Affinal Relations in Rural Korea, 17th through 19th Centuries.

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Much has been discussed on agnatic relationship in Korea, but relatively little attention has been paid to affinal relationship. The present research has been a preliminary attempt at analysing affinal relationship based on household registers of late seventeenth through midnineteenth centuries.Korean society during late-Choson period was under strong influence of Confucianism, and the clan system became elaborated. Kin groups long established in local societies organized themselves into agnatic descent groups called Munjung. However, a very high geographic mobility of the population was one of the characteristics of the period. One of the foci of the research was to find if there is any correlationship between immigration and affinal relations. Household registers from four periods, each including some 350 households in five to seven villages have been analyzed, with the following results.1.Intra-village affinal relations were frequent in the seventeenth century, but the frequency dropped sharply after the eighteenth century, indicating that the present-day norm of village exogamy may have developed during this period.2.Affinal ties do not appear to have playd a major role in promoting immigration. However, most of the intra-village affinal ties that did exist were associated wtih new immigrants to the village concerned.