Kim Man-deok
Suggested Listening: Feel Good - Gryffin, Illenuim, Daya.
Born in 1739 on Jeju island, by local custom she would simply have been called “Mandeok”. Her family lived there because her father was a generational political exile. His ancestor had not cooperated with the founding of the Joseon Clan few hundred years before and had been sent to Jeju to start a new life. Mandeok’s mother was a commoner, and so by law Mandeok and her two brothers took on the status of her mother and were considered common as well, although dad technically had higher status as a political prisoner. Good on you, dude. Look at you go.
Mandeok lived during the Joseon Era, like I said, and this happens to be one of the longest dynasties known to exist on the historical record. As with most Eras, this one wasn’t the best to women. The local proverb of the time observed, “Better to be born a cow than a woman.” However, even though Confucianism was hot shit on the mainland, Jeju Island had more of a shamanistic Goddess-worshipping vibe and the men let their women be more economically independent than the rest of the world at the time. Thanks, guys!
When Mandeok was 11 years old, her father was killed while trying to get home in a storm. Her mother was so distraught, that she died the next year from grief. At 12 years old, Mandeok became an orphan. She was separated from her brothers and was given to a retired courtesan to be trained as a gisaeng.
Now, a gisaeng is government owned property. It meant her body wasn’t hers and she was trained for three years (they gave her that) to be pleasing for men. She was trained in medicine, needlepoint, pleasure, conversation, etc. Whatever they wanted her to be to them at that moment, she could be, and was forced to. She was not allowed to say no to what was asked of her. We call that a slave, guys.
Local legend says that at age 22 she was able to buy her freedom. This story is nice, but most likely apocryphal, as was somewhat customary for gisaengs to “retire” somewhere within their 20s. To purchase her freedom would have taken a huge sum of money and would have to have been done though a male patron. Though not impossible, there is also other evidence that points to her retaining the title of gisaeng on the official record into her later life.*
No matter her title, as a single female, she was able to make a remarkable rise through a class system that exclusively promoted men in the merchant profession. She was able to accumulate wealth by making and trading needed products on the island. By the time she was 50 years of age, Mandeok had become one of the two wealthiest women living in Korea (the other was on the mainland, living in the Royal Palace). She never married, but she did take in a boy who had been orphaned, like herself, to foster.
In 1794, when Mandeok was 55 years old, there was a great famine that lasted several years on Jeju. Weather conditions had destroyed the crops and about half of the food relief boats sank before ever reaching the island. The records of King Jeongjo’s court note that “a third of the people” on Jeju were starving at this time. However, 170,000 people - 90% of the island’s population - had already died from lack of food. The suffering was unimaginable, there was no hope, and it was quite logical to dig a grave for you and your family to sleep in, so you could all be together in the end.
Mandeok looked back on the suffering of her own life and on all the suffering before her. She looked at all the wealth she had earned over her entire lifetime
and she gave it away.
She used the majority of her wealth to fund the importation and distribution of food to the island of Jeju. The island was on a path to complete extinction, and Mandeok pulled it out of a crisis and into the light. There are two types of people in this world; those that have suffered and so think others should, and those that have suffered and know others shouldn’t. Mandeok knew suffering only leads to more suffering, and so the people didn’t need to pray to the divine island goddess to save them. She had been there all along.
When word reach the Royal Palace of the 18,000 people Mandeok had managed to save, King Jeongjo thought “Someone should write a book about her!” and he ordered it to be done. *When her deed was recorded in the official records of royal court, she was written down as being a gisaeng, something I said I would touch on earlier. When she was offered a reward, she asked that she be allowed to cross the sea and visit the sacred mountain of Geumgang, which could be seen from the island. The King granted her request to leave the island and ordered that people along her path provide her food and rest during the journey. The people were happy to do so, having heard what she had done, they surrounded her with joy like the celebrity she was.
After her journey she returned to the island of Jeju, living a quiet life there until 1812 when she passed away at the age of 73. She left all of her wealth and possessions to the poor, leaving a small amount of property to her adopted son.
References
For those of you into this kind of thing (and who wouldn’t be?) I am switching to APA citation, as that is what my current program asks of me.
A-young, J. (2018, October 2). [제주] 거상 혹은 의인이라 불린 여인, 김만덕의 자취를 따라 걷다. Korean Travel Sketch. https://www.ktsketch.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=2894
Ah-yung, C. (2023, December 8). Joseon's Female Merchant Kim Man-deok. The Korean Times. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2022/06/142_42948.html
Ching-dae, C., (2018, April 30). Kim Man-deok, remarkable female philanthropist. The Korean Times. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2023/10/137_247450.html
Hilty, A. (2013, May 11). Jeju heroine Kim Mandeok: A closer look (part one). The Jeju Weekly. https://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=3125
Hilty, A. (2013, May 11)., Jeju heroine Kim Mandeok: A closer look (part two). The Jeju Weekly. https://www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=3126
KBS World Vietnamese. (2010, September 17). Kim Mandeok, Joseon’s first female CEO. https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/contents_view.htm?lang=v&menu_cate=history&id=&board_seq=59842&page=25&board_code=