By Mark Peterson
I was recently contacted by a young man, a third-generation Korean American who had some questions about research on his own Korean jokbo ― family genealogy. I was pleased to receive the email and happy to answer his questions. But more importantly, I was thoroughly taken with his ability to figure out how to read a genealogy.
His name is Braden Oh, and he was contacting me from his home in Southern California. He is attending a small, elite engineering college in Massachusetts; the school competes with MIT where, in fact, his father and uncle graduated, both in Astronomical Engineering. Braden is an exceptionally bright young man.
Many young people in Korea are not able to read their own family jokbo because the document is written in Chinese characters. Years ago, even in the 1960s and 70s when I first went to Korea, most educated people could read Chinese characters. Newspapers were filled with Chinese and it was the medium for communication. Most street signs were in Chinese. But the times have changed and Chinese is no longer taught in the schools and most young Koreans today cannot read much Chinese at all. Some know the Chinese characters for their names, but not much more than that. Therefore, reading a jokbo is a formidable task. At least many are frightened away by it. But not Braden Oh.
As a third-generation Korean-American, he speaks no Korean. When I asked him if he knows any Korean, he responded, "No, not a lick." But he was inspired by one of my videos on how to read your own jokbo, and he decided to try. He needed to learn Chinese, at least how to look up Chinese to transcribe names. And he needed to learn Chinese numbers. Then he needed to learn the "gapja" systems of the 60-year cycle, which means learning to look up the way 10 zodiac symbols interact with 12 zodiac symbols to make the 60-cycle used for dates in old Korea and China. And on a "date conversion chart" one needs to key in on which king's reign the 60-year date falls, to make sure you are in the right cycle ― the king's reign tells you whether it's 1804 or 1864, for example.
And Braden did all that. He had a friend who had studied Chinese a little, I think a Chinese-American, who showed him how to scratch in something that looks like the character for the name or other information. The program they were using would then give them the Chinese character in Chinese pronunciation, and he'd have to then look up the Korean pronunciation. I told him about the Korean dictionary for Chinese characters on Naver, which saved him one step ― but he was able to do it. On his own. I was really impressed. Most Korean young people, let alone Korean-Americans think it's too hard to use the Chinese. But Braden figured out how to do it.
He said my videos helped. I have a few videos on YouTube on how to read jokbo. I recorded them about a year ago featuring a bright young second-generation Korea American who can speak quite a bit of Korean. She had learned the basics from an older man at her church who is somewhat of a specialist in genealogies and he enjoyed teaching young people how to read the jokbo. Most of the youth did not catch on so well, but my student at Brigham Young University, Rebecca Moon, really enjoyed it, got into it, and then I found out about it and filmed her for my YouTube channel. Rebecca has inspired Braden. I don't know how many more will be in the chain, but I am in the process of making a series of videos featuring Braden and his jokbo.
In the first one, we look at the basics ― looking at one's immediate family, looking at the birth and death dates of father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. We looked at the Chinese "gapja" 60-year cycle, and got all the birth and death dates down. We looked at how to "scratch-in" the names to see how they are pronounced.
In the second video, we looked at marriages, how to read the wife's name and about her family, usually her father, and their birth and death dates. And we looked at the burial information briefly. I told him that the location of the grave was given, but he didn't need to look that up yet. That's for later, maybe.
And in the final video, we looked at how to trace the lineage up, and up through the generations which means going to the top of the page and then reading the information to take you upward to the next page, and up that line to the reference to the next page until we reached the first ancestor, the sijo (same pronunciation for the sijo poem I've written about previously ― different Chinese characters, however).
Some people think jokbo, and genealogical records are a dying art. I don't think so. And Braden has given me hope for the future.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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His name is Braden Oh, and he was contacting me from his home in Southern California. He is attending a small, elite engineering college in Massachusetts; the school competes with MIT where, in fact, his father and uncle graduated, both in Astronomical Engineering. Braden is an exceptionally bright young man.
Many young people in Korea are not able to read their own family jokbo because the document is written in Chinese characters. Years ago, even in the 1960s and 70s when I first went to Korea, most educated people could read Chinese characters. Newspapers were filled with Chinese and it was the medium for communication. Most street signs were in Chinese. But the times have changed and Chinese is no longer taught in the schools and most young Koreans today cannot read much Chinese at all. Some know the Chinese characters for their names, but not much more than that. Therefore, reading a jokbo is a formidable task. At least many are frightened away by it. But not Braden Oh.
As a third-generation Korean-American, he speaks no Korean. When I asked him if he knows any Korean, he responded, "No, not a lick." But he was inspired by one of my videos on how to read your own jokbo, and he decided to try. He needed to learn Chinese, at least how to look up Chinese to transcribe names. And he needed to learn Chinese numbers. Then he needed to learn the "gapja" systems of the 60-year cycle, which means learning to look up the way 10 zodiac symbols interact with 12 zodiac symbols to make the 60-cycle used for dates in old Korea and China. And on a "date conversion chart" one needs to key in on which king's reign the 60-year date falls, to make sure you are in the right cycle ― the king's reign tells you whether it's 1804 or 1864, for example.
And Braden did all that. He had a friend who had studied Chinese a little, I think a Chinese-American, who showed him how to scratch in something that looks like the character for the name or other information. The program they were using would then give them the Chinese character in Chinese pronunciation, and he'd have to then look up the Korean pronunciation. I told him about the Korean dictionary for Chinese characters on Naver, which saved him one step ― but he was able to do it. On his own. I was really impressed. Most Korean young people, let alone Korean-Americans think it's too hard to use the Chinese. But Braden figured out how to do it.
He said my videos helped. I have a few videos on YouTube on how to read jokbo. I recorded them about a year ago featuring a bright young second-generation Korea American who can speak quite a bit of Korean. She had learned the basics from an older man at her church who is somewhat of a specialist in genealogies and he enjoyed teaching young people how to read the jokbo. Most of the youth did not catch on so well, but my student at Brigham Young University, Rebecca Moon, really enjoyed it, got into it, and then I found out about it and filmed her for my YouTube channel. Rebecca has inspired Braden. I don't know how many more will be in the chain, but I am in the process of making a series of videos featuring Braden and his jokbo.
In the first one, we look at the basics ― looking at one's immediate family, looking at the birth and death dates of father, mother, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. We looked at the Chinese "gapja" 60-year cycle, and got all the birth and death dates down. We looked at how to "scratch-in" the names to see how they are pronounced.
In the second video, we looked at marriages, how to read the wife's name and about her family, usually her father, and their birth and death dates. And we looked at the burial information briefly. I told him that the location of the grave was given, but he didn't need to look that up yet. That's for later, maybe.
And in the final video, we looked at how to trace the lineage up, and up through the generations which means going to the top of the page and then reading the information to take you upward to the next page, and up that line to the reference to the next page until we reached the first ancestor, the sijo (same pronunciation for the sijo poem I've written about previously ― different Chinese characters, however).
Some people think jokbo, and genealogical records are a dying art. I don't think so. And Braden has given me hope for the future.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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