Managing the Descendants of Ming Migrants in Late Chosŏn Korea
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 15/02/2021

Where there is hair, there will be lice: Managing the Descendants of Ming Migrants in Late Chosŏn Korea was recorded on 12th February 2021 with speaker Dr Adam Bohnet (King's University College at Western University Canada). Find out more at: https://www.soas.ac.uk/koreanstudies/events/seminars/12feb2021-where-there-is-hair-there-will-be-lice-managing-the-descendants-of-ming-migrants-in-late-c.html

During the eighteenth century, the descendants of Ming migrants were organized by the Chosŏn court into the special tax-category of imperial subjects (hwangjoin). In addition to protection from most personal taxes, members of this category also enjoyed advantages in obtaining positions in the military bureaucracy and had particular roles within the court’s Ming Loyalist rituals. Their ritual role, in particular, depended on their assumed conformity to an idealized Ming Loyalist narrative, and yet very few of their life stories or the life stories of their ancestors conformed to this narrative.