A recent 'jokbo' forum
Mark Peterson
I wrote a column for the Nov. 13 edition of The Korea Times titled "Korea's new jokbo” in which I suggested that since Korea was no longer a "patrilineal society," the Korean genealogical books called "jokbo" needed to be reoriented and updated.
Jokbo that show the male lines of family history are a snapshot of the society at the time. Korea has not always been patrilineal — it became so in the late 17th century. Jokbo describe that kind of society, which was dominated by men. But today’s society has moved away from that tradition, and jokbo need to as well.
The president-publisher of The Korea Times liked the article and on my subsequent visit to Korea, he called me into his office and asked if I’d like to organize a The Korea Times Global Forum on the topic of “new jokbo." I responded that I’d be more than happy to do so.
We held the forum on March 3 and it went very well. We had about 100 people attending and I invited four other speakers in addition to myself, with a panel discussion at the end.
The theme of the program was modern jokbo and talking about how they can include women equally, remembering grandmothers as well as grandfathers. The format for jokbo in this new age is like that of Western countries, or if you like, the format that was used in Korea before the late 17th century swing to patrilineality, or male dominance.
The speakers addressed the idea of equality for women in new jokbo by looking at how the Western format can be used, and how that format is exactly the way Korea portrayed their genealogy in the early and middle Joseon periods.
Korea then called the format the “palgojodo” — the eight great-great-grandfathers’ chart. It is exactly the same thing as the Western family trees going back five generations. The idea is that one has one father and one mother, two grandfathers and two grandmothers, four great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and eight great-great-grandmothers and grandfathers.
The speakers included Kim Jeong-woon, the head of the Korean branch of FamilySearch International, probably the largest genealogical organization in the world, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. She spoke about doing her own research to go beyond her patrilineal jokbo to find the jokbo of her grandmothers, and construct her own palgojodo.
The second speaker was Koh Hye-ryeong, who has retired from the National Historical Society and was the founding president of “The Roots Association,” a Korean genealogical research society.
I wanted to have one speaker who was not a Ph.D. — a grassroots genealogical researcher rather than a trained specialist. I asked around and found Kim Yong-im, a woman from Chungcheong Province who was associated with FamilySearch and had completed her own palgojodo. She explained how anyone can search in the existing jokbo collections and find ancestors in maternal lines. The idea was to demonstrate how regular people can use the resources available and fill in their family tree.
Then we heard from the only other man on the program — I initially wanted all the speakers except me to be women. Song Man-oh is a retired professor from Jeongbuk University. He spoke about a jokbo he had discovered of a man who had no male heir, but recorded the ancestors of the men who married his three daughters.
My presentation was last and I spoke of how jokbo on paper and bound in books will soon be a thing of the past. Digitizing jokbo and putting them on the internet is going to make them into living documents. Every death, marriage and birth — the essence of family history — can be entered at the time of the event. There will be no more need to print the document on paper and bind it in a book every 30 to 40 years, as is done now.
In addition, with digitization will come indexing. Listing all entries by name, dates of birth and death, and relationships is happening now. With indexing, it will be possible to easily find the missing grandmothers further up the ancestral tree.
It will not only be possible to look the names up one at a time, but in the not-too-distant future, it can all be done by artificial intelligence (AI). Soon I will be able to ask AI to find all my eight great-great-grandfathers and eight great-great-grandmothers. People will soon be able to find out the range of their relationships, not just those who bear the same surname, while sitting in their home, in front of their laptop.
I pointed out that today’s jokbo will be scientifically connected to DNA. We get 50 percent of our DNA from each parent. We get 25 percent from each grandparent. We get 12.5 percent from each great-grandparent, and we get 6.25 percent of our DNA from each of our great-great-grandparents, our "gojo haraboji" and "gojo halmoni." I joked that there must be some “Koreanness” in the number 6.25. If you don’t know what 6.25 is, ask any Korean — they’ll tell you!
Mark Peterson (frogoutsidethewell@gmail.com) is a professor emeritus of Korean studies at Brigham Young University in Utah. The views expressed here are his own.