chosŏn’s humiliating submission to the Qing (1636–1911). This traumatic event, in turn, created a political and social atmosphere in which those who advocated an anti-Qing and thus pro-war stance were celebrated. Moreover, those who died resisting the invading army, took their own life in anticipation of shameful surrender, or were taken as hostages to Qing were elevated as heroes of loyalty and righteousness. Many of these people as well as their descendants and followers, including Yu Kye, belonged to a political group called Westerners (Sŏin), which regarded an anti-Qing stance as the ultimate expression of righteousness and politicized that value. These socio-political environments might have provided a historical context for Yu Kye’s desire to portray Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor as having been the most righteous person possible by resisting a dynastic change, as Chŏng Mong-ju did.
Invention of Yu Sam-jae and Discovery of His Tomb
The first mention of Lord “Sam-jae” (Samjae-gong) as the Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor appears in a record reportedly left by Yu Ok-kyŏng (1561–?) in 1625, although this was an indirect quote made by Yu Ha-gyŏm (1632–?) in his 1689 circular letter (t’ongmun) addressed to members of the Kigye Yu. According to the quote, Lord Sam-jae—not Ŭi-sin––was the righteous person during the reign of Silla’s last king, Kyŏngsun (r. 927–935), who did not submit to Koryŏ and thus became a township headman of Kigye.Footnote 67 In the mid-seventeenth century, the Kigye Yu had invented Ŭi-sin as the founding ancestor and identified him as the righteous person. By 1689, not only had they invented a new founding Silla ancestor, Sam-jae, but they had also discovered the exact location of Sam-jae’s tomb in Kigye district. It is the 1704 edition genealogy that clearly places Yu Sam-jae, a Silla official who held the position of Ach’an, as the founding ancestor and Ŭi-sin as a descendant of Sam-jae (rather than a son), although it adds a note to the entry of Yu Sam-jae that the person’s given name had not been transmitted, signaling the compiler’s understanding that “Sam-jae” was indeed a common noun referring to “the highest posts” (figure 1).Footnote 68
The earliest record of the possible location of the founding ancestor’s tomb comes from Yu Ok-kyŏng, just mentioned, who lived in Yŏngch’ŏn County adjacent to Kigye. He identified three tombs in Aedang-dong, Kigye. One reportedly belonged to a literary licentiate degree-holder from Paech’ŏn with an unknown given name (and thus it was simply called Yu Pae-ch’ŏn). The middle one, surrounded with stone walls, was believed to be the tomb of Lord Sam-jae. As early as 1614, Ok-kyŏng, a military degree-holder, reported this finding to Sim Yŏl (1569–1646), Yu Ham’s (1526–1581) son-in-law, when he was appointed Kyŏngsang’s provincial governor (figure 2).Footnote 69
Regarding the discovery and securing of Yu Sam-jae’s tomb, 1689 was a landmark moment for members of the Kigye Yu. In that year, while Yu Ha-gyŏm served as magistrate of Kyŏngju, a lawsuit revealed that Yu Sam-jae’s tomb was located in Tang-dong (or Aedang-dong) about 4 kilometers (10 li) north of Kigye’s old county seat. Before then, based on allegedly deceitful misdirection by residents, Kigye Yu members believed that the tomb they sought was another one, located in Ori-dong about 2 kilometers south and belonging to Yu Pae-ch’ŏn.Footnote 70 According to the lawsuit-related documents preserved by the Kigye Yu, the misidentification began sometime in the sixteenth century when Sŏ Hu-jun’s (1610–1669) grandfather illegally placed his ancestor Sŏ Hon and his wife’s tomb inside the boundary of the Tang-dong tomb.Footnote 71 When a Kigye Yu (either Yu Kang in 1556 or Yu Hong in 1577 as mentioned earlier), who was appointed Kyŏngsang provincial governor came to pay a visit to the founding ancestor’s tomb, the Sŏ family, being afraid their illegal burial would be discovered, led the governor to believe the Ori-dong tomb belonged to Kigye Yu’s unnamed founding ancestor.Footnote 72
The Sŏ family’s deceit was exposed when Sŏ Hu-jun sued Chŏng Se-ch’u, who buried his father’s corpse right below the Tang-dong tomb in 1661 (or 1675), arguing that the Chŏng had infringed upon the legal boundary of the Sŏ family’s ancestral tomb. The lawsuit produced a key witness, an elder named Yi Sin who had lived in Aedang-dong for generations, and whose father was a respected geomancer. According to the father, the Tang-dong tomb belonged to the Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor, and the prosperity of the Yu descent group derived from the highly auspicious site chosen for the tomb. Yi’s father also explained the Sŏ family’s bad fortune in having no son to succeed them: their ancestor not only violated Yu’s founding ancestor’s tomb but also removed its tombstone and destroyed protective walls around the tomb. The Chŏng family won the lawsuit and subsequently placed more burials on the site. Several members of the Yu family living near the area heard of the lawsuit at the time but failed to follow up and confirm that the Tang-dong tomb did indeed belong to their founding ancestor.Footnote 73
Consequently, when Min Chu-myŏn (1629–1670), a great grandson of Yu Ham, paid a visit to the founding ancestor’s tomb to offer a ritual and also repair the mound as magistrate of Kyŏngju, he paid these respects at the Ori-dong tomb.Footnote 74 It was only when Yu Ha-gyŏm arrived in the area as magistrate of Kyŏngju that he summoned the members of the Sŏ family—Sŏ Hyŏn and Sŏ Ch’ŏl—and Chŏng Se-jae representing the Chŏng family, to straighten the matter out. In addition to Yi Sin’s testimony, Ha-gyŏm was able to collect further evidence from elderly people in the area who all confirmed that the founding ancestor’s tomb was the one at Tang-dong. Until that time, residents there had disguised the Ori-dong tomb as the Kigye Yu founder’s in order to avoid the inconvenience of accommodating Yu officials who wanted to pay respects to their founding ancestor: the Tang-dong tomb was located in rugged mountains much farther from the residential areas (figure 3).Footnote 75 Another bit of circumstantial support for the Tang-dong site was its unrivalled geomantic merit, which surely suited the purpose of recognizing a founding ancestor.Footnote 76 Thanks to Ha-gyŏm’s efforts, the Kigye Yu linked the Tang-dong tomb to their founding ancestor and immediately erected a stone marker there. The Chŏng family had to relocate its ancestral burials, although the Sŏ Hon couple’s tomb was left intact.Footnote 77 This is shown on the “Illustrated Map of Yu Sam-jae’s Tomb” (Sijo Yu Sam-jae punsan chi to) inserted in the 1704 genealogy (figure 4).Footnote 78
Topographical features as seen from Yu Sam-jae’s tomb facing south. Author’s photo, 14 June 2023.
Illustrated Map of Yu Sam-jae’s Tomb. Top: south; left: East Sea; yellow circle: Yu Sam-jae’s tomb; green rectangle: Sŏ Hon couple’s tomb; red rectangle: Puun-sa Buddhist temple. Source: Yu Myŏng-ham, comp., Kigye Yu ssi chokpo (1704), 8: 2a. Courtesy of Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, Seoul National University.
After Yu Kang and/or Yu Hong as provincial governor of Kyŏngsang visited the presumed tomb of the founding ancestor of Kigye Yu in the late sixteenth century, and the idea that the Kigye Yu originated far back from Silla began to germinate, it took more than a hundred years and the involvement of multiple actors to invent the names of the earliest ancestors and to identify his tomb by mobilizing questionable evidence. This long process was captured by a late seventeenth-century source, the Origins of Descent Groups, dated before 1689. Although the exact date of its compilation is unknown, it was certainly before the death of its author Cho Chong-un, in 1683. I think that it was completed later in Cho’s life, since it is extensive and contains information on more than 540 descent groups, and so must have taken a great deal of time and experience to compile. Like the 1704 edition of the Kigye Yu Genealogy, the Origins of Descent Groups names Yu Sam-jae as the founding ancestor of Kigye Yu, Yu Ŭi-sin as a descendant of Yu Sam-jae, and Yu Sŏng-mi as a descendant of Yu Ŭi-sin.Footnote 79 One conspicuous difference is that the genealogy records Yu Sŏng-mi as the “son” of Ŭi-sin (figure 1), although its compiler agreed with and recorded Yu Kye’s criticism that Sŏng-mi, who married a women who was a seventh-generation descendant of Silla’s last king Kyŏngsun, could not be a son of Ŭi-sin, King Kyŏngsun’s contemporary. In contrast, Cho Chong-un omits the letter “son,” making Sŏng-mi a descendant of Ŭi-sin. An intriguing note inserted into the entry for “Yu Sam-jae” in the Origins of Descent Groups reads that there is a tomb in Kigye that is said to be that of Sam-jae, indicating Cho’s awareness of the intermittent visits and inquiries made by certain members of the Kigye Yu in Kigye as well as the lawsuits over gravesites there alleged to be the tomb of the Kigye Yu’s founding ancestor.
In the following decades, the Kigye Yu took several tangible actions to protect this newly found tomb. In 1710, when Yu Myŏng-hong was Kyŏngsang provincial governor, he built a graveside hermitage (punam) called Puun-am, 16-k’an in size, using resources collected from his relatives.Footnote 80 Although Myŏng-hong was credited for founding the hermitage, the “Illustrated Map of Yu Sam-jae’s Tomb” inserted in the 1704 genealogy (figure 4) clearly shows that a Buddhist temple named Puun-sa had existed right next to Sam-jae’s tomb. Myŏng-hong must have designated this temple as a memorial hermitage by providing resources to either repair or expand the existing edifice. He had resident monks guard the tomb by prohibiting logging and grazing in the area. He also collected donations from relatives and added his salary to purchase some lands as ritual land (chejŏn), which were put under the care of either resident monks or nearby farmers. Caretakers used income from that land to prepare for regular rituals conducted at the tomb.Footnote 81
In 1727, Yu Ch’ok-ki (1691–1767), who was also Kyŏngsang provincial governor, facilitated erection of a tombstone (myobi) on the left side of the tomb.Footnote 82 This work involved identifying a proper stone, shaping and engraving it, and moving it to the tomb site via land and sea. In 1732, Kyŏngju magistrate Kim Si-hyŏng (1681–1750), a descendant through a daughter’s line, financed the addition of a capstone for the stele.Footnote 83 Five years later, Yu Ch’ŏk-ki, who had become provincial governor again, arranged for Kyŏngju magistrate Cho Myŏng-jŏng (1709–1779), a relative by marriage, to provide labor and resources to relocate the tombstone and adorn the tomb mound.Footnote 84 In 1748, Yu Chik-ki (1694–?) financed firing a porcelain epitaph to be buried near the tomb.Footnote 85 By 1786, Yu Han-jun (1732–1811) learned the folktale of Yu Sam-jae’s birth, that a child wrapped in a red cloth came down from heaven, and recorded it in the “Family History” (kajŏn).Footnote 86 This motif of auspicious birth—descending from heaven—is common for the founder of a descent group or kingdom.Footnote 87 In 1795, Yu Han-mo (1734–1816), during his appointment as magistrate of Kyŏngju, recovered the lost residence of the Yu family of Silla and a well.Footnote 88 For the rest of the Chosŏn dynasty, the members of the Kigye Yu provided resources to repair and expand the Puun-am, which remained the lineage’s guardian hermitage and purification hall (chaesil) (figure 5).Footnote 89 Multiple generations of Kigye Yu members made various contributions to securing and protecting their founding ancestor’s identity, and they often fully capitalized on their positions as county or provincial officials. Members both local and from the capital closely collaborated to achieve their goals.Footnote 90
Puun-jae near Yu Sam-jae’s Tomb. Author’s photo 14 June 2023.
Conclusion
Elite competition for power and prestige in the face of an ever-growing pool of aspirants for elite positions unleashed genealogical pursuit in Chosŏn Korea. Martina Deuchler contends that the most compelling strategy of distinction for yangban elites was lineage-building through corporate activities such as compiling and publishing genealogies.Footnote 91 Song Chun-ho highlights a social trend toward valuing deep and prominent ancestry, which intensified in late Chosŏn.Footnote 92 Yi Su-gŏn shows that in the seventeenth century there were decisive changes in how Chosŏn elites thought of their descent group identity and history. Adoption of the Neo-Confucian family system, which was primarily organized by the principles of patriliny and patriarchy, promoted the study and compilation of genealogies as a way to unite the members of descent groups and clarify hierarchical order within them. In this process, elites put more value on ancient and prominent ancestry.Footnote 93 Kim Mun-t’aek similarly argues that seventeenth-century elites came to develop interests in their remote ancestors, including founding ancestors, as they began to form lineage associations in tune with patrilineal ideology. In the process of forming patrilineal lineage organizations, the tomb of the founding ancestor provided a focal point through which dispersed members of the lineage could cooperate and be united.Footnote 94 In the case of the Kigye Yu, many members, including in-laws and descendants from daughter’s lines, collaborated to gather information, sue adversaries, and finance all the related mnemonic activities. Such processes and commitments, shared among members, nurtured further interests in their ancestors and lineage and helped consolidate membership.
Availability of information enabled these pursuits of ancient and prominent ancestry. Family-kept information and commemorative writings were primary sources for compiling genealogies, but their scope, largely confined to several generations of ancestors, limited their efficacy in establishing longer timelines and broader connections. Information from state-led compilations and publications of historical and geographical books filled some gaps and also motivated yangban literati to investigate their ancestry. They did not usually attempt to change or remove readily available sources to glorify their ancestry.Footnote 95 When sources were not available, however, they relied on testimonials derived from vague and subjective memories. Moreover, they considered it acceptable to add their own views based on circumstantial knowledge and evidence.Footnote 96 Literati emphasized empiricism, but that principle easily capitulated to their social and cultural need for ancient and eminent ancestors. Such outright fabrication, which was rationalized on the basis of fragile evidence gathered by exercising power and authority over the witnesses, incurred no suspicion among their own members or their fellow literati, who engaged in similar practices.Footnote 97
Attempts to establish and define lineage spaces in society by mobilizing credible as well as remotely related evidence were not unique to late Chosŏn elites. In the Pearl River delta in South China, major lineages in late imperial China, in order to consolidate positions in local politics and protect economic interests, claimed that their ancestors had originated from prominent families in the central plains, the cultural and political centers of the Tang (618–907) and Song. Helen F. Siu reported, “It is a common practice of the compilers of lineage genealogies to search backward in time to locate relationships with prominent ‘ancestors,’ however tenuously linked, in order to boost lineage status,” and she added that “claims before the Song dynasty are not reliable.”Footnote 98 David Faure, too, found that written genealogies compiled during the late imperial period often relied on myths and legends dating to early Chinese history to document their pre-Ming origins from northern China. It was also common for lineages to claim that their founding ancestors had been senior officials or members of the Song or Tang imperial families. The compilation of genealogies with such elaborate founding stories was closely related to securing settlement rights and the tax registration required in early Ming.Footnote 99
We encounter a comparable case of genealogical construction and invention in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Florence. Giovanni Ciappelli offers a functional explanation for the popularization of family records there in the form of texts called ricordanze (family record books). Florentines began to produce these to document “evidence of [a family’s] social promotion for future generations” or to convey and instill a family’s self-identity by asserting deep and prestigious roots to its descendants or to the outside world. Acknowledging the production of family books, called libri di famiglia, in various places throughout Italy from the late medieval period, Ciappelli observes that they evolved into a proof for official recognition of noble status and the production of genealogies, including “false genealogies, created to increase the antiquity of a family’s origins.” In addition, he sees that such a “quest for a family’s mythical origins, markedly present in the genealogies of some noble families since the beginning of the Early Modern period,” was “rooted in a complex and long-standing cultural attitude.”Footnote 100
Likewise, other European families, from royal to noble and bourgeois, faced increasing competition for power and prestige in the early modern period and became preoccupied with genealogical knowledge for various reasons, such as to prove their nobility and enhance their political and social reputations and aspirations. The result was the production of increasing amounts of genealogical data and information in a variety of forms.Footnote 101 While genealogists and nobles sought out trustworthy data excavated from libraries and archives, they also accepted mythical stories as proofs and often relied on arbitrary readings of documents, which opened a door for outright forgery. The unknowability of the deep past, combined with dubious genealogical research methods, allowed for the relaxation of judicial evidentiary standards, especially regarding records from before 1400. For non-judicial reconstructions of family pasts, other forms of evidence such as coins, stone inscriptions, coats of arms, and even oral testimony were considered acceptable.Footnote 102 Markus Friedrich declares that “compromises of all kinds” were common in genealogical research.Footnote 103
Elites’ reliance on pliable empiricism in Chosŏn Korea left many gaps and loopholes in their genealogies, opening up possibilities for marginal elites or even non-elites to claim their place in elite genealogies. One loophole was uncertain ancient ancestry. As the Kigye Yu compilers in 1704 noted, it was problematic that they only had five generations of people to represent three hundred years between Ŭi-sin, allegedly of the tenth century, and Yŏ-hae, a historical person who lived in the thirteenth. They could have filled in missing names to clarify lost generations, they said, but decided not to do so because they did not know which or how many generations were missing.Footnote 104 Up to the 1867 edition, compilers did not arbitrarily fill in the missing generations between Sam-jae and Yŏ-hae and kept the original integrity quite well.Footnote 105 But then in the modern 1965 edition three new generations are inserted between Sam-jae and Ŭi-sin and the four original generations including Ŭi-sin and Yŏ-hae expand to ten.Footnote 106 Arbitrary insertions subsequently enabled the creation of new branches descended from those newly added ancestors. The number of branches of the Kigye Yu thereby expanded from six in the 1867 edition to fifteen in the 1965 one.Footnote 107
Another loophole that enabled fabrication and expansion of genealogical records was missing information regarding many listed members. Where pertinent, compilers would add the notation “no son” (muja) or “no heir” (muhu) to an entry, which effectively blocked arbitrary addition of records, but many other entries listed the name only with no information whatsoever about descendants. These notational blanks allowed opportunists to enter their names as descendants and thereby claim lineage membership.Footnote 108
Finding roots in Chosŏn Korea was quintessentially and exclusively an elite activity, one that began for practical purposes like clarifying immediate elite ancestry for official appointments and family inheritance, and for enhancing social standing. The genealogical endeavor soon became not only fashionable but essential as elite competition for power and prestige intensified in late Chosŏn. But the fragile empiricism guiding this pursuit of exclusivity and prominence cleared the way for others to join the privileged clubs that lineages embodied. This elasticity ultimately diluted the value of the genealogy in modern times.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference “Momentum of Its Own: Inherent Dynamism in Pre-Modern Societies,” convened by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the Bielefeld University, Germany in January 2021. I would like to thank Franz Arlinghaus, Andreas Rüther, and Jörg Quenzer for inviting me to the conference, and the conference participants, especially Simon Teuscher and Marion Eggert, for their comments. I also like to thank Dr. Hyun Jae Yoo for helping me to visit the tomb of Kigye Yu’s supposed founding ancestor in the summer of 2023.
