Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Nearby Korea, being strongly influenced by Chinese bureaucratic concepts and Confucianism, also used this system in antiquity and flavors of it have carried over into the modern age. There were some differences, the Chinese exam created a kind of possible path for social mobility if you could find a way to study for it. Lots of families would pool their resources to send one son to an academy to learn how to pass the exam on hopes that, if they passed it, would help pull the entire family out of poverty and potentially support sending other sons.

In ancient Korea it had a different effect and tended to fix certain classes into the "classes from which the bureaucracy could be reliably drawn from". They still had the academies, but it tended to be the same class/castes who attended and passed the exam. In theory it was open, but in practice it worked this way [1].

Some of the preserved academies still exist and are major UNESCO sights. [2]

Modern South Korea still uses an examination system for civil servants [3], but has lost the caste system so in an interesting way has ended up more like the ancient Chinese concept. It tests civics, history, data analysis, etc. and I believe there are different tests for different levels of seniority and are required for promotion. It's common for test takers to have spent several years in dedicated study after university to prepare for the exam [4].

A semi-equivalent might be like a bar exam in other countries.

1 - https://www.amazon.com/History-Korea-Antiquity-Present/dp/07...

2 - https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1498/

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea_public_servi...

4 - https://youtu.be/zt4d_jGLXMY

Did this lead people to buy surnames? I know buying (into a) surname happened —which is why like 80% of the pop has one of half a dozen surnames, rather than there being a longer tail of distribution.

Kim Lee Son

This explains a lot, neat

> I know buying (into a) surname happened —which is why like 80% of the pop has one of half a dozen surnames, rather than there being a longer tail of distribution.

Huh? Why would you expect a flatter distribution? The concentration of surnames is easily explained by natural development over time.

People could either buy themselves into a genealogy or do it through forgery, forgoing their own surnames. There were advantages to having a ‘noble’ surname: https://factsanddetails.com/korea/Korea/People/entry-7211.ht...

So while Japan has a couple of hundred thousand surnames in circulation, Korea has in total about 350. However the great majority of the pop belongs to one of the top eight or so surnames: Kim, Lee/Li/Ri Park/Pak, Cho, Kang, and a couple of others.

Note that a surname in the top eight is, by definition, not a noble surname. Almost everyone bearing such a name is a commoner and having it is nothing you can brag about.

Your link suggests that what was for sale was noble identity - a place in a specific and unique noble family, with formal documentation that you belonged to it - not a license to use the surname, which everyone was already free to use.

> It became increasingly common for successful merchants too to take on a last name. They could purchase an elite genealogy by physically buying a genealogical book (jokbo) — perhaps that of a bankrupt yangban [noble] — and using his surname.

> By the late 18th century, forgery of such records was rampant. Many families fiddled with theirs: when, for example, a bloodline came to an end, a non-relative could be written into a genealogical book in return for payment. The stranger, in turn, acquired a noble surname.

But again, what you're acquiring there isn't a "noble surname". It's noble legal status, and you end up with whatever surname the noble family uses by coincidence. No one participating in this system cared whether they ended up with the name 金 or with 網切, so this isn't a good explanation for why 金 is so common.

The link also dwells on the much greater variety visible in Japanese surnames. It doesn't point out why that is, but we do know the answer - they are more variable for the extremely obvious reason that the concept of a surname in Japan is much more recent, dating to the late nineteenth century.

No, I don't believe it was specifically tied to this system.

Dr. Mark Peterson[1] who has his own great channel[2] and a video on this topic (in Korean)[3] explains it as mostly just happening as a clerical matter both during the Choson period by simply registering a name to align with prestigious families and to hide your caste status and then later during the Japanese occupation since it was demanded as part of the growing Japanese empire.

In practice, it's less confusing than it sounds. Koreans will use contextual associations such as other family members, titles, friend or business associations, and historic clan hometowns to discern things.

"Oh, you are a Kim also? Which one?"

"I'm from the Jeonju Kims."

"Oh haha! I'm from the Incheon Kims. I know another Jeonju Kim, are you that one?"

"No that's CEO Kim he's my distant uncle. I'm just the normal Kim. My wife is so and so."

"Ahh, okay."

(completely made up example that's probably wrong but meh)

And after that everybody is clear on who is who. This kind of thing is often included in some introductory stuff about what age everybody is so you can get your honorifics sorted out as well.

1 - https://youtu.be/4VVCbApZ4bg

2 - https://www.youtube.com/@TheFrogOutsidetheWell

3 - https://youtu.be/tLcwZ4p2pIU

Thank you very much! TIL something that completely changed my outlook on the subject matter

What did you believe before vs. after, if you don't mind saying? I haven't had a perspective on either situation, so I'm purely curious.

I didn't expect that it was possible for inherently open system to offer no social mobility. I expected all kinds of bad things, but not that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com