Ordinary People: Reading the Past

This working paper is the first product of an attempt to investigate the meanings associated with ordinary people in Korea and the West and how those meanings have changed over time. My approach was, first, to select the Korean term ilban-gungmin (일반국민) and the English term ordinary people; and, second, to take the meanings of the words in their historical usage, rather than their present-day meanings, as the unit of analysis. Using AI, I went back as far as the reign of King Sejong in Korea and ancient Greece in the West, searched for relevant usages and meanings, and traced them forward again to the present. This working paper brings together the initial results of those two investigations. I had two reasons for undertaking this work. One was that I once came across a reference suggesting that the Western word ordinary carried meanings related to non-military status and rank. Something about that struck me as curious, and I wanted to dig into it. The other was the question that naturally followed: Then what about Korea? Did I get what I wanted? Well, I am not entirely satisfied. But I cannot travel through time myself. What I did learn, once again, is that words carry within them the experiences of the people who lived in their time. That much is certain. In the Korean case, even the official Korean translations were not always clear. After spending considerable time examining the meanings of sangin (常人), I eventually settled, rather boldly, on three usages. There may be errors in both the Korean and Western cases. I hope this paper will be used by those who have been interested in this subject but have not yet had the opportunity to explore it themselves. For them, at least, it may provide a starting point for approaching the subject.