A History of Korea

by Professor Kyung Moon Hwang

  in the narratives of national struggle reflects the intensification of Korean identity in opposition to Japan.

  There remains, however, one final major factor in the war’s outcome that, in Korea at least, has not been readily highlighted: the Chinese. North Korean accounts understandably do not even mention the Ming dynasty’s assistance, for this would run counter to their hyper-nationalist narrative of Korean history. Even in South Korea, conventional perspectives on the war give little credit to the Chinese assistance. As for Yu’s Book of Corrections from the early seventeenth century, it paints the Chinese in mostly a negative light, focusing on their abusive behavior, their commanders’ neglect of Korean concerns in the negotiations with the Japanese, and their battlefield failures. Other recent scholarship, however, has questioned this longstanding impression and suggests that the Chinese forces played not only a key role in the allied victory over Japan, but indeed an indispensable one.

  THE REGIONAL ORDER REMADE

  The significance of the Chinese contribution highlights the fact that, notwithstanding Korea’s suffering, this war’s impact spread far beyond the peninsula and may have been the most widely encompassing East Asian regional event until the modern era. Indeed the consequences extended even to an area originally untouched by the invasion, Manchuria. While there remains historical debate over the precise connections between the Japanese invasions and the conquest of Korea and China by the Manchus three decades later, the destructive force throughout East Asia could only have had a staggering, profound effect on the region.

  Often overlooked when considering the fallout from the Japanese invasions of Korea is the pronounced impact on Japan itself, much of which, ultimately, was in fact beneficial. The lessons learned from the failure of Hideyoshi’s grand scheme, not to mention the expenditures of resources and lives, cast a long shadow over Japan’s subsequent history. Aside from megalomaniacal delusion, Hideyoshi’s primary reason for launching the invasion was to provide an outlet for the energies of his warrior retainers, who had proved instrumental in his completing the project of politically reunifying Japan after centuries of fragmentation. After his death, Japanese leaders would not again venture beyond their borders for over 200 years. In fact, the leader who emerged as Hideyoshi’s successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, instituted a peaceful, stable, and in many ways a thriving dynastic rule based partly on the policy of “closure” to the outside world until the middle of the nineteenth century. The salutary effects of the Hideyoshi misadventure would extend to unforeseen realms as well: the many Korean artisans—artists, potters, smiths, ship builders, and others—taken as war captives back to Japan appear to have made a lasting contribution to the development of Japanese culture and technology.

  As for China, the dedication of massive resources to the war against Japan—an act, admittedly, that was not devoid of self-interest, since Korea served as a buffer against the Japanese—could not have helped the Ming dynasty’s increasingly fragile grip on rule. After more than two centuries, the Ming government, having concentrated its energies on internal stability through limited foreign adventures, found itself having to beat back not only the Japanese, but also Chinese rebels and ultimately yet another “barbarian” group to its immediate northeast. The Manchus, descendants of tribesmen who had periodically organized themselves into a formidable military force throughout East Asian history, had suddenly done so again while the rest of the region was preoccupied with recovery from the Japanese invasion. By the 1620s, the Manchus, following the familiar pattern of the Northmen of East Asia in previous eras, appeared on the verge of striking Korea on their way to the big prize of China itself. The brooding specter of this invasion instigated a major factional struggle in Korea over how to respond, and eventually the king, who favored a policy of accommodation with this new power, was overthrown by Chosn’s high officials in favor of a more explicitly pro-Ming monarch. This soon brought forth the first of two devastating Manchu invasions of Korea in 1627, to be followed by the finishing blow in 1636, when the Korean monarch surrendered in ritualized humiliation to the Manchu emperor just outside of Seoul. This paved the way for the Manchus’ march into Beijing in 1644 and their takeover of China.

  Despite succumbing themselves to the irrepressible Manchu force just a few years earlier, the Koreans were completely shocked by the Ming dynasty’s fall, which constituted, from the Korean perspective, an event on the level of a cosmic shift. For all the diplomatic subordination that the Koreans endured thereafter, the legitimacy of the ensuing Qing dynasty of the Manchus was never accepted by most Korean elites, who harbored a deeply ethnicized scorn for these “barbarians.” Indeed for well over a century Koreans openly retained fantasies of engaging in a “northern campaign” to overthrow the Qing. Koreans, now deprived of their long held assumptions about civilizational order, were forced to reconsider their larger standing Under Heaven. A belief hardened among Korean elites that, with the fall of the Ming, only Chosn remained as a bastion of (Confucian) civilization. This accompanied the equally fascinating emergence of a more widespread sense of national consciousness among lower groups of people, as seen in the expressions of popular culture from the seventeenth century onwards (Chapter 12). Indeed, the rallying cry of Yi Sunsin, Righteous Army leaders, and others around the common cause of national survival during the Japanese and, later, Manchu invasions laid the foundation for fortifying the idea of Koreanness itself.

  10

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  Ideology, Family, and Nationhood in the Mid-Chosn Era

  CHRONOLOGY

  1644 Manchu conquest of Ming dynasty China

  1674 Ascent to throne of King Sukchong

  1680 Marriage of King Sukchong to Queen Inhyn

  1688 Birth of crown prince to a royal concubine, Lady Chang

  1689 King Sukchong’s divorce from Queen Inhyn, marriage to Lady Chang, purge of Westerners

  1694 Remarriage to Queen Inhyn, demotion of Lady Chang

  1701 Death of Queen Inhyn, execution of Lady Chang

  THE BIRTH OF A SON TO LADY CHANG, 1688

  In late 1688, news quickly spread that Lady Chang, the favored concubine of King Sukchong, had given birth to a son. Though certainly not an unusual event in the annals of the Korean monarchy, in the tense atmosphere of court politics at this time, it carried strong repercussions. For Lady Chang, known commonly as Chang Hibin, was not just a royal concubine. Through her actions and her unwitting status as a political symbol, she also embodied the tensions and conflicts that had roiled the capital for years involving fundamental issues of Korean identity and civilization. Lady Chang had so smitten the monarch that he promptly designated the newborn as the crown prince, divorced his own queen, who had yet to bear a son, and promoted Lady Chang as her replacement.

  The vehement objections to this move from many top advisors, including the most notable Confucian scholar of the era, unleashed a storm of political strife. Within fifteen years, this conflict would ultimately victimize dozens of high officials on all sides and end with Lady Chang’s own execution ordered by the monarch himself.

  A riveting story that has been replayed countless times on Korean television dramas and movies, this episode’s historical significance extends far beyond the realm of the inner palace quarters. It underscores, for one, the conflicts surrounding ideological and factional struggles, family practices, social organization, and even civilizational identity that had been stirring for decades as the country recovered from the Japanese and Manchu invasions (Chapter 9). From the historian’s perspective, these wider implications in turn highlight the significance of this middle period of the Chosn dynasty, when some of the most familiar features of Korea’s Confucian society came into form.

  KING SUKCHONG’S TRIANGLES

  The mid-Chosn, in turn, can be further divided: the half-century of devastating invasions from 1592 to 1637, and the seven or eight decades thereafter of recovery and reconstruction. The political figure dominating the latter period was King
Sukchong, who ascended the throne in 1674 and survived to reign for forty five years. His longevity alone suggests a strong monarch ruling at a time of welcome stability, which indeed was the case for the country as a whole. King Sukchong bolstered Korea’s defenses and stabilized its northern frontier, implemented major tax reforms that contributed to the growth of agricultural production, and chipped away at the social discrimination against lower status groups in the government and military. All these deeds for the public good, however, are overshadowed in the prevailing historical perspective by his private failings—his quick-tempered, inconstant, and often scandalous behavior—which in turn had a great bearing on the history of this period.

  The consequences of these personal weaknesses might not have extended beyond his private quarters had he not ruled amidst the peak of factional wrangling among high officials, a phenomenon that he actually furthered. The bitter partisan court battles of the late sixteenth century, which affected Korea’s preparations for and response to the Japanese invasions, had again undermined Korea’s preparations for and response to the Manchu incursions beginning in the 1620s (Chapter 9). But it did not stop there; following the Manchu conquest of Ming China in 1644, factional wrangling in Korea became intricately tied to sophisticated debates concerning the country’s place in the larger realm of civilization. Indeed, since the early Chosn era, philosophical differences had often spawned factional divisions. This relationship became crystallized in the arcane metaphysical rivalry of the sixteenth century between the forerunners of the Southern School, who followed the great philosopher T’oegye, and the Westerners, forming around the teachings of Yulgok (Chapter 8). Such a close intertwining of ideological and political affiliations had overwhelmed the political system and debilitated the monarch. Sukchong, though, used factional hostilities as a political tool even while claiming to abhor it. Partisan strife, a phenomenon commonly associated with the institutionalized weakness of the Chosn crown, stood in this case as a manifestation of a powerful king attempting to increase his leverage through his triangulation between two bitterly opposing sides.

  Sukchong was also immersed in another, better-known triangle, however—the love triangle involving his wife and his concubine. The troubles arising from this particular dynamic were commonplace in Korean elite families throughout the Chosn era (and beyond), but, when these private travails racked the royal family, they had a pronounced effect on politics. The two-decade drama involving these three figures resulted in major political upheavals leading to the deaths of dozens of people. It also highlighted the tensions of the mid-Chosn era between the ongoing efforts at Confucianization and the great native impulses—socially, culturally, and in the realm of the family—continuing to resist a complete makeover.

  Sukchong’s second wife, Queen Inhyn (his first had died at an early age), had impeccable family credentials and, according to both official and unofficial historical sources, was widely revered for her grace and character. But as time passed these qualities were overshadowed by the lack of a male heir. In the meantime, the king grew strongly fond of one of the palace ladies, Lady Chang, who had already developed a reputation for her spellbinding beauty and cunning. She even suffered expulsion from the palace for her potentially dangerous effect on the harmony of the royal family. Queen Inhyn herself, credited with selflessly putting her husband’s desires above those of her own, urged that Lady Chang be allowed to return. In early 1688, when news of Lady Chang’s pregnancy spread, it seemed to validate Queen Inhyn’s noble move even as it threatened to unleash yet another struggle for royal succession. When, in answering the monarch’s fervent wishes, Lady Chang bore a son, King Sukchong’s affection for her grew immeasurably. In the midst of this euphoria, the monarch named the newborn the crown prince. An explosion of political strife quickly followed.

  The high officials belonging to the Westerners faction immediately protested en masse to this move, arguing that Queen Inhyn was young and thus could still bear a “legitimate” crown prince. Not only did King Sukchong react angrily to this protest by purging some of these officials, he immediately ratcheted up the confrontation to another level by divorcing Queen Inhyn, stripping her of her title as queen. He accused her of insufficiently embracing, both figuratively and literally, the baby boy, and further rationalized this move as necessary for the crown prince when he eventually became king. The uproar that followed induced another purge of the Westerners, this time killing the faction’s intellectual leader, Song Siyl, who was forced to drink a bowl of poison. In 1694, however, King Sukchong, fickle as ever, changed his mind again and returned Queen Inhyn to the palace, demoting Queen Chang back to her original status as a palace lady. This would not be the end of the drama, however, for Queen Inhyn, still without having borne a son, died suddenly in 1701. When it was discovered that Lady Chang, in her attempt to regain the monarch’s affections, had constructed a shamanistic altar where she put curses on Queen Inhyn through the use of figurines, King Sukchong blamed her for his queen’s death and had Lady Chang executed. But Lady Chang, as if remaining true to her reputation, would not go quietly and fiercely resisted any dignified death. The executioners had to force feed her the poison.

  If we take a step back from the titillating combination of sex and politics that enveloped this long-running drama, we can rightfully place it in the larger currents of Korean history and even draw comparisons to similar situations in other parts of the world. To many readers, this episode will evoke thoughts of the notorious behavior of King Henry VIII of England from a century-and-a-half earlier. Like King Sukchong, Henry was willing to go to extremes in order to divorce his queen for a favored concubine and, like Lady Chang, Anne Boleyn in the end paid the ultimate price for the monarch’s inconstancy. In the meantime, the political order was upended and led to the execution of the widely revered great man of letters, whether Song Siyl or Thomas More, who led the righteous opposition. And in the wider consequences as well, there are important similarities. While a new religious order like the Church of England did not materialize from this episode in Korea, in both countries the larger stakes concerned the country’s place in the realm of the dominant religio-ethical civilization.

  In this sense, Song Siyl and Lady Chang stood as the dueling parties in King Sukchong’s most important triangle. In determining the future direction of Korea’s Confucian civilization, the monarch had to balance his personal desires against the two extreme priorities represented by Chang and Song. Song Siyl, in fact, had served as the resilient ideological fount of classical East Asian and Neo-Confucian orthodoxy for much of the seventeenth century. Since the 1640s, he had engaged in prominent battles against scholar-officials arguing for Korean exceptionalism in the Confucian world order. The latter view, given the fall of Ming China to the Manchu “barbarians” in 1644, emphasized Korea’s position as the lone standing source of civilization and called for an adjustment to orthodoxy that would accommodate historical change and national interests. Song, on the other hand, in condemning such “heterodoxy,” always maintained that Korea, precisely because of the fall of Ming China, must firmly adhere to the traditional understanding. Little wonder, then, that Song is sometimes cited as “Korea’s Zhu Xi,” in reference to the great Chinese scholar credited with formulating the foundation of Neo-Confucian doctrine in the twelfth century. In stark contrast,

  Lady Chang can be seen representing the nativist impulses of folk religion, the primacy of the crown, and the complications of hereditary social hierarchy. She also represented the heritage of strong-willed Korean women whose public prominence reached a high point in the mid-Chosn era.

  FAMOUS FEMALES

  Neither Lady Chang nor Queen Inhyn, who have always been joined at the hip in historical lore, wished to be swept up and exploited by the political combatants of the day. Likewise, neither likely could do anything to prevent their fates from being determined, in the end, by a mercurial monarch. But in other ways, these two opposing females served as models of strength in Chos
n Korea, albeit in very different ways. Queen Inhyn has always stood as the paragon of Confucian female virtue. Unable to gain the affection of her husband due to the lack of a son, she subsumed her personal feelings and interests by inviting Lady Chang back into the palace. And when Lady Chang gave birth to a boy, Queen Inhyn again selflessly supported the monarch’s designation of the baby as the crown prince. Lady Chang, on the other hand, has traditionally been portrayed as the evil opposite—the stubborn, licentious, and decadent femme fatale. But she could also be considered a model of the boisterous, passionate, clever Korean female who more recently has been celebrated, especially in popular culture, as a forerunner to the confident modern woman who takes her fate into her own hands.

  Unlike Lady Chang, most palace girls, who were servants attending to mostly female members of the royal family, had little chance of becoming a royal concubine, much less of exerting great influence on political affairs. But, as with other privileged females, they could express themselves through a discreet but historically significant medium of empowerment at the time, vernacular writing. The Korean alphabet had been devised and promulgated in the mid-fifteenth century, but well into the nineteenth century literary Chinese remained the dominant form of writing in the circles of learned elites and government affairs. Females, who could not expect to become literate in the high culture, took advantage of the alphabet’s great functionality to leave behind a treasure trove of valuable writings, ranging from letters and diaries to poetry, novels, and chronicles. Among the most illuminating examples of the latter came from a palace lady who apparently had witnessed the events surrounding the Queen Inhyn–Lady Chang affair. This author penned the “Biography of Queen Inhyn,” a sympathetic portrayal of the queen that still stands as a precious unofficial source of information about these events.