조선 전기 自己婢妾 소생 使喚에 대한 인식: ‘骨肉相殘’ 개념의 정착을 중심으로

Abstract

Recent research has sought to elucidate the realities of early Joseon’s construction of a Confucian morality. This paper examines one part of this process: the emergence and spread of the perception of using as domestic servants the offspring of a slave whom the owner has taken as a concubine as wrong or immoral. The first step in this process came in 1397 (Taejo 6), when, based on the premise that taking one’s “flesh and blood” (骨肉) on as a servant in the same way that one would an ordinary nobi was improper, a law seeking to release from lowborn status (從良) the offspring of slave-status concubines was enacted. Thus, the perception of keeping “flesh and blood” as domestic servants emerged immediately after the establishment of the Joseon dynasty in 1392. Shortly thereafter, in 1405 (Taejong 5), a law forbidding the taking as domestic servants the offspring of one’s grandfather’s and father’s slave-status concubines was enacted and included in the Six Codes of Administration (經濟六典). In 1414 (Taejong 14), however, a law aiming to release from lowborn status not only the offspring of slave-status concubines, but also all offspring of the unions of lowborn (賤人) women and commoner (良人) males, was enacted. In Sejong’s reign (1418-1450), this same law would be reorganized to form the “Release from Lowborn Status of Children of Lowborn Wives and Concubines Law” (賤妻妾子女 從良法; hereafter jongnyangbeop). Thereafter matters concerning the utilization of the offspring of one’s slave-status concubines as servants would be discussed in the process of the revision and application of this jongnyangbeop. In the latter half of the fifteenth century, a proposal was raised within Joseon’s Slave Agency (掌隸院) to enact a law that would prevent those offspring of slave-status concubines who had not undergone or completed the process of release from lowborn status set out in the jongnyangbeop from being taken on as the domestic servants of the “legitimate offspring” (嫡子孫) who were their near kin. At that time, the Slave Agency described the practice of taking on one’s close relatives as servants as “an act of harming one’s flesh and blood” (殘傷骨肉). In this way, the idea that taking on one’s kin as servants was something improper had transformed into the idea that is was in fact “harming one’s flesh and blood.” By the turn of the sixteenth century, “harming one’s own flesh and blood” (骨肉相殘) had become a standard terminology. In 1554 (Myeongjong 9), legal officials—under impression that the phrase “‘harming one’s own flesh and blood’ (骨肉相殘) means that utilization as a servant is not allowed,” although not recorded in any legal codes, was law—decided to make the person in question a government nobi instead. Myeongjong pointed out that this was not right, and enacted a law allowing the taking as domestic servants of non-released lowborn relatives removed by at least five or six degrees of consanguinity. This shows that at the time, “harming one’s own flesh and blood” (骨肉相殘) had taken on an influence equivalent to that of an actual legal clause. This paper confirms this development by examining the proceedings of the late sixteenth century “An Family Slave Case” (安家奴案), in which a lawsuit was filed seeking to claim as nobi the offspring of a great-grandfather’s slave-status concubine. In both the plaintiff’s petition and in the testimony of the plaintiff and the defendant alike, both parties equated the act of taking on the offspring of a father and grandfather’s slave-status concubines as domestic servants with “harming one’s own flesh and blood” (骨肉相殘) and the law forbidding this practice with the “Law on Harming One’s Own Flesh and Blood.” The people of sixteenth century Joseon already considered the taking of members of the paternal bloodline as domestic servants to be a problem of morality (人倫), and the concept of “harming one’s own flesh and blood” (骨肉相殘) to which it gave rise became the symbol of the law that would prohibit the taking as domestic servants of paternal relatives within four degrees of consanguinity.