조선후기 평민 동성촌락의 성장

Abstract

Today traces of a single-lineage village remains in places in Korea, and an investigation in 1930s also revealed that villages corresponding to almost half the total were single-lineage villages. It is difficult to explain such a phenomenon from the viewpoint in the late Joseaon Dynasty that a single-lineage village is regarded as a nobility one and a non-single-lineage village is a commoners' village. A single-lineage village does not occur only among the nobility(Yangban), so that after the 19th century, there began to appear many cases even among non-nobility classes where they took the leadership of a village by accepting agnate order and through collective living of the single-lineage people. The common people, during their collective living, controlled a marriage of the same surname & family origin to which the nobility already adhered and formed their own circle to offer marriage. However, their circle to offer marriage or living is narrower than the nobility, mostly concentrated on a single-lineage village and its surrounding. They positively made efforts for increasing their social position in line with formation of their single-lineage villages. The earliest generation of the people who formed single-lineage villages consisted of commoners and servants, but after the middle 18th century, the village members increased in their position to the middle class, and almost to the upper class by the late 19th century, all of which resulted from formation of a strong paternal group. Some of the common people in the late Joseon Dynasty positively accepted family culture established by the nobility, while they attempted to advance their social position by collectively living in a certain village. All of such efforts did not give all the groups success. But, it is difficult to deny the fact that it resulted from the common people's continuous efforts for a long time that the tendency of the single-lineage people collectively living appeared in lots of villages in modern times.