Chapter 1: Some History Stuff
C> Posting this before I put chapter 2 out: some cool history that I didn’t fully discuss in chapter 1!
While I’m a huge history nerd, not everyone reading historical fiction is. And anyway, this is fanfiction, not a thesis, so I left out a bunch of cool things I found.
Here they are, quickly!
1) Indenturement: indentured workers got that way because of two reasons. Either they committed a crime that put a big debt on them (like Yoongi in this fic), or they chose indenturement sometimes because of poverty. This system was kind of complex in Korea. Without getting into too many details, unlike black slavery, indentured laborers were paid wages, could hold land, have their own indentured workers, and even received maternity and paternity leave. A lot of them were trapped in the system because of what they owed to the government, but the rules were different.
2) Untouchability: the Korean untouchable caste were mostly comprised of people in menial professions — butchers, basket makers, acrobats, folk performers etc. They were mostly nomadic, which helped in their often becoming disenfranchised and being blamed for thefts, crime or murder. They were the lowest class of people in both the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, and often faced discrimination. [This is especially interesting because this caste system was a direct impact of Buddhism being introduced in Korea during Goguryeo/Silla/Baekje era- did the ‘purity’ politics of it come from the place of origin of Buddhism, India?] Again, however, unlike India, around the time period that this story is set in, the baekjeong were allowed to hold land, but discrimination from other groups continued to torment them.
3) Yongchon: I don’t really think there was a district called Yongchon back in the Joseon era - I chose that name because in present day, that’s an area that’s close to the Yalu River in North Korea. As the coldest region in the Korean peninsula, it serves my purpose. That was also a land that was frequently invaded by China (it shares a border) and by Jurchen tribes, so it made sense for me to set it there considering I wanted a village with a strong military presence. In the present day, this region would be in N.Korea.
4) Winter and food: the gap between cultivation in rice and barley is punctuated by horrid winters, and people usually starved in this period. In extreme cases, they ate dug up tree roots to survive. In addition to high taxes, all of this led to a bunch of peasant revolts in the later Joseon period, such as this famous one that laid ground for the end of the dynasty as a whole > Donghak Peasant Revolution
5) the podocheong: they had detectives, they had undercover spies, they had code language and women employees! The podocheong kept a register of indentured female workers so they could be used to investigate in more residential areas where men—especially higher-class men—wouldn’t go. If you wanted to be a lady in the podocheong, you had to be able to drink your weight in makgeolli. That was an actual rule.
6) seonbi: while scholars were learned and respected, those that chose not to occupy governmental positions but act in service of the public often found themselves persecuted by royalty. In this fic, Namjoon is a virtuous scholar, working in service of the common folk. In many instances in Joseon Korea, seonbi submitted blunt petitions to force the king into reducing taxes or giving back wealth to the public. This led to the scholars being purged and pursued by those in service to the king. The seonbi are glorified by the public, but reviled by those in power—which makes sense considering how popular dramas with them are :D
7) inks and paints: making Tae an artist in this fic came with its own body of research—I’ll talk about this later, but I wanted to show you what an inkstick is! It was a stick made of soot, colored pigments, animal glue, and some other sometimes medicinal materials that had to be ground into an inkstone to create ink for painting/calligraphy. Colored inksticks look like this:
Okay, history lesson over. Please let me know if these are fun/helpful to you, or if you want me to address anything else in terms of writing process or research ^^ I’m really enjoying diving into lesser known history for this whole thing!!!
> Link to the fic
Editing to add:
my sources are mostly from Google Books but I referred a lot to Cornelius Osgood’s writings, especially his book “Koreans and their Culture”, which is recommended reading by the National Museum of Korea.
