Temporarily for Your Majesty: Debates on Abolishing Courtesan Slavery in Chosŏn Korea

Abstract

abstract:I identify the institution of government courtesans in Chosŏn Korea as state slavery. Government courtesans, like other government slaves and like private household slaves, were legally defined as chattel property in Chosŏn. Yet courtesans differed from those other types of slaves because their performances—labor mandated by the state— were constantly questioned and delegitimized by the government of nearly every Chosŏn king. Based on an examination of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century court debates about abolishing the courtesan system, I argue that the government’s repeated failures to abolish the use of courtesans produced the Chosŏn courtesan system as an illegitimate, temporary, and dispensable state apparatus. Paradoxically, the repeated designation of ongoing courtesan participation in royal, diplomatic, and military events as temporary in fact perpetuated courtesan slavery, even as the nominal illegitimacy removed any legal, social, or moral justification for the system.초록:이 논문은 조선 정부에서 국가 노예제인 관기 제도를 폐지하기 위한 논쟁 을 거듭했으나 매번 실패하는 지속적 과정이 관기 제도를 부적절하고, 임시적이 며, 제거 가능한 조직으로 만드는 담론적 효과를 창출했으며, 이를 통해 역설적 으로 국가 노예제의 권력 위계 질서를 영속화했다는 점에 대해 살펴본다.