Between Dreams and Reality : The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600-1894 / Eugene Y. Park.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Park, Eugene Y., author.

Series:

Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 281.

Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 281

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Military education--Korea--History.

Military education.

Sociology, Military--Korea--History--1392-1910.

Sociology, Military.

Korea--Armed Forces--Examinations--History.

Korea.

Korea--History--Chosŏn dynasty, 1392-1910.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

Leiden; Boston : BRILL, 2007.

Other Title:

The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600-1894

Place of Publication:

Boston : Harvard University Asia Center, 2007.

Summary:

"From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Korean men from all walks of life trained in the arts of war to prepare not for actual combat but to sit for the state military examination (mukwa). Despite this widespread interest, only for a small minority did passing the test lead to appointment as a military official. Why, then, did so many men aspire to the mukwa? Eugene Y. Park argues that the mukwa was not only the state's primary instrument for recruiting aristocrats as new members to the military bureaucracy but also a means by which the ruling elite of Seoul could partially satisfy the status aspirations of marginalized regional elites, secondary status groups, commoners, and manumitted slaves. Unlike the civil examination (munkwa), however, that assured successful examinees posts in the prestigious central bureaucracy, achievement in the mukwa did not enable them to gain political power or membership in the existing aristocracy. A wealth of empirical data and primary sources drives Park's study: a database of more than 32,000 military examination graduates; a range of new and underutilized documents such as court records, household registers, local gazetteers, private memoirs, examination rosters, and genealogies; and products of popular culture, such as p'ansori storytelling and vernacular fiction. Drawing on this extensive evidence, Park provides a comprehensive sociopolitical history of the mukwa system in late Chosŏn Korea.".

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Introduction

The Early Military Examination System

The Rise of a Military Aristocracy

Local Elites and the Military Examination

Yangban Cohesiveness and the Chosŏn Dynasty

Nonelites and the Military Examination

The State and the Military Examination System

Appendixes

Notes

Works Cited

Character List

Index

Harvard East Asian Monographs.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781684174515

1684174511

OCLC:

989852384

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684174515 DOI