Wrongful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea appears in the context of ongoing academic interest in East Asian pre-modern legal records and recent research into the complexity of Chosŏn history that uses previously untapped sources. Wrongful Deaths adopts a similar format to Robert E. Hegel's True Crimes in Eighteenth-Century China: Twenty Case Histories (Washington, 2009), by providing an insight into criminal cases over a 100-year period. Both books feature a general introduction to the historical and legal context, followed by modern English translations of investigations into criminal violence. While Hegel's book examines a wide range of cases – including rebellious activity that occurred during a period of growing stability under eighteenth-century Qing rule – Wrongful Deaths focuses mainly on domestic or localized violence during the political and economic instability of nineteenth-century Chosŏn. Wrongful Deaths features translations of eight different cases taken from the kŏman (檢案 or inquest records) including infanticide, adultery-homicide, violence resulting from illegal burials and suicide.
Delving into inquest records like the kŏman provides a wealth of legal and political information about the period, but research into Chosŏn-period materials like this is a daunting task indeed. Not only are legal records extremely lengthy and repetitive, they feature frequent references to obscure episodes from the Confucian classics, and are written in both literary Chinese and idu (clerk's writing). Adding to the difficulty, the original questions to witnesses and accused are often omitted. Wrongful Deaths is therefore an invaluable resource for researchers attempting to orientate themselves to Chosŏn-period legal sources. The introduction does a good job of explaining the basis of the Chosŏn legal administration, particularly its adoption and adaptation of the Great Ming Code (Da Ming lü 大明律) to suit the changing circumstances in Korean society. The introduction also reveals the lengthy and often complex investigations that local authorities went through after a suspicious death. In addition, the introductions to each section offer vitally important legal and historical background information, while the glossary clarifies different terminology used by the administrators of the time. The investigators of the cases in Wrongful Deaths were often confronted by contradictory testimony, which made judgments exceedingly difficult, especially in Case 5, which features a wet nurse accused of murdering an infant child. The translations also reveal fascinating details about Chosŏn legal practice, such as the insertion of silver hairpins into the orifices of corpses to determine poisoning.
The book shines a light on the daily conflicts of the period. Captured in the records are communal squabbles, jealousies and class animosity. One area of contention that features heavily is graveside litigation after illegal burials. Identifying a propitious spot was important for relatives of the deceased, and yangban elites deliberately chose particular sites to monopolize potentially profitable timber-rich forest land. Case 2 features the illegal burial of a corpse too close to another gravesite – an act that led first to an attempt at a legal solution, and when that failed to violence.
Conflict also originated in what James Palais called the contradictory impulses of Confucianism – in other words, the tension between theoretical and idealistic Confucianism and the practical implementation of Confucian thought (“Confucianism and the aristocratic/bureaucratic balance in Korea”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44/2, 1984, 433). Widow fidelity was a Confucian ideal that was not an option for the most impoverished in society, and many widows had to remarry or find other ways to make ends meet. Case 4 involves two widows who competed over the purchase of a house in Kyŏngsang Province. When one successfully bought the house – guaranteeing herself some financial stability – the other began to destroy her rival's reputation by spreading malicious rumours about her sexual proclivities; actions that led to suicide and a murder investigation.
Like Robert Hegel's book, perhaps the greatest achievement of Wrongful Deaths is the rich source of information about the daily lives of ordinary people provided in the translated legal cases. Despite the fact that judicial records are a process of mediation by official scribes, legal sources offer a voice to the marginalized, who in Hegel's words “were generally silent and invisible” in other official sources and in cultural artefacts. Case 7 is one of adultery and murder and reveals traces of a non-elite group, the tanners (or p'ijang 皮匠), who appear infrequently in official records. It is this latter feature of Wrongful Deaths that makes it a welcome addition to available classroom materials on Chosŏn Korea. One of my colleagues’ most frequent complaints is the difficulty of making pre-modern Korean history interesting and motivating for students, who are separated geographically, temporally and culturally from the events described in history books, and more seriously fail to see any need for academic enquiry: “It [pre-modern Korean history] is boring because it doesn't seem relevant to my life”, one student confessed to me. Used effectively in class, Wrongful Deaths can help lift history off the page by providing detailed insights into the lives of both elites and non-elites.
One minor misgiving concerns the limited choice of cases, and it is a shame, that unlike Hegel's book, there is no coverage of official legal deliberations over rebellious activity or politically motivated violence. There was no shortage of such cases in the period covered by Wrongful Deaths, and it would be interesting to compare official judgments of those accused of political crimes and those charged with criminal offences.
