Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0324/03242.txt

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$Unique_ID{COW03242}
$Pretitle{241}
$Title{South Korea
Chapter 2C.   The Family System}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald M. Seekins}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{family
social
korea
south
land
new
percent
kinship
traditional
urban}
$Date{1981}
$Log{Peddlers*0324201.scf
}
Country:     South Korea
Book:        South Korea, A Country Study
Author:      Donald M. Seekins
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 2C.   The Family System

     The individual Korean was part of a complex clan and kinship organization
that extended beyond the nuclear family unit and existed on four levels. At
the lowest level the basic unit was the household (chip-see Glossary),
consisting of husband and wife, their children and, if the husband were the
eldest son in his family, his parents as well. The eldest son's household, the
stem family, was known as the "big house" (kunchip), while that of each of the
younger sons, a branch family containing husband, wife and children only, was
known as the "little house" (chagunchip). It was through the stem family of
the eldest son that the main line of descent was traced from generation to
generation, and the weight of tradition bore most heavily on him and his wife.
He was responsible for rituals in honor of his ancestors on the anniversaries
of their deaths, and she was responsible for producing the all-important male
heir who would carry on the family line.

     The second level of kinship was the "mourning group" (tangnae), which
consisted of all those descendants of a common patrilineal forebear up to four
generations back. The central purpose of this unit was ancestor worship. The
eldest son in the first generation called together his brothers and their
families to his house, and an elaborate feast was prepared for the spirits of
the male ancestors of four generations back who, together with their wives,
were received not with fear but with love and respect. The eldest son, who was
in effect the family priest, read a formal message to the spirits who were
then invited to partake of the assembly of elaborate and attractive dishes
that were laid out for them in the ancestral shrine.

     Similar ancestral rituals were carried out at the third level of kinship
organization, the lineage (p'a-see Glossary). A lineage might comprise only a
handful of households but in some cases included hundreds and even thousands,
and rites for ancestors of the fifth generation or above were performed at a
common gravesite. The lineage possessed land, gravesites, and buildings;
croplands were used to support the ancestral rites. The lineage was
traditionally not only responsible for ancestor worship, but also for the aid
of poor or distressed lineage members, the education of children at schools
maintained by the p'a, and the supervision of the behavior of younger lineage
members. Because most villagers were members of the same lineage in
traditional times, the p'a performed many of the social functions on the local
level that are now performed by public schools, police, and social welfare
agencies.

     The fourth and most inclusive kinship group was the clan, or more
accurately, the surname-origin group (tongjok). In many cases its only real
function was to define the limits of available marriage partners. Often there
was little solidarity between members of the same tongjok, who were
distinguished by having not only the same surname but the same origin. Thus
the Chonju Yi were people with the surname Yi who originated in Chonju in
North Cholla Province, claiming for their common ancestor the founder of the
Yi Dynasty, and the Kimhae Kim were people with the surname Kim originating in
Kimhae in South Kyongsang Province, claiming as their common ancestor the
founder of the ancient kingdom of Kaya (see The Origins of the Korean Nation,
ch. 1). Because of a very strict rule of exogamy, people from the same tongjok
could not marry even though they might be only very distantly related.

     Surname-origin groups, lineages, mourning groups, and households were
tied together by the Confucian principle of filial piety, the practice of
ancestor-worship, and the law of exogamy, which distinguished relatives from
non-relatives in the most precise way. The individual found himself part of a
network of family and kinship relations that extended beyond his household not
only to persons in his village and beyond but also to persons in the distant
past who were the clan and lineage ancestors. On the one hand membership in
these telescoping kinship entities left the individual with little room for
spontaneity or self-determination; the restrictions on women were particularly
onerous. On the other hand it provided security and a sense of community and
gave individuals a strong sense of identification. Each person saw his or her
interests as identified with those of the collective whole, and each
generation had an interest in perpetuating the rituals and cohesiveness of the
kinship and family groups, since future generations would take care of the
spirits of past generations through ritual.

     Recent studies of premodern rural communities in South Korea suggest that
even in traditional times the kinship structure outlined above was often the
ideal rather than the reality, especially since most rural people were too
poor to afford the elaborate rituals associated with marriages, funerals, and
the death-anniversaries of ancestors. Many premodern families were fragmented,
two-generation nuclear households in which ties to larger kinship units were
weak or nonexistent. Korean ethnographers studying a fishing village on an
isolated island off the southwest coast in the 1960s discovered not only that
kinship organization was weak and that lineages held no communal property but
also that the youngest, rather than the oldest, son lived with his parents and
inherited most of whatever property there was to divide. Fishing villages in
general tend to have a less highly developed kinship structure than
agricultural villages, owing in part to the nature of fishing as a way of
life-one in which there is little property in land-and to the poverty and
isolation of many fishing communities.

     There have traditionally been regional differences in family and village
life within South Korea. North and South Ch'ungch'ong provinces compose what
is considered to be the most conservative region in terms of Confucian family
values and yangban culture, while Cheju Island, off the southwest coast, is a
very striking cultural variant (see Regional and Political Subdivisions, this
ch.). In the coastal villages of Cheju, women divers traditionally swam the
coastal waters in search of seaweed, oysters, and other marine products and
were economically independent. Often they supplied the main economic support
for the family while the husband did subsidiary work, took care of the
children, and did household chores-in sharp contrast with the Confucian norm.
Confucian ancestor-worship was rarely practiced, and female-centered
shamanistic practices were widespread.

     Even within a single region there could be significant variations in the
pattern of social relationships in different villages. Those composed of
persons belonging to yangban lineages (hyangban) tended to adhere to the ideal
in family and kinship relations, and individuals preferred to interact with
each other in formalized patterns of hierarchy and deference. Village leaders
were lineage elders and "self-help" organizations such as kye (credit
associations formed by small numbers of persons for various objectives), ture,
and p'umasiban (communal aid institutions formed during the harvest time) were
usually limited to members of the same p'a, or lineage. In "commoner" villages
social relations tended to be more egalitarian. Self-help organizations
evolved among neighbors even if they belong to different lineages, and persons
in positions of leadership tended to be those with strong personal
characteristics rather than individuals with high lineage status. Commoner
villages were apt to be livelier than yangban villages, allowing greater
freedom for women, more frequent quarrels and drinking, and a more open and
ebullient neighborhood life. Both the hierarchical Confucian tradition and a
more egalitarian or communitarian tradition-as the anthropologist Vincent
Brandt has labeled it-have deep roots in the history of Korean village life,
and both have played their part in the development of modern Korean social
life in villages and urban areas.

The Passing of the Traditional Order

     The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen the breakdown of
the old order based on Confucian norms and the creation of new classes and new
kinds of social relationships. During the Sino-Japanese War, when it was
apparent that the old international system centered on China and legitimized
by Confucian concepts of universal order was coming to an end, a progressive
Korean government, supported by the Japanese, promulgated reforms (sometimes
referred to as the Kabo Reforms) in order to initiate sweeping social changes
that were to echo those that had taken place in Japan three decades earlier.
The old social strata lost their legal status: yangban and commoners were made
equal before the law, and slavery and the category of "base people," or
ch'onmin, were abolished. The civil service examinations based on Confucian
subjects were discontinued, and more modern ways of selecting officials for
government service were proposed.

     These reforms, however, remained largely on paper; it was only with the
Japanese takeover of the country in 1910 that the real social transformation
of Korea began. Immediately after annexation the Japanese began a
comprehensive land survey in order to establish land ownership. Traditionally
all land had belonged to the king, who let it out in the form of grants to
government offices, private schools, scholar-officials, and other privileged
subjects. Although specific parcels of land tended to remain within the same
family from generation to generation, including the communal land held by
lineages, there was no institution of private property in land until the
Japanese confirmed individual titles of ownership during the nine-year survey.
Rural society was radically transformed. Local yangban who collaborated with
the Japanese were able to hold onto their land and maintain their privileged
social and economic position; those who did not were plunged into poverty.
Farmers whose families had tilled the same land for generations but who could
not prove ownership in a way satisfactory to the colonial authorities had
their holdings confiscated. This land was either held by the government or
given to influential individuals who came to constitute a new landlord class.
The farmers themselves either became tenants or were forced to leave the land;
the number of tenants rose from 39.4 percent of the farming population in the
1913-17 period to 55.7 percent in 1938. Thousands emigrated to the cities or
overseas, and others fled to the hills to become "fire-field" farmers, living
under extremely harsh and primitive conditions. After the consolidation of a
new landlord class composed of both Koreans and expatriate Japanese,
scientific methods of agriculture were introduced, and large amounts of rice
were exported to Japan by the landlords and by commercial enterprises such as
the Oriental Development Company. Increases in rice yields did not benefit
Koreans, whose consumption of rice actually declined during the colonial
period.

     While two new classes-agricultural entrepreneurs and a rural proletariat
of tenants-were growing up in the countryside, the Japanese built highways,
railroads, schools, and hospitals, and developed a modern system of
administration. The new, modern sector required technically trained experts,
and although the top positions were invariably occupied by Japanese, Koreans
worked on the lower levels as secondary technical and administrative
personnel. Thus while the number of Korean high officials in the colonial
administration increased from only 354 to 442 between 1915 and 1942, the
number of junior officials increased from 4,891 to 15,479, and the number of
other employees doubled from 15,543 to 29,998 in the same period. Japan's
industrial development policies in the 1930s and 1940s, although concentrated
in the northern half of the peninsula, were to create another new class of
workers and lower level managers, which was to play an important role in the
industrial development of South Korea after 1945. The percentage of
economically active persons engaged in nonagricultural occupations rose from
14.4 percent in 1912 to 28.8 percent in 1972, and the number of factory
workers rose from 14,500 in 1911 to 230,700 in 1940.

     The urban population (persons living in cities of 20,000 or more)
increased from 7 percent to 19.6 percent of the total population between 1925
and 1940, the largest cities being Seoul and P'yongyang. Thus Japanese
colonial policies, while creating a great deal of suffering and resentment,
paved the way for the development of a modern industrialized society after
liberation in 1945.

     Two developments immediately after 1945 were particularly significant for
South Korea's social modernization. The first was the land reform, which was
carried out by United States and South Korean authorities between 1945 and
1950. The institution of private property was retained in the countryside, but
the American occupation confiscated and redistributed all land held by the
Japanese. After the Land Reform Act of June 1949, which was finalized in March
1950, the new South Korean government bought up and distributed around 330,000
hectares of land, and about one-half million hectares were sold directly by
landlords to their tenants at nominal rates. The percentage of tenants in the
farming population fell from 48.9 in 1945 to 7 percent in 1965; the amount of
land farmed by tenants fell from about 60 to 15 percent in the same period. A
new class of independent, family proprietors was established.

     The second development was the great influx of repatriates and refugees
from overseas and from North Korea. Between 1945 and 1949 almost 2 million
Koreans returned to South Korea from Japan, Manchuria, and other foreign
countries. Moreover with the establishment of a communist state in the north,
large numbers of refugees (estimated at about 1.1 million) fled to the south
by 1947 and were joined by about 2.1 million more during the Korean War. Most
of these refugees settled in the cities-new recruits for the country's
industrial labor force.

New Social Elites

     The elite of the contemporary era is more diverse than that of
traditional Korea. Its members are the managers of large, complex
organizations and technically trained specialists-not only higher level civil
servants but military officers, the managers of business enterprises and the
mass media, university professors, scientists, and other professionals. Given
the Confucian heritage the high status of civil servants and university
professors is understandable, but new elements in the elite have risen to
positions of great power, particularly the military and businessmen.

     Yi Dynasty military officers, though technically yangban in the original
sense of the term, had much less prestige than civilian scholar-officials and
were excluded from the social elite. Korea did not have native military forces
during the colonial period, although some Koreans served in the Japanese armed
forces (especially after 1941) and a small number of them had received
officer's training, the most outstanding example being former President Park
Chung Hee. The invasion by North Korea in June 1950 and the three years of
fighting that followed, however, cast the small South Korean military
establishment into the role of the saviors of the country, and since the coup
d'etat of May 1961 they have held political power, much strengthened by
American support and assistance (see Background, ch. 5).

     The military as a group have tended to be less educated and more
provincial in their outlook than the professional or business classes,
although this has changed as more graduates of the four-year course of the
Korean Military Academy have entered the upper echelons of the officer corps.
On the whole, in any case, their role in society has been that of modernizers.
The military leadership around Park could take credit for having provided the
main impetus for South Korea's spectacular economic growth and development
during the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover universal military conscription has
played a vital role in integrating the society. It has exposed the nation's
young men both to technical training and to urban culture, radically changing
their orientations and expectations. The goal of the military can perhaps best
be described as that of creating a society that is disciplined and harmonious
and yet at the same time technically advanced and economically efficient-a
synthesis of the old and the new that has proven at times unstable and
contradictory.

     The business class of entrepreneurs and modern managers is, like the
military, a new elite because it had low status in traditional society. Unlike
China and Japan, which had substantial commercial classes and lively urban
cultures, the commercial sector in Yi Dynasty Korea was small and weak. Money
was practically nonexistent, and barter was the rule. What commercial
enterprise existed was in the hands of itinerant peddlers who traveled through
the rural areas. Much manufacturing was controlled by government monopolies,
and there was little room for the development of private initiative in the
production or distribution of goods. Thus the rise of a modern business class
is particularly impressive.

     A survey conducted by the Korea Development Institute in 1976 showed that
the social backgrounds of a sample group of large-scale entrepreneurs tend to
concentrate in the elite social categories that evolved in Korea after the
Japanese annexation. The fathers of 47 percent of the sample had been medium
to large landowners; 19 percent had been merchants; 16 percent,
factory-owners; 7 percent, professionals; and 6 percent, civil servants. A
large portion of the entrepreneurs were refugees from North Korea-21.2
percent.

     Most of the entrepreneurs had very good educational backgrounds. About 60
percent of the sample studied by the Korea Development Institute attended
junior college or university which, given the extremely limited educational
opportunities in South Korea until quite recently, attests not only to the
privileged status of their families but to the high value placed on education.
Yi Pyong-ch'ol, the founder of Samsung, South Korea's largest conglomerate,
was born in 1910, the second son of a wealthy landlord in South Kyongsang
Province. He received a classical Confucian education before going on to
modern primary and secondary schools in Seoul and studying for a time at
Waseda University in Tokyo, one of Japan's best universities. Kim U-jung, the
founder of Daewoo, one of the newest and fastest-growing conglomerates, was
the son of a family of educators and attended the prestigious Yonsei
University in Seoul (see Private Enterprise, ch. 3).

     One of the most striking continuities between traditional Korea and
contemporary South Korea is the great respect commanded by educated persons. A
man wishing to express his respect for another will call him "teacher"
(sonsaeng), even if he is not formally in that profession, and the title paksa
(doctor, Ph. D.) is uttered with great reverence. Teaching, particularly on
the primary and secondary levels, is regarded as a "sacred profession";
teachers are prominent members of local elites and often have disciples-former
students who come to them for advice and guidance.

     With the exception of the military, the new national elites of South
Korea share one characteristic: the majority are graduates of the most
prestigious universities. There is a well-defined hierarchy of such schools,
starting with Seoul National University at the top, followed by Yonsei and
Koryo universities. Ehwa Women's University is the top college for women. The
Korea Development Institute survey revealed that 25 percent of the sample of
entrepreneurs and 34.6 percent of higher civil servants had attended Seoul
National University. At the bottom of the higher education pyramid are
low-prestige "diploma mills" whose graduates have little chance of breaking
into elite circles and which are often racked with corruption, being run more
like businesses than educational institutions. Those at the top require
blue-ribbon educational backgrounds not only because it gives them the
cultural sophistication and technical expertise needed to manage complex
organizations, but also because subordinates will not work diligently for an
uneducated man-especially if they are educated themselves-and because "old
school ties" are increasingly necessary for advancement in a highly
competitive society.

     The social value of education in contemporary South Korea cannot be fully
understood, however, if it is seen simply in terms of professional training or
preparation for high status and high income occupations. Recent surveys of
both adults and college students show that they tend to stress the
significance of education in terms of moral cultivation and the ideal of the
man of virtue. This very Confucian notion of education as a means of
self-perfection rather than as mere training is expressed both in the recent
government emphasis on "anticommunist and moral education" courses at all
levels in the school system, including universities, and in the viewpoint of
many politically active college students who see political protest in terms of
a moral duty to reform society and combat injustice-a heritage which goes back
at least as far as the early Yi Dynasty (see Education in the Contemporary
Era, this ch.).

     The military, economic, and political elements of the new national elite
combine old and new social values in interesting ways. All emphasize the need
for scientific and technical expertise and rational organization in the
pursuit of well-defined, socially oriented goals: national defense and
economic growth. They express older, more traditional themes as well: the
value of education as a means of moral cultivation and the importance of
loyalty, filial piety, discipline, and self-restraint in general.

     The regime of President Chun Doo Hwan has continued the emphasis on
traditional values that was a prominent feature of Park's government. The
maxims of copybook morality are intoned everywhere-in the media, the
classrooms, and on the city street corners where Saemaul (New Community)
Movement agitators praise the virtues of neatness and good neighborliness.
Although communist subversion is seen as the greatest threat to social and
national life, the daily incivilities of a crowded, urban life are diagnosed
as evidence of a creeping decadence that the people must resolve to combat. As
an editorial in the progovernment Korea Herald for April 28, 1981, put it:
"The state of things as far as messy traffic and picnicking go is a slur on
the reputation of old Korea as a land of courteous and gentle people. It is
time that we should revitalize our declining social morality and regain our
title to being a nation of civility and a law-abiding people."

Family and Social Life in the Cities

     Contemporary urban family and social life exhibits a number of trends
away from traditional structures. One is the tendency for complex kinship and
family structures to weaken or break down and be replaced by simpler,
two-generation nuclear families. Another closely related trend is the movement
toward equality in family relations and the resulting improvement in the
status of women; thirdly, there is a movement away from lineage and
neighborhood-based social relations toward class-based relations, since people
in the cities no longer work among their relatives and neighbors in the fields
or on fishing boats but among unrelated people in factories, shops, and
offices. Finally there is an increasing tendency for an individual's location
and human associations to be transitory and temporary, rather than permanent
and lifelong. There is increased physical mobility as improved transportation
facilities-superhighways and rapid express trains-make it possible to travel
between Pusan and Seoul in a few hours, and subsidiary transportation networks
break down barriers between once-isolated villages and the urban areas.
Mobility in human relations is also becoming more apparent as people change
their residences more frequently, often in line with employment requirements,
and an increasing proportion of the urban population lives in large,
impersonal apartment complexes.

[See Peddlers: Peddlers in Pusan, with dried edibles; the male customer is
examining ginseng roots. Courtesy Rinn-Sup Shinn]

     Contrary to the Confucian ideal the nuclear family-consisting of husband,
wife, and their children-is becoming predominant in contemporary South Korea.
In that particular setting it is different from the old branch family or
"small house," which also consisted of two generations, for two reasons: the
conjugal relationship, rather than the relationship between the son and his
parents, is becoming increasingly important, leading to greater equality
between husband and wife; and the nuclear family unit is becoming increasingly
independent (both economically and psychologically) of members of the larger
kin group, leading to a greater equality between the family units established
by older and younger brothers and less dependence by the younger generation on
the older, once the former reaches maturity. Whereas the isolated nuclear
family was seen in the past as a sign of poverty and misfortune, the present
nuclear family arrangement is viewed as a conscious choice by those who desire
more independence from traditional kinship ties.

     Nevertheless filial piety and the continuation of the male line are still
considered to be very important, and surveys show that male children are
strongly preferred over female children even by modern parents. The Planned
Parenthood Federation of Korea has discovered that many parents would have
more than two children-the desired limit in terms of population control-if the
first two were daughters, in order to obtain a son. Yet the woman is no longer
seen merely as the biological means to produce a male heir. Although most
marriages continue to be arranged by elders seeking a compatible pair, the
final decision on marriage is made by the prospective bride and groom
themselves. The romantic ideal of the "love marriage" is very strong, and the
number of marriages in which a man and a woman meet and decide to marry on
their own is increasing. An increasingly liberal attitude toward choice in
marriage is reflected in changes in the South Korean Civil Code. Originally,
the Family Law stipulated that men under twenty-seven and women under
twenty-three had to obtain the consent of their parents before marrying, but
this was lowered to twenty years for both with the revision of the law in
December 1977. Child betrothals and marriage arrangements in which the man and
woman do not meet before the wedding day are practically nonexistent. People
marry much later in life than in traditional times.

     Economic relations between the generations of a single family have
changed radically in the transition from traditional rural to modern urban
society. In the past the male head of the patrilineal family controlled all
the property, which was usually in the form of land and was the sole means of
economic support for all family members. With the development of urban
industrial and service sectors, however, each adult generation and nuclear
family unit became more or less economically independent, although sons might
depend upon their parents or even their wife's parents for occasional economic
assistance-in the case for instance, of buying a home. Since urban families
usually live apart from the paternal in-laws, even when the householder is the
eldest son, the wife no longer has to endure the domination of her
mother-in-law and sister-in-law. In some cases the family is closer to the
wife's parents than to the husband's. The modern husband and wife are often
closer emotionally than in the old family system; they spend more time
together and even go out together socially, a formerly unheard-of practice.
Yet the expectation remains that elderly parents will live with one of their
children, preferably a son, rather than on their own or in nursing homes or in
other special facilities for the aged, although this may change with the
expansion of health care and social welfare facilities in the future.

     Beyond the nuclear family, blood relationships are still very strong,
particularly among close relatives such as members of the traditional
"mourning group" (tangnae). Relations with more distant relatives, e.g.,
members of the same lineage, tend to be weaker, especially if the lineage has
its roots in a distant rural village, as most do. Ancestor rites are still
practiced in urban homes, although for fewer generations than formerly; the
majority of urban dwellers seem to conduct them in honor only of the father
and mother of the family head rather than for the previous four generations as
well, as had been the case in the traditional system. The result is that there
is a much smaller number of ancestors to venerate and far fewer occasions for
which to hold the household ceremonies.

     In June 1973 the government enacted a Family Ritual Law in order to
curtail wasteful spending on weddings, funerals, and ancestor rites; heavy
fines were imposed on those who conducted these ceremonies too ostentatiously.
Invitations to weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies, traditional hempen
mourning garments, funeral flags, more than three funeral wreaths, and the
offering of food, liquor, or gifts during wedding and funeral ceremonies were
banned, although there was apparently some relaxation of these restrictions in
the revised law of December 1981. In some ways increased geographical mobility
has aided in the preservation of family solidarity. During New Year's, Ch'usok
(the Autumn Harvest festival in mid-September), and Hansik ("cold food day" in
mid-April) the trains and highways are jammed with people traveling to visit
living relatives and gravesites in other parts of the country.

     Although many women work outside the house, the dominant conception,
particularly for the middle class, is that the husband is the "outside
person"-the one whose employment provides the major source of economic
support-and the wife is the "inside person" whose chief responsibility is the
maintenance of the household. The tendency remains for working women to leave
the labor force when they get married. Many women manage the family finances,
and a recent survey has shown that over 60 percent of them have joined kye,
private, short-term credit associations that give them access to needed funds
that might not be obtainable from a conventional bank. Probably the most
important responsibility of the woman is the management of her children's
education. Given the extreme importance of education for social status and
economic advancement, the wife must see that the children keep up in their
studies. If they fail in school, it is a great loss of face not only for her
but for her husband and his entire family.

     In the traditional society only men could obtain a divorce. The reason
for divorce might be barrenness (defined as the inability to bear a son) and
more often involved incompatibility between the wife and her parents-in-law
than between her and her husband. In contemporary society both men and women
have the right to divorce, although social and economic discrimination make
the lot of a divorced woman a difficult one. Women's rights organizations see
the revision of the Family Law in December 1977 as only a partial solution to
the unequal legal status of men and women, particularly regarding divorce. The
husband can still demand custody of the children, for instance, although the
law makes it more difficult for him to coerce or deceive his wife into
agreeing to an unfair settlement. The rate of divorce in South Korea is
increasing, though it has not approached the levels found in some Western
countries.

     Beyond immediate family and close kin the social relations experienced by
the urban individual were apt to be largely determined by place of employment.
The smallest enterprises-shops or factories located in back alleys often
employing only a handful of workers-tend to be paternalistic; the proprietor
enjoying the status of a fictive father. Large-scale enterprises, including
the conglomerates, are more impersonal, although some firms devote much
attention to a "people first" policy-looking out for the welfare of the
employees and ensuring a high work morale. Large-scale paternalism has been
reinforced by the introduction of comprehensive health insurance schemes in
recent years (see Public Health and Welfare, this ch.). Although most large
enterprises insist that hiring and advancement are solely on the basis of
merit, family connections, school ties, and the judicious application of gifts
and other incentives still play an important role in business as well as
political life.

     At both the top and the bottom of South Korean society standards other
than those of strict merit are apt to be used in the distribution of favors
and benefits. According to a Korean journalist the dominant trend in modern
economic enterprises is for the founder and owner to turn over control of the
company to his son rather than to professionally trained and experienced
managers. At the other end of the spectrum Korea's criminal class illustrates
the power of the kinship principle in another way. Criminals are organized
into "families" of a fictive sort, in which "fathers" and "elder brothers"
have absolute authority. Shoeshine boys, for instance, who act as facilitators
for all sorts of illegal activities, are at the bottom of a rather elaborate
hierarchy of syndicate heads who own "turf" in the cities, followed by
subordinate "generals," "elder brothers," and "fathers" who control the
boys-often runaways from rural areas.

     Although family life has changed radically in the transition from the
rural village to the large city, urban people are not disconnected or
atomized. Rather, the urban individual, whether he is the head of a large
conglomerate, a university professor, a politician, or a newly arrived migrant
from the countryside, is apt to deal with the world of strangers outside his
doorstep by relying on a well-established network of kinship or quasi-kinship
connections for assistance. A common theme of government-sponsored campaigns
and groups, such as the Social Purification committees established by the Chun
regime, is the struggle against kin-based favoritism, and the prevalence of
favoritism is one way in which the old Confucian principle of filial piety
still asserts itself in contemporary society.