YANG-BAN (two divisions, civil and mili tary). The name first given to the privileged classes in Korea, during the Korat dynasty (918-1392), when the inhabitants were classi fied as nobles, commoners and slaves. The nobles, owing allegiance to the king, exercised within their own domains both civil and mili tary authority. In time, these functions and classes were separated, the civil officers being called East Division and the military, West Division, according to their place at court. After 1392, under the new dynasty, when Buddhism fell and Confucian ethics and Chi nese ideas prevailed, many able commoners en tering politics, the ruling classes numbered five, nobles, local-ban, middle-class men, common people In this new classi fication, the noble yang-bans held the chief gov ernment offices and were immune from taxation. If not earning a living, they lived off the peo ple. The chief families or clans were the Kim, Chwe, Pak, Li, Chong and An (the Six Fami lies). and later the Min and Cho. The stories of their hitter feuds make up the substance of modern Korean history, culminating in the mur der of Kim Ok Kun and Queen Cho. With other clans and their subdivisions, numbering over a score, there were, in 1910, 54,000 yang ban families, comprising one-fiftieth of the households in Korea; two central provinces having a total of 35.630 families; though the yang-ban are scattered all over the peninsula.
Without domains or fixed stipends, the yang bans, despising labor and looking only to offi cial positions and income — when there are hut 17.000 offices of any and all sorts open to Ko reans — the condition of 37,000 families in this proud class is that of poverty. In old days, a man in high office would have 200 or 300 hang ers-on to look after, the public looking on his supporting so many relatives as a at virtue. When Korea, in 1912, for the third time in its history, was given the name of Chosen, apart from the creation of a new class of nobility pensioned by the Japanese government, all the old class distinctions and privileges — of amaz ing and curious variety - were abolished. Yet as social ideas. habits and customs die slowly. the yang-I:tn, like the old samurai of Japan.
still Cilj..y. I much of the old-time pres tige The history of Korea. especially in its nnslern (. cannot he nildersto.,41 without some understanding of the social influence of the yang-ban and their fend, ((insult Hui gert, 'The Passing of Korea' (1906)- Griffis. 'Corea, the Hermit Nation' (1907), the annul Annual Reports on Reforms and Progress in Korea (1917-18), and the Eastern Asia Of ficial Guide Book: Vol. I, Manchuria sad Chosen.