Korea
A Note on Korean Names
Approximately half of all Koreans share only five family names, and distinguishing among them is a genuine challenge. The roman letters used to represent Korean sounds may also vary with the geographic region and with individuals, resulting in the same names often being spelled differently. Brothers and sisters in a family also usually share a second given name that distinguishes their generation and is known as their “generational” name.
Generational names usually come after the personal or “first” name—and therefore appear like “middle names” to Westerners—but some people may put them first, further complicating matters. Some names are written with the first name and the generational names separate and with the initial letters capitalized. Others connect the two names with a hyphen, sometimes with the initial letter of the generational name capitalized and other times with it in lower case. Some people run the two names together as if they were one. The same editions of English-language newspapers and magazines published in Korea and abroad often present Korean names in two or three different ways.
Not surprisingly, foreigners who are not familiar with Korean family names, with the last-name-first custom, and with the use of shared generational names often have difficulty recognizing which is which.
For this book I have chosen to present all Korean names in the Western style—first name, the generational name as the individual concerned writes it, and family name—because Westerners are used to this system and it reduces the possibility of confusing the names. The most famous example of Koreans who combined their first and generational names was probably Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), the controversial patriot and statesman who was president of the Republic of Korea from 1948 until 1960. His original name was Sung Man Yi.
For more very important details about Korean names, see “Irum/What’s in a Name?”
Aboji 아보지 Ah-boh-jee
The “Father” Culture
When asked to list the most important word in the Korean language, most older Koreans are likely to respond with aboji (ah-boh-jee), the common term for “father.” A formal and honorific term is abonim (ah-boh-neem). In fact, Korea’s traditional culture might be described as a father culture because of the central role that fathers played in the social structure and in day-to-day living for more than five centuries.
The reason for the development of a father-based social system in Korea is bound up in the Neo-Confucianism adopted in 1392 by the newly established Choson (or Yi) dynasty as the official government ideology. From around 1200 the preceding Koryo dynasty had become dominated by an elite class of officials and Buddhist priests who became increasingly corrupt and inefficient. Korean scholars of that era blamed the situation on the royal court’s continuing obsession with supporting Buddhism at the expense of the welfare of the country.
These scholars began to advocate political reform based on a more detailed and stronger version of Confucianism, known as Neo-Confucianism, or “New Confucianism,” that had been developing in China for several generations. This new form of the ancient sage’s teachings emphasized filial piety and ancestor worship as the best possible foundation for the family and society as a whole. In 1386 the newly established Ming dynasty of China invaded Korea in an attempt to reassert hegemony over the peninsula. This precipitated the fall of the Koryo dynasty in Korea and the formation of a new dynasty in 1392 by a young charismatic Korean general named Song Gye Yi.
General Yi and those who succeeded him purged all Buddhist influence from the government and adopted Neo-Confucianism as the paramount ideology of the new regime, making it the law of the land socially as well as politically. Under this much more detailed and stricter form of Confucianism, Korean family members were precisely ranked by sex and age, with aboji or “fathers” having absolute authority over all other members. By law and by custom fathers were to be obeyed without question in all things.
There was a special relationship between husbands and wives, but first sons ranked second in the family hierarchy because they automatically inherited the mantle of the father’s power, along with most of his property, and were responsible for performing the all-important rituals pertaining to ancestor worship. In this social and political context Korean fathers reigned as masters of their households in every traditional sense of the word. Love and affection played no formal role in this family system because attitudes and behavior based on such emotions would have been disruptive and were therefore taboo.
General Yi’s successors (he took the name Taejo when he assumed the throne as king) continued his policy of promoting Neo-Confucianism as the state and social ideology, and by the middle of the next century they had won out over those continuing to favor Buddhism.
Over the following several generations Neo-Confucianism was turned into a ritualistic cult that controlled almost every aspect of Korean behavior, particularly the etiquette of interpersonal relationships and the role of the father. Under this Confucian concept of government and society, the king was regarded as the symbolic father of the people, who were expected to obey him as children obey their fathers. By extension, people were also expected to obey all government authorities because they were official representatives of the father-king.
A generally unspoken corollary of the king-as-father concept was that people were not expected to respect or obey an unethical king and were justified in rebelling against him. But that was something that normally occurred only after generations of abuse, during which the strength and will of the ruling faction gradually degenerated and the government could no longer stifle the dissent. The Confucian-oriented dynasty founded by General Yi was to last for more than half a millennium and fundamentally influence the attitudes and behavior of all Koreans.
All activity in Korean families was based on the dominant role prescribed for the male sex in general and on aboji and sons in particular. Fathers were the foundation of the family system, and sons were the pillars of each household. Until around the 1960s, Korean parents “babied” their young children, especially sons, longer than most Western parents. Mothers nursed their children longer and would often carry them on their backs until they were three or four years old.
Fathers generally had close, warm relationships with both their male and female children until they were three or four years old, tolerating behavior that would sometimes shock Westerners. But as soon as the process of preparing the children for adulthood began, the father’s relationship with sons changed dramatically. Fathers became very strict and very formal, resulting in the relationship between fathers and sons gradually becoming more distant, ultimately reaching the point that interaction between them was virtually limited to formal occasions.
The whole thrust of the fathers’ attitude and behavior was to condition their sons to obey them, to be dependent on them, to pay them a highly formalized style of respect in both language and behavior, and to carry on the Confucian traditions of the family, including the chauvinist treatment of females.
One of the more irrational aspects of this system was that it generally created an unbridgeable emotional gap between fathers and sons. It is recorded voluminously that the system resulted in a great many sons hating their fathers, and there are equally numerous references in social literature to the relief that sons felt when their fathers died, freeing them at last. From the outside, it often seems that most of the effort of Korean fathers while they were alive was to become chosang (chohsahng), or “ancestors,” whose descendants would remember and honor them.
Despite the strict Confucian image of the traditional Korean family it was rare that fathers exercised absolute dictatorial power over their wives and children. No matter how restricted wives were in their public behavior, within the walls of their homes they could and often did influence
