Korean Adoption and Inheritance: Case Studies in the Creation of a Classic Confucian Society

The cases in Korean adoption and inheritance reveal steps in the transition called "Confucianization" that took place mostly in the seventeenth century. The transition from partible inheritance, equally divided between sons and daughters, to primogeniture; the attempt to use soja as heirs; the movement toward agnatic adoption as the way to provide an heir when there were no children, or when there were only daughters born into the household are all covered in numerous cases from the official history, from government records, and from private documents.