An alternative viewpoint claims that the dynastic turnover represented a revolutionary moment, but one driven not by ideas but rather by material changes and socioeconomic imperatives. The agitation of lower-level elites, and specifically the middle- and small-scale landowners, stood as the indispensable source of support for Yi Snggye’s efforts to dismantle the late Kory aristocratic order. To this vanguard, the significance of Neo-Confucian doctrine was utilitarian—in the service of class interests of smaller landowners struggling against the stranglehold on power of the capital elites and estate landlords. The rise to prominence of both Chng Tojn, from a lowly local official background, and Yi Snggye, scion of a military family in the far northern fringe of the Kory realm, would seem to validate this perspective. In spite of the attractiveness of this theory in suggesting a deeper desire for social change and, by extension, a great rupture and hence a compelling story of historical progress, it appears somewhat overdrawn. Notwithstanding the dynastic founder’s family history and Chng Tojn’s own humble background, extensive studies of the social background of the new capital elites have shown that, for the most part, they came from the Kory aristocracy.
A third vantage point, in fact, prefers to consider the dynastic turnover as representing neither a social nor an ideological revolution, but rather a historical moment limited in significance, at least initially, to the realm of politics. It required a combination, in other words, of a military strongman’s grab for power and a committed group of scholar-officials, like Chng Tojn, who had long attempted to implement major reforms, both in line with Neo-Confucian doctrine and in order to curb the abuses of the Buddhist establishment. The dynastic transition, then, represented the culmination of institutional reforms that had begun in the late Kory dynasty to address decays in the socioeconomic and political
system. It took simply the decisive contribution of military and political power (and ruthlessness) provided by Yi Songgye and his son, Yi Pangwn, to bring this promise to fruition. Critics of this stance, which appears to emphasize continuity over historical rupture, have objected to what appears an insufficient consideration of the wider circumstances of political change, especially one as momentous as the toppling of a five-century-old dynasty. One could also levy the charge that this interpretation suspiciously resembles the one put forth by Japanese colonialists to justify the takeover of Korea in the early twentieth century: what happened between 1388 and 1392 was merely a drawn-out palace coup. Few historians would seriously dismiss the dynastic turnover as just a coup, but the resistance to this theory reflects a wariness of undervaluing the impact of large historical forces in what appears, on the surface, a monumental transition.
YI PANGWN’S IMPACT
Whatever the answer to the question of the historical meaning of the dynastic transition, one must reserve judgment until considering more fully what took place both before 1392 and after this initial decade-long period of turmoil at the hands of Yi Pangwn. Upon ascending to the throne to become King T’aejong (r. 1400–18), he placed the floundering new dynasty on firm footing as a Confucian polity. Under his direction, the Chosn state established the basic structure of government that would endure until the late nineteenth century, especially in defining the state’s deliberative and administrative authority. These duties were headed, respectively, by the High State Council and the Six Boards, a kind of cabinet-like division of managerial responsibility. For the provinces, the early Chosn reforms stretched the state’s administrative control to the farthest reaches of the realm and institutionalized the eight-province division of the country that still is in effect (at least in South Korea) today. T’aejong also took decisive steps to further the disenfranchisement of the Buddhist establishment, the only viable rival to the new dynasty in its claims to ideological supremacy. He did this by closing down many temple complexes and appropriating the Buddhist clergy’s human and material resources. And further attesting to the state’s ambition for population control, he instituted the obligation to carry an “identity tag” for people traveling outside their home regions. Above all King T’aejong strengthened the position of the monarchy in relation to the bureaucracy, presenting himself as the model of both an authoritative and sagely Confucian monarch.
King Sejong the Great
Only one monarch in the long history of Korean royalty commands the universal appellation of “the Great” following his name: Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Chosn dynasty (r. 1418–50). Sejong enjoys a standing in Korean civilization that is akin to George Washington’s in the US, with his name attached to everything from universities and cultural institutions to civic organizations and state projects. That his portrait graces the most familiar South Korean currency, the 10,000 won bill, is itself a reflection of his perceived supreme stature in Korean civilization. Most Koreans attribute to him what is widely considered the nation’s signature cultural accomplishment, the promulgation of the native Korean alphabet in 1446. They also know that he instituted innovative state policies and sponsored the invention of advanced scientific instruments such as the rain gage, water clock, and sun dial. He is seen, in short, as having come closest to the ideal of the sagacious monarch who promoted the welfare of the common people above all. But one can also summarize his accomplishments and historical significance with the claim that, more than anything else, King Sejong the Great completed the foundation of the Chosn state’s great task of Confucianizing Korea.
Even the development of the Korean alphabet itself was part of Sejong’s wide-ranging efforts to enhance the state’s dissemination of Confucian teachings. Overlooked in the ceaseless and ubiquitous mythologizing of this great feat (there is even a national holiday honoring the alphabet) is the fact that Sejong, in addition to standardizing the Korean—that is, “correct”—pronunciation of Chinese characters, found the alphabet a potentially breakthrough instrument for public education. In his famous preamble to the “Proper Sounds to Educate the People” (Hunmin chngm), the document introducing the new alphabet, Sejong stated not only that the Korean language is different from Chinese, but also that the common (“ignorant”) people needed a simplified system of written communication. The Chosn government in fact soon began to publish numerous didactic works featuring glosses with the new alphabet, all preaching the core values of Neo-Confucianism. And indeed, Neo-Confucian scholarship and education was the basic charge of the Hall of Worthies, a state research institute that Sejong established soon after ascending to the throne. Today there remain questions about the precise balance of contributions from the Hall of Worthies and King Sejong the Great to the alphabet project, but in accordance with the Confucian values that Sejong so eagerly sought to instill, there was no difference: he gets the credit.
As noted above, the Confucian transformation of Korea by the Chosn dynasty took a very long time to accomplish, but T’aejong’s actions helped to set the parameters of Confucianization, characterized by a comprehensiveness of ambition and scope, especially under the direction of the state. The institution of the tributary relationship with China as a means of integrating Korea into the universal civilizational (i.e., Confucian) order represented one of the key steps in this direction that T’aejong, even before he became king, directly ensured. Some modern historians have criticized this and other steps taken by the Chosn founding fathers like T’aejong and Chng Tojn as having led the Koreans to subsume their native ways, indeed their cultural autonomy, to the foreign ideology of Neo-Confucianism. The early Chosn’s explicit reference to the Confucian canon as the basis for comprehensive changes appears indeed to have set the stage for an obsessive and at times stultifying preoccupation with asserting the country’s Confucian credentials. But Confucianism, like Buddhism, also contained the potential to highlight and heighten native customs and identity. T’aejong’s son and successor, King Sejong the Great, considered the greatest of all Korean monarchs, served as convincing testimony to this potential.
8
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Confucianism and the Family in the Early Chosn Dynasty
CHRONOLOGY
1469 Promulgation of Kyngguk taejn, the Chosn dynastic code
1480 Birth of Lady Yi of Kangnng
1501 Birth of philosopher Yi Hwang (T’oegye)
1504 Birth of Sin Saimdang, daughter of Lady Yi
1536 Birth of Yi I (Yulgok), son of Sin Saimdang
1541 Drafting of the Yi family inheritance testament
1551 Death of Sin Saimdang
1569 Death of Lady Yi
THE DRAFTING OF THE YI FAMILY INHERITANCE TESTAMENT, 1541
In 1541, a family inheritance document was drawn up to designate the division of an aristocratic female’s possessions, mostly in the form of slaves. Though normally an unremarkable event, this particular occurrence was notable because some of the recipients of this estate, along with its attendant responsibilities, included a mother and son who later became the most celebrated such tandem in Korean history: Lady Sin Saimdang, the venerable poet, painter, and calligrapher who epitomized Confucian ideals regarding females; and her son, Yi I, better known by his pen name of Yulgok, recognized as one of the foremost Confucian scholar-officials and a towering genius. This will is valuable also because it represents one of the few surviving such works from the early Chosn era, and that it distributes the estate of a female to her female offspring—something that would be increasingly rare as time passed.
Image 8 Lady Sin Saimdang (front) and one of her bamboo paintings (back) featured on the Bank of Korea’s 50,000 won note, issued June 2009. (Courtesy of Bank of Korea.)
In 2007, South Korean officials chose Sin Saimdang as the historical figure to grace the new 50,000 won note, the fourth bill in South Korean money, and the first new one in several decades (see Image 8). Given that the hallowed figures on the other three bills were all men, including Lady Sin’s son Yulgok, anticipation over the selection of the new personage drew great attention, with the tacit understanding that the figure would be a female. To the surprise of many, however, when the selection committee announced its choice, a strong reaction arose from women’s organizations and feminist groups, who viewed Lady Sin as a representation of the harmful impact of the Chosn era and Korean tradition itself. This opposition provided a reminder of, among other things, the ongoing significance of the early Chosn dynasty, in particular the Confucianization of society and family, in Korea’s past and present.
EARLY CHOSN CONFUCIANISM
It is commonly accepted that the Chosn dynasty, which endured from the late fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries, permanently Confucianized Korean civilization, in effect rendering Korea’s premodern culture inseparable from Confucianism itself. In modern times, this has provided the impetus for an ongoing reconsideration of Korean tradition by distinguishing the Chosn era from a “pre-Confucian,” and presumably more genuine, Korea. In North Korea, the official historical view dismisses Confucianism as a reflection of backward feudalism and toadyism. In the South, the nationalistic thrust of this critique has fused more recently with the continuing struggle over the proper place of Confucian teachings, especially regarding females and the family, in contemporary identity. While this division of Korean history tends to obscure the millennium of Confucian political thought on the peninsula before the Chosn dynasty, the notion that the Chosn rulers and social elites instituted Confucianism as a totalizing, dominant thought system appears warranted.
The early Chosn state stood at the center of these efforts at Confucianization and, regardless of whether Confucianism drove the dynastic transition or simply acted as a convenient political tool (Chapter 7), the state was infused with this greater purpose. Due to the immediate demands of state strengthening and centralization, Confucian statecraft in the early Chosn appears to have had a major impact even in the economy. Officials pursued a grand effort to fortify state finances while attempting to adhere to the Confucian ideals of eliminating unjust tax burdens and of reinforcing the centrality of agriculture over other economic activities, such as commerce. This required, then, a land tax policy of shifting revenues toward the central state’s officials and organs at the expense of other social sectors that, in the Kory era, had grown very wealthy, especially the landed aristocracy and the Buddhist establishment. These measures did not go so far as to completely monetize the economy, however; land taxes were paid in kind through grains and cloth. A complex system of personal tribute taxes also constituted a large proportion of the state’s revenues. The population was responsible for service duty, such as military service or labor for state projects, as well as for providing material goods, ranging from luxury items to household goods, for government organs, the royal family, and even foreign dignitaries. The precise balance between land taxes,
personal service, and tribute items is difficult to gage, but all of these duties had the effect of reinforcing the centrality of agriculture in the country’s economy. Commercial activity and foreign trade appear to have been relatively unchanged or even curtailed through the central state’s increasing control over the circulation of material resources. Confucianism, and hence Confucian statecraft, expressed little interest in encouraging private accumulation.
Confucianism did, however, encourage the pursuit of intellectual wealth, and the first two centuries of the Chosn dynasty witnessed the peak of Confucian philosophy—indeed, the peak of philosophy, period, in Korean history. Through a richly productive exchange of letters, memorials, and publications, Confucian philosophers participated in a thriving republic of letters in sixteenth century Korea that tackled fundamental problems in connecting the cosmos to human experience and morality. The preeminent figures in these developments were Yulgok and Yi Hwang, better known as T’oegye (who also is canonized by his appearance on one of the South Korean currencies). Although they were not of the same generation and likely met only a couple of times, T’oegye and Yulgok stood as the dueling representatives of a great debate that consumed Korean philosophy in the sixteenth century and went on to exert a profound impact on politics and society the rest of the dynasty (Chapter 10). The issue, now commonly called the “Four-Seven Debate,” revolved around how to reconcile basic psychological drives behind moral behavior (the “four basic feelings” and “seven emotions”) with the Neo-Confucian metaphysics of reality and being. T’ogye appears to have further refined and clarified the orthodoxy, with great effectiveness, and gained acclaim for unveiling a convincing schematic for self-cultivation. Yulgok, meanwhile, won renown for tackling these questions through a novel, synthetic approach that reflected well the creative forces of the sixteenth century, and indeed the great cultural achievements of the early Chosn as a whole.
CONFUCIAN FAMILY LAW AND WOMEN’S STANDING
One must be mindful, however, that the Chosn dynasty lasted over five centuries, and the historical perspective on Confucianism’s impact on Korean civilization is closely tied to this durability. Had the Chosn system ended with the lifespan of a typical Chinese dynasty—for example, if the Japanese invasions of the 1590s (Chapter 9) had led to a new sociopolitical order after only two centuries of the Chosn—then Confucianization might have been judged as incomplete. In fact, in terms of the political or socioeconomic hierarchies, the dynastic changeover appears to have fallen far short of a major shift. Rather, the most pronounced impact of Confucianization came from the comprehensive approach to remodel Korean customs, religious practices, and human interaction, down to the level of the family itself. The signal transformation, in fact, came in the realm of family law, with the most dramatic effects felt in the familial and social standing of women. The intimate setting of the family, though, is also where entrenched customs naturally take the longest to change—as witnessed in modern Korea, for example, with the century-long, grinding progress to overturn Confucian family law.
The Chosn dynasty eventually did manage to install a new family system as a central feature of the Confucian transformation of Korean civilization. The legislative blueprint appeared in th
e opening decades of the Chosn dynasty at the turn of the fifteenth century, based largely on “Master Zhu’s Family Rituals,” written by the great twelfth-century systematizer of the Neo-Confucian renaissance in Song dynasty China, Zhu Xi. Master Zhu’s Family Rituals designated four such ceremonies and contained detailed instructions on how to carry them out: capping (a coming-of-age ritual), wedding, funeral, and ancestor worship. With the exception of capping, these rituals had long been practiced by Koreans, but the Neo-Confucian instructions integrated them systematically into a cosmology that extended to dictums on politics, society, religion, and other realms. Because of their divergence from previous practices and their centrality to the overall Confucian program, the propagation of Confucian family teachings received a lot of attention from the state. Korean scholar-officials and even female royal family members glossed Zhu Xi’s work, with a consideration of native circumstances, in order to disseminate publications on core Confucian principles. This effort was enhanced by the Korean alphabet beginning in the mid-fifteenth century.
The Confucian family laws also demanded a strictly patrimonial system, one that not only traced lineage identity and legitimacy through the males, but also required that all rituals conform to this orientation. While the intricacies of the new wedding rites seem to have faced the most difficulty in gaining complete acceptance, the Confucian ancestor worship requirements had the most far-reaching impact. The lifelong responsibility of descendants to observe regular sacrificial rituals carried an acute economic burden, for example, and this demanded that inheritance practices, too, be gradually modified.
A History of Korea Page 9