In the late Joseon Dynasty, examiners found it exhausting to review the overwhelming number of exam papers, so they often stopped grading once they had found enough passing answers. This created a desperate race to submit papers as early as possible. Consequently, the "prime seats" were those that provided the clearest view of the exam questions and the fastest path to the submission desk, allowing candidates to turn in their work before the grading window closed.
And they didn't just get more examiners to compensate? If you only accept X amount of "over Y% passing answers", won't that fuck you up by not getting the cream of the crop, and instead useless losers? If your aim isn't the cream of the crop, why even do exam shit instead of just nepobaby stuff like aristocracy etc?
If a modern corporation/government faced a choice between 'half ass it enough to give the rich ruling class a fig leaf of legitimacy' vs 'fully fund it and provide rigorous oversight that benefits the poors' which do you think they would pick? It was pretty much the same back then.
Only if the exam can actually tell the cream of the crop from ‘good enough’ which… would be a struggle during the time period before even considering the cheating/ corruption involved.
They were still grading for ‘good enough’ answers, too, so they wouldn’t get total losers.
Yeah but it just feels sorta more....elaborate here? Maybe it's because I read a lot of korean/chinese/japanese stuff, but even then I can't remember European countries just lying and cheating so hard. They did it but not that it would become an industry for a civil servant exam.
I think it’s the fact that by the time European and western nations were using civil service exams (something that they did by reading Confucius and noting that China did civil service exams), the states were advanced enough to just grade more of the exams and there was a smaller recruitment base for civil servants.
In Korea, the only Avenue for a Yangban was the civil service (including military officers) or being a teacher. Having a merchant or middle class professional career was looked down and many of those were already monopolized by their own clans. In America and Europe, the civil service was the place a well respected aristocratic, gentry, or middle class kid could go after graduating school, but if it’s not possible, there are also business, commercial, clerical, professional, etc avenues and opportunities.
As far as I'm aware, the civil servant exam as it existed in countries in Imperial China's orbit doesn't really a good analog in europe. Especially when considering the administrative and legal structures in place. Maybe the late medieval/renaissance era Catholic Church would be a good comparison?
The civil service exams have a great analog in Europe! The European, British, and American civil service exams for their bureaucracies were based on the Confucian ones.
The advocates of them were scholars who read Confucius and heard about how the Asian nations were doing exams to recruit government workers. The exam itself was completely different and less ritualistic than the Confucian exams, but the concept is the same.
Except the Eurpopeans were doing it far, far later. Joseon was doing in in 912, the Brits started doing it in 1850 because China did it.
And if a brit or an American fails the Civil service exam, they can just get a different job. Wheras the fail condition in Joseon was slavery or serfdom.
The only comparable systems were elsewhere in Asia. It was a system of governance that was alien to the rest of the world.
For Europeans and Americans, failing the exam wasn’t the end of the world. There were other avenues that were often better paying.
I will point out some flaws in your argument though. Joseon didn’t exist until the year 1392. The exams in Korea probably existed since before the unification of the Three Kingdoms and even longer in China. This meant the exams went through massive changes.
In Korea, certain positions were reserved for certain aristocratic families regardless of whether or not they even took the exam. This evolved into these seats are reserved for these families if they pass to these families get first pick to these families don’t get any special treatment. The decline of the dynasty occurred when these families got de facto special treatment over everyone else.
Also failing the exam didn’t mean you became a slave or peasant. If you could even take the exam, you were probably already wealthy enough to go to a university and academy and have private tutors. Korean peasants read in Korean, but the exams were in classical Korean.
It did mean that as time went on, both in China and Korea, there were too little jobs for exam passers and academy graduates. Once going to a regional academy and passing the lower level exams meant that you could get a job at a provisional government, but increasingly even those jobs required higher levels of education. This was compounded in Korea, by the dominance of certain clans.
If you fail the exams, you could become a merchant, but you’d lose respect from your yellow aristocrats. You could become a technician (doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc), but that meant competing with very well-established middle class clans alongside losing respect.
There are tons of research about civil and military officer exam of east Asia. Including lineage of said officers, history of examination system, and of course, how they cheated in it. Most of the book I read were written by Korean or Japanese researchers, so I do not know how much of such researches accumulated in Europe or America.
I have never been part of this subreddit, I didn't even know it existed. But for some reason reddit has decided to keep recommending me your posts for the past few weeks, and now learning random Korean history trivia from rabbit people is just part of my daily routine.
What was the "Prime Seat"?
In the late Joseon Dynasty, examiners found it exhausting to review the overwhelming number of exam papers, so they often stopped grading once they had found enough passing answers. This created a desperate race to submit papers as early as possible. Consequently, the "prime seats" were those that provided the clearest view of the exam questions and the fastest path to the submission desk, allowing candidates to turn in their work before the grading window closed.
jfc and I thought my exams were stressful
And they didn't just get more examiners to compensate? If you only accept X amount of "over Y% passing answers", won't that fuck you up by not getting the cream of the crop, and instead useless losers? If your aim isn't the cream of the crop, why even do exam shit instead of just nepobaby stuff like aristocracy etc?
If a modern corporation/government faced a choice between 'half ass it enough to give the rich ruling class a fig leaf of legitimacy' vs 'fully fund it and provide rigorous oversight that benefits the poors' which do you think they would pick? It was pretty much the same back then.
Tradition
Only if the exam can actually tell the cream of the crop from ‘good enough’ which… would be a struggle during the time period before even considering the cheating/ corruption involved.
They were still grading for ‘good enough’ answers, too, so they wouldn’t get total losers.
This is what I'm must curious about.
That's great, is there a lot written about it's corruption?
There are countless records of corruption from the late Joseon Dynasty.
Given the tendency of cultures and people in general, that have the means to at least, of writing down basically everything. Probably.
Yeah but it just feels sorta more....elaborate here? Maybe it's because I read a lot of korean/chinese/japanese stuff, but even then I can't remember European countries just lying and cheating so hard. They did it but not that it would become an industry for a civil servant exam.
I think it’s the fact that by the time European and western nations were using civil service exams (something that they did by reading Confucius and noting that China did civil service exams), the states were advanced enough to just grade more of the exams and there was a smaller recruitment base for civil servants.
In Korea, the only Avenue for a Yangban was the civil service (including military officers) or being a teacher. Having a merchant or middle class professional career was looked down and many of those were already monopolized by their own clans. In America and Europe, the civil service was the place a well respected aristocratic, gentry, or middle class kid could go after graduating school, but if it’s not possible, there are also business, commercial, clerical, professional, etc avenues and opportunities.
As far as I'm aware, the civil servant exam as it existed in countries in Imperial China's orbit doesn't really a good analog in europe. Especially when considering the administrative and legal structures in place. Maybe the late medieval/renaissance era Catholic Church would be a good comparison?
The civil service exams have a great analog in Europe! The European, British, and American civil service exams for their bureaucracies were based on the Confucian ones.
The advocates of them were scholars who read Confucius and heard about how the Asian nations were doing exams to recruit government workers. The exam itself was completely different and less ritualistic than the Confucian exams, but the concept is the same.
Except the Eurpopeans were doing it far, far later. Joseon was doing in in 912, the Brits started doing it in 1850 because China did it.
And if a brit or an American fails the Civil service exam, they can just get a different job. Wheras the fail condition in Joseon was slavery or serfdom.
The only comparable systems were elsewhere in Asia. It was a system of governance that was alien to the rest of the world.
It seems kinda stupid tho. You cam only be a slave, a farmer, a merchant, a sdier or a government official (which could mean many a number of jobs?)
I addressed that in another comment.
For Europeans and Americans, failing the exam wasn’t the end of the world. There were other avenues that were often better paying.
I will point out some flaws in your argument though. Joseon didn’t exist until the year 1392. The exams in Korea probably existed since before the unification of the Three Kingdoms and even longer in China. This meant the exams went through massive changes.
In Korea, certain positions were reserved for certain aristocratic families regardless of whether or not they even took the exam. This evolved into these seats are reserved for these families if they pass to these families get first pick to these families don’t get any special treatment. The decline of the dynasty occurred when these families got de facto special treatment over everyone else.
Also failing the exam didn’t mean you became a slave or peasant. If you could even take the exam, you were probably already wealthy enough to go to a university and academy and have private tutors. Korean peasants read in Korean, but the exams were in classical Korean.
It did mean that as time went on, both in China and Korea, there were too little jobs for exam passers and academy graduates. Once going to a regional academy and passing the lower level exams meant that you could get a job at a provisional government, but increasingly even those jobs required higher levels of education. This was compounded in Korea, by the dominance of certain clans.
If you fail the exams, you could become a merchant, but you’d lose respect from your yellow aristocrats. You could become a technician (doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc), but that meant competing with very well-established middle class clans alongside losing respect.
There are tons of research about civil and military officer exam of east Asia. Including lineage of said officers, history of examination system, and of course, how they cheated in it. Most of the book I read were written by Korean or Japanese researchers, so I do not know how much of such researches accumulated in Europe or America.
Some local scholars : So we should shut down Gwageo system and make sure we can pick actually competent man as officer, not some exam machine!
Central officials : That is good, but what kind of system can do such? Vote? Lottery? Recommendation?
Local scholars : ...
I have never been part of this subreddit, I didn't even know it existed. But for some reason reddit has decided to keep recommending me your posts for the past few weeks, and now learning random Korean history trivia from rabbit people is just part of my daily routine.
I like the rabbit people.
I'm super curious about the combat one lol
Damn, no wonder China and Japan rolled them /s
Yi Sunshin is going to rise from his grave to come kick your ass lol.