What is this test?
“Is your family register real or fake?” is a for-fun personality test that guesses which social class your ancestors might have belonged to in Joseon-era Korea, based on eight features of your hands and body — whether your hands look developed by labor, whether your legs are long, whether your forehead is broad, and so on. These are folk superstitions turned into quiz questions, not a scientific method. In fact, the test leans on the theory of use and disuse (Lamarckism), an idea that modern science has discarded. Please enjoy it purely as a game.
A quick look at Joseon's class system
Legally, Joseon society rested on the yangcheonje system, dividing people into commoners (yangin), who owed taxes and state duties, and the base people (cheonin), who did not. In practice, however, it hardened into four layers: the ruling yangban, the technical and clerical jungin, the farming and trading commoners (sangmin), and the lowest class of nobi.
Yangban are often imagined as a tiny elite, but in the late Joseon period the state, desperate to refill its war-drained treasury, sold rank and status through blank warrants (gongmyeongcheop) and grain payments (napsok). Buying up genealogies to launder one's status became common too, so the number of people claiming to be yangban swelled enormously. That is why we can fairly ask today just how “real” a family register claiming noble descent really is.
Learn more about each class
The articles below go deeper into how each class actually lived and how their share of the population shifted over time.
- Joseon's class system — yangcheonje, the yangban/commoner divide, and its unraveling
- What is a yangban? The traits and history of Joseon's ruling class
- What is a jungin? The professional middle class
- What is a commoner? The majority who upheld Joseon
- What is a nobi? The lowest class and its emancipation
- The base people — butchers, entertainers, shamans, gisaeng
- The gwageo exam — what made a yangban a yangban
- Blank warrants and grain payments — status bought with money
- What is a jokbo? Ancestral records and status laundering
- Surnames and clan seats — where do our names come from?