Two principles, six routes, and a debate from the early 1970s

Talent was recruited in more than one way in Goryeo but the two basic principles were ability and status. The civil-service exams stand for the first; hereditary privilege, eumseo, stands for the second. Other routes existed, yet the people who held the core posts were those who had come in by those two doors. That is why the question whether Goryeo was an aristocratic society or a bureaucratic one reached through the exams keeps returning.

The older discussion had leaned toward an aristocratic reading. In the early 1970s, a bureaucracy thesis that stressed the function of the exams and an aristocratic thesis that stressed the function of eumseo argued with each other, and a method that used Max Weber's patrimonial bureaucracy to characterize Goryeo also appeared. Citing a reference work, that account sets the idea out; it is contrasted with modern rational bureaucracy: rule and ownership are not fully separated, the tie between monarch and official is personal and favor-based, and the ruler is bound by tradition on one side and exercises power by arbitrary grace on the other. Pointing also to Heo Hong-sik's 2005 study of Goryeo's exams, the account looks first at eumseo and at the exams, then at the grounds of each thesis, and then at how Goryeo should be characterized. A closing section is named in the contents, but it is not filled out Selection and the important posts were concentrated on the first two. Those two, then, are the axes the account follows.

Eumseo from 997, exams from 958, and a door that was never only one thing

Goryeo's aristocratic society did not yet have as wide a social base as Joseon's yangban society. Its munbeol aristocrats wanted an appointment system that would keep their privilege, and that system was eumseo. It includes mun-eum, office for descendants of officials of the fifth rank and above, and gong-eum, office for descendants of officials of special merit, a distinction the account takes from Lee Ki-baek. Other names appear in the records — family privilege, the resources of a house, and terms that name the father, the grandfather, or a wider relative — and the account treats those names as a guide to how far the privilege ran. A first rule is dated to 997, at King Mokjong's accession, granting sons of civil and military officials of the fifth rank and above a privileged post, and a grant of gong-eum land in 1039, the third year of King Munjong, as a foundation for a munbeol aristocratic society. In principle the eldest son received it; if he could not, a grandson or a younger son could receive a reduced post. The official age was eighteen or older; in practice people were appointed around fifteen, and promotion sped or slowed with the father's or grandfather's standing. After King Gojong, as the official class expanded, the benefit was narrowed from the fifth rank and above to the third rank and above. Even so eumseo still showed that a concern for bloodline kept its hold, and it remains a main support for reading Goryeo as an aristocratic society.

A first Korean form of the exams was Silla's reading examination in three grades, set up in the national academy in 788, the fourth year of King Wonseong, to select officials by how well students read, in the service of a Confucian idea of government. In late Silla, as the number of true-bone aristocrats grew and struggles over the throne sharpened, the bone-rank system turned more closed, and birth began to matter more than learning. Goryeo itself began the exams in the ninth year of King Gwangjong, 958, on the advice of Shuang Ji, as a way to bring in new civil officials in place of the old military meritorious men of the founding, and as a foundation for a new bureaucratic system that would strengthen royal power — a reading the account takes from Lee Ki-baek. The exams were divided into literary composition, the Confucian classics, and technical fields such as law, arithmetic, medicine, and geomancy. Both of the first two were meant to recruit civil officials, but composition was valued more: the account gives counts for the dynasty of some six thousand passers in composition and only about 450 in the classics. Those are counts given for that period for Goryeo, not a later official total. Technical exams stood lower, and a military exam appeared only under King Gongyang, so it is fair to conclude that Goryeo had none. Free commoners, yangin, could sit. Two doors, then, and a question the source leaves open.

Sources

1. the aristocratic and bureaucratic theses for Goryeo society, centered on eumseo and the civil-service exams, and citing among others Kim Ui-gyu (1985), Lee Ki-baek, and Heo Hong-sik (2005).

Last updated: 14 November 2026