Yangban

The yangban (Hangul: 양반: Hanja: 兩班) were part of the traditional ruling class or gentry of dynastic Korea during the Joseon Dynasty. The yangban were mainly composed of civil servants and military officers. The yangban were landed or unlanded who comprised the Korean Confucian idea of a "scholarly official". Basically, they were administrators and bureaucrats who oversaw ancient Korea's traditional agrarian bureaucracy until the Joseon Dynasty ended in 1894. In a broader sense, office holder's family and descendants as well as country families who claimed such descent were socially accepted as yangban.

Unlike noble titles in the European and Japanese aristocracies, which were conferred on a hereditary basis, the yangban title was granted by law to individuals who passed state-sponsored civil service exams called gwageo (과거, 科擧). Upon passing these exams—which tested knowledge of the Confucian classics and history—several times, a person was usually assigned to a government post. A yangban family that did not produce a government official for more than three generations could lose its status and become commoners. In theory, a member of any social class except indentured servants, baekjeongs, and children of concubines could take the government exams and become a yangban. In reality, only the upper classes—i.e., the children of yangban—possessed the financial resources and the wherewithal to pass the exams, for which years of studying were required. These barriers and financial constraints effectively excluded most non-yangban families and the lower classes from competing for yangban status.

Yangban status on a provincial level was de facto hereditary. It was customary to include all descendants of the office holders in the hyangan (향안, 鄕案), a document that listed the names and lineages of local yangban families. The hyangan was maintained on blood basis, and one could be cut off from it if members of the family married social inferiors, such as tradesmen. Although the hyangan was not legally supported by government acts or statutes, the families listed in it were socially respected as yangban. Their householders had the customary right to participate in the hyangso (향소, 鄕所), a local council from which they could exercise influence on local politics and administration. By reserving and demanding socio-political power through local instruments such as hyangan and hyangso, yangban automatically passed down their status to posterity in local magnate families, with or without holding central offices. These provincial families of gentility were often termed jaejisajok (재지사족, 在地士族), which means "the country families". Thus, while legally, yangban meant high-ranking officials, in reality it included almost all descendants of the former and increasingly lost its legal exactitude.

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