The yangban (兩班) were the ruling class of the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties. The word originally referred to the two orders of officials who lined up before the king at court: the civil order (munban, to the east) and the military order (muban, to the west). Over time it hardened from meaning serving officials into a hereditary status covering their families and descendants as well. In principle the yangban did not engage in productive labor, grounding their status in devotion to learning and politics — which is why they were also called sadaebu, the scholar-officials who studied Confucianism.
The privileges of the yangban
The yangban's greatest privilege was the road to office — the civil service examination (gwageo). Passing the higher civil exam in particular was the key channel for a family to preserve its standing; a house with no office-holders for several generations struggled to be treated as yangban at all. Economically they lived off land and slaves. Above all, being exempt from military service was the decisive difference from commoners. Owing no taxes, military duty, or corvée labor, they wielded influence over local opinion and administration through village codes and private academies.
From a tiny elite to a majority
In early Joseon, the yangban were a small elite of only about 2–5% of the population. But the late Joseon period changed everything. As the treasury ran dry through the Japanese and Manchu invasions, the government sold office and status through instruments like blank warrants (gongmyeongcheop) and grain payments (napsok). With buying up or forging the genealogies of fallen yangban houses also rampant, one analysis of household registers in the Daegu region found the share of yangban households climbing to around 70% by the 19th century — a sign of how badly the old boundaries had blurred.
The janban, or fallen yangban
Not every yangban lived comfortably. A yangban who failed to gain office and declined economically over generations was called a janban (殘班). Bound by pride, they could not easily take up farming or trade, and lived in poverty. This plight was satirized in Park Ji-won's tale "The Story of a Yangban," in which status itself is bought and sold.
The marks left on hands and body
Because the yangban did no productive labor and travelled by palanquin or horse, their hands and legs are said to have developed little from work. From this arose a folk belief that fine hands, short legs, and a narrow forehead were the yangban's physical marks. This is, of course, only an old superstition — there is no scientific basis for reading status or lineage from bodily features.