Describe the Choson empire of Korea as it strengthened in the 16th and 17th centuries. How was Korea influenced by China and Japan? What role did the yangban have in Korean society?

Question

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Answer 1

ANSWER:
Recovery after the Imjin War was hindered by Manchu invasions that lasted until the late 1630s. Even after the Korean king submitted to the new Qing dynasty, factionalism broke out among the officials that turned violent, an on-again, off-again problem throughout the Choson dynasty (1392–1910). Despite these challenges, the Choson dynasty proved to be the longest-lasting state in East Asian history. The dominant influence on Korean culture had long been China, to which Korean rulers generally paid tribute. Thus, although the Korean and Japanese languages are closely related, and although Korea had developed its own system of writing in 1443 and made extensive use of printing with movable type from the fifteenth century on, most printing continued to use Chinese characters. In many ways the Choson dynasty was also a model Confucian state. The government was staffed by men who passed the civil examination system, modeled on the Chinese institution of the same name. But there was one important difference. In theory, if not in practice, anyone could sit for the civil examinations in China, but by the sixteenth century in Choson Korea, one had to be born into the yangban class to take an examination and work in any position of real influence in government. The yangban, literally “two orders,” were a hereditary status group who dominated the civil and military examinations, filling nearly all of the official positions in the national and local governments. Only occasionally was social mobility possible for commoners who tested into the military yangban group, a status typically disdained by the civil yangban. This played a role in stifling recovery from the devastation of war.