The Historiographical Debate around the Nobi System

The Case of James B. Palais

Abstract

There is currently a debate surrounding the nature of the nobi system throughout Korean history. We can find historians who define the nobi system as a system of slavery and the nobi as slaves, and historians who prefer to define it as a system of serfdom and the nobi as serfs. This article exposes the interpretation that the American historian James B. Palais offered about the nobi system in the Joseon dynasty of Korea based on his intellectual production, placing greater emphasis on the interpretation offered in his work Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty, as well as exposing the intellectual influences that motivated this interpretation by Palais. Palais's interpretation of the nobi system would revive the debate surrounding the nature of the nobi system and lay the foundation for the interpretation of the nobi system for future historians of Korea.