#95. On the traditional Korean marriages and divorces (Hanja 1: "혼")

I learned something interesting today about the marriage customs in the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897 AD), so I thought I'd share it in my blog. Just so that this blog doesn't become just a cultural blog, and so that you learn something about the Korean language as well, here is the Chinese letter (hanja, or 한자 in Korean) that means "to wed":

The full Korean name of this letter is:

혼인할 혼

All full names of hanjas are two words. The first part "혼인할" describes the meaning of the hanja. While this first part does not get read out loud when the hanjas combine to make a word, this first part is very important because it tells us how to interpret the hanja. Since "혼인하다" in Korean means "to wed," this first part signals that whenever this letter gets used in a word, the word will be related to marriages.

The second part "혼" describes how it sounds when it is used in a word, and this is the part that you read out aloud when they hanjas form a word. This means that every time you see a Korean word which includes the above Chinese character, you read out the character as just "혼", and not by its full name "혼인할 혼."

So, for example, the word for marriage is "결혼 (結婚)." You see that the second character is "혼인할 혼," so you know that the second syllable of the above word is "혼." Not only that, even without knowing the first character, you know that this word is related to marriage!

And here is a photo of a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. Notice the crazy balance of yin (the woman, and the colour blue) and yang (the man, and the colour red). Marriage, of course, balances yin and yang :)

Other words that include this hanja "혼인할 혼" are:

이혼 (divorce), 결혼식 (wedding ceremony), 약혼 (engagement), 파혼 (break off engagement), 혼사 (everything related to wedding), 혼담 (talk and negotiations of marriage between families) etc.

Even if you didn't know what these words meant, you can make an educated guess by knowing enough hanja. This is why hanja is such an important part of the Korean school curriculum -- it allows you to expand your vocabulary in an exponential way!

Of course, there are other hanjas whose second part is still "혼", so you cannot make the correct guess every time. But this is just part of life of every Korean, and what counts is that you can still make a guess! (Ironically, the Korean word for "alone" is "혼자," and we can be sure that this "혼" definitely does not come from "혼인할 혼.")

The hanja itself is also interesting. It is comprised of two other hanjas, the one meaning woman (女,  "계집 녀") and dusk/darkness (昏, "어두울 혼"). A woman at dusk/darkness? I will leave that one to your imagination (and don't be offended by the implied sexism, because this letter was probably invented in the time of Jesus Christ.)

Anyway, now that the Korean lesson is out of the way, here is an interesting fact.

As we all know, Koreans are pretty traditional people. The laws against adultery were abolished only a year or so ago, and people are still very traditional about pre-marital sex or being a single parent. So I had always assumed that divorces were a recent development, as a bi-product of having come in contact with the west.

It turns out that this is completely false, and divorces (이혼) were commonplace in the Joseon Dynasty, especially among the common folks (but also among the nobles). According to Arnold Henry Savage Landor, a British explorer who came to Korea in the late 1890s, he said: "if a lower-class Korean woman was left a widow by her 20th husband, she'd probably move right on and find a 21st husband."

As such, the process for obtaining an 이혼 was really simple. In order to obtain an 이혼, all they had to do was agree that they did not want to be married anymore! This is because most of the commoners did not know how to write, so they could not write down an agreement even if they wanted to.

But just agreeing to 이혼 in words leaves so many messy possibilities, and no ways to prove the 이혼 should they want to marry someone else! So the man and the woman cut out a part of their clothes and gave the parts to each other, as a token for having agreed to the 이혼. The part of their clothes that they cut out is called "옷섶," and it is marked in the photo below:

This is a woman's traditional top, but the man's top also had a similar part.

It is the little extraneous piece of cloth that serves to keep the two flaps of the top closed and connected. Without it, the top is much more likely to come apart, leading to indecent exposure. It is also symbolic. By getting rid of the piece that held the two flaps together, it symbolizes the splitting of the union between the couple. And so it served as a token of the broken union.

For illiterate plebeians, I found this to be a shockingly direct yet heartbreaking analogy, so I thought that I would share this with you. I hope you enjoyed it!