page_title: Slavery
section_title: Korea
hierarchical_section_title: Slavery / History / Early modern period / Asia / Korea
caption_attribution_description: Collection: Willard Dickerman Straight and Early U.S.-Korea Diplomatic Relations, Cornell University Library Title: Gesang School (i.e. kisaeng school) Date: ca. 1904 Place: Asia: North Korea; Pyongyang Type: Postcards/Ephemera Description: Korean kisaengs, or singing girls, dressed up for singing and dancing. Korean kisaeng is special women's occupation that exists for helping parties enjoyable by singing and dancing. Their social position was among the lowest in the traditional Korean class system. Their daughters also became kisaengs and their sons became slaves. The art of entertaining of the kisaeng is analogous to Japanese geisha. These professional entertainers were highly trained in the arts of poetry, music, dance, and other forms of social or artistic diversion. The picture is somewhat curious. It was taken in front of a modern, western-style brick building, with a very peculiar Korean screen as the backdrop. Inscription/Marks: Inscription in characters imprinted on image; pencilled inscription on verso: 'Gesang School' Identifier: 1260.74.09.02 Persistent URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/5xr9 There are no known U.S. copyright restrictions on this image. The digital file is owned by the Cornell University Library which is making it freely available with the request that, when possible, the Library be credited as its source. We had some help with the geocoding from Web Services by Yahoo!
context_page_description: Slavery and enslavement are the state and condition of being a slave. A person is enslaved when a slaver, by means of physical restraint or threat, has forced, coerced, or intimidated him or her into unwilling work. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour, where people are forced or compelled to work against their will. In the course of human history, slavery was often a feature of civilisation and legal in most societies, but is now outlawed in most countries of the world.
  In 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26 percent were children, were enslaved throughout the world. In the modern world, more than 50 percent of enslaved people provide forced labor, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In the industrialised countries, human trafficking is the modern variety of slavery; in the unindustrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.
context_section_description: During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population. The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century. Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi. King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775, and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801. In addition, population growth, numerous escaped slaves, growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858. The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87, and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894. However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
  During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery. These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".
caption: Kisaeng, women from outcast or slave families who were trained to provide entertainment, conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class.
exif: {}