The Gang-Beating of the Slave Myŏngaek: A Magistrate's Strategic Representation of Slave Resistance

• In Event: 266. Reports from the Local Courts: A New Archival Window onto Local Communities in Eighteenth-Century Korea

Abstract

Scholarship on the position of slaves in the late Chosŏn legal system often notes that the emergence of slaves with considerable stores of wealth generated sociopolitical pressures that led to changes in the law codes. Increased recognition of the property rights of slaves, among other rights, formed the central component of those changes. This paper presents a case from early 18th-century Namwŏn concerning a slave whose treatment by the local magistrate suggests a different picture. Myŏngaek, the slave in question, became involved in a love triangle with a local military official and was eventually beaten by that official because of it. The magistrate's handling of the case involves a strategic invocation of slaves' rights for the purposes of convicting the military official, but not exactly for upholding the slaves' rights. The magistrate develops a clever strategy to pressure the military official—one which invokes the increased rights of slaves but, unfortunately, never in a genuine way. This presents a conundrum for understanding the position of slaves in the late Chosŏn: though the strategic aspects of Myŏngaek's case suggests that legal protections were in place, the actual enforcement of those protections were at the discretion of the magistrate.

Author

• Matt Lauer, University of California, Los Angeles