Re: Boreanesian versus Korean (was: Accepted Crimes)

On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> >On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Kristian Jensen wrote:
> -----<snip>-----
> >> I take it you're not in the Conculture mailing-list then... however,
> >> I already forwarded the message to Conlang-L, but it seems you always
> >> miss my posts and Teoh has conveniently snipped it above... Oh well,
> >> here it is again (and I hope you're not too busy to have a look at it
> >> this time).: 8)
> >
> >Heh, it's not just your posts, I summarily delete tens of posts every day
> >without looking at them based on the subject header.  I'd like to join
> >Conculture someday when I find I'm *not* summarily deleting Conlang posts
> >because even skimming them all would take too long.
[snip]
>
> Agreed. <sigh> What I do is read all the first posts of new threads,
> read all threads I participate in, read all threads that I'm interested
> in, and I delete all the rest. That way, I think, I don't miss anyone
> who tries to hint for my participation.
If I don't understand the subject header of a new post and don't have
time to look at it out of curiosity, I delete it.  Since I have very
rarely seen anyone hint for my participation (since I have no linguistics
expertise per se) I don't really go on the lookout for my name.

> >than anything to do with modern genetics.  OTOH since women were (I
> >believe) stricken from their own family's records when they were married
> >off into another family, keeping track of this could be a pain in the butt.
>
> Well, for women being stricken from the record only means that the descent
> system is patrilineally biased... that's all. I don't think it would make
> it any more difficult to trace one's lineage that way. The Boreanesian
> system, for instance, is a duo-descent system -- meaning that one's lineage
> is traced through _both_ the father and the mother. That makes it
> considerably more difficult.
Are you sure?  Because from what I understand of the Korean system, you
were *supposed* to keep track of whether you were related to someone on
your mother's side as well for "interclan incest" purposes, though
everything else was reckoned patrilineally.

Add to that the problem that for some families, especially (in South
Korea) people who fled to the south from the north or Manchuria at the
end of WWII when the Japanese occupation was ended, that upheaval *plus*
the Korean War really screwed with a lot of the old family records.  My
mother's family comes from the north originally, but fled to Seoul at the
end of WWII (perhaps there's some hushed-up history of Japanese
collaborationism, or perhaps they just had bad experiences with certain
Communists; I haven't really inquired), and then when the Korean War
came, they were among the many refugees from Seoul when the UN and South
Korean forces were pushed south to Pusan.  :-/  Interclan incest wasn't a
problem for my mom's family because as a northern clan, they have a
"rare" clan name in the south.

My dad's family has even worse records, and the family history there is
really screwed up (his grandfather was an illiterate minor revolutionary
against the Japanese, his father lost the family estate to something we
*still* haven't figured out, etc.).  This is probably a bit unusual since
most Korean families have someone who's the family record-/lineage-keeper.

In all the confusion, it must be even easier to fudge things, or to find
things out the hard way when old records come to light.

> On the other hand, the Boreanesian system is a moiety system. Using Korean
> terms, that means there are only _two_ "clans" within the patrilineal lineage
> in Boreanesia. Of course, being duo-descent means there are also two "clans"
> within the matrilineal lineage. So basically not as many descent groups as
> in the Korean system.
Okay.  I didn't understand the terminology.  "Moiety" from French? "half"?

> >Also, even when the law *was* in force, people would find ways to get
> >around it sometimes (especially if a marriage match was advantageous to
> >both families--Korea even today has many arranged marriages, though my
> >parents' wasn't one; my mom's family strongly opposed her marrying an
> >unknown pauper).  I think fudging records and so on were involved, but I
> >don't recall details clearly.  Frankly, if enough village elders and
> >family heads-of-house and so on are willing to look the other way,
> >"intermoietal incest" (if that's the term?) could happen, and the way my
>
> That's not the term. A moiety is one of only two possible descent groups.
> Korea has clans, and, as far as I can tell, quite a whole lot more than just
> two. You obviously mean "interclan incest".
<bow>  I stand corrected.  But it's obvious to you, not to someone who's
not sure what a moiety is!  <wry g>  Though couldn't you look at a moiety
as a clan system with just two clans?  Or is there some fundamental
difference I'm missing?

> Hmmm... I don't think it would be that easy to shove things about descent
> under the carpet in Boreanesia. Afterall, there _are_ only a total of four
> descent groups. Furthermore, an adult Boreanesian wears cicatrice markings
> on his/her body indicating which affiliation he/she has. You can't really
> hide these, except perhaps through plastic surgery.
No markings, just names in Korea.  Different circumstances, so the Korean
situation doesn't really apply too well.

> >I must add that the above discussion applies to post-WWII/Korean War
> >South Korea.  I don't actually know what the system was *legally* under
> >Chosun Korea or the Japanese occupation, though I imagine the tradition
> >does date back to the Chosun period or thenabouts.  You'd probably be
> >better off asking a "real" Korean, who'd have a better chance of knowing
> >such details!
>
> That's OK. My concern is indeed post-WWII Korea. I'm trying to figure out
> if the Boreanesian system can survive in the modern post-WWII world. I
> think it will survive in Boreanesia. Tell me if I'm wrong here -- The main
> difference I can see between the Boreanesian and the Korean descent system
> is that the Boreanesian one is observed very much like a religion. The fact
> that the system is based on moieties means that Boreanesians have little
> difficulty believing that they are all related to the first two legendary
> families that settled the islands thousands of years ago. Being ancestral
> worshippers seems to me to enhance the respect and religious reverance for
> these two legendary families and thus the moieties. Moietal affiliation is
> reflected in rituals associated with almost every important detail in the
> life of a Boreanesian; from birth, to maturity, to marriage, to death. It
> would require the death of all these rituals for the system to die --
> although that itself is not unheard off.
Koreans are traditionally shamanistic ancestral worshippers.  However,
despite being a small and extremely homogeneous population, modern Korea
has a large number of Buddhists and Christians (I think Buddhists
slightly outnumber the Christians, but I'm not positive).  Also, the
"foundation myth" of the bear who turned into a woman and married a Son
of Heaven, Korea's first king, is something they don't teach as "history"
so much as national myth, not to mention that in its current, modified
version it was actually created by some nationalist monk in the 14th (?)
century or so.  Add to *that* the fact that Chosun Korea (and earlier
Koreas, I'm sure) had a caste-based system, along with a huge population
of slaves.  While the truebone and other highbone castes (nobility) ended
up merging, you still had substantial lower castes who probably wouldn't
even *dream* of claiming descent from the royal lines.  (I have no
"royal" blood that I'm aware of, though what with the Three Kingdoms
period, concubines, and illicit affairs probably most every Korean has
some "royal" though possibly unknown connection.  Until recently there
really weren't many other places for all that high-caste DNA to go....)

Ancestral worship is still alive, if vestigially, in many Korean
families.  My folks are pretty much atheistic, but I've been taken to
grandparents' graves to bow before them and leave offerings of food (and
bouquets of flowers, though I think we stole that from the West).  People
still visit matchmakers and shamans for various purposes.  Fortunately we
don't still practice the insane 3-year mourning period.  But the
historical situation looks quite different from what you describe for
Boreanesia.

YHL