19세기 조선의 민사집행의 실태

Abstract

How was the legal decision of local government enforced in 19th century Joseon? In this paper, I have presented some points about civil execution in 19th century Joseon using various archives of the local government of 19th century Joseon. Petitioners strongly requested the imprisonment of debtor. However, the local magistrate and governor were reluctant to use it, preferably as an imprisonment of debtor last resort (chapters II, III, IV, and VI). In chapter Ⅰ, I described when the loser do not observe the court ruling, what kind of measurements do the written law of Joseon dynasty prepared. In chapterⅤ, I showed several cases that local governor ordered imprisonment of debtor to magistrate. In chapter Ⅷ I showed that in 19th century Joseon, the prison functioned as a debtor’s prison. In chapter Ⅸ I showed that the central government and local government was the most frequent users of the imprisonment of the taxpayers when they d id not p ay t he t ax on time. The conclusions of this essay are as follow. The modern rationalized legislation outlawed the imprisonment of debtor, or even if it was not, it uses the imprisonment of debtor as a non-criminal basis. Western medieval debtor’s prisons fall into this category. From the middle of Joseon Dynasty, the detention house was described as a company building, and the concept of detention house was comparable to that of the Western medieval debtor’s prison. However, the detention of debtors in 19th century Joseon was different from that of Western medieval debtor’s prison in that it was incorporated as part of the criminal process.