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Many things are known about the nobi and the nobi system in premodern Korea, such as their demographic data and their social and legal status during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). But we know little about the private and personal side of their lives, what their day-to-day life was like as individuals or families, the personal and social relationships among the nobi, and nothing at all of their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The sole purpose of this study is to cast a little light on the human face of the men and women who were nobi.
Prologue
Until several years ago, I had no knowledge of the extent of slavery in premodern Korea. In fact, it was in shock and dismay that I learned Korea had been a slave society, not just a society with slaves.1 How can I account for my ignorance? Was it simply a personal failing or part of the collective ignorance of my generation? I had, of course, known of the words, nobi and jong: nobi, a two-character hanmun word for persons of the servile class both male (no) and female (bi), and jong, a vernacular word for a male or female person of the servile class. But I had had little understanding of the exact meaning of these words or their relation to me or Korean history, for they were little more than words I had heard spoken or seen in print, and only rarely at that. Such had been the extent of my knowledge about slavery in Korea until I began to look into the subject. I have wondered if my experience in any way parallels that of an American who discovers that many of America's founding fathers had been slave owners.
What should the nobi be called in English? Slaves, serfs, or servants? They were one or the other, or all three, their individual status varying not only with the place and time of their bondage but also with the particular character of the relationship between an individual nobi and his master. Though slaves by most definitions, the nobi were in many significant ways unlike the slaves of the antebellum South, with whom the word slave is mostly associated today. Among Korean scholars of the nobi there is...