If you read my previous post, you might know that Korean use their last name to identify their family relation. But yet, just last name is in fact not enough to identify your family relation. As I told you on the previous post, Kim, is the most famous last name, but then of course not every Kim knows each other and not every Kim related to each other. What am I trying to say here is there is one specification to determine which family relation one Korean from, it is called 본관 (Bongwan) which means the origin of one's ancestor. I got this knowledge from Korean culture class which sadly I got pretty disappointed grade on it ㅠㅠ. Anyway, each Kim might have different Bongwan which makes them different each other. For example, there is a person whose last name is Kim and his 본관 is from, I don't know, Daejeon for example will have no family relation with a person whose last name is also Kim but from different Bongwan. So, basically there is a term for this called 동성동본 (dong seong dong bon) which means same last name, same bongwan. And why is this important? because in the Korea's law about marriage, it is stated that a person can not get married with it's relative(same last name same bongwan) within 8촌 (chon), and that makes me have to explain what chon is. Chon is really complicated, I, myself even still now kind of confused, but let me try explaining by a graph here.
You can try to understand the graph but it is king of complicated. Mom and Dad is 0, and then parents to child is 1, then child and child (brothers/sisters) is 2, then uncle and nephew is 3, cousins is 4, the graph goes on until 8 chon, now within 8 chon, a korean cannot get married each other based on law.
Learn much? I will continue later :)
앙가
인천, 한국
