From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Korean men from all walks of life trained in the arts of war to prepare not for actual combat but to sit for the state military examination (mukwa). Despite this widespread interest, only for a small minority did passing the test lead to appointment as a military official. Why, then, did so many men aspire to the mukwa?

Eugene Y. Park argues that the mukwa was not only the state's primary instrument for recruiting aristocrats as new members to the military bureaucracy but also a means by which the ruling elite of Seoul could partially satisfy the status aspirations of marginalized regional elites, secondary status groups, commoners, and manumitted slaves. Unlike the civil examination (munkwa), however, that assured successful examinees posts in the prestigious central bureaucracy, achievement in the mukwa did not enable them to gain political power or membership in the existing aristocracy.

A wealth of empirical data and primary sources drives Park's study: a database of more than 32,000 military examination graduates; a range of new and underutilized documents such as court records, household registers, local gazetteers, private memoirs, examination rosters, and genealogies; and products of popular culture, such as p'ansori storytelling and vernacular fiction. Drawing on this extensive evidence, Park provides a comprehensive sociopolitical history of the mukwa system in late Choson Korea.

Contents
		List of Figures, Maps, and Tables	xiii
		List of Abbreviations	xv
		Introduction	1
1		The Early Military Examination System	15
			Koryo Antecedents and the Founding of Choson 16
			A Military to Serve the State 19
			The New Military Examination System 25
			The Declining Political Stature of Military Examination Graduates 33
			Continuing Aristocratic Domination of the Military Examination 38
			Summation 47
2		The Rise of a Military Aristocracy	49
			The Military Examination System After 1592 50
			Late Choson Critiques of the Military Examination System 60
			The Emergence of Central Military Official Descent Lines 68
			Why Specialization? 73
			The Military Aristocracy and Politics 79
			Summation 84
3		Local Elites and the Military Examination	86
			Southern Local Yangban 88
			The Kaesong Elite 100
			The Northern Elites of P'yongan and Hamgyong Provinces 105
			Summation 114
4		Yangban Cohesiveness and the Choson Dynasty	117
			Marriage Ties 119
			Adoption 123
			Branch Affiliation Diversity 125
			The Government Sale of Ranks and Offices 128
			The Sacrosanct Aristocracy 132
			Summation 141
5		Nonelites and the Military Examination	143
			Anecdotal and Legal Evidence of Nonelite Participation
			in the Seventeenth-Century 144
			The Actual Extent of Nonelite Participation:
			The Examination Roster Data 149
			Nonelites and Late Choson Social Mobility 154
			The Limitations of the Military Examination
			as a Ladder of Success 158
			Nonelite Aspirations 162
			Military Ethos and Popular Culture 168
			Summation 177
		Conclusion: The State and the Military Examination System	179
Appendixes
A		New Local Military Competitions from the Reigns
		of Sukchong through Yongjo, 1674-1776	189
B		Highest Achievements of Military Examination Passers
		from Elite Military Lines, 1592-1894	190
Reference Matter
		Notes	195
		Works Cited	237
		Character List	255
		Index	265