Law and Custom under the Chosŏn Dynasty and Colonial Korea: A Comparative Perspectivede The Journal of Asian Studies

Law and Custom under the Chosŏn Dynasty and Colonial Korea: A Comparative Perspective
de The Journal of Asian Studies
Research ArticlesMarie Seong-Hak Kim, The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 66 Issue 04 , pp 1067-1097
AbstractA number of Korean legal historians have argued that Chos custom customary law that has been postulated as a true source of private law in Korean historiography was the invention of the Japanese colonial jurists. The Japanese collected Korea's popular usages that were supposed to serve as an antecedent for a modern civil law, and colonial judges employed the legal instrument of custom in reordering Korean practices into a modern civil legal framework. In colonial Korea, custom played the role of an intermediary regime between tradition and the demands of modern civil law.