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One of the most interesting hereditary social groups of pre-modern Korea was a band of technical specialists called the jungin ("middle people").
During the latter half of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), the jungin carried out specialized, technical functions shunned by the better-known yangban aristocracy but nonetheless essential to the functioning of the government. They filled official posts responsible for interpreting, medicine, law, the sciences, accounting, document preparation and even painting.
The jungin who staffed the Office of Interpreters, for example, trained civil servants in foreign languages (Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu and Japanese), devised state examinations and supplied government interpreters for the court.
These interpreters, a select group that had to pass a very competitive screening process to win appointment, translated documents, compiled textbooks and developed the curriculum for foreign language instruction.
But the most prominent function of these interpreters was representing the court and government in border localities such as the port of Busan, as well as outside the country by joining periodic diplomatic missions to China and Japan. This experience also provided opportunities to build significant wealth through trading.
Perhaps most importantly, their linguistic skills and exposure to the outside world supplied them with ideas, models and contacts that eluded most other Koreans, including the ruling aristocracy. This would prove particularly important to the jungin during the Korean enlightenment period beginning in the late 19th century.
Among the most visible and influential jungin interpreters was the Hyeon family, which produced a veritable who's who of major figures of the early modern period. These people helped shape the wave of government and social reform that characterized the Korean enlightenment, ascended the bureaucratic ranks of the modern officialdom, and contributed greatly to the emergence of a new elite and a new culture in modern Korea.
We can begin with Hyeon Chae, who at the turn of the 20th century authored more than a dozen translations and textbooks on subjects ranging from history to Korean language and grammar. His works, in fact, represented a microcosm of the diverse intellectual trends among the cultural pioneers of this period.
They employed the lessons of Social Darwinism, republicanism and other ideologies to further the cause of self-strengthening, Western education, Korean independence and awakening of the nation. More than any other traditional status group, it was the jungin who stood at the forefront of these fundamental, nearly revolutionary changes.
Another member of this clan, Hyeon Jin-geon, became one of the preeminent authors of modern Korean literature. Like many other colonial era (1910-45) writers, Hyeon Jin-geon attended school abroad, in Japan and China, before returning to Korea to work as a novelist and reporter. His works are renowned for their vividly realistic portraits of struggling Koreans learning to adjust to the rapidly changing world.
His second cousin, Hyeon Cheol, became one of the founders of modern Korean theater. He helped to establish a native theatrical tradition by organizing study societies, translating Western works to be staged in Korean and founding performance and acting schools. And, of course, he penned his own important contributions, in the form of both plays and criticism, to the fledgling Korean theater movement.
Another major cultural figure from this family was Hyeon Che-myeong, a versatile instrumentalist and one of the pioneers of Western music in Korea. He was later implicated, however, in what were considered pro-Japanese activities during the wartime mobilization of the late 1930s and early 1940s. This resulted from a difficult set of circumstances that ensnared many of the new social elite, including the jungin descendants, during the Japanese colonial period.
One of the most explicitly pro-Japanese Koreans, in fact, was Hyeon Yeong-seop, a public intellectual and activist. In the late 1930s he published a book, "The Path Koreans Should Take," which argued that the Korean people could only be saved from their wretched political, family and social system by shedding their identities as Koreans and becoming Japanese in both mind and spirit.
But also consider Hyeon Yeong-seop's cousin, Hyeon Jun-seop, who under the name of Peter Hyun wrote a book called, "Man Sei! The Making of a Korean American." In this work, Peter Hyun detailed the struggles of his family as immigrants in the United States and the heroic work of his father, the reverend Hyeon Sun (Soon Hyun), an independence activist working to overthrow Japanese rule.
That two diametrically opposite perspectives concerning national identity in the modern world could come from cousins provides a good indication of the variety of ways the descendants of the Hyeon family, and of the jungin in general, made their mark on modern Korea. After centuries behind the scenes as practitioners of skills that were held low esteem, they exploded onto the upper strata of government, religion, culture and education during the modern era.
In many ways, the jungin were the forerunners to modern professionals, so it was understandable that, based on their accumulated knowhow and greater awareness of new ideas and models, they would make their mark as influential elites in the early 20th century. Their ascendance to such prominence and social influence represented, then, not only a compelling story of modern social change, but the often hidden but potentially powerful features of pre-modern Korea as well.
Kyung Moon Hwang is associate professor in the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of, "A History of Korea _ An Episodic Narrative" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Korean translation was published as 황경문, "맥락으로 읽는 새로운 한국사" (21세기 북스, 2011).
