Encountering Law: Legal Knowledge and Practice in Chosŏn Korea — Jungwon Kim

Korea Institute Korea Colloquium

Jungwon Kim
King Sejong Associate Professor of Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University

Chaired by Sun Joo Kim, Harvard-Yenching Professor of Korean History, Harvard University

Scholars have long assumed that Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) lacked a distinctive system for cultivating legal professionals. Local magistrates and provincial governors, serving as chief judicial officers in their jurisdictions, were scholar-officials appointed through the civil service examination and often perceived as lacking formal legal training. Yet, despite their abscence of structured legal education, these officials demonstrated substantial knowledge of the law and significant practical administrative skills in legal matters. There were also legal specialists who underwent rigorous training, passed examinations in law, and were appointed to assist local governors with judicial tasks. Moreover, numerous legal cases reveal that ordinary people, much like the officials judging them, displayed a surprising familiarity with the law. This talk explores how legal knowledge was generated, disseminated, interpreted, and applied by various groups in Chosŏn society. Drawing on rich archival materials—including law books, legal handbooks, trial reports, and other local-level governmental publications—it uncovers the multifaceted modes of producing and sharing legal information, highlighting how legal literacy and knowledge facilitated access to justice and shaped the judicial process in Chosŏn Korea.

Jungwon Kim is King Sejong Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She specializes in the gender and legal history of premodern Korea, with a focus on the Chosŏn Dynasty. She is the author of Virtue That Matters: Chastity Culture and Social Power in Chosŏn Korea, 1392–1910 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2025). Her other works include co-authoring Wrongful Death: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea (University of Washington Press, 2014) and co-editing Beyond Death: The Politics of Suicide and Martyrdom in Korea (University of Washington Press, 2019). She also edited the special issue Archives, Archival Practices, and the Writing of History in Premodern Korea (Journal of Korean Studies, 2019). Currently, she is working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Families in Trials: Local Courts and Legal Culture in Chosŏn Korea. She earned her PhD from Harvard University, taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton.

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