The lowborn people of the Chos?n society strove both for resistance and imitation in order to promote their social status. As the contradiction of the yangban-centered ruling system intensified, they resisted collectively.
On the other hand, they tried to improve their economic power by which means they were eventually able to imitate the internal and external conditions set for the status of the yangban class. With a great amount of time and effort required, the act of imitation was stimulated by the desperate motive of liberation from the fetters of social status.
Particularly, the slaves (nobi) from the lowborn classes would have two choices: either running away or securing economic power to achieve an advancement in status. A slave named Subong offered grain to the government and an honorary post was conferred. At this time, rising from his lowborn status, he obtained a surname, which was allowed for anyone belonging to the social status of commoner or above. Since then, his descendents were able to live as commoners who not only had a surname and clan seat, but also held themselves responsible for the military duty in public service. A hundred years after Subong was liberated from slavery in the seventeenth century, his descendents were waived from the military duty owing to another promotion up to a middle stratum of occupational service. Still, their final objective was to reach the higher occupational service of yuhak which had been monopolized by the yangban families. Finally in the mid-nineteenth century, most of his descendents, listed in the household registers, were able to use the title of yuhak.
Subong’s descendents had pursued ways in which to heighten simultaneously their occupational service [for the state] and their social status. Given that any change in surname was fairly difficult, the labor taken even to change their clan seat reflected their ongoing desire for a higher promotion in social status. They chose a new, attractive clan seat which was of immense authority and rooted to the yangban families. At this juncture, they started imitating the kinship order of the yangban families. Along with the promotion of social status, they came to assimilate themselves gradually to the yangban culture so as to narrow the social gap between the yangban and themselves.
This climbing process continued into the modern period in which the names of Subong’s descendents were added to the genealogy of a leading surname and their lineage was remembered as the descendents of a yangban family with great dignity.