remain in paradise. Gaining merit by memorializing and revering one’s ancestors was an important part of the teachings of Buddhism. This religious requirement added to the importance of keeping track of one’s family tree.
Confucianism, which became increasingly influential in Korea from the twelfth century and was decreed the state religion in 1392, made ancestor worship the law of the land. Social classes, based primarily on ancestry, were minutely prescribed and hereditary. Local government offices kept detailed records of all families. From that time until the end of the nineteenth century, keeping track of one’s genealogy was not just a religious and social commitment but a legal requirement as well.
Another factor in the perpetuation of the chok system in Korea was the requirement that all families be listed in a national registry for tax, corvée labor, military service, and other administrative purposes, a procedure that provided a permanent record of the bloodlines of families from one generation to the next.
Probably the most important element in the perpetuation of the chok system, however, was the fact that the ruling elite in each of the earliest clans tended to make their positions hereditary, resulting in both power and wealth accruing to their individual families. Over the generations a few hundred of these families grew into large clans. By the beginning of the so-called Three Kingdoms period in the first century B.C., in any particular generation a handful of these clans were able to maintain a virtual monopoly on government power, often with the king and most of the higher court officials from the same clan.
Each of Korea’s three great unified dynasties, Shilla (669-935), Koryo (935-1392), and Choson (1391-1910), was dominated by the clans of their founders and their allied clans.
Korea’s largest and most famous clans cannot be separated from the country’s hereditary gentry class, the so-called yangban (yahng-bahn), a title first used in the early Shilla kingdom, prior to the unification of the country in 669, to describe scholars who served as both civil service officials and military officers.
Clan lineage in the yangban class became of overriding importance during the early centuries of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) because each family’s social status was determined primarily by its clan and by its relationship to the patrilineal founder of the clan. This made it extremely important for people to maintain detailed records of their ancestry, and as a result the study and publication of chok po (choak poh), or “clan genealogy,” became a major industry in the early 1600s.
Among the clans that were prominent and powerful in Korea during the Three Kingdoms period (100 B.C.-A.D. 668), the ones that stand out were Kim, Pak (now often written as Park), Yi (usually romanized as Lee), Sol, Suk, Sin, Kang, Yo, Ro, Om, Chu, and Myong.
There are said to be thirty-nine “root clans” throughout the country, each with a number of branches. The largest and most prominent of these “root clans” is the Kim family, which has thirty-two branch clans and accounts for some 24 percent of the population of the country. The Yi (or Lee) family has five branches. (The literal meaning of Kim is “gold.”)
Some Korean families can trace their clan ancestry back twenty-five hundred years. The main clan heir is known as chongson (chohng-sohn), which refers to “the oldest offspring.” The place where a clan originated is known as pongwan (pohngwahn), or “original place.”
Chol 촐 Choll
The Versatile Bow
While all ancient people apparently bowed down to superiors and to symbols of power as a sign of inferiority, humility, and respect (behavior that seems to have been inherent in the human species), the Chinese ritualized and institutionalized the bow and made it a formal, official part of all greetings, farewells, apologies, petitions, religious rituals, acknowledgments of orders, and so on. When the Chinese invaded Korea in 109 B.C. and established a four-hundred-year-long political hegemony over the small kingdoms on the peninsula, one of the customs they introduced into Korea was their highly stylized form of bowing.
Over the next thirteen centuries the chol (choll), or “bow,” gradually became embedded in Korean behavior. But it was the founding of the Choson or Yi dynasty in 1392 by General Song Gye Yi that was to make the bow into a vital part of the lives of all Koreans. General Yi adopted a much more structured and strict form of Confucianism, referred to as Neo-Confucianism, as the foundation for Korean society and implemented this new social order with military precision and discipline.
A key part of the relationship between individuals in the newly organized Choson dynasty was a precise form of etiquette that included respect language, a demeanor that was appropriate to the social rank of the people involved, and the chol.
General Yi’s successors continued the policies and practices that he had instituted until the very end of the Choson dynasty in 1910. When the Japanese annexed and colonized Korea in 1910, they brought their own highly institutionalized and stylized bow with them and required that all Koreans adopt it. The result of all this intensive conditioning is that the bow is still an important part of Korean etiquette.
The deeper the bow, the more humility, respect, sorrow, gratitude, etc., it indicates. In earlier times it was common for people to kneel down (if they were not already sitting) and touch their foreheads to the floor or ground when bowing to rulers and other high-ranking dignitaries and on special occasions such as funerals. This was the infamous k’ou t’ou (kowtow) long associated with China. K’ou means “head,” and t’ou means “bump” or “knock”—in other words, to knock one’s head against the floor or ground to demonstrate servile deference.
European traders and others who began visiting Asia in the 1700s and 1800s were shocked when they observed people performing the kowtow. They regarded it as dehumanizing and insulting. One historically famous “bowing incident” involved the leader of a British delegation who was scheduled to be presented to the empress of China. When he was informed that he would have to perform the kowtow before the empress, he became outraged and announced that he would rather go to war than submit to such a barbaric custom. (Finally the matter was settled when the Chinese agreed that he could remain standing and just bow from the waist.)
If one is accustomed to sitting on the floor or ground—as the Chinese and other Asians were—bowing until the head touches the floor is not such a big deal—a perspective that was, of course, totally alien to Europeans.
In Korea, as in Japan and most other Asian nations, bowing remains the formal method of acknowledging, greeting, and paying respect to people, to religious symbols, and so on, although where casual meetings and farewells are concerned internationalized Koreans and other Asians routinely combine the bow—and sometimes replace it altogether—with the Western custom of handshaking.
The chol is, in fact, a very effective means of nonverbal communication and for Koreans is far more culture-laden than verbal greetings and handshaking. The message given by a chol is determined by its depth and its duration. The deeper the bow and the longer its duration, the stronger the message.
There are bows for a variety of occasions and people involved. The lower-status person generally bows first, unless the superior is formally apologizing for some serious transgression. Differences in the social standing of the parties, as well as the circumstances, determine the type of bow that is appropriate. People of conspicuously senior status may barely nod in response to bows from those who are young and very junior to them (professors/students; parents/children; corporate presidents/ordinary employees). By the same token, the more emotional content the bower wants to express, the deeper and longer the bow.
As someone who has been bowing for more than fifty years, I can personally attest to the efficacy of the chol as a means of relating emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually to others. When expressing sorrow, humility, or gratitude, for example, a
