Choson Korea had a strict, largely hereditary class system with its nobi at the bottom. The nobi class made up around 30-40% of the society (Kim, 109); in Seoul, the capital, the number was even larger—75% of Seoul’s residents were nobi (Palais, 25). The nobi class counted among its members people with a great variety of occupations including domestic workers, field workers, sharecroppers, concubines and even faraway tribute-paying peasants. Given the variety of people and the size of their class, it is understandable that there is a debate over what exactly to call the nobi in English. Any English word will be loaded with Western connotations and each choice of word comes with implications for comparative history. If we teach Western English speakers that nobi are slaves, their mind will go to the race-based genealogical slavery of the Americas from the 16th century to the 19th century, and they’ll likely assume that the life of a nobi resembles the life of the slave they know. If the word “serf” is used, they’ll think of the Russian kind; if the word is peasant, probably a European feudal class; servant, they’ll think of a butler or of the indentured servant of early American history. Considering the available evidence though, I believe the term “slave” describes the nobi’s crucial role in Choson society best, despite how much a nobi’s life varied depending on the master and the time. Their status must defined by what can legally be done to them, not what benefits they could legally be afforded. Following this logic, “slave” is best to describe the nobi, who could be legally beaten even to the point of death (Kim, 125), raped (Hee-sook, 123), or starved (Kim, 118), even if their treatment differed by time, place, and master (Kim, 108-109). Slavery not only existed, but it was crucial to the society, making up a large population and freeing up the upper class to create works of literature, culture, and statecraft.
The life of a nobi was quite dynamic and the exact duties and responsibilities of a slave were not strictly defined. It is clear that there were nobi who at specific times, under specific masters, lived a life unlike most Western definitions of a slave. In the 2010 movie The Servant, the no (male form of nobi) protagonist Bang-ja is left alone with a large amount of property belonging to his yangban owner Mong. Mong leaves to study for (and eventually pass) the civil service exam, leaving Bang-ja alone in the property for years, near to the woman that Mong had recently loved, and Bang-ja loves. When Mong comes back, it seems like coincidence that he and Bang-ja even interact. Bang-ja didn’t buy his freedom nor was he emancipated; his owner just left him. The film does not treat this years-long uncoupling as rare or bizarre or illegal, suggesting that this practice would have been somewhat common at the very least. To someone who has their notion of a “slave” from the Antebellum South, this might seem weird, but it seems that Choson slavery was fluid enough to allow for such a lax master-slave relationship at times.
An even better relationship can be observed between owner and nobi in Kichung Kim’s 2003 paper “Unheard Voices: The Life of the Nobi in O Hwi-mun's Swaemirok,” which analyzes the way in which a yangban master described his nobi in his war diary. The master, O Hwi-mun seems to really care about his chief nobi, Makchong. He never punishes him or threatens to punish him, despite frequently punishing other nobi (Kim, 129). When Makchong is sick, O Hwi-mun worries, and this worry does not seem to be motivated by the loss of wealth inherent in losing a slave (Kim, 130). When Makchong dies, O Hwi-mun remembers his life and all the work he has done for the family and cries. At the burial, Hwi-mun has offerings of wine and fruit made (Kim, 131).
In James Palais’ Views on Korean Social History, he explains the argument against the nobi being called a “slave,” before himself disagreeing. He describes the scholar Yi Yonghun as believing that most nobi, excluding private domestic nobi, had too much freedom to be described as slaves; they are better described as “serfs” (Palais, 39). Yi displays the chakkae system as one piece of evidence, where a slave had to work two pieces of land, one for him and one for his master. Other pieces of evidence include “outside-resident slaves” who paid tribute and “sharecroppers” who divided the harvest in half with their master (Palais, 40). Knowing these examples, I would concede that sharecroppers are clearly sharecroppers and tribute-paying small farmers are most similar to peasants or serfs. Nonetheless though, these nobi were still owned. They could not quit their arrangement; their term won’t expire like an indentured servant; they aren’t tied to the land like a serf. Finally, they had simply no bodily autonomy, even if kinder masters opted to afford them more freedom when they did not have to.
The nobi can’t be serfs because they weren’t tied to the land, and they can’t be just peasants/sharecroppers/prostitutes because they could be starved, beaten (even to the point of death), and raped legally without recourse (other than ‘abandonment’). Unlike serfs, they moved around with their masters and could be assigned to new lands and new tasks (Kim). Furthermore, their ability to be purchased independently from the land, at the price of one horse (Lecture01Theme01), seem to rule out the “serf” translation. O Hwi-mun’s diary seems to describe some of the harsh treatments that rule out describing them as merely sharecroppers, who would have a right to life and to not be the victim of violence. During a food shortage, the nobi are preferentially starved so that the owning family can eat as much as possible, ruling out the slim possibility that they are peasants paid in food and shelter (Kim, 118). Nobi could also be beaten legally, and if they succumbed to death after a punishment beating, it would still be legal (Kim, 125). A 2004 Han Hee-sook paper explains that nobi could be raped completely legally as well (Hee-sook, 123). The harshness of their treatment no doubt depended on the kindness of their masters; nobi could at times be without a master for years (“The Servant”), or could be a trusted ally whose death inspired serious grief and ritual offerings (Kim, 129-131) or could be a sharecropper (Palais, 39-40). But these better times do not define a person’s legal status; with both constant movement and the ability to be starved, raped, and/or beaten to death legally without recourse, how could these people be described as anything but slaves?
Slavery is crucial to understanding Choson Korea both because of their immense size as a population and their extreme importance to the ruling class. Nobi were 30-40% of the population, which is staggering by itself, even before one considers that they made up 75% of the capital, where most of the state’s leaders lived and worked (Kim, 109) (Palais, 25). It is impossible to understand any society and its culture while ignoring 30-40% of it or 75% of its capital. Even examining just the yangban would require examining slavery since the yangban called nobi “sujok,” which translates to “my hands and feet” (Kim, 114). This nickname implies that the nobi were critical for any remotely physical task, and yangban could not be expected to go anywhere without nobi. The success of Choson Korea may have been due to the cleverness of its leaders, but these leaders could not have had the opportunity to be clever if they had to tend to their fields all day. It is often said that a society develops as agriculture is streamlined such that labor can be freed up for other jobs while still having enough food. In the case of Choson Korea, the nobi themselves were the ones doing this freeing up, allowing the labor of the yangban to be dedicated to philosophy, literary analysis, and statecraft. Primary sources back up this idea that nobi labor was crucial to yangban success. 17th century Choson scholar Yu Hyongwon wrote that wealth was counted in nobi ownership, signaling how widespread and useful nobi were to their upper class masters. More profoundly, he wrote that “it is basically not hard to understand that the slave law in our country is wrong in principle, but people in general are all blinded by their immediate private interests” (Ch’oe, Lee, and De Bary, 161). Since it is blatantly against Confucian moral principles to enslave another man, Yu Hyongwon argues, the only reason slavery existed at all was because of how extremely crucial the nobi were to the society and especially the yangban upper class.
Nobi were integral to the success of Choson Korea, and “slave” is the best English word to describe their status. While they could at times act as sharecroppers, feudal peasants, temporary household managers, or even trusted allies, nobi must be defined by the rights they lacked. If statuses were defined by the rights that the unfree could receive from especially benevolent masters, then slaves wouldn’t be slaves at all; they’d be “temporary unpaid labor frequently manumitted.” Nobi could be starved, raped, or beaten to death all legally, rendering them completely unfree. They weren’t attached to land and could move or be sold without land, rendering “serf” a poor descriptor. The only English word that can rightly describe the nobi is “slave.” These slaves made up 30-40% of Choson’s population, 75% of the capital, and did all physical labor for the yangban elite, earning them the nickname sujok meaning “my hands and feet” (Palais, 25) (Kim, 114). This nickname was accurate, describing the importance of nobi’s role in freeing up the yangban to learn all the culture and statecraft for which Choson Korea is most notable. Widespread slavery existed in Choson Korea—and it is key to understanding its successful and deeply hierarchical society.