Entry and Rise In Bureaucracy:  Patterns of Career Advancement in Joseon Dynasty

1. Abstract

Quantitative studies of social systems are thriving nowadays. These studies have paid particular attention to studies related to politics. It suggests that the political system is a constant interest, which is amply understandable. However, these studies have dealt with the byproducts of the actions and arguments by politicians, and as a result they do not examine the very operating dynamics of the political society itself, i.e. how the actors enter and fare inside it.

In this work, we analyze a comprehensive, well-preserved data covering a long time period in a stable political system, and tracks individual bureaucrats' career trajectories. It is the integrated data set from the Joseon Dynasty that ruled the Korean peninsula. The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty (AJD) and the Pangmok are the main components of our dataset. From these datasets, we could completed every career trajectory of 10,638 Joseon bureaucrats.