Slavery in Korea included the hereditary status known as nobi, which existed in changing forms during the Goryeo and Joseon periods. Nobi could be attached to the state or to private households. They performed agricultural, domestic, administrative, and other services, but the category was not socially uniform: some lived with those who controlled them, while others maintained separate households and owed labor or payments.

Nobi status combined features that historians compare with both slavery and serfdom. It could be inherited under rules that changed over time, recorded in official or household registers, and in some circumstances transferred or sold. At the same time, some nobi held property, formed families, or exercised substantial day-to-day autonomy. For this reason, historians generally retain the Korean term rather than treating every nobi relationship as identical to Atlantic plantation slavery.

Reform was layered. The Joseon state emancipated many government nobi and destroyed their registers in 1801. The Gabo reforms of 1894 abolished the remaining hereditary legal status. These measures ended a local status order; later forced labor under Japanese colonial rule belongs to a distinct legal and historical setting.

Further reading

Kim, Nobi: A Korean System of Slavery, Slavery & Abolition

Kye, Slavery in Medieval Korea, in The Cambridge World History of Slavery