The 'new' 6.25 of Korean genealogy

Americans call it the Korean War. Koreans call the three-year fratricidal war that broke out on June 25, 1950, the “yug-i-o,” meaning the day the war began. Like Dec. 7, 1941 (“a day that will live in infamy” — FDR), or Sept. 11, 2001, these were days so horrific that the event is known by that day as a numeric.

I’m going to suggest another meaning for 6.25. I’ve mentioned this briefly in a previous column when I was writing about the new jokbo in Korea. I presented this idea to the audience at the Global Forum that The Korea Times sponsored on the new Korean jokbo — “Not just grandfathers, but grandmothers jokbo, too.”

In my presentation there, and I wrote about it in my column here, I suggested the new Korean jokbo will be similar to the Western jokbo — and at the same time, will recapture the traditional Korean jokbo before the male dominance, before the patrilineal takeover of the Korean jokbo. Koreans, before the late 17th century, kept what was called a “pal gojo-do.”

The beginning structure in Western jokbo, or genealogy, what we now like to call “family history,” is the five-generation-pedigree chart. That is exactly the same thing as the “pal gojo-do.” Five generations begins with the “self,” then two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents, or eight great-great-grandfathers, if you want to look at the patrilineal side. When you look at the amount of DNA you have inherited from each of those 16 great-great-grandparents, it is 6.25 percent. I’ve been struck by the coincidence that that number, 6.25 has great significance in Korea’s past, in terms of both war and peace.

It turns out, I don’t think anybody but me does this, but 6.25 is the number showing your and my connection to my great-great-grandfather and your and my great-great-grandmother.

Will Korea come to see the new 6.25 as something significant? No, it will never stop being the signifier for the Korean War. But as Korea finds its way through a post-male world, as Korea begins to define jokbo and family heritage as something more than male, as Koreans discover their broad range of genetic and social ancestry, maybe the number 6.25 will have additional meaning.

Will Koreans start to see their grandmothers as more than a mere appendage to their grandfathers? Yes. It is inevitable. It will happen slowly but inevitably. When I ask audiences, when I’m giving a speech about Korean history, how many great-great-grandfathers ("gojo harabeoji") they have, and I see people hold up one finger and say “one,” I am amused. I chuckle and say, you have one father, two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers and eight great-great-grandfathers. Slowly the lights come on. And people start to see it.

I don’t usually point out that they get 6.25 percent of their DNA from each of those eight great-great-grandfathers, and an equal amount from each of their eight great-great-grandmothers, but maybe I should start doing that. Six-two-five. Yug-i-o. Maybe we can find its an additional, new meaning in our family history.

Last time I wrote about new technology, call it artificial intelligence, or call it OCR (optical character recognition), that can read jokbo and create an index to make it easier to find the female lines. This technology will enable Koreans to see their physical and cultural heritage in a whole new light. People with discover a hidden mother of a mother of a mother who was a Jeonju Yi-ssi. And the researcher will suddenly realize that they are an heir, maybe, to the royalty of Korea. Others will find other prominent and interesting ancestors.

Some will find that they are descended from a slave. I have a theory that all of us, at one level or another, Korean or foreign, have slaves in our ancestry. And we should honor therm and their lives, as well as we honor the kings and the noble people we may find.

The beginning level, both in the West and in Korea, is the five-generation chart, the “pal gojo-do.” The 6.25 level. From there one can go upward, to the fifth-generation ancestors from whom we obtained 3.125 percent of our DNA, and the sixth-generation ancestors from whom we obtained 1.5625 percent of our DNA, and on up the family tree. It becomes incalculable, but at the great-great-grandparent level, the 6.25 makes some sense.

As AI research comes online, as Korea leaves its patrilineal and patriarchal past behind, as Western-style genealogy conforms with traditional Korean gender-balanced genealogy, Korea will create a new paradigm of family history, one that includes grandmothers as much as grandfathers. For now, we can call it the new 6.25, or “yug-i-o.”

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.