Sources of Conflict in South Korean Parricides, 1948-1963
Phillip C. Shon, Ph.D.
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Abstract
Previous works on parricide have been primarily based on North Americanand European contexts, to the near exclusion of other nations, sociocultural contexts, and time periods. Using newspaper accounts of parricidefrom the Chosun Ilbo, this paper aims to examine the sources of conflict
between parents and their offspring in preindustrial South Korea. The
findings reveal that arguments, financial disputes, and discipline arenotable sources of conflict in South Korean parricides. Additionally, theresults suggest that parricides in South Korea are shaped by Confucianvalue systems.
Keywords: South Korea, parricide, Korean culture, sources of conflict,homicide, Confucianism
Introduction
Parricides represent about five percent of the homicides in South
Korea.1 Although the term parricide has been used in the past and present
to define the killing of one’s biological and stepparents, prosecuted undergeneral homicide law rather than specific statutory offenses2, the term isstill used to include the killing of superordinate and affinal family
members in Korea.3 This study uses the term “domestic parricide” to referto the killing of a mother, father, or superordinate elders such as uncles,
aunts, grandparents, and in-laws by subordinate family members such as
children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, and sons/daughters-in-law. This
expansive definition of parricide is consistent with other historical works
that have included extended family members in their definition. 4 This
paper examines the sources of conflict between parents/superordinate
family elders and their offspring/subordinates in pre-industrial South
Korea.
In previous works, child abuse and mental illness have been profferedas causal factors in parricides.5 For example, Ahn et al. and Jung et al.
attributed the prevalence of parricides in South Korea to the mental illness

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of offenders, as well as the nuclear character of Korean households. Thatis, mentally ill offspring kill their parents because they are the default
caretakers who reside with them, and the victimization is primarily
explained as a function of co-residence. Even when parricides are
examined in Korea and other Asian nations, explanations continue to beframed primarily from Western templates of judgement (e.g. the Capragas
syndrome) rather than with specific social and cultural factors that might
be pertinent to their understanding.6
An exploratory study of the sources of conflict is important because
conflicts have a temporal beginning and a terminal resolution, even if their
origins are historical or situational.7 Conflicts occur throughout the life
cycle of parents/superordinate elders and their offspring/subordinates inways that are also rooted in sociality.8 Every homicide is about something,whether the killing arises from a major disagreement about life decisions
or a frivolous conflict.9 Rather than trying to impute a motive, it may be
prudent to understand the dynamics of a homicide by examining the actual
sources of conflict between victims and offenders.10 Although much is
known about the potential conflicts between adolescents and parents in
Western contexts, the effect of mental illness on legal disposition, and thepunishment that parricide offenders receive in Asia11, little is known about
the type of domestic conflicts that occur between parents and their adultoffspring that lead to parricides. It is this potential discord between parents
and their adult offspring that may illuminate notable characteristics ofparricides. This paper examines the sources of conflicts that lead toparricides in South Korea and applies a source-of-conflict model ofparricide used in a previous study to South Korea.
The paper also explores the sources of conflict between
parents/superordinate elders and their offspring/subordinates during theperiod from 1948 to 1963. South Korea underwent significant changes
during this period, including the inauguration of the First Republic, theKorean War and its aftermath, the April 1960 student revolution, and the
May 16th coup d’état. The military revolution ended the short-lived Second
Republic, ushered in the Third Republic, and established the groundworkfor the nation’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. 12
The changes brought on by the Korean War and the industrialization
reconfigured the social organization of Korean families in significant
ways. 13 It is unknown how such social changes in Korean history may
have affected the conflicts between parents/superordinate elders and theiroffspring/subordinates that resulted in parricides.

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South Korea also provides a unique opportunity to examine how
sources of conflict can be shaped by cultural belief systems. The Yi
Dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910 adopted Confucianism as thestate ideology. Confucian influences, customs, and practices continued
during the Japanese colonization and the U.S military government. 14
Today, respect for elders, conformity to established traditions, patrilineal
kinship ideologies, and the preservation of hierarchical relations permeate
almost every aspect of socio-moral life in Korea.15 Expectations of filial
piety in Confucian ideologies shaped the interactions between
superordinate elders and subordinates, as the latter was expected to deferto the former. 16 In a country where respect for tradition and elders is
encoded into every aspect of social life, parricide represents the apogee ofrebellion in a political, cultural, and moral sense.17 Such a belief system
ought to militate against violence against parents and elders.18 Other works
that have examined the intersection of Confucianism and parricide in Asia
have primarily examined the ideology as a protective factor against
violence.19 This project explores whether Confucianism can be viewed asa facilitator of violence against parents and superordinate family members.
The conflicts that entangle parents and offspring in pre-industrial
South Korea may or may not be similar to the ones reported in other Asian
countries that share Confucian roots. It remains unknown how ideologies
such as Confucianism may affect the pattern and character of violenceagainst parents/superordinate elders. Although this paper does not test
hypotheses, it analyzes the sources of conflict in qualitative ways as a wayof generating testable propositions and theories about parricides, anddiscusses the notable sources of conflict that shaped parricides in South
Korea.
Literature Review: Parricides in the West and East
For the past 30 years, the discord between parents and their offspringthat leads to parricides has been primarily framed as one related to childmaltreatment in the context of nuclear family relations or mental illness inadult offenders. 20 In the West, the term “parricide” has been usedsynonymously with “adolescent parricide,” reflected in the enduring
typological construct used to differentiate the various types of offenders
who kill their parents.21 Aside from adolescents who kill their parents toescape prolonged abuse, suffer from mental illness, or are motivated bytheir own selfish desires, a systematic study of adult offenders and adultvictims in their own right has been absent in the existing literature. WhenInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XXII, No. 1

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adult parricides have been examined, however, they have been framed
solely in relation to mental illness. 22 Previous psychiatric studies ofparricide offenders in the West have found that the most commonly
diagnosed mental illness in parricide offenders is paranoid schizophrenia,
followed by psychosis, personality disorders, and impulse disorders.23
Recent historical works have argued that parricide ought to be
examined across the entire life cycle of offenders and victims rather thanjust childhood and adolescence. This emerging body of work has shownthat changes in leisure patterns, modes of economic production, patternsof alcohol consumption, and gender relations affect how parricides
unfold, 24 thus mirroring larger patterns of homicide in society. Just as
importantly, it has been shown that parricides ought to be examined inrelation to other homicides.25 By no means is a continued neglect of adulton-adult parricides justifiable. In order to move away from adolescentcentered analyses in parricide studies, the reasons thatparents/superordinate elders and offspring/subordinates become mired inconflicts must be examined.
Previous works on parricide in the East have been primarily legalistic
and psychiatric rather than criminological. For example, Ahn et al. andJung et al. attributed the prevalence of parricides in Korea to the mental
illness of offenders as well as the nuclear character of Koreanhouseholds. 26 Victimization is primarily explained as a function of coresidence. Finch’s study found that Japanese parricides involved adisproportionate number of male offender matricides, largely explained asa function of the post-war work patterns of Japanese fathers.27 That is, sonsdisproportionately killed mothers while fathers were away at work due to“insanity” or “hatred.”
Other historical works that have examined the intersection ofConfucianism and parricide have primarily examined the punishment that
offenders received. Gabbiani’s examination of Chinese legal codesindicated that the punishment for parricides, intentional or not, wasdeath.28 Moore’s study of punishment in China revealed that lack of filial
piety was treated harshly by legal authorities.29 In the preceding historical
works, mental illness was explored as a way of explaining the variationsin legal punishment. Moreover, historical works on homicides in Asia
relied on a handful of exceptional cases, legal codes, and precedents foranalyses, as a way of generalizing about the characteristics of social life in
the periods under study.30 In nations that codify filial piety and punish its

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2018violations, it is possible that Confucianism may shape the sources ofconflict between parents and their offspring.
Shortcomings in the Parricide Literature
Previous literature has examined the sources of conflict in parricideprimarily in a Western context, imbued with Western sensibilities andframed in relation to child maltreatment or mental illness, which thereby
ignores other potential sources of conflict throughout the life cycle ofvictims and offenders. For instance, historians have implicitly attributed
the rarity of parricides to the fact that children were sent away to work inthe service of other households. 31 However, if domestic servants areincluded in the figures, the percentage of domestic homicides increases
slightly.32 Moreover, it has been shown that disputes about inheritance33
and alcohol-fueled fights that culminate in lethal violence were important
contexts behind parricides throughout history.34 Previous criminologicaland psychiatric studies have neglected to provide a historically andculturally sensitive analyses of parricides, focusing instead on individuallevel variables. It remains unknown if ideological systems such as
Confucianism affects violence against parents in meaningful ways.35
There are also notable shortcomings that exist in the parricide
literature in the East. First, the discourses of child maltreatment and mental
illness permeate the analytical strategies of scholars who examine
parricides in Asia.36 Rather than exploring the sources of conflict between
parents and offspring in their own right, a Western template ofinterpretation is presupposed. This presupposition is problematic, for thevery definition of parricide in a Korean context is different from the oneused in Western-based research.
Second, although parricide has been defined as crimes against
superordinate elders in Asia, recent works emphasize the nuclear
orientation of families—biological parents and stepparents—while
excluding the presence of other family members who may affect patternsof violence in the household. 37 By examining parricide in preindustrial
South Korea, the variations in the character of violence against parents thathave occurred due to technological and socio-cultural changes may
provide invaluable insights into means to reduce violence within thefamily. A study of the sources of conflict that lead to typical parricide
incidents, rather than analyses of exceptional legal cases, may yieldfindings that illuminate the patterns of social life in the years following theestablishment of the Republic of Korea.

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Data and Methods
For this paper, the Chosun Ilbo was used for data on parricide cases.
Established in 1920, the conservative paper was suspended frequently
during the Japanese occupation. However, it has been published daily
since the liberation, including during the 15-year period for this research,
January 1, 1948 through December 31, 1963. Newspaper copies available
in microfiche were digitized and publicly available on a commercial
website, and a registration fee was paid to obtain access. A research
assistant identified and located articles related to parricides by sifting
through the digitized copies of the newspapers, and the author thenscoured the digitized microfiches looking for the appearance of generalterms such as “homicide” and “murder” in the initial stages of caseselection. A more refined search was carried out if the Korean word for
murder appeared in the text of the article. Cases were selected for inclusion
if the term “ancestor” appeared next to the term murder or its
lexical/sentential equivalents. The term can be literally translated as“elderly superordinate murder,” which is the English language equivalentof parricide. Table 1 contains the terminology used to search the Chosun
Ilbo and National Archives of Korea (NAK).
Table 1: Search Terminology and Translations
EnglishKoreanChinesePhonetic
Murdersalin살인
殺人
Ancestor
Parricide존속존속살인Manslaughter치사

Attempted
Wounded

미수
진상
상해

尊屬
尊屬殺人
致死
未遂
眞傷

jon sok
jon sok sal inchi sahmi soochin sang
sang hae

傷害
Source: Developed by the author.

The author selected articles directly related to the killing of a parent
or other superordinate family elders, which resulted in a total of 102
newspaper articles on 92 completed or attempted parricide incidents. Afterthe cases were selected, a coding instrument containing 18 variables was

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used to further refine the data for analytical purposes. The data was thenentered into a data management software.
According to historians, information in newspapers should be crosschecked against multiple sources.38 To this end, the author obtained a listof all the documents related to crimes committed against superordinate
elders that occurred between 1948 and 1963 through on-site access at the
National Archives of Korea (NAK). According to Korean law, offenses
against superordinate elders received a special designation, jon sok, whichfunctions as an aggravating factor. The author visited the NAK andobtained a list of all official records that had the designation jon sok. There
were 473 offenses committed against superordinate elders that werereported, investigated, and adjudicated during the 15-year period coveredby this research. This figure constituted the universe of violent offenses
against parents/superordinate elders. There were 19 distinct offenses thatreceived this special designation according to the record list createdthrough on-site record searches.
The NAK records facilitated further validity checks. Of the 19
aggravating offense categories contained in the list, examining the fourmost serious possible charging offenses for jon sok categories—murder,
manslaughter, attempted murder, and wounded—yielded 124 offenders
contained on the NAK records. This figure represented the universe of
attempted and completed parricides. The Chosun Ilbo reported 92
attempted and completed parricide incidents by 95 offenders.
It was not feasible to cross-check the names of offenders in the NAK
record list as the middle names were redacted; similarly, newspapers
sometimes omitted the middle names of offenders and victims in order topreserve the anonymity of the accused. In the end, the primary source ofdata for this project was the 92 cases that were found in the Chosun Ilbo.
While this figure is by no means an exhaustive list of all parricide cases
during the period examined, it comes close to the actual number of cases
found in the archives. Other researchers have found that when newspapers
are matched against official sources using the capture-recapture technique,the newspapers contain 75 to 80 percent of homicides that appear in
official records.39 In this sense, the total number of cases found using only
newspapers in the current study mirrors those figures found by priorresearchers.
Out of the 92 parricide incidents, this research examined informationon the sources of conflict that were related to the killing of aInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XXII, No. 1

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parent/superordinate. For this paper, the initial data on the sources ofconflict were coded into the following categories:
Table 2: Categories of Sources of Conflict
Category
Explanation
Trivial Argument
Parricide originated from a verbal dispute
related to domestic matters
Long-term Financial
Parricide originated during the course of
Disputean intricate plan to steal a parent’s
property, obtain an inheritance, or acquire
life insurance proceeds.
Short-term Financial
Parricide occurred during the course of a
Disputerobbery or in response to a parent’s
rejection of a demand for money.
Discipline
Parricide occurred in response to a parent
disciplining his or her offspring.
DefenseParricide occurred in order to defend
another family member.
Mental Illness
Newspaper accounts identified theaccused as mentally ill.
Other
Parricide originated from conflicts otherthan those listed.
Unknown
The source of conflict couldn’t bediscerned from newspaper articles.
Source: Developed by the author from multiple sources.
The contexts in which parricide arose were inextricably tied to the way
the crime originated, weapon used, and level of intent embedded into theoffense. Hence a parricide was coded as being (1) “premeditated” if theoffender planned the crime in advance; (2) “spontaneous” if the parricide
was not planned; (3) “accidental” if the killing was an unfortunate
accident; (4) “hit” if the offender used a hitman to carry out the attack; and(5) “unknown” if intent could not be discerned. The amount of detailed
information collected was explained by the coverage a particular casereceived. For instance, parricides that contained salacious characteristics
and bizarre details generated tremendous news coverage. Parricides thatinvolved the mentally ill received a paragraph at best. In the following
sections, the notable contexts of Korean parricides and the sources of96

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conflict are examined in greater narrative detail, with excerpts that best
illustrate the analytical category used as examples.

Results
During the 15 years examined in this study, 95 offenders killed 116
victims in 92 parricide incidents. The majority of the offenders in theparricide incidents were men (85 percent), while women committed
approximately 15 percent of parricides. Disaggregated by victim’s
relationship to the offender, parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents madeup the bulk of the victims (73 percent). Stepparents constituted 6 percent
of victims. Killings of mothers- and fathers-in-law by sons and daughtersin-law made up almost a fifth (19 percent) of the cases. Table 3
summarizes the sources of conflict in this study:
Table 3: Sources of Conflict in South Korean Parricides
N=92#
Percentage
Trivial argument24
26%
Long-term finance
7
8%
Short-term finance89%Disciplinary
9
10%
Defense3
3%
Mental illness
14
15%
Other
20
21%
Unknown89%Parricides that were related to arguments of a domestic and trivial naturecomprised a quarter (26 percent) of the cases, while conflicts that wererooted in financial disputes comprised another 17 percent of parricides;
these can be further divided into long-term and short-term financial
disputes, which account for 8 percent and 9 percent of parricides,
respectively. Parricides that occurred in the context of administration of
discipline made up about 10 percent of the cases, and defense related
conflicts comprised 3 percent of the parricides. Each of these categories
is examined in greater detail in the following sections.
Argument
The confrontational character of male-on-male Korean parricides issimilar to other parricides reported in other historical contexts.40 Consider

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an example of how argument-related parricides in South Korea emerged
and were ultimately resolved:

Case #30: 08301958
Kim Chang-whan (age 27) and his uncle, Kim
Dong-gook (age 30s), got into a heated argumenton the evening of August 27, 1958. During theargument, Chang-whan grabbed a kitchen knife
and stabbed his uncle in the upper chest, causing
his instantaneous death.
Argument-centered parricides emerge from the ongoing social
situation and materialize when one of the parties interprets an innocuous
utterance as an affront.41 Case #30 illustrates the characteristics of typicalSouth Korean parricides in several ways. While the victim-offender
relationship between an uncle and a nephew, the terminology used in thearticle highlights the Confucian roots of the relationship. “Uncle” in
Korean translates literally to “little father.” Furthermore, the hierarchicalrelations become less significant in the heat of an argument of trivial
origin.42 However, aside from the nominal relations between victims andoffenders, a much more significant interactional factor in parricides
operates in a Korean context.
Argument-related parricides between superordinate elders andsubordinates resemble the prototypical scenarios of confrontational
homicides seen in other countries and historical periods. 43 Arguments
cannot begin unless one of the disputants interprets the utterance as an
offense, and this second turn response is what guides the trajectory ofarguments across several turns in conflict discourse. Utterances that areinterpreted as offensive acts turn into arguments, which escalate into
physical fights. Fights between familial subordinates and superordinate
relatives that culminated in death became classified as parricides. Such atransactional view of parricide bears a strong fraternal resemblance to thecontours of masculine and domestic violence that historians andsociologists have described. 44 Korean parricides were not unique whencompared to other homicide events in that regard.
According to the data, argument-related parricides were also shapedin significant ways by the intent embedded in the offense:

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Table 4: Intent in South Korean Parricides
N=92#
Percentage
Spontaneous
42
46%
Premeditated28
30%
Accidental
1
1%
Hitman00%
Unknown
21
23%
Almost half of the parricides were not planned. Offenders in spontaneous
parricides used weapons of opportunity such as knives, axes, sickles, andhands and feet because the killing emerged as a chance outcome during
moments of unplanned verbal conflict in the course of mundane family
life. Consequently, ordinary household tools became weapons used to kill.
Weapons that were highly suggestive of premeditation (e.g., guns, poison)
occurred in a less than 15 percent of parricide cases in the current study.
In the preceding excerpt, Kim and his uncle become embroiled in anargument about something. Those types of accusations and arguments are
not unique to Korea; they are likely to occur in countries where parents,
elderly relatives, offspring, subordinates, and in-laws cohabitate androutinely interact, thus amplifying the intensity of conflicts.45
Argument was the most common conflict that mired parents andoffspring together, for it represented a full quarter of all parricides. Thisfinding is most likely explained by the fact that parricides occur between
parents and their adult offspring. Despite the difference in age and status,
domestic conflicts lead to the experience of intense emotions that erupt inviolence: violence that travels upwards against superordinate elders.
Confucian ideologies shaped the appearance of various characters inscenes of parricide, but did not necessarily contain the emotional pressuresof domestic life, offensive accusations, and enduring disputes and othertumultuous emotions that bubbled underneath the surface of filial piety.
FinanceLong-term financial disputes revolved around inheritance, insurance
claims, property, and wills occurred in 7 of 92 incidents (8 percent) while
short-term financial disputes revolved around spending money andInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XXII, No. 1

99allowances took place in 8 of 92 incidents (9 percent). Together, financebecame a source of conflict in 17 percent of the parricides. Consider thefollowing case:
Case #5: 04061954
Lee Jong-eon (age unknown) was known to befinancially prudent. His son, Lee Min-soo (age21), was said to have disliked his father’s miserly
ways. He planned to kill his father so that hecould receive his inheritance and spend it freely
as he wished. On May 27, 1954, Min-soo went toa local pharmacy and purchased some poison.
On May 30, he mixed the poison with his father’s
supper. However, Min-soo’s sister-in-law
witnessed and foiled his plot. He was turned overto the police.
In pre-industrial South Korea, inheritance was particularly important,as grooms were expected to establish their marital residences. In rural
areas, a daughter-in-law established residence in her husband’s home,along with his relatives reflecting the patrilocal customs of Confucian
practices. For those who were establishing residences in the city, securing
housing was tempered by rising real estate prices as emigrants poured into
Seoul from rural areas and the capital rapidly urbanized.46 Seed money,
therefore, became an important component of entry into adulthood via
marriage for men, as well as for women in the form of honsu (dowries).
This became a notable source of conflict between offspring and theirparents. 47 Some adult offspring also wanted unbridled access to theirfathers’ inheritance money to engage in unfettered spending sprees, thus
resembling the behaviors of self-centered, profligate sons described in thehistorical literature.48
This dangerously antisocial character was especially evident in theoffense characteristics. Long-term finance-related parricides were usually
premeditated, and involved some amount of planning. In case #5, theacquisition of poison occurred prior to its administration. It was purchaseddays before the murder, and the perpetrator carried out the attempted
killing in a beguiling manner, under the guise of pro-sociality. This typeof behavior was commonly found in rural settings, as pesticides and other

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household chemicals were readily available. Lee failed only because hisploy was discovered in the midst of the plan’s execution.
Finances as sources of conflict intersected with offender behavior andentitlement ideology in the following ways. Inheritances were imbued
with expectations of reciprocity. Historians have shown that inheritance
distributions were contractual agreements that parents negotiated withstrangers and kin alike. 49 South Korea was no exception. Inheritancecustoms, according to Confucian ideology, awarded significant portions to
the eldest biological son (primogeniture), and sometimes adopted sons. In
return, the recipients had a moral duty to carry out annual ancestral rituals.
Sons who killed their parents for their inheritance sought to circumvent
this contractual and moral duty by deceitfully and violently taking what
they desired.
Discipline
Cases were coded as being related to “discipline” if the newspaper
used terms such as “berate” or “chastise” to describe the behaviors of theparents. In South Korea, discipline often appeared as a source of conflict
between adult offspring, as the following case demonstrates:
Case #65: 30091961
On September 27, 1961, Choi Weol-sun (54)berated her son Bae Jang-saeng (34) for drinking
excessively. He came home drunk, and she
chastised him again for drinking too much. Bae
grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her in thestomach, killing her instantly.
The age of the offspring (34) differs from the tacit expectation that thewords “discipline” and “punishment” constructs: they imply an adultberating a chronological child, at least according to Western sensibilities.
However, that expectation is unfulfilled. Bae Jang-saeng came home after
a night of excessive drinking, but was disciplined as if he were a child.
Bae did what grown men routinely do, yet, his 54-year old motherchastised her adult son. Discipline-related parricides thus occurred when
parents attempted to preserve their nominal identities as parents byberating their adult offspring.
In typical cases, adult offspring attempted to relate to theirsuperordinate elders as adults, but were rebuffed by parents andInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Vol. XXII, No. 1

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superordinate elders, who rejected such overtures and invoked theirhierarchical authority. Adult offspring, despite their legal, social, andemotional standing, must relate to their parents as children, as adult-onadult relations wane in favor of age-graded vertical relations. Such rigid
hierarchical relations are possible due to the overly possessive view that
Korean parents have of their children. Scholars have shown that Koreanparents view their offspring’s bodies as extensions of themselves, andview their own roles as that of life-givers.50 During the course of children’s
upbringing, their indebtedness to parents is emphasized repeatedly. 51
Perhaps this emphasis is a means of socializing and shaming their children
into becoming caregivers in their parents’ old age.52
DefenseKilling in the defense of another family member occurred in 3 out of
92 incidents (3 percent). Moreover, such defensive parricides occurred ina particular direction: sons killed their fathers to defend their mothers
during domestic conflicts. Korean sons rarely killed their fathers to defend
their siblings or other family members from fathers’ attacks, and similarly,sons didn’t kill mothers to defend their fathers and other family members
from their attacks.53 Consider the following excerpt:
Case #6: 07061954
On June 2, 1954, Choi Deok-soo (age 40s) camehome drunk around 8 pm and started arguingwith his wife. The victim’s son, Choi Young-shin(age 20s), attempted to intervene in the ensuing
argument, but his father ignored him andcontinued to argue with his wife. Younger Choi
punched his father which resulted in him being
gravely wounded. The elder Choi died four days
later. The son was charged with parricide by thepolice.
In the excerpt above, violence between intimate partners precedes thefatal violence against a parent. Similar to domestic violence in general, theaggressor in this case is a man.54 In Case #6, the husband was verballyassaulting his wife, setting the initial scene of the parricide with a case ofdomestic violence between two marital partners. Alcohol remained aprominent factor, with the husband’s drinking pattern 55 instantiating an

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argument that turned into a lethal fight. The father’s drinking unwittingly
implicated other family members in the domestic violence and violenceagainst children.56
Lethal violence against fathers must be understood as one option froma welter of behavioral possibilities that are paradoxically facilitated and
impeded during scenes of parental intimate violence. First, sons become
unwitting third participants in the intimate partner violence between theirfathers and mothers as witnesses to a crime. Second, they become targetsof assault when fathers redirect their attack from their wives to their sons.
Third, sons can kill their fathers in the course of defending their mothersor themselves during acute battering incidents.
In the excerpt above, the male-on-male patricide emerged as an
unplanned outcome during the course of the mother’s defense. The father’sviolence induced further violence. Moreover, the spontaneous character ofdefensive parricides can be substantiated in the weapons that are used tokill. Hands and rocks are weapons of opportunity and convenience, thus
suggestive of an expressive attack.57 Parricides that are similar to Case #6
can be explained by chance factors rather than malicious aforethought.
Sons who killed their fathers did so as they attempted to defend theirmothers from the father’s domestic violence. Daughters rarely appeared as
offenders in these types of defensive parricides, while sons who came totheir mothers’ defense represented the few remaining agnatic allies in thehierarchically organized Korean households. Ironically, in these cases,
being a good son to one’s mother meant being a bad son to one’s father.
This self-contradictory performance of perpetrators’ roles as filial sonswas one way that the paradox of Confucianism played out in households
across South Korea.
Discussion and Conclusion
This paper has examined the sources of conflict between parents andother superordinate family members and their offspring and subordinatesin pre-industrial South Korea in an exploratory way using newspaper
articles as data. The findings in this study suggest that Confucian ideology
shaped the patterns of parricide in notable ways. First, it broadened theclass of victims who were represented in parricide cases, as varieties ofhierarchical relations were represented in the current study. Second, thepresence of stem families amplified conflicts across hierarchical relations.
Patrilateral kin appeared as victims in Korean parricides because living
arrangements were shaped by patrilineal kinship ideologies. The presence

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of extended kin can be explained as a function of patrilocal marriages andresidential customs. Thus, this proximate living arrangement led toordinary conflicts that were punctuated with violence even amidst a familysystem that theoretically should have worked to suppress violence.
The exploratory findings in this paper suggest that arguments of atrivial and domestic nature, disputes over long-term and short-term
financial issues, discipline, and defense were notable sources of conflictthat led to parricides. The details reported in the newspapers regarding
mentally ill offenders were thin, but mostly involved adult men, withdaughters and adolescents were rarely involved in parricides related tomental illness contexts. Mental illness in a Korean context can be viewed
as a self-evident explanation of the offender’s behavior. The articles wereshort, based on journalists’ impressions, and rarely included details orinterviews with family members, neighbors, or witnesses. An offender’s
prior history of mental illness reported in the newspaper functioned as ade facto account of parricides in a South Korean context
That arguments of a trivial nature represented the most common
source of conflict between parents and offspring is consistent withprevious works on homicide and parricide, which have found that the latter
resemble prototypical confrontational homicides between men. 58
Parricides in South Korea emerged in unplanned ways from on-goingsocial intercourse. Thus, the findings of this study extend the applicabilityof scenarios of masculine violence in a parricidal context across national,
cultural, and historical contexts. A source of conflict analysis suggests that
nominal identities lose their significance as participants become engrossed
in ordinary domestic squabbles that arise during family life.
This paper suggests that conflicts related to finances constitute anothersignificant portion of parricides. This finding is consistent with previous
works, which have asserted that disputes about inheritances lead toparricides. 59 However, this paper indicates that inheritance involves
another dimension that previous researchers have overlooked. Being a
legitimate recipient of inheritance in a Korean context involved a moral
duty that was imposed even after parents’ death in the form of jesa (rituals
to appease one’s ancestors.)60 The calculated ploys to steal inheritances byoffspring circumvented this implicit Confucian moral contract. In
addition, the findings suggest that short-term conflicts about money
resemble robberies committed by self-indulgent offspring who kill out ofa sense of entitlement. Such adult behavior mirrors the tendency ofdangerously antisocial adolescents who kill their parents to satiate their

104

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2018

desires for unfettered spending. Having adult offspring demand moneyfrom their parents for profligate purposes, however, may be one
unintended consequence of a Confucian social system that treats adultoffspring as if they are children.
The sources of conflict noted in this paper also differ in notable ways
from prior works. Although excessive punishment that parents administerto their offspring has been noted as a warrantable reason behind whyadolescents kill their parents,61 this paper suggests that the very notion of“abuse” should be carefully considered in relation to history and culture.
Koreans did not limit punishment, discipline, and abuse to those under theage of 18. Instead, they embodied a view of children and adults in waysthat were marked by Confucian ideology. Korean parents assumed a
proprietary view of their children, and attempted to exercise their authority
even toward grown adult offspring. Such conflicts are aptly understood as
discipline-related ones, not abuses according to Western norms. Thisdifference in the cultural understanding of punishment and discipline does
not mean that abuses did not occur, but rather implies the involvement of
a different cast of characters.
The findings from this exploratory study suggest that there may be analternative way to understand cultural ideologies such as Confucianism.
Theoretically, belief systems that codify and encode respect for elders
through deference and obedience suppress violence when viewed inhistorical ways. In one of the well-established theories of violence,scholars have shown that violence in the West decreased throughout aperiod of eight centuries as people realized their interdependencies,
adjusted their public behavior accordingly, and became more civilized in
the process.62 Although a comparable argument has not been made in theEast, a corpus of works implicitly suggests that social behaviors
commonly found in Asia, as well as belief systems such as Confucianism,may militate against violence. 63 The findings from the current study,
however, suggest that Confucianism may actually facilitate violenceagainst elders. Such a tentative conclusion proffered in this exploratory
paper requires much more careful empirical validation.
Limitations
There are several shortcomings that remain in this paper, notably links
to other homicides, weapons employed, geographical variations, andgender disparity that should be explored in future research.

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For example, this paper has not examined incidents in which
parricides turned into other homicides (e.g., cases of mass murder). Priorworks have shown that parricides are intricately linked to intimate partner
homicides and mass murder. Future works should examine the way
parricides in Korea may be related to other forms of homicide such as
domestic homicides and mass murder. Additionally, while firearms are themost common ways in which homicides and parricides are committed in
America, guns in Korea symbolized the embodiment of privilege,
modernization, and advanced bureaucracy.64 The differences in weapons
used to kill therefore may be indicative of class differences. Future
research should examine the weapons used in Korean parricides.
Secondly, subcultural theorists of crime have also found that
confrontational homicides tend to be geographically clustered in Southern
regions of the U.S., and the explanation for the source of such patterns has
been lively debated for the past four decades.65 It may be worthwhile toexamine whether such geographical variations would be applicable tospecific types of homicides such as parricides in future works. The
migration patterns brought on by the industrialization in South Korea
would enable an examination of the changes in the geography ofparricides.
Lastly, Confucianism as a social and cultural system privileges men
while contributing to the systemic oppression of women. This paper has
not explored the specific ways in which violence affected women during
this tumultuous period in Korean history. For future works, researchers
ought to examine women as offenders and victims in the context ofordinary social and family life as well, for those findings will illuminate
additional aspects of life in Korea.
In addition to the unaddressed research questions noted above, there
are limitations and shortcomings in this paper that warrant a cautious
interpretation of the study’s findings. First, the potential coding errors thatexist when attempting to classify the conflicts based solely on newspapers
is problematic, for a comparative study of convergence validity between
court records and newspapers indicated that the error rate for coding thesources of conflicts was approximately 25 percent.66 This probability ofcoding errors therefore should be remedied by supplementing newspaper
articles with other official records as validity checks. Second, although theuse of newspapers as a source of data has permitted the social, cultural,and historical context behind the killings, this study was not able toexamine the broader trends by time or year. The inability to calculate

106International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2018

parricide rates relative to general homicide rates is another major
shortcoming that can only be remedied by supplementing newspapers with
official sources. These two limitations of using only newspapers as data
constitute warrantable potential criticisms that future works should take
into consideration.

Notes:
1

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