Béla Boxman
Béla Boxman is an Honours research master student in Historical Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and guest student Korean Studies at Leiden University, specialising in historical demography and migration history in early modern East-Asia. As research intern at Ajou University he is working on linking historical databases and demography of the Joseon dynasty. He has worked with historical data as student assistant for Antwerp University and the Historical Database of Suriname and the Caribbean (HDSC) at Radboud University.
Radboud University Nijmegen, Ajou University
Session
The gwageo, civil service education system was an educational and governance model shared by multiple East-Asian societies, including Vietnam. Through this institutional connection, local elites were selected through Neo-Confucian knowledge, shaping regional society through an international system. Moreover, the yangban elites in Joseon’s different localities became entangled with this international system. Overall, these factors facilitated social and geographical movement across the Korean Peninsula.
This paper seeks to elucidate the way the career trajectories of local scholars were shaped by this educational model. Educational practices associated with the gwageo generated various types of mobility: candidates often crossed county – and at times provincial – boundaries to prepare for or sit for the examinations, and many successful examinees experienced additional movement as they advanced into official positions.
Employing a method drawing from two key sources, this study seeks to reconstruct the career paths of scholars from Danseong county. First, using the household registers (hojeok), which record occupation, residence and kinship information for local inhabitants, as well as individual mobility and family connections in 1606-1888 Danseong. And second, the exam lists (bangmok), official rosters of successful gwageo candidates, to identify the scholars and track those who advanced to official positions. This way, the scholars’ mobility can be situated within a larger tradition of East-Asian education reaching across national borders, to shed light on a topic that is much understudied yet provides an insight in both national attitudes and the reactions of the local elite.