What Did Joseon Royal Eunuchs Actually Do All Day?

It is the middle of the night, the king is asleep, and you are not. This is a night, a day, and a whole life as a royal eunuch of Joseon Korea (1392–1910): the men who lit the palace lamps, fed the fires under the king's floor, called out the hours and locked every gate. Joseon's eunuch office, the Naesibu, stood outside the palace walls. By law there were 140 eunuchs but only 59 ranked positions, so the men took turns, and lower ranks went unpaid during their rest periods. They studied the same Confucian classics as the scholars who looked down on them. And unlike the palace maids, most eunuchs went home after their shift: Joseon eunuchs were allowed to marry, and they adopted sons who kept their own birth surnames, so a single family's graves can carry a different name on every stone. A genealogy compiled in 1805 lists 777 eunuchs, and a 2012 study of that record found that the eunuchs it could measure lived to about 70 on average, far longer than Joseon's kings. We also cover the inner court and the outer court, the mandarin orange a eunuch could not give his own uncle, King Yeonsangun's 1504 examination of his eunuchs, Kim Cheo-seon, who served seven kings and was killed in 1505 for rebuking one, Yun Bong, the boy sent to Ming China in 1403 who returned thirteen times as an envoy, the eunuchs honored for loyalty after the 1592 invasion, and the last eunuch villages of the twentieth century. A note on accuracy: popular stories about eunuchs, including several famous details from historical dramas, have no support in court records and are not presented here as fact. The lifespan study is a small sample and cannot prove why the eunuchs lived longer. Chapters: 0:00 It is the middle of the night 1:19 Becoming a eunuch 2:50 The school 3:24 Before dawn 4:12 Sixteen jobs 5:54 The king's table 6:35 Inner and outer 7:51 Home 9:28 Longer lives 10:21 The night shift 11:01 Danger 11:45 Kim Cheo-seon 13:16 The boy sent to China 14:02 Rewards 14:35 The last eunuchs 15:47 So what did a royal eunuch actually do all day? Sources: Academy of Korean Studies — Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: "Naesi" and "Naesibu" Academy of Korean Studies — Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: "Kim Cheo-seon" and "Yun Bong" National Institute of Korean History — History of Korean Culture, Vol. 23, Ch. 3 "Eunuchs" (Park Hong-gap) National Institute of Korean History — Annals of the Joseon Dynasty: Yeonsangun Ilgi (1504–1506 entries) Gyeongguk Daejeon (Grand Code for State Administration, 1485) — Ijeon: Naesibu Yi Geung-ik — Yeollyeosil Gisul, Byeoljip 10: Eunuchs (18th–19th c.) Min K-J, Lee C-K et al. — "The lifespan of Korean eunuchs", Current Biology 22(18) (Sep 2012) The Korea Times — Mark Peterson, "Last eunuch's surname" (Jul 2019) and "More on eunuchs" (Aug 2019) The Korea Times — "'Jokbo' exhibition reveals diverse family trees", National Library of Korea (Jul 2017) Kyunghyang Shinmun — "Korean eunuchs lived 14–19 years longer" (Sep 2012); Lady Kyunghyang, "The last eunuch village" (Dec 1983) Digital Dobong Culture Encyclopedia — Choansan Eunuch Tombs #Joseon #KoreanHistory #eunuch