Nobi

Slavery in Korea has a very long history. Slaves in Korea were owned as property by the elite Yangban class. They were bought, sold, given away as gifts and inherited. For individuals in financial difficulty, one could sell either one's self and or one's family into slavery. Daughters were often sold into sexual slavery. The killing of slaves, while legally prohibited in 1444, rarely went punished. Slavery was largely hereditary. Knowledge of Korea's slavery is not common amongst modern Koreans. It involved about 30% to 40% of the population and was eventually abolished by the Japanese in the 20th century.

Nobi

Nobi is the Korean word for a system of slavery which was in place from about the 4th century averaging 30% or or 40% of the population, it was eventually abolished by the Japanese in the 20th century. Nobi can refer to either the system itself, or the people in the system. It is a two-character Hanmun word for people of the servile class, male (no) and female (bi).

Nobi and its proper translation into English have been the subject of heavy debate among historians, as non-Korean historians overwhelmingly favor translating it as "slave" and "slavery". Many Koreans argue that nobi was not a slave system, but a servant class system that does not meet the criteria for slavery, pointing to a different word, noye. Many arguments of this nature are rejected as attempts to sanitize an embarrassing and ignoble aspect of Korean history.

Carrying an element of shame to modern Koreans, those who do not wish nobi to be equated with slavery cite that the percentage of the population who were nobi never reached anywhere near the level of slaves in slave societies, either ancient or modern; there was no racial foundation for nobi; and the role of nobi was far different from the role of slaves in almost all aspects, economically, socially, and philosophically.[1] These individuals wish the word to simply be kept "nobi", arguing that trying to translate it simply obscures the context.

Value

The first record of the price of nobi was in Kyori dynasty, 986. A male aged 15-60 was worth 100 pil of hemp cloth. This remained unchanged for the next 400 years. During the Chosen dynasty, in 1398, it rose to 400 pil, equal to the value of a horse. Later set officially as 4,000 notes of paper money or 20 sok of rice, this price remained until 1600s.

At the time of the Japanese invasion of 1592, prices fell steeply and vagrancy rose. They only rebounded to the same levels as before after the war.

Living conditions

Nobi were kept by members of the Yangban class. They worked as public servants in the courts, field laborers, and house servants. Nobi could be bought, sold, and given as gifts. They were the property of their owners. Their owners were responsible for their care and well being, and to a certain extent, were answerable to the law for such. Nobi could own property in many cases. Nobi were allowed to marry and rear children, sometimes only with other nobi, sometimes with commoners, and at least on a few occasions, as concubines on their owners. The fate of the children was in the hands of the masters, some were made nobi, others commoners, others abandoned altogether.

Nobi were created by force, perhaps as a punishment for a crime or failure to pay a debt but becoming nobi voluntarily was possible, typically to escape wretching poverty. Because the institution of slavery was such an important part of the Chosŏn rulers, there are numerous historical records in which slaves are mentioned.

Sexual slavery

Main article: Comfort women

Contemporary sexual slavery

Main article: Prostitution in South Korea

Main article: Prostitution in North Korea

Korea both South and North are known to be sources and destinations of human trafficking and sexual slavery. Grinding poverty and the famines of the 1990s drove thousands of women to defect to China and

External links

• Nobi and Nobi Labor in Ancient Korea Lee In Cheol
• James B. Palais, University of Washington; Theodore Kornweibel, San Diego University
• Kuen Tae Kim et al.
• Nobi: Rescuing the Nation from Slavery

Bibliography

• From imperial gifts to sex slaves: theorizing symbolic representations of the'comfort women by CS Soh - Social Science Japan Journal, 2000
• James B. Palais’s chapter 6 in Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Kyŏngwŏn and the Late Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996)
• Rhee, Rhee Young-hoon and Donghyu Yang “Korean Nobi in American Mirror: Yi Dynasty Coerced Labor in Comparison to Savery in the Antebellum Southern United States”
• Slavery in Medieval Korea by Ellen Salem, Columbia University 1978
• Slavery in Korea Korea Review, 2 (1902) pp 149-55
• Slavery and Slaving in World History by Joseph Calder Miller. M.E. Sharpe, 1999 ISBN 0765602806
• Rural Slavery in Antebellum South Carolina and Early Choson Korea by Hyong-In Kim. University of New Mexico, 1990.
• Unheard Voices: The Life of the Nobi in O Hwi-mun's Swaemirok by Kichung Kim. Korean Studies - Volume 27, 2003