Talk:Jokbo

So the second son
So the second son and so forth don't have a jokbo? If this is correct, than only a small portion of Korean (nuclear) families have a jokbo, with most everyone looking to their fourth and fifth cousins to discover their ancestry. Please explain Isaac Crumm 01:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The holder of the jokbo is the head of the household, and it is not a nuclear family document, but a clan document. It's typically held in the clan central office, as it were, although there are certainly copies. Clans are identified by the region of origin, what Koreans mean when they say "hometown" - 'kohyang'. The huge Kim (Korean name) surname has any number of clans, and the records for, say, the cadet royal line, the Andong Kims, will be kept in Andong. As an additional comment, perhaps we should fill out this a bit more, since these records replace the western vital records - Koreans do not have marriage licenses, birth certificates, etc but rather keep all such records in the jokbo, of which a copy is also kept at the local government office. The jokbo can even denote citizenship...I am married to a Korean woman, whose family very kindly entered me into the jokbo when we married. That act among other things confers Korean citizenship. I didn't realize at the time what a very gracious act it was. Especially given that the clan is the Min clan. --Dan (talk) 18:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

should distinguish
We should distinguish from the official jokbo and duplicates of it. Yes, only the eldest son of each branch of each clan gets official custodianship of the original, but the other sons (and their families) are allowed to have copies, especially for those parts of the clan that are substantially distant (geographically speaking) from the rest of the clan.

use of the jokbo
As for the use of the jokbo (as a record of Korean lineage, use in record-keeping and housing of the official copies in a clan monument and in government archives, and so on), it is mostly as Dan says. Inclusion into the jokbo by itself does not necessarily denote membership into the clan; clan jokbos (that's meant to be plural) still do not record the actual name of any women who marry into the clan, simply the clan they hail from. They are marked as "woman from so-and-so clan," even though most Korean women still retain Korean names with Chinese character equivalents (all Korean men with Korean names have these, and aside from the family name, part of the given name is determined by the jokbo for any particular generation). I'm not sure how your wife's family included you in their jokbo, Dan (i.e. did they list your name in English, did they transliterate it into Korean, or did they just write "man from so-and-so foreign family"), but that's not typical practice, because it effectively means you've been absorbed/assimilated into your wife's clan (of course, if you're not concerned about that sort of thing, I suppose that doesn't matter). Depending on how it was done, it could have been a simple recognition of an outsider marrying into the clan (and required no more than the usual administrative effort, and this is the typical assimilation route), or it could have required a lot more wrangling and discussion among clan elders (if they were going to include you as a full male member of the clan, as if you'd been born into it). However, I would normally suspect that your inclusion into your wife's clan's jokbo was merely a symbolic gesture, as your wife is not actually recognized as a full member of her clan (women in jokbos are not listed with the clan name or last name, but listed as "woman" followed by her given name, and mostly the only thing about them that is listed is who they married), but the way in which you describe it makes me think that maybe the clan elders (in a rare gesture of magnanimity, I might add - these guys are typically loathe to add other people into their own clan, usually because of possible conflicts in claiming members of other clans to their own) did in fact convene and decide to include you as a full member.

conditional
This sort of thing is conditional; for instance, if a male member of the clan does something to shame himself or the clan - like sell out the nation - a council of elders can still opt to have that member's name, achievements, and descendants stricken from the jokbo. This sort of procedure was far more common in past eras when it was far easier, under neo-Confucian guidelines, to "shame" the clan. However, this process is also reversible, as when a member that has been removed somehow redeems himself. Back in the day, if you were not a member of a clan with a jokbo you were effectively nobody, with no recognition and no status; thus, the threat of being removed from the jokbo was a serious one. All clans that have received some sort of mandate or recognition from one monarch or another during Korean history, so long as they didn't fall out of favor (and stay that way) or do something to lose recognized status (more so among the various clans than with the royal court), still retain a jokbo (and its subsequent copies). Quite frequently you will hear tales of clans that have gained and lost yangban status (and often gained it again), and this also refers to jokbo recognition. While yangban clans were the only ones to officially have jokbos in the Chosun era (1392-1910), the yangban system itself did not explicitly exist as an institution until then; clans of the landed nobility and court scholars, as well as military clans and national intelligentsia, who had maintained jokbo in previous eras (i.e. Unified Shilla and Goryeo), typically became yangban clans in the Chosun era and continued to maintain their jokbos.

significance of the jokbo has diminished
While the official significance of the jokbo has diminished somewhat with the abolition of the monarchy and the yangban system of nobility, its use as a family record has been known for most of Korean history (i.e. a very long time, on the order of millennia). Therefore it is understandable that Korean clans will still maintain their aristocratic traditions. However, given the various events in Korean history (most of them tumultuous), it has become more difficult to determine who in fact is part of a clan with a legitimate jokbo (i.e. who is part of a legitimately aristocratic clan) and who is faking - as it is, practically all families in Korea these days claim to possess a jokbo or be a part of a clan that does, despite the fact that the number of people and families who could claim this were still in the minority before (of course, after several thousands of years of being fairly homogeneous, it is also possible that most Koreans these days can claim descent from one aristocratic clan or another). It has been speculated that many lower-class families acquired the jokbo of their employer clans or became part of those clans outright and passed that off as their own.Ecthelion83 (talk) 00:34, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Really nice, Ecthelion - you should clearly put a lot of this on the main page. To answer your questions, my wife's eldest uncle, who was head of household, included me in the jokbo, after consulting with his (one-and-only) younger brother. As you may know, the Min family is pretty small and those two uncles were about it for a council of elders. They wrote my name in transliterated hangul, and included a bit about my hometown. Not sure about recognition of women as full clan members or not, at least in this particular clan. The women in this clan tend to be a pretty strong-minded and strong-willed bunch. Several in the previous generation, i.e., the women born about 1910-1930, were college educated. And they really know their history and politics, and love to talk about it. --Dan (talk) 21:38, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Honestly, despite everything I've said, I can't profess to be an expert on the jokbo and the various intricacies; thus, I'll be content for the time being to leave what I've said off the main page and let it be parsed over by others who are interested/have more knowledge than I do. That said, I am certain now that female members of the clan, regardless of the clan from which they hail, are still written with their given name but not the family name (according to the traditional understanding that despite the fact that Korean women keep their last names after marriage, they become a part of the family into whom they marry) when recorded in Hanmun (not Hangul). Various details such as college education (especially for the women, in the era you mention, Dan), achievements, and who one marries, are likely to be listed, for men and women, as I now know. As for your wife's family, Dan, do you know which Min clan/sept they are? As I noted, various clans with the same last name hail from various places (for instance, the Korean rulers during the Joseon era hailed from the Jeonju Yi clan; I am a member of the Gyeongju Yi clan, and despite the use of the same Chinese character/Hanmun for the name, they are two distinct clans and, as far as I'm aware, not actually related), and some clans, despite sharing the same name, may not actually be related.Ecthelion83 (talk) 22:45, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Dan, if your wife is from the Yeoheung Min clan (as in Empress Myeongseong's clan), which is essentially the only prominent Min clan, then it'll likely have a lot more than two people for council of elders, as there are 142,570 members as of 2000 according to the South Korean Office of Statistics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.247.91 (talk) 05:24, 2 September 2010 (UTC)