Crimes Under Ethical Code:Research On Women’s Crime In Joseon Dynasty

From the women’s criminal cases, we can get a lot of valuable information for studying legal history, such as the influence to law caused by gender consciousness, the relationship between ancient women and law, the ancient women’s legal status and so on. Previous researches on the legal status of women were mainly focused on the aspect of legal system, and less involved in the implementation of these systems and their impact on women and. Therefore, the author hopes to use "Jingguodadian", "Xudadian", "Dadiantongbian", "Qiuguanzhi" and "The annals of the Joseon Dynasty" as the main analysis material, from the perspective of female crime, through the analysis of criminal types and cases of women in Joseon dynasty, investigate the legal provisions for women crime in Joseon Dynasty and related judicial practice, explore the legal status of women and the gender concept in the mainstream social values during Joseon period.Specifically, in the late Joseon Dynasty, no matter what kind of crime, the concept that "Husband is superior to wife" has been very clear and firm. It is particularly obvious in the law about husband hurting wife’s relatives, and Compared with his wife made father family relatives of conviction and sentencing, they were not on the same level, in the early Joseon Dynasty, it was unthinkable. In the family system, there had a significant difference between Joseon and the Chinese traditional culture, wife and family status was very high, compared to the husband and his family status, the two were mutually parallel. The peninsula has long history that husband living in wife’s home called "shuaixuhun" during marriage period, also increased the wife and family status. With the neo-Confucianism introduced to the Korean Peninsula, after Joseon Dynasty established, Confucianism became the mainstream ideology, ethics has gradually penetrated into all aspects of Joseon society, whether it was in the national fundamental policy discussions or to the specific case, the whole country all stressed the importance of discipline, made the ethics be on the supreme position, a minister says, feudal customs, it could not be destroyed, or the human beings would be destroyed.The Joseon Dynasty showed a hitherto unknown passion in shaping the behavior of the moral virtues of women, the most outstanding performance was advocating the women’s chastity concept, and this idea came into the people’s daily life concept through the instructions and laws and decisions in the form of penetration, the authority of the husband’s status had gradually raised, the wife and family status was slowly reduced. All of this was in order to maintain the authority of the husband and the feudal hierarchical order, when there was a conflict between authority of the husband and the pecking order, the pecking order would be the first choice. We understand the concept of women’s crime in the context of the Joseon Dynasty, and also should according to the social and cultural background, "the so-called ’bad’, ’antisocial’,’crime’, but refers to the desire of those things is not suitable for sometime, somewhere or can not cater to the ruler of the authority." For the Joseon Dynasty ruler, this desire was mainly Confucianism ethics.This paper firstly introduces the brief history of Joseon Dynasty and the development process of the Confucianism to be the mainstream ideology in the whole society, the mainstream ideology of the society change, affecting the Joseon Dynasty women’s lifestyle, which affected their mental activities and values, and then became an incentive for them to go on the road of crime, also it was a guiding principle of conviction women crime sentencing. The following part mainly discusses around the two extremes of the Joseon Dynasty women convicted of criminal sentencing. One is the women’s offenses against the Confucianist ethics morals, the official attitudes is aggravating, the case focused on family relatives between couples and emotional crimes; the other one is for women for the identification and maintenance of Confucian ethics the concept of the crime, the crime, even if it is a felony murder, they are likely to give praise, sentencing will be lighter, cases are focused on women’s revenge for husband and revenge for being raped. The article introduces a kind of women’s crime that will affect to their relatives called YuanZuo, the object edge is the father and the husband, and in fact, it is emphasizing the responsibility the of parents under the guide of ethics.In a word, to the comprehensive understanding of women’s crime, we should put it in the context of the whole community. The Joseon Dynasty started the applicable of "Daming law", and the Chinese traditional legal transplantation model by selective introduction turned into a full-blown transplantation, which brings the whole social cultural transformation. This transformation has also brought changes in the status of women, gradually changed the psychology of women, to also had a far-reaching impact women crime.