대한제국기 호구 변동의 의미 - 평안북도 정주군 해산면 호적대장과 목장양안 비교 분석 -

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the meaning of fluctuation of households recorded on the household registers complied during the Korean Empire(Gwangmu Empire, 1897~1910). The records of households and people written on the consecutive household registers－compiled in 1899 and 1900－of Haesan-myeon, Jeongju-gun, Pyeonanbukdo Province are analyzed and compared to the records of people written on the two sets of Haesan-myeon state-owned farmland registers, complied in 1899 and 1902. These two kinds of documents produced by local administration sometimes grasped the same people who lived in this area and had duty to pay land tax on account of cultivating the state farmland. The central government of the Korean Empire clarified that every single household and person lived in a specific ‘myeon’, an administrative district, had to be grasped and recorded on the household register of that region. In other words, household registers during this time had to grasp natural households and show the actual residence of people who lived in that administrative district. However, based on this comparative analyses of the records of household registers and state farmland registers, multiple natural households could be recorded as a single household on household registers. And it was possible that people who consecutively lived in the same region could be dropped out of the household registers, or could be recorded on a different region. That is, a household on the household registers during this time was differentiated from a natural household and household registers did not grasp every single natural household and person in the area. On the one hand, there was no borderline of an administrative district, particularly a ‘dong(洞)’, the smallest unit of administration. On the other hand, the contents of household registers could be affected by the intention of a local administration responding the pressure of household taxes levied on a administrative district. Determining the definition of a “household” or setting the total number of households of a region was up to the local administration as occasion demands.