Social Anthropology of Korean Local Elite

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(1) In the late 19^<th> century, there occurred a movement to reorganize and revitalize their age-based associations and related ritual activities among the families of dynastic local functionaries (rijok) in Namwon Town, triggered by the abolishment of the dynastic status-based institutions. In this process, the rijok families were reorganized into a status group circumscribed with the traditions thus reinvented, alienated from yangban's nation-wide Confucian tradition.(2) Among local coordinators and brokers who were involved in the developmental projects in Namwon Town after 1920's, there were not only Japanese immigrants but also local Koreans. Among the latter were leaders of rijok origin, who varied considerably in terms of their careers and political inclinations.(3) In the urbanization process of Namwon Town in the early 1930's, the restoration of Kwanghallu (Kwanghan Pavillion)and the establishment of Ch'unhyang Shrine and its annual ritual proved to be a formation of local tradition based on the concomitance off heterogeneous status traditions, as well as a sort of fruition of Korean local modernity, a chimera of "tradition" and "modern".(4) After the liberation in 1945 up until the early 1980's, those who were mainly involved in the reproduction of local cultural tradition and community development as coordinator and broker were the urban riches and the upper-middles. Among them were also those from traditional elite families including rijok, who also showed an idiosyncratic attitude toward the reproduction of their own status traditions and the activities of patri-kin groups.(5) In the process of rapid industrialization under the control of the highly centralized government and the dominance of official nationalism, ways of community development projects and reproduction of local traditions changed greatly. This made some components of former status traditions which were excluded from the register of the national culture more or less alienated.