A History of Korea

by Professor Kyung Moon Hwang

  Wang appears well versed in the great thought systems that had originated from abroad, but the pronounced tenor of the Ten Injunctions is actually a proto-nationalistic call for maintaining the distinctive ways of Korea in the face of foreign influences, including those from the Middle Kingdom. “In the past we have always had a deep attachment to the ways of China ... but our country occupies a different geographical location and our people’s character is different from that of the Chinese,” warns the fourth injunction. “Hence, there is no reason to strain ourselves unreasonably to copy the Chinese way.” Buddhism, though, is considered a native cultural element, as stated explicitly in the sixth injunction, which insists that the great state-sponsored Buddhist festivals retain the worship of the shamanistic and geomantic spirits of primal Korean religion. Indeed in the fifth injunction Wang credits his great achievement of peninsular reunification to the combination of geomancy and shamanism, and he implores his descendants to remember the centrality of Pyngyang in Korean civilization. He designates this city the Western Capital, second in importance only to his home town, the Kory capital of Kaegyng (formerly Songak, and later known as Kaesng). This dualism suggested by the Ten Injunctions—on the one hand, native, including Buddhist, ways, and on the other, “Chinese” Confucian learning—would rise to the level of considerable tension over the course of the Kory dynasty.

  The strong nativist impulse in the Ten Injunctions is reinforced by the explicit condemnation of the people lying to Kory’s north, the Khitan, who are referred to as “savage beasts” (more Confucian language). The periodic invasions and skirmishes from the north—a recurring theme throughout Korean history—was not lost on Wang. In his ninth injunction Wang instructs his followers to maintain a watchful eye on the northern frontier. This proved prescient, for Kory would suffer major invasions from various northern peoples, beginning with the Khitan, and then the Jurchen, then finally the Mongols, who would conquer Korea in the thirteenth century and rule the country as semi-colonial overlords for almost a hundred years (Chapter 6).

  The wariness of the northern part of the peninsula was understandably inscribed into the Ten Injunctions, but what of the wariness of the southern part, in particular the southwestern territory of the peninsula that had previously stood as the domain of Latter Paekche (and before then, Paekche)? In the infamous eighth injunction, Wang goes into detail about the negative geomantic and cultural features of this area as a prelude to the stunning instruction not to allow people from this region to become government officials. The recent history of straining to conquer Latter Paekche is unequivocally acknowledged as the source of Wang’s suspicion of this region. Even so, as historians have pointed out, it is remarkable that Wang would put forth such a pronouncement, given his general policy of appeasement of local elites around the country (he married several women from this region), and given that one of his highest officials came from the southwest. Here we encounter, then, the doubts about the authenticity of the Ten Injunctions itself as originating with their purported author, Wang Kn. There are persuasive arguments that indeed, the Ten Injunctions date to the early tenth century, more than fifty years after Wang Kn’s passing, and that they reflected the political circumstances and concerns of that subsequent period. The more important point, however, is that, regardless of the precise dating of this document, it exerted a great influence in the following four centuries of the Kory as the blueprint for proper rule. In any case, the eighth injunction did not raise doubts about Wang’s authorship of the Ten Injunctions until

  the latter part of the twentieth century, when regional hostilities, particularly on the part of the South Korean dictatorships toward this area, flared into a major detriment to South Korean political culture.

  LEGACY

  It is difficult to determine to what extent, if any, the eighth injunction had on Kory history, especially given the prolonged periods of real sociopolitical power being held in the hands of military officials and Mongol clients. The other injunctions appear more effective in forecasting the tasks and concerns of the Kory, especially in regard to the country’s collective identity and cultural core. The founder’s strenuous efforts to legitimize his family’s dominion, for example, went far beyond his incorporation of local lords through marriage ties. He also placed the Kory dynasty firmly in the historical lineage of the peninsula through the dynasty’s name, which reinforced Kory’s claims as a successor to Kogury, and through his acceptance of the former leaders of both Silla and Parhae into the country’s aristocratic order. The significance of the Parhae connection, in fact, could have been the cause for the Ten Injunctions’ vitriol against the northern “barbarians,” especially the Khitan, who conquered Parhae around the same time that Silla itself came to an end. It was a matter of reinforcing Korea’s distinctiveness from the peoples who surrounded Kory. Subsequent periods in the Kory era witnessed follow-up efforts, such as the compilation of official histories, to reinforce these historical ties. As noted above, perhaps the most notable feature of this consolidation of collective identity was, as seen in the Ten Injunctions, the insistence on the centrality of Buddhism as the country’s dominant cultural element. Indeed, the rest of the Kory era saw little divergence from this command.

  Just as important but perhaps less notable were the substantial administrative advances that the Ten Injunctions appeared to endorse. The systematization of government, both institutionally and symbolically, constituted an urgent task for the early Kory rulers, whose efforts turned toward overcoming the decades-long period of disintegration and local rivalries. The pervasiveness of Confucian language when describing the general approaches to proper government paved the way for major developments during the reigns of Wang’s immediate descendants on the throne. These included the establishment of a provincial administration more closely tied to the central government and, in 958, under the reign of King Kwangjong (one of Wang Kn’s sons), the implementation of that great institution for recruiting government officials in premodern Korea, the state examination system.

  5

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  Religion and Regionalism in the Kory Order

  CHRONOLOGY

  1126 Yi Chagym Rebellion

  1129 Construction of a new royal palace in Pyongyang

  1135 Outbreak of the Myoch’ng Rebellion

  1136 Suppression of the Myoch’ng Rebellion by Kim Pusik

  1145 Publication of the History of the Three Kingdoms

  1170 akeover of government by military officials

  THE OUTBREAK OF THE MYOCH’NG REBELLION, 1135

  In early 1135 came news of an uprising in Pyongyang that had quickly spread throughout P’yngan province, and soon most of the northwestern region of the country appeared under the control of a band of rebels under the leadership of a charismatic Buddhist monk. Before demonstrating his propensity for havoc, this monk, Myoch’ng, had set his powers of persuasion—the official histories called it something more akin to sorcery—on the king himself, convincing the monarch that the dynastic capital must be moved to Pyongyang in order to avoid national disaster. When the king, under great pressure from his highest officials, changed his mind, Myoch’ng and his cohorts in Pyongyang broke away. The leaders of this movement proclaimed a new, paradisiacal land, but to the Kory court, of course, this action constituted nothing more than the latest rebellion.

  It took over a year to quash the uprising, and the reverberations in this region and, indeed, in the country as a whole, would endure much longer. The Myoch’ng Rebellion shook the foundations of the country and encapsulated important social, political, and cultural developments in the Kory dynasty both before and after the uprising itself. Myoch’ng’s downfall also had significant repercussions for the structures of political and social power in Kory, including the decline of the monk’s home region, and reflected the ongoing influence and special character of Korean religion.

  THE INSTITUTIONALIZED INFLUENCE OF THE BUDDHIST CLERGY

  Following the re
ligion’s inception on the Korean peninsula around the fourth century, the Buddhist clergy and the sociopolitical elite developed a mutually beneficial relationship by incorporating each other into their respective realms of influence and claims to legitimacy. As the Ten Injunctions showed, this relationship had reached a peak by the early Kory dynasty (Chapter 4). But Buddhism was not limited to the monarchy, for the centuries of steady propagation among the population had produced a culture suffused with Buddhist sentiment. Both the regional and central elites patronized the Buddhist establishment, whether through their support of local temples or sponsorship of nationwide Buddhist festivals. Surely the most visible example of the pervasiveness of Buddhism, especially among the aristocratic taste-setters, was the emergence of the remarkable style of blue-green “Kory celadon,” prized now (as then) even beyond Korea for its ethereal beauty. These ceramics’ almost indescribable sheen itself seems to evoke Buddhist spirituality, as do the many inlaid graphical motifs that refer to well-known Buddhist themes.

  The state took the lead in this patronage of Buddhism. The separate spheres of influence had long ago been settled: the spiritual realm, including rituals for the afterlife, for the Buddhist order; and the secular realm of political power for the state. But the state continued to incorporate Buddhist learning and the clergy by recruiting a special segment of the officialdom through a the Korean alphabet in the fifteenth century—a significant issue, given the impact of the printed vernacular on the rise of early modern Europe.

  The Buddhist printing advances of the Kory

  When asked to name their people’s greatest cultural achievement, most Koreans likely would choose the invention of the native alphabet in the fifteenth century, but they might also list two products from the Buddhist-dominated civilization of the Kory era: the remarkable celadon ceramics, and the great advances in printing developed by the Buddhist establishment. In fact, one could argue that, taken together, the most impressive accomplishments of premodern Korean civilization came in printing technologies, dating back to the Unified Silla era (668–918), when the oldest extant work of woodblock printing in the world was printed and stored in a Buddhist altar. Woodblock printing was invented by the Chinese, but this technique achieved new heights in Kory dynasty Korea and, furthermore, these developments laid the groundwork for the next major breakthrough, that of moveable metal type printing, also invented by Kory Buddhist clergy.

  Most people in the West associate the invention of moveable metal type, the holy grail of premodern techniques because of the flexibility and durability it provided to enable mass printing, with Johannes Gutenberg of Germany. Gutenberg’s invention in the mid-fifteenth century ushered in the era of widespread information dissemination in Europe, which had an immediately colossal impact through the pamphlets and other rapidly-produced written works that fueled the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Very few people outside of Korea know that moveable metal type was actually invented two centuries earlier, around 1230, by Buddhist monks in a temple in south-central Korea. In fact the earliest extant book printed with moveable metal type, a Korean work of Buddhist scripture, dates to the 1370s, and is held in the French National Library in Paris. (How France managed to gain possession of this book is a matter of dispute.) In Korea, however, this breakthrough did not lead to significant social or religious change, even after the crafting of

  Around the same time as this invention, the storied Tripitika Koreana—wooden blocks on which were carved nearly the entirety of the East Asian Buddhist canon—was being destroyed by the Mongol invasions that began in the 1230s. Originally produced as a testament to Buddhist devotion amidst the Khitan invasions of the eleventh century, the Tripitika’s destruction by the Mongols prompted the Koreans to reproduce it, again as a way of appealing to the Buddha for salvation amidst the carnage. The result was a project that took nearly two decades in the mid-thirteenth century to carve over 80,000 wooden blocks, which are now preserved in Haeinsa Temple near the southern city of Taegu. This extraordinary feat bespoke not only the cultural centrality of Buddhism at the time, but also the authority of the Kory state and the Buddhist establishment in mobilizing the enormous human and material resources necessary for the project. It also testified to the high level of literacy and technology associated with Kory Buddhism.

  Image 5 Wooden blocks of the Tripitika Koreana, in Haeinsa Temple, near Taegu, South Korea. (Author’s photo.)

  nationwide Buddhist examination system. The state also sponsored the erection of massive temple complexes throughout the country, which enjoyed tax and other benefits that allowed them to accumulate, and often abuse, extraordinary wealth. The monarch, furthermore, appointed national and royal preceptors, who served as religious advisors to the king and maybe more importantly provided the stamp of Buddhist blessings on the monarchy. Perhaps the most eminent monk to be named national receptor, albeit posthumously, was Chinul, a figure of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Chinul developed a unified system of thought and practice for Korean Buddhism, which had long been divided, sometimes bitterly, into the meditation (sn) and textual (kyo) schools. The largest Buddhist order in South Korea today counts him as its founder.

  What proved most distinctive about Kory Buddhism, however, was the incorporation of shamanistic and geomantic elements. As the Ten Injunctions strongly suggested, Korean Buddhism by this time drew from a great mixture of Buddhist orthodoxy, underlying folk beliefs in local gods and spirits, and geomancy, or the systematic combination of nature worship with geography. The great state-sponsored Buddhist celebrations, the Lotus Lantern Festival and the Eight Gates Festival, incorporated these various elements. Through this mixture of religious influences, together with the development of Buddhist scholarship, a distinctively hybrid form of Buddhist practice emerged. Indeed, Korean geomancy was itself systematized by a Buddhist monk in the Unified Silla era,

  Tosn, who integrated the geographical features of Korea into an organic vision of the peninsula as a living entity fed by the spiritual energy of Buddhist temples and practices. Tosn’s followers, including Myoch’ng, cultivated and popularized this perspective, to the extent that geomancy, including the notion of a geomantic unity for Korea, held an influential standing among the aristocracy and monarchy well into the twentieth century. The location of the capital of the next dynasty, Chosn—still the capital of (South) Korea today—was determined according to geomantic principles, for example. Well before then, however, geomancy played a central role in a watershed moment in the history of Kory.

  MYOCH’ONG’S REBELLION

  Aside from the fact that he was a Buddhist monk from Pyongyang, little is known about Myoch’ng’s life before his role as protagonist in the tumult that engulfed the country in the early twelfth century. The official historical accounts excoriate him for his deceitfulness and cunning, but he clearly had considerable charisma and skill. Like Rasputin, who held an unshakable grip over the Russian royal family at the turn of the twentieth century through his seemingly magical ability to treat the Romanovs’ hemophilia, Myoch’ng appears to have cast a spell over the monarch, Injong. Most tellingly, the monk convinced him of a direct geomantic relationship between the ongoing misfortunes of the dynasty—especially the constant attacks and threats of invasion from the Jurchen people to the north—and the location of the dynastic capital in Kaegyng (present-day Kaesng). Myoch’ng’s solution, not coincidentally, was to move the capital to his home town of Pyongyang, which held more positive geomantic features, he claimed. He also urged the monarch to declare Kory an empire and launch a campaign against the Jurchen, steps bitterly opposed by the king’s ministers.

  That King Injong succumbed to this line of reasoning cannot be explained simply by dismissing him as a dupe, for the baseline of belief tying geomantic principles directly to the health of the country, as noted above, had an extensive history. Furthermore, Pyongyang had long enjoyed a centrality in Korean civilization, reflected in the fact that, since the early Kory peri
od, it was deemed the Western Capital (Sgyng), the second most important city. And, as noted in Chapter 1, Pyongyang had served as the admin- istrative center of the Lelang Chinese commandery and the capital city of the Kogury kingdom. Furthermore, according to the conventional understanding of Korean origins codified in the Kory era, this city represented the place of origin for Korean civilization itself. So said the myths of Tan’gun, the founder of the Korean people who established his court there, and of Kija, the Chinese official who transmitted higher civilization to the peninsula and ruled from Pyongyang. From Myoch’ng’s perspective, and likely that of many elites from the northwest, the transfer of Kory’s capital to Pyongyang represented simply the return of this city to its rightful standing, which would in turn lead to better fortunes for a country besieged by both external and internal threats.

  The capital region, in fact, was still recovering from the biggest domestic challenge to the dynasty hitherto, the rebellion in 1126 led by Yi Chagym. The powerful scion of a royal consort family and the monarch’s father-in-law, Yi attempted a personal takeover of the throne before his uprising was suppressed with tremendous bloodshed. The capital officials, in short, were extremely wary of brewing trouble. These sensitivities were put on high alert when, soon after the Yi Chagym incident, King Injong began to show signs of having fallen under the sway of the mysterious monk from Pyongyang. Injong made frequent visits to Pyongyang and eventually ordered the construction of a royal palace there. The capital elites, fearing a major shift in power to the northwestern region, responded by imploring the monarch to examine the countervailing evidence: the greater attention shown to Pyongyang, including the construction of the royal palace, not only failed to eliminate the Jurchen menace, but also failed to halt a series of natural calamities that beset this region. The monarch became convinced by these arguments and put a stop to his plans for moving the capital city to Pyongyang. Prompted by an official, Cho Kwang, and other cohorts from Pyongyang, Myongch’ng’s response to this royal turnabout was simple: rebellion.