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The Formation and Characteristics of Commoners’ Clan Villages in the Late Joseon Period- Case Study of the Danyang Woo Clan of Haebukchon Village in Daegu Prefecture

  • The Review of Korean History
  • 2017, (128), pp.271-308
  • Publisher : The Historical Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

KyungRan Kim 1

1안동대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The clan villages in Daegu prefecture began to form purposefully in the late 18th to mid-19th century, and more than a few villages also emerged in the late 19th to 20th century. Among those villages were those that can be defined as commoners’ clan villages. A representative example is the Danyang Woo clan’s village in Gwang-ri, Haebukchon village. The Danyang Woo clan was not of the typical nobility (Yangban in Korean) in the late Joseon Dynasty. Moreover, it was difficult to find the nobility in Gwang-ri, which was village of the Danyang Woo clan. In fact, Gwang-ri was originally a typical commoners’ village, which was inhabited by ordinary people with different family names and clan seats, rather than those of the upper class. Since the 19th century, the Danyang Woo clan, who occupied the majority of middle-class occupations, rose to the position of the upper class before any of the other family names in the village. The intention of the Danyang Woo clan in raising the social status through the rise in position was consequently a factor of the formation of a clan village. The Danyang Woo clan of Gwang-ri shared one genealogy derived from a common ancestor. This conflicts with the existing understanding that the members of a commoners’ clan village had no blood relation to each other or that they originated from various genealogies. It seems that the Dangyang Woo clan of Gwang-ri lived for generations over a long period of time and maintained an exclusive blood relation. As can be seen from the case of the Danyang Woo clan of Gwang-ri, the entity of the formation of clan villages evolved into positions of the nobility and even the commoner since the 19th century. It seems that the formation of the commoners’ clan village was mainly attributed to ordinary people’s orientation toward the upper class which appeared in the overall kindred order of the late Joseon period.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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