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Although alcohol was not typically sold this way before the modern period, this piece is meant to emphasize how versatile alcoholic beverages were throughout Korea’s history. By the Late Koryŏ period (1250s–1392s) there were over 25 varieties of liquor, rice being the most popular (75). The lettering of the word soju in the artwork is written in Korean letters. This artistic choice has many implications. While the Mongol period influence on alcoholic beverages in the East Asia peninsula was immense, soju eventually became a Korean product produced with techniques developed in Korea and made from resources in Korea. Moreover, in premodern Korea, Korean lettering, now known as hangul, occupied an informal written space and was reserved for household use (as opposed to Chinese lettering, which was more formal). Therefore this artistic choice alludes to the production of alcohol in households.

Historical Context:

The artwork was inspired by Hyunhee Park’s book, Soju: A Global History (Cambridge, 2021), which uses soju’s development through history to understand the first stages of globalization in world history. During the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the Mongols conquered Korea and China, spreading their dietary customs. Among one of these was the consumption of new varieties of alcoholic drinks. One of the first alcoholic beverages introduced by the Mongols was called, “kumiss” or “shobat,” made from the fermented milk of mare and camel, and contained low alcohol content, less than 10% (43). Soon after, they introduced imported liquors made of grapes. As new alcoholic drinks were introduced into the Eastern Asia peninsula, Korea also adopted new distillation methods that could create drinks with stronger alcohol content (47). They made their own versions of this stronger alcohol made of grains.

Before the introduction of distillation, the most popular drink in Korea was rice wine. As described on p.70, Korean rice wine (which is different from soju) was “milky, off white, slightly sweet, tangy, bitter, astringent taste.” After distillation practices were introduced, Koreans began to make, aralgil (the word is derived through Mongolian and Turkish the Arabic word arak, meaning “perspiration” 80), a distilled liquor made by portable stills. As a result, the new alcohol lasted longer and was more concentrated at 40% or higher alcohol content.

Koreans adopted these new technological advances. Korean stills are called “soju kori”  and in the Chosŏn period, many families typically owned a still. Alcohol was used for medicine, spiritual and other social practices. As its popularity grew, drinking became more frequent, some even attended several drinking parties in one day (76). In conclusion, changes in the uses of alcohol and the evolution of techniques for making alcohol give us an understanding of the relationships that pre-modern Korea had with its neighbors as well as how soju became what it is today, Korea’s National Drink. 

For more, view the original article.

Ch’ŏn Si-ŏk, “Soviet Regime Nurtured Me [Ssobet’ŭ chugwŏni narŭl yangsŏng shigiŏtta.].” Sŏnbong (Vladivostok) Sept. 1, 1937. (Korean: 천시억. “쏘베트 주권이 나를 양성 시기엇다.” 선봉 (블라디보스톡) 1937년 9월 1일.)

A 25-year old author expresses their gratitude to the state for providing, mostly in assistance fee, when they and their family were going through some hardship. Despite the difficulties, the author portrays their journey of receiving education while working. It is ultimately a success story as the author ends the article by emphasizing they make 1000 rubles and live comfortably by working as a truck driver.

The piece comes from a newspaper, translated as Avantgarde, which has been in print since the early 1920s in Korean. It has many borrowed words from Russian. This particular newspaper was published in celebration of the International Day of Youth. International news especially about Japan, China, the US, and Spain. Pictures and photos/drawings - Gender? Labor? Production? Politics - fascism?

Significance

The support the Soviet regime provided - this could be a good springboard for a discussion about the nationality policies of the Soviet Union. The importance of education. What languages are used for education? The labor the youth are exposed to from an early age. The trajectory of their education and career. The context is important as it is the month that the Soviet Koreans would be deported roughly in about two weeks.

Issues of Notice

Author’s claim that their Russian was poor when they moved to Khabarovsk to attend a college of education. The treatment they received as an ethnically Korean minority and the opportunities they received were good. The definition of success and the role the Soviet Union played in it. The role of the youth in the Soviet Union.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the Soviet state view the role of the youth? Can we detect any concerns of the state regarding its ethnic minorities in the face of external threat (Japan, Germany, the US) despite its promotion of nationality policies?

2. How does the author describe their life and success?

3. Despite the fact that it is written in Korean, does the article reveal anything about the author’s “Koreanness” or Korean agenda apart from the Soviet ones?

For more, view the original article.

The Chosŏn Dynasty (1392 - 1910) was a society ruled by Confucian elites. Although the Chosŏn Dynasty was a classist society, some aspects can appear to have been quite progressive by modern standards: women could participate in lawsuits and it could accommodate a diversity of cultural and religious practices,  with both shamanism and Buddhism being prominent among the larger lower-class population. These facts may suggest that Chosŏn promoted a tolerant space for religious diversity, but upon closer inspection, this was not the case.

This essay discusses the experience of Buddhists in Chosŏn dynasty. It focuses on the idea of collective trauma, as used in Hwansoo Kim's article "Buddhism during the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392-1910): A Collective Trauma," which portrays the mistreatment of Buddhists in the Chosŏn state. My personal interest in this topic stems from the fact that I am a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews, a group who has been targeted and persecuted repeatedly in history because of the religion they practice. States often enforced religious uniformity as a power move to hold control over the people it rules. They might cast a part of the population as infidels because of their religious difference, using their "otherness" as a way to enforce state orthodoxy. By focusing on collective trauma, this paper is meant to highlight the ways in which seemingly minute aggressions and acts of intolerance encouraged by a state affect the way a marginalized religious group might be treated.

During the Koryŏ dynasty, Buddhism played a prominent role in state ideology. The Chosŏn dynasty that replaced Koryŏ relegated Buddhism to the sidelines and envisioned Confucianism to be the sole state ideology, reforming both official and social practices to conform to Confucian ideals (Seth 130). I believe the purpose of the enforcement of Confucianism by the Chosŏn state was that it is easier to rule over a group of people if they all share the same ideology especially if it is the ideology of the ruling party. Along with enforcing Confucianism as a dominant religion, the Chosŏn state also used Confucianism to reinforce a homogenous ruling class, the sajok, in order to establish control over the country's subjects. For instance, to hold sacred the internal interest of the ruling class of Chosŏn, the state placed restrictions on status categories, including chungin, secondary sons, hyangni, and the hyanghwain (submitting foreigners). These restrictions effectively prohibited any individual, or their descendants, who were not a part of the established elite from entering the ranks of the ruling sajok class.

Shortly after the founding of Chosŏn, Buddhist monks were stripped of their positions, and Buddhist officials were intimidated into denouncing Buddhism as their practiced religion. These events were the result of the attempt of scholars to remodel Korean society for government institutions and marriage on the ideals of Confucianism (Seth 130). Chŏng To-jŏn, a Korean Neo-Confucian scholar, aided in the efforts to overthrow the Koryŏ kingdom (918--1392 [CE]) and regarded Buddhism as an undesirable alien faith, as it focused on individual enlightenment and not on the social relations that social interactions were reliant upon in society (Seth 136). Additionally, the nature of the practice of Buddhism was misrepresented in efforts to make Buddhism and its practitioners sound less appealing, as displayed in the written work by Confucian teacher Kim T'aejun, which regarded Buddhist monks in Chosŏn as "sexually promiscuous social outcasts" (H. Kim 102). The Chosŏn state encouraged the restriction of Buddhist activities and heavily curtailed membership. Although Buddhists institutions were allowed to exist, the actual practicing of Buddhism was discouraged. The Chosŏn state did not allow Buddhist clergy much religious, economic, or social autonomy, even after forcing burdens upon them that had nothing to do with their religious practice. In unique cases, Buddhists were assigned to military positions and other foreign service-related positions as envoys. This was due to the fact that allies to Chosŏn, such as Japan and China, were predominantly practitioners of Buddhism (H. Kim 114).

Ann anecdote discussed in the dissertation "Protect the Pines, Punish the People" by John S. Lee, shows the prejudice and intolerance of Buddhists in Chosŏn. It involved a a monk who was forced into state labor. As a member of a Buddhist monastery, he was required to patrol and protect the side of a mountain that was dense in pine trees. These trees were essential to the infrastructure of Chosŏn, because pine wood was used for the manufacturing of military ships and weaponry. After a strong storm along the mountainside, pine branches were left disturbed, with mounds of pine debris littering the mountain surface. A government officer saw this site and assumed that the monk belonging to the monastery assigned to the area had not been performing his duties; the officer assumed that the debris on the ground was the result of pine tree removal in the area. Rather than approach the monk with words, the officer confronted him with his fists, punching the monk in the chest to demand a confession for the crime the officer had pre-conceived. The monks were forced to pay substantial restitution (Lee 1).

This instance is quite alarming because of the arbitrariness of the violence the state officer perpetrated against the monk. Here, we see the impulse of violence against a monk, for seemingly no other reason than that the officer thought it was acceptable to beat a monk simply because of the lowly social status of Buddhist monks. I consider this to reflect an institutionalized intolerance of the Buddhist practitioners. Most other literature presenting cases of Chosŏn who dealt with the courts was given a hearing by the magistrate, the privilege to a petition, and in some cases, the ability to appeal a case and its sentences (J. Kim 7). So, although Chosŏn seemed to consider itself as a fair and just state, the treatment of Buddhist monks in the state proved otherwise. It can be true that the officer responsible for the crime against this monk might have been acting on his own and not on behalf of the Chosŏn state. However, even though this monk was a Chosŏn subject, it seemed the officer had no compunction abusing him and meting out punishment without using proper legal channels.

Tensions between Confucian scholars and Buddhist monks continued even into the 20th century after the end of the Chosŏn period. This is exemplified in the 1936 rage-fueled altercations between Buddhist monks and Confucian scholars in H. Kim's 2017 article. These incidents are a consequence of Chosŏn state's intolerance of Buddhism and reveal how the collective trauma experienced by Buddhists in Chosŏn left lasting scars across generations, persisting beyond the end of the Chosŏn Era.

For more, view the original article.

The image to the left is a representation of the traditional ruling class, the yangban. The image was taken in 1863 and is one of the earliest photographs depicting highly educated civil servants and military officers of Chosŏn Korea. The image to the right is a representation of the Korean slaves and serfs, the nobi. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, nobi were responsible for majority of manual labor such as housework and farming. They were not treated with the same level of respect as the Yangban.  Harvard professor Sun Joo Kim, in her article “My Own Flesh and Blood: Stratified Parental Compassion and Law in Korean Slavery,” discusses an issue where these two groups intersect: yangban and nobi: the relationship between human emotions and slavery in Chosŏn. In the eighteenth century, 30% of Chosŏn’s population were slaves. A large number would have also been public slaves as well. Sun Joo Kim’s article shows how yangban would refer to slaves as their "hands and feet,” because they provided the domestic and agricultural labor necessary for the master’s economic and social life. Having hundreds of slaves working on a single estate suggests how little human interaction existed between slave and master, but there were also numerous cases of yangban men who had children with women of slave status. One of the main problems the author is trying to address in this article is, “what happens to the status of a child who was fathered by the yangban master but born to a slave woman?”

Usually, even if the father was a yangban and the mother was a slave, then the child would still belong to the lowest class. A yangban male who had a child with a female of slave status, for instance, a kisaeng or entertainer, might still invest feelings of sympathy towards the child as his "own flesh and blood.” This emotional attachment could be one way a slave might escape slave status. For instance, the Chosŏn court recognized this problem when it issued an order through the Directorate for Reclassification of Slaves in 1397: “Even if a child is born of a slave-status concubine, the child is also one’s own flesh and blood. Therefore it is inconvenient to enslave them like other ordinary slaves.” According to this statement, a child with yangban blood born to a slave-status concubine was eligible for special treatment. If the father and the owner of the slave child agreed, they could be manumitted to attain so-called “good status,”  signifying a rise in the social hierarchy.

Slaves were treated as property, but they were still considered human beings as well. This raised a problem. Relinquishing slavery status made upward social mobility possible, potential disturbing the distinction of status. These gestures, however, were justified by parental compassion, where it was not possible to treat one’s own “flesh and blood” as slaves. According to a diary Yu Hŭich’un, a yangban, with a slave concubine, were still “[his] own flesh and blood” and he repeatedly declared that “manumitting one’s children and cousins is ‘the right thing to do.’” In this respect, a yangban rescuing his children from slavery was more of an emotional gesture, rather than a rational one. Yu believed that it was his right to exercise parental compassion for his family members rather than a political act. Although many yangban shared these feelings and argued against the laws of the time, the appeal to parental love and care was not extended to slave-status offspring of non-yangban fathers. Non-yangban fathers could not help their children obtain good social status because they had no leverage or legal option to do so. Unlike yangban who had aristocratic status, wealth, and most importantly the ability to voice their opinions, non-yangban fathers had little recourse when their children were born into slavery. In conclusion, this difference demonstrated the stratified layers of parental compassion within pre-modern Korean law.

Personally, I believe that the early premodern status system was enforced to increase the number of slaves. I find it very interesting that in Korea, the enslaved might include one’s own kin, and did not involve racial or ethnic difference as was the case in other parts of the world during this period. Although it seemed that the possibility of a slave rising in social hierarchy was controversial, partly because it was very common for a yangban male to have a child with a female slave. However, if I had been a yangban father, I would not like to see my daughter or son working desperately as a slave. After all, a parent’s natural instinct is to nurture their children and seek what is best for them.

For more (including 2 images), view the original article.

Cultural ideas surrounding mental illness are always changing and evolving. However, an understanding of how different cultures and time periods viewed and treated mental illness can help further the current understanding of mental illnesses.

According to Soo Jin Kweon’s thesis Cripping Hwabyung: A Cripqueer Analysis of Korean Historical Drama Films, which discusses Theodore Yoo’s work on the history of psychiatry in colonial Korea, “colonial authorities and [Chosŏn] era (1392-1910) Confucianism enforced an ‘emotion regime’ where ‘emotional suffering’ was also noted as the cause of emotion-related mental illnesses'' (Kweon 2). Chosŏn Confucianism associated the development of mental illness with pre-existing emotional suffering, rather than viewing emotional suffering as a result of mental illness.  While Theodore Yoo explains these emotion-related illnesses as a cause of suicide in the colonial period, in Chosŏn Korea, there were other associations with suicide. Suicide was often treated as a means of escape from arranged marriage or sexual assault, or as a result of extreme anxiety and loneliness (Lee 117). Anxiety and loneliness tie into the colonial Korean idea of suicide as a means of ending emotional suffering, but suicide as a means of escape from arranged marriage or sexual assault, or as a means of demonstrating one’s loyalty and piety are distinctly Chosǒn beliefs. Janet Yoon-sun Lee writes in her article “Lovesickness and Death in Korean Literature” that “suicide used to be, and still is (...) sometimes necessary to acquire filial love” (Lee 117). Suicide acted as a way to prove one’s morality, according to Confucian standards, and thus was glorified at times, while being a disgraceful and unspeakable action at other times. The contrary attitudes towards suicide provide a view of Chosǒn Confucian attitudes towards mental illness. Whether emotional suffering was the cause of suicide or the result of suicidal thoughts and mental illness, suicide and emotional suffering are both parts of mental illness that must be discussed and explored.

Mental illness, as we view it today, played a major role in Chosǒn period novels. Themes such as suicide and self-harm are prevalent in many well-known Korean novels from the time. According to Lee’s paper, female suicides were common in stories from the time; about 92% of all suicides described in Chosǒn novels were of women. There are three main reasons why female characters committed suicide are: to escape sexual assault or arranged marriage; the result of struggling with anxiety due to loneliness; and voluntary deaths, usually with a moral cause such as filial piety (Lee 117). Female suicides were often linked to female martyrdom and a desire to do what is right according to the rules of filial piety. 

Members of Chosŏn royalty could be considered to exhibit traits of what we would call mental illness today. One example was the Deposed Queen Yun, the second wife of King Sŏngjong and mother of Prince Yŏnsan. She was known for her intense jealousy and harmful behaviors resulting from that jealousy, such as scratching King Sŏngjong and attempting to poison her husband’s concubine; her jealousy and actions led her to be dismissed as queen, thus why she is known as the Deposed Queen Yoon. According to one study titled, “Deposed Queen Yoon Might Have Suffered From Bipolar Disorder” from the Journal of Korean Neuropsychiatric Association, she exhibited many traits which today would be considered hypomanic, or a milder form of mania (a state of mind marked by extreme excitement, delusions, overactivity, and euphoria); hypomania is a symptom of bipolar disorder. While one cannot fully diagnose someone who has been dead for centuries, there are many similarities between the deceased’s behavior and the diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder. According to King Sŏngjong’s Annals, which was examined by this study, Queen Yoon’s hypomania might have been first triggered just after she had given birth to her son, Prince Yŏnsan (Seo and Kim 160). Her symptoms became noticeable to King Sŏngjong, but they reduced and temporarily went away. 

However, bipolar disorder is marked by periodical swings from emotional highs to emotional lows. Queen Yun relapsed badly again soon. Once she was dismissed as queen and King Sŏngjong remarried, she directed these intense emotions at the new queen, the Queen Dowager, as well as King Sŏngjong. The article points to a record from the Annals of King Sŏngjong dating from August 11, 1482 to suggest that  “Queen [Yun] curses and threats toward [King Sŏngjong] and the Queen Dowager intensified, and that she exhibited manic symptoms, including aggressive behavior and hypersensitivity to stimuli” (Seo and Kim 161). These symptoms caused a lot of disruptions to King Sŏngjong’s life even after he had dismissed Queen Yun. Her behavior would again go through periods of remission and relapse, over and over again, as is common in bipolar disorder. 

Her son, Prince Yŏnsan, shared some symptoms of bipolar disorder as well. Seo and Kim write, “[Yŏnsan’gun] showed symptoms suspected of hypomania or mania, such as sexual promiscuity, extravagance, obsession with entertainment, excessive punishment, excessive excitement, and expression of anger” (Seo and Kim 162). According to a paper titled “Genetics of Bipolar Disorder” published in the National Library of Medicine, bipolar disorder “has a strong genetic component” (Escamilla and Zavala). Given that both Queen Yun and her son show symptoms of bipolar disorder, it is not unlikely that Queen Yun would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder today. Additionally, Seo and Kim write, “Considering the episodic clinical course in which these manic and depressive symptoms last for several months or more and then go into remission and relapse repeatedly, it is highly likely that [Yŏnsan] also suffered from bipolar disorder” (Seo and Kim 162). The influence of genetics on the development of bipolar disorder cannot be understated; Prince Yŏnsan’s symptoms also support Queen Yun’s diagnosis.

Mental illness continues to be a difficult subject to speak about. Understanding Chosŏn attitudes towards mental illness requires an understanding of Chosŏn beliefs, just as understanding mental illness requires an understanding of an individual’s beliefs. Learning about the past can often be a way to improve the present; perhaps increased access to this knowledge about how mental illness was viewed and how those with symptoms of mental illnesses were treated will further destigmatize mental health and encourage more openness surrounding the topic.

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This artwork depicts a scene in the lineage novel, Jade Mandarin Ducks. One of its themes is how the relationship between the father-in-law and the son-in-law affects the daughter-wife’s relationship with her family—in this specific scene, her son. Lineage novels are vernacular Korean texts that have been transcribed by elite Korean women. They then circulate within the family. Besides following the intricacies of the kinship system of the late Chosŏn Korean period, these novels explore the subject in how the structures of prescriptive kinship are emotionally internalized by individuals. One of the unique aspects of these lineage novels is the relationship between the father-in-law and the son-in-law. The father-in-law here is presented to be a petty and profit seeking man while the son-in-law is seen as honorable and morally right. In the late Chosŏn period, where patrilineality thrived, animosity between the father-in-law and the son-in-law meant that the two “most important” men in a daughter-wife’s life were in conflict, causing her to become a frigid mother to her son. In Jade Mandarin Ducks, the conflict between them is revealed to be a result of the father-in-law, following the usual path of lineage novels of being a treacherous and greedy official, had also tried to seduce son-in-law unknowingly when he was dressed up as a maid at his household “to avoid political persecution” (Chizhova 139). This encounter brought on the son-in-law's scorn for his father-in-law, which the daughter-wife did not understand. This continued mistreatment of the father-in-law resulted in the growing resentment within the daughter-wife, turning her into an emotionally unavailable mother to her son.

The first scene depicts a family of three; the son Ponghŭi, the father/son-in-law, Segyŏng and finally the mother/daughter, Hyŏnyŏng. We see Hyŏnyŏng gazing coldly at the father and son pair who are happily having a bonding moment over learning. She is also purposefully placed far from the pair to signify the distance between them. To further emphasize the distance, she is wearing a bit of a solemn color of purple, unlike the neutral color of blue that the father and son pair is wearing. 

In the next scene, Segyŏng just praised Ponghŭi for being able to identify all six of the Chinese characters on the page. Ponghŭi looks up to his mother for the same validation. This scene was not depicted in the novel. It is my interpretation of how Ponghŭi, growing up without parental comfort, would look up to his mother in this rare moment where he was noticed by his busy father. He had also wanted his mother to acknowledge him, but was met only by his mother’s hanging head and cold, distant visage. 

In the last scene, Segyŏng, who has noticed his son’s constant disappointment puts his hand on Ponghŭi’s back to comfort him. He then speaks to Hyŏnyŏng his son’s behalf and asks how she could treat their son this way. He questioned whether she actually had any maternal love for their son and if she did not feel the same joy as he did for their son’s accomplishments. 

This story taught the lesson of how the father-in-law and the son-in-law had to reconcile and make amends before Hyŏnyŏng could stop being a frigid mother. The only way for Hyŏnyŏng to be emotionally present for her child was for her husband Segyŏng to treat her father with respect. Only if Segyŏng performed his duty towards her and her father would Hyŏnyŏng be able to perform her duty towards her son, Ponghŭi.

I picked this particular story because reading it initially made a lasting impression on me. It confused me in a way that made me interested to learn more. The strained relationship between father-in-law and son-in-law affecting the daughter-wife relationship with her son and not just the son-in-law/husband gave me a different perspective I never thought of before. In my eyes the child did nothing wrong, so it was hard to wrap my head around the idea, which caused me to reflect on this story a lot.

For more (including 3 images and 1 video), view the original article.

The goal of this project is to visually recreate the stories in the form of a comic strip from Jisoo Kim’s research in Chapter Five of her book the Emotions of Justice. Throughout this chapter, Kim includes stories of individuals who petitioned on behalf of their family members to highlight the way they shaped the Chosŏn legal system. Through the use of illustrations, I hope to provide the reader with a visual representation of these accounts that reflects the emotions and feelings of those challenging unjust treatment.

In Chosŏn Korea, legal practices were heavily influenced by wŏn, a term encompassing emotions like grief, hatred, anger, and suffering. The state believed that letting the wŏn of individuals fester would threaten social order and harmony. The legal system therefore became a means to relieve the wŏn of the people. Individuals of all social backgrounds (elite/commoner/slave) utilized the legal system through both verbal and written petitions to seek justice. While the idea of justice during the Chosŏn period was defined by the state, the people also played an important role in challenging that definition (Kim 12)

For more (including 12 images), view the original article.

Between 1392 and 1910, during the Chosŏn period in Korea, a strict hierarchical structure existed in society. As in many premodern cultures, a system of slavery existed within this structure and served as the base upon which society operated. Nobi (slaves) and their labor contributed to the wealth of Yangban (elites) who thrived within this system. At first glance, this system may appear to resemble other systems of slavery and class hierarchy such as those of Western societies including slavery in antebellum America or ancient Rome. However, Sun Joo Kim’s examination of the system in the article “My Own Flesh and Blood: Stratified Paternal Compassion and Law in Korean Slavery,” unravels the complexities of the Chosŏn legal system and the role of emotion and affective politics in Chosŏn society.

Kim’s findings reveal the positive impact paternal emotion had in laws governing class and social status. These findings surprised me in light of the rigid nature of Chosŏn society, where upwards social mobility was virtually nonexistent and slaves were considered property. I was surprised to learn that Yangban men who fathered children with concubines of slave status would be moved to advocate for the child’s future and that the legal system would allow for the child to take on a higher status than what they were born into.

Nobi existed at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Chosŏn Korea. In some time periods, nobi made up about 30% of the entire population and were a highly sought after “commodity” for the wealthy. As nobi provided both domestic and agricultural labor, yangban depended on their work for economic gain. Yangban viewed slaves as resources rather than people. They “regarded slaves as stupid, disloyal, deceptive, and slanderous” and did not treat nobi as equals or as individuals deserving of respect. Instead, they treated nobi as “less than” and were intent on maintaining their own superiority. Additionally, “slaves were bought and sold and inherited; their families were divided in accordance with the owner’s need; and they were usually denied a family name” (Kim 2). These patterns reveal the nature of nobi’s relationships with the yangban: slave and master, property and owner. Nobi did not enjoy the privileges of the yangban such as individual freedom, accumulation of wealth, or even having a family name. Additionally, upwards mobility was nonexistent for those of  nobi status.

Because upwards mobility was impossible for nobi, the occurrence of children born between two classes such as the nobi class and the common class presented a dilemma. However, according to Chosŏn law, “‘a child is base if one parent is base’” (Kim 3). Thus, if a child was born between a nobi and a commoner, the child would take on the lower status and become part of the nobi status. This could occur even between elite and lower classes as well, however. As yangban males often had sexual relationships with concubines of slave status, children were born out of these relationships. These children were supposed to inherit their mother’s status and entered the slave class upon birth. However, as described Kim puts it, “the yangban elites’ desire to buttress status distinction and maintain wealth, and basic human values and feelings were entangled to a surprising degree” (Kim 5). Yangban elites benefitted economically from children being born into slave status, as this would increase the number of slaves producing labor and would support the flow of the economy. However, when it came to their own children who were born into slavery, parental compassion played a large role into determining the social status of these children; they did not always remain slaves on behalf of their father’s advocation.

Affective politics allowed for children who were born to a slave-status concubine and a yangban father to assume a higher status, such as that of commoner, rather than take on the status of their mother and remain in slavery, as was usually done. Yangban elites pointed to the “Neo-confucian ideal of patriarchy and patrilineality” (Kim 5) in order to justify their arguments that their children should not be slaves merely due the status of the children’s mothers. Although motivated by paternal compassion and human emotion, these Neo-Confucian ideals were used as justifications in legal cases through which yangban elites sought to free their children from slavery. For example, the Chosŏn scholar-official Yu Hŭi-ch’un  advocated for four daughters who were born into slavery, recording the processes in his diary entitled Miam’s Diary. He made deals with the owners of his daughters and completed court documents and records to ensure their freedom and recorded his joy at successfully freeing them from slavery. As Kim recounts “the affective norms [can be] sense[d] from Yu’s dealings with his slave-status daughters” (Kim 18). Not only did Yu acknowledge his daughters as his own, but he also advocated for their freedom. He actively pursued their freedom via deals with their owner and monetary exchanges. He clearly recorded his own positive feelings towards them as well, revealing the role of emotion in his legal pursuits.

Chosŏn Korea saw a period of strict social hierarchy with little to no social mobility. However, affective politics allowed for emotion to motivate elite yangban to overturn these strict categories in cases of their children being born into slavery. While children who had at least one parent who belonged to the slave status were automatically placed in this status as well, parental compassion overruled these preexisting norms. Recognizing the role of emotion in Korean politics is important to understanding how laws were not strictly black in white; in other words, set laws were still accountable to emotion and human morality, rather than being set in stone or directed solely by economic gain.

 I value Sun Joo Kim’s article for the depth in which she analyzes the overlap between policy and human emotion. She shows how affective politics can lead to the contradiction of pre-existing societal norms through the examination of the manumission of slaves in Chosŏn Korea on behalf of parental compassion and advocation. With this in mind, we might look more deeply into current politics and societies and further examine affective politics in modern times.

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Before Chosŏn was established, Koryŏ (918-1392) ruled the Korean peninsula with a Buddhist national ideology. Internal strife and Mongol invasions weakened Koryŏ, making it possible for a powerful general, Yi Sŏnggye, to overthrow Koryŏ and establish Chosŏn as its first king. Confucianism was important to the Koryŏ state, but it did not become the dominant social ideology until the founding of the Chosŏn kingdom in 1392.  This change in the establishment was driven by a vision for a new social and political order based on Confucianism. Historian Michael Seth in his A Concise History of Premodern Korea states that the dynastic transition “was more than a change of dynasties; it was a long-term attempt to create a society in conformity to Confucian values and beliefs” (Seth 135). Confucian philosophy is therefore perceived as the end-all and be-all value system behind life in premodern Korea during the Chosŏn era. But even if Confucianism dominated the peninsula for centuries, it was not the only factor influencing Chosŏn’s state politics or religious practices.

In the book Turning Toward Edification, the author Adam Bohnet argues that Confucianism did not dictate all of Korean politics. For example, policies towards foreign migrants were aimed at reinforcing existing social hierarchies rather than observing Confucian ideals. When it comes to foreigners in Korea, they were expected to follow Confucian rules for mourning people, clothing etiquette, how to marry, and how live ‘morally,’ but the state did not require them to change their language or cultural practices to fit the Confucian model (Bohnet 193). This means that there was room for values to develop outside of Confucian thought in how to handle the question of ethnic difference. Chosŏn treated Ming China as the center for all Confucian morality. When they fell the Qing Dynasty rose, and Chosŏn Korea believed itself to be the rightful representative of Chunghwa (embodiment of Chinese civilization through a Confucian view) ideology. However, this did not lead to any privilege for Ming people living in Korea until the 18th century. Before this time, all outsiders were grouped under the same category of status of hyanghwain: “whether for those of Chinese, Jurchen, or Japanese origin,” this special status “provided protection, but not prestige” (124). They could live under Chosŏn protection but were not allowed any special rights. This distinction is important because it shows Chosŏn cared more about maintaining the Korean status system than allow Chinese migrants to be treated as superior because of their Ming origin.

Another example where Confucian influence reached its limit is the re-emergence of Buddhism in the 17^th century. Buddhism lost its preeminent position as a state-sponsored religion in Chosŏn, but the religion found a way to survive. It eventually reappeared in a way that affected the social-political culture of Chosŏn. According to Sung Eun-Kim, “it was inevitable that the abolishment of Buddhism’s traditional relationship with the state would give rise to efforts by Buddhism to become independent, and to search for wealthy sponsors to take the place of the state” (Kim “The Re-emergence" 236). Evidence for Buddhist resurgence is visible in the sudden increase in stele erections organized by Chosŏn elites. Even though Korea was ruled by Confucian philosophy, members of the royal family and elites continually engaged in Buddhist practices. One of these effects Buddhism had on Chosŏn people was seen in the creation and production of different art forms. Elite and scholar paintings were more formal and represented ordinary life while folk paintings were brightly colored, showed spontaneity and contained symbols from Buddhism and shamanism (Seth 220).

Moreover, the exchange of poetry between Chosŏn scholar-officials and Buddhist monks lasted from pre-Chosŏn to the end of the Dynasty. According to Seung Eun-Kim,

… the relationship that was maintained between the monks and the scholar-officials and the literati emerged in specific forms of literary works. Particularly from the beginning of the seventeenth century, introductions to collected works of eminent monks and the texts of the steles for eminent monks were written by famous scholar-officials and literati. Furthermore, the    shared literary works between the two traditions, including exchanged letters and poems, show that monks were part of the greater literary world, and even held membership in poetry    societies. (299)

This crossover of religious doctrines is not widely talked about when referencing Korea’s secularism in the 14-18^th centuries. The Chosŏn kingdom was created on the foundation of Confucian philosophy, but it is important to note that Buddhist influence remained even among the ruling elite class.

The focus of this paper is to call attention to the ways Confucianism's impact was combined with and even conflicted with outside agents of change. There were aspects of Korean society that remained outside of strictly Confucian values and influences such as the social ranking system, the treatment of foreigners, and the support for the reintroduction of Buddhism in Chosŏn. It’s important to know that these forces existed so that we can get a more complete picture of different facets of Korea’s socio-political culture. As much as Chosŏn scholars might have wanted to hide the influence Buddhism still had on the people, scholars today are shedding more light on the reach of Buddhism and Confucianism throughout the Chosŏn period into modern-day Korea. When reading Chosŏn era history it can be easy to assume Confucianism consumes all. Knowing the arguments against this view can help get a better understanding of the reality of what happened in the kingdom’s past.

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In modern Western culture, most agree that certain jobs should be given to the most qualified, regardless of birth or parentage. However, in Chosŏn Korea (1392 - 1910), this was not the case. Chosŏn society “tended to emphasize aristocratic birth rather than bureaucratic skill and moral stature” (Kim, 3). Although Chosŏn society was largely governed by Confucianism, a Chinese philosophy that emphasized ability over birth and “idealized the Confucian prescription of employing men of talent,” many Chosŏn Koreans still overlooked merit in favor of inheritance (Kim, 3).

Interestingly, the secondary status groups, people who were ranked below the elite yangban class in the social hierarchy, relied on both lineage and merit. For these groups, which include the muban (military officials), chungin (technical specialists), sŏŏl (illegitimate children of concubines), hyangni (clerks), and northern elites, “heredity remained the indispensable feature in determining status.” However, because “the bureaucracy, in fact, was the institution in which achievement and merit could most affect the social hierarchy,” the secondary status groups used their employment in the government bureaucracy to gain upward mobility in the social hierarchy and secure their status (Hwang, 27).

To become a member of the muban early in the Chosŏn dynasty, men from non-yangban status groups could take the mukwa, or the military examination. By passing, they could raise their status by becoming military officials. Military officials and yangban families intermarried, but by the early 17th century, they separated into different groups. Certain muban families married only within their class and “monopolized” the top military posts. Simply put, the lower status men “took advantage of the increasing accessibility of the mukwa military exam and military posts to gain a measure of upward mobility” (Hwang, 33). Initially, lower status men were able to elevate their status through merit by passing the mukwa military exam to the point where they could marry with yangban, but later they secured their status using their lineage later in the Chosŏn era by marrying exclusively within their own group. 

The sŏŏl group had an ambivalent relationship with ascriptive status, social status acquired from birth. Although their fathers were of higher, yangban status, their mothers were their secondary wives (or concubines) and therefore women of non-yangban backgrounds. This pedigree doomed them to a lower social status because they were considered “illegitimate.” This meant that all descendants of concubines were socially ruined because no one wanted to marry them and they were legally excluded from the highest rungs of the civil bureaucracy (Hwang, 34). The sŏŏl group was unhappy with this system and sought to “be recognized as members of the yangban elite” since they descended from yangban fathers (Kim, 15). To protest their lack of yangban privileges and inability to participate in the civil bureaucracy, the sŏŏl group quoted Mencius (372-279 BC ), an ancient Confucian philosopher, who argued that kings should “employ men of talents and virtue regardless of their origin” (Kim, 15). Nevertheless, Chosŏn society still limited peoples’ advancement based on birth. Consequently, as the number of sŏŏl grew, so did their discontent. They “became truly forceful” as a result of their “campaigns to escape their legal and societal stigmata” (Hwang, 54). For example, in 1823 they gathered nearly ten thousand signatures on a petition submitted to the king. This resulted in political reforms that came slowly, but, discrimination against the sŏŏl remained until the end of the Chosŏn dynasty (Kim, 12). Ultimately, the sŏŏl had to work against and with their heritage as they fought to gain the privileges that their yangban fathers had in order to overcome the barriers that came with their mother’s lower status and obtain opportunities that merit could grant them in the bureaucracy.

Similar to the sŏŏl, the chungin class also disputed discriminatory practices based on lineage to obtain opportunities through merit. The chungin had their own exam (chapkwa) which allowed them to become technical specialists such as astronomers, painters, medical officials, and so on. Despite their importance, the chungin had a “subordinate standing in the hierarchies of both the bureaucracy and the society” (Hwang, 34). Unlike the sŏŏl, they didn’t really participate in many movements to gain privileges for their status group, “possibly because the number of technical specialists was relatively small” (Kim, 22). Nevertheless, in 1851, the chungin organized a movement against the discriminatory policy that kept the chungin from prestigious positions. The chungin reasoned against this policy by “[emphasizing] merit and talent, rather than pedigree” (Kim, 22). However, they didn’t hesitate to put forth their prestigious ancestry as another justification, claiming that they “originated from the pure scholar official class” (Kim, 23). 

The elites from the northern Py’ŏngan province also argued for meritocracy when faced with discrimination. The origin of discriminatory practices against northern elites is somewhat unknown but according to Paek Kyonghae (1765–1842), a P’yŏngan literatus, regional discrimination rooted itself in the social environment during the Chosŏn dynasty (Kim, 27). Unfortunately for the northern elites, this meant that they were “effectively barred northerners from obtaining prestigious positions” despite the fact that this policy “contradicted the Neo-Confucian prescription for a meritocracy” (Kim, 27). Eventually, they grew sick and tired of discriminatory practices and took advantage of reforms that improved life for other secondary status groups. In 1823, northern elites organized themselves to collectively protest against the unfair policies and in their argument, “invoked the Confucian principle of meritocracy” (Kim, 32). 

In an ideal Confucian society, meritocracy would be celebrated over aristocracy. On the other hand, Chosŏn was far from an ideal Confucian society and unfortunately for the secondary status group, factors out of their control, such as heritage, often kept them from equal opportunities. Overall, something that all of these groups had in common was their intent to elevate their status based on meritocratic achievement. Whether or not they used their prestigious lineage to justify their calling for a better social standing depended on the group and the situation. In the end, the struggle to climb the ladder of social hierarchy demonstrates the neverending endeavor for better opportunities in Chosŏn society.

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Towards the end of the sixteenth century, feudal Japan, unified under its leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi, invaded Chosŏn Korea in 1592. The resulting Imjin War was a conflict on a uniquely monumental scale, entailing hundreds of thousands of combatants. It also marked a turning point in the geopolitical situation in East Asia. The massive force of Japanese ashigaru (foot soldiers) and their leading samurai cut down droves of unprepared Chosŏn soldiers, and occupied large swaths of the Korean peninsula. Despite this initial success, the Japanese war machine soon ground to a halt, with Ming China also joining the conflict to aid their Korean allies. Interrupted only by a short period of negotiation, the Imjin War ended after the Japanese withdrew their troops from Korea in 1598.

On the eve of the Imjin War, the Chosŏn government was put to the ultimate test. Open threats by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and overall hostility from the Japanese government had already led to Chosŏn being wary of a potential invasion. It was this pivotal moment where a capable leader would be expected to channel Korea’s resources into an effective defense in depth that could hold back the coming storm. King Sŏnjo proved woefully unfit for the task at hand. The Chosŏn government at the time was beset with extreme factionalism that the weak Sŏnjo could do little to rectify. The two main factions, known as the Easterners (Tongin) and the Westerners (Sŏin), bickered endlessly over the correct Neo-Confucian interpretations of the classical texts. Their rivalry hindered a streamlined policy of defense against the looming Japanese threat (Wagner 1-4). The resulting preparations for warfare were pitiful: the timorous Korean government’s construction of land fortifications was limited in scope and crudely built (Kim 18). There was no attempt to modernize the Korean army’s weapons; the adoption of muskets would only come about after the Japanese demonstrated its effectiveness in mass slaughter. The appointment of civil service officials to military positions was another unfortunate blunder, as it was commonly believed that knowledge of the Classics superseded tactical experience in the heat of battle (Wagner 18). The officers on the front-lines in turn proved to be more indicative of factional corruption than military competence. The collapse of the Chosŏn defense in the initial stages of the war would accentuate these glaring problems with Korea’s martial policy.

It would not be fair to put all of the blame on the reigning monarch in Chosŏn, as the Korean court was guilty of these sins as a whole. However, King Sŏnjo was the ultimate person of authority that could conceivably address these deep-rooted issues directly. His weak and debilitated performance as a leader indicated his inability to properly reconcile the national interest of Chosŏn with the squabbling Easterner and Westerner cliques. Indeed, when King Sŏnjo was forced to flee his capital after the Japanese laid waste to the southern half of the Korean peninsula in 1592, he composed a poem that encapsulated his failure to quell the factional strife that had ruined his small nation. 

As I wail to the moon over the border mountain, / The winds of Amnok [Yalu] wave pierce my bowels for aye; / O, my courtiers, do not say again / East or West from today!

(Ha 2)

By July of 1592, the Japanese had already abandoned any thought of invading China and were focused on consolidating their gains in Korea (Hitoshi 104-111). It was here when the first confrontation between the Ming and the Japanese occurred, with General Zu Chengxun leading a combined force of his Chinese troops from the Liaodong province and Chosŏn government troops against Japanese-occupied Pyongyang. The resulting battle was an unmitigated disaster, with Zu Chengxun barely escaping with his life and the sole Chinese presence in Korea being routed by Japanese forces (Turnbull 124-126).  Although Zu Chengxun bitterly blamed the Koreans for the defeat, there is ample reason to disregard this, as Chinese generals were notorious for assigning blame to the Koreans when they suffered defeat to avoid punishment. It would take more than four months for Ming forces to set foot again in Chosŏn to contend with the Japanese.

Nevertheless, King Sŏnjo saw the value in using Ming soldiers to bolster the Korean war effort. His own Korean government troops had been defeated time and time again by the more experienced and well-equipped Japanese. His continuous petitions to the Ming court for aid eventually bore fruit: additional Ming forces were sent to the Korean peninsula, partly because of Sŏnjo’s exaggeration of the Japanese threat against China (Yeon 523). However, by this point, the Japanese had already become bogged down and were experiencing difficulties inland because of a new kind of Korean resistance.

The Korean righteous armies, known as ǔibyŏng, were bands of guerilla fighters that took a very different approach to the war. In contrast to the Korean government troops that confronted the Japanese army directly, these civilian volunteers focused upon disrupting supply lines and ambushing foraging parties. These raids even extended into attacks on enemy strongholds within Chosŏn, with their efforts frustrating the overall offensive (Hawley 291-292).  Despite the fact that over half of the peninsula was under Japanese control, its occupation was tenuous due to the severe logistical difficulty of supplying more than a hundred thousand troops in a foreign land. These problems were exacerbated due to constant harassment by these Korean irregular troops, which Hideyoshi referred to as the ikki rebel forces (Hur, “The Politics of Food and Governance in the Imjin War”). By 1593, Hideyoshi’s goal of subjugating Chosŏn was already in doubt.

It was in January when the Ming Chinese arrived in significant numbers, with thirty thousand fresh Ming troops, headed by General Li Rusong. This massive force, assisted by a few Chosŏn regiments, sought a rematch at Pyongyang, where an intense battle ensued. Although the Ming–Korean forces penetrated the outer walls, the Japanese inflicted severe casualties on the allied forces and continued to put up a ferocious defense. General Li, shocked by the number of losses, ordered a withdrawal of his men and sent a secret message to the Japanese stating that he would let them evacuate without a fight (Gale 161). Later that night, the Japanese left Pyongyang, and the city was retaken.

It is important to note Ming China’s reluctance to commit to an all-out fight against the Japanese invaders. Time and time again, their conduct would demonstrate that they were more interested in pushing them back to the south than eliminating them entirely. This was partly because of China’s economic instability, poor weather, and supply issues of their own (Hawley 303-305). More importantly however, it was also recognized that the Japanese were already losing grasp on their conquered territory. Rather than needlessly waste Chinese lives, they hoped that the enemy could be induced to retreat through a show of force. The Koreans, of course, were deeply irritated by this, and constantly worried that the Chinese were not as dedicated as them to destroying the enemy.

Why then, were the Koreans so generous with their praise to Ming China in official documents? The answer is because of the underlying power structures that defined their diplomatic relationship. Chosŏn Korea was a tributary state to the Ming empire, and received safety and security in exchange for acknowledging the mighty Celestial Kingdom as the pinnacle of civilization. Appealing to China as an honorable and all-powerful empire was Korea’s ultimate political strategy during the late sixteenth century (Wang 246-247). To openly disparage their closest ally was thus not an option. Instead, King Sŏnjo and his fellow courtiers gritted their teeth and continued to cajole the Ming to be more aggressive in the fight against the Japanese barbarians. Although Ming involvement steadily increased from 1592 to 1598, its role in changing the tide of war was ultimately secondary. It was staunch Korean resistance, first and foremost, that was the most pivotal in damaging the logistical capabilities of the Japanese occupation.

The war was not only limited to land. In fact, the greatest military victories that Choson achieved was through its navy, particularly under the command of the famous admiral Yi Sun-sin. Despite the Japanese enjoying superiority in pitched land battles, the Korean navy proved to be much more effective at sea due to their modernized strategy of distanced combat. The development of advanced naval artillery allowed the Koreans to concentrate cannon fire on the enemy from afar, and stay relatively safe. The Japanese conception of naval warfare was considerably more medieval, and depended on close combat via boarding parties (Hawley 204-206). The Korean panoksŏn (board-roofed ships) and kŏbuksŏn (turtle ships) were the most advanced battleships of the East Asian naval sphere and greatly outclassed their Japanese counterparts.

Under Admiral Yi, the small Korean navy won a string of naval victories in 1592 against Japanese ships venturing into the Yellow Sea at Okpo, Sach’ŏn, and Tang’p’o, without the loss of a single vessel. It was then when Hideyoshi ordered his daimyos to pool their naval resources and completely eliminate the Korean navy for good. The momentous battle would take place at Hansan Island, where Yi found himself facing a numerically superior Japanese force of seventy-three warships, headed by the daimyo Wakizaka Yasaharu. The cunning Korean admiral rearranged his battle line into his famous crane-wing’s formation, which capitalized on the power of his naval artillery. Nearly all the Japanese ships were smashed to pieces, with Yasaharu’s fleet being completely decimated. Following the disaster, the horrified Hideyoshi ordered all naval operations to cease for good (Turnbull 55-78).

These outstanding victories by Yi occurred in tandem with the terrible losses that were taking place on land in 1592. It's important to emphasize that these were not merely flashy tactical victories that boosted Korean morale. Rather, they were a blow to the very core of the Japanese war effort. The initial invasion of the peninsula had certainly been tremendously successful, but after months of fighting, provisions began to dwindle. Keeping over a hundred thousand soldiers well fed and supplied proved an exceptionally difficult task, especially with the involvement of guerilla resistance movements inland. Korean naval dominance added yet another problem for the Japanese, as it prevented the resupply of their forces through the Yellow Sea. The Korean prime minister Yu Sŏngnyong recognized the value of this achievement, stating:

The Japanese had now taken Pyongyang, but they did not dare advance any farther without first receiving reinforcements via the Yellow Sea. Thanks to this one operation led by Yi Sun-Sin, such reinforcements would never arrive. By denying their navy entrance to the Yellow Sea, Commander Yi effectively cut off one arm of the Japanese advance … Indeed, it must have been an act of divine providence.

(Hawley 237)

 

Hideyoshi had not anticipated this, as he no doubt expected the easy vanquishing of the Chosŏn navy, just as he had done to their army in 1592. His soldiers would now face two critical threats to their logistics, without which an occupation would be impossible: the ǔibyŏng armies that harassed the inland supply routes, and Admiral Yi’s panoksŏns and kŏbuksŏns that thrashed supply ships coming into the Yellow Sea. Faced with these overwhelming problems, it is not surprising that the Japanese pursued efforts for negotiation by 1593.

King Sŏnjo on the other hand, achieved little. He failed to prepare the nation adequately for the brutal assault on his kingdom. He failed to unify his own court and fled the capital when the Japanese swarmed through his own country. His only accomplishments were his desperate calls for help, whether it was to Ming China, or to the Buddhist warrior monks that his own government had persecuted for centuries (Haboush 53–54). The war was not won by the Korean state, but rather the Korean people themselves. Far from becoming subservient to Hideyoshi like many of his other defeated foes, they resisted his conquest and fought back against the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world at the time.

The enemy army did not melt away immediately. The Japanese, after all, were not willing to go quietly and wished to save face in the wake of their stalled offensive. By 1593, Hideyoshi was forced to reassess his goals. It was now certain beyond a doubt that Chosŏn could not be fully conquered. However, he hoped that Japan could still obtain some concessions from his initial gains. After intense deliberation and negotiation that lasted several years, he agreed to a settlement in 1596 with the Ming–Chosŏn coalition under the conditions that he would be granted a special royal title by the Ming. As a show of gratitude, Hideyoshi pulled the bulk of his force to a select few fortresses in the south (Hur, Works in English on the Imjin War 69). Despite King Sŏnjo and his court being loath to negotiate with the hated Japanese, especially when the enemy hadn’t even left the Chosŏn territory, Ming China dictated most of the diplomatic correspondence due to their higher status, and were eager for the war to come to a swift end. Their hopes would soon be dashed.

When the Ming envoys came to Osaka to grant Hideyoshi the official title of ‘King of Japan,’ all seemed to be going as planned. A ceremony of investiture was carried out, with him receiving lavish regalia and an official seal from the Ming emperor. In this way, the Ming hoped to grant him an ultimately meaningless title to appease Hideyoshi and end the war at the least cost to themselves (Xing 5030-5032). Following the ritual, a letter was sent ordering that he fully remove his troops from Chosŏn now that he was an official vassal of Ming China.

Hideyoshi was furious. He had understood that the Korean peninsula would not be his and had long since abandoned any idea of invading China. Through a long series of negotiations he had slowly whittled down his demands to something that barely resembled his original ambitions. By going through the process of investiture, he had hoped that the Ming would gracefully exit the conflict and allow him to continue to press the Koreans for concessions (Hwang and Matsuda 321-322). It now became clear that the Ming and the Koreans were not going to give him anything, with the supposed title being a complete sham. Hideyoshi immediately ordered a second invasion of the Korean peninsula. His main goals would be twofold: to enact vengeance against Chosŏn, and obtain the concessions he so desired to exit the conflict under the guise that he had won.

The Japanese returned in 1597 with the explicit understanding that Korea could not be conquered. Hideyoshi accordingly ordered his troops to focus upon controlling the southern provinces of Chosŏn rather than attempting to retake the capital. In order to stave off the logistical problems that had plagued the first invasion, he hoped that his forces could live off the land and secure food from the Korean population (Hawley 423-424). To do this, he would have to quell the guerilla resistance, an objective he pursued by ordering his soldiers to be even more brutal. Mass atrocities were carried out, including the slaughter of entire villages and the collection of Korean noses as proof of his daimyos’ contributions to the war effort (Hur, “Atrocity and Genocide”). Despite the devastation that the Japanese inflicted, Korean resistance continued, with the terror only fomenting more anger towards the invaders. The land campaign of 1597, in turn, was marked with particular savagery and violence.

Hideyoshi also demanded the destruction of the Korean navy, which had been so effective during the early invasions of 1592. This began with the carefully plotted sabotage of the capable Yi Sun-sin. Using a double agent, the Japanese damaged Yi’s reputation and used the chaos of Korean factional politics to turn the government against him (Hawley 409-417). He was imprisoned and tortured. The court replaced him with the incompetent Wŏn-Kyun, who proved grossly inadequate as a naval tactician. At the Battle of Ch’il’-ilch’ŏnnyang, almost the entire Korean navy was decimated, which took the lives of all the senior naval commanders including Wŏn-Kyun himself. King Sŏnjo and his court had no choice but to reappoint Yi Sun-sin to high command. In the subsequent Battle of Myŏngnyang, Admiral Yi used the remnants of his naval force, numbering only thirteen warships, to fight a last stand against one hundred thirty-three Japanese vessels. The Japanese suffered a humiliating defeat after being unable to break through the Korean battle line, and were consequently blocked from entering the Yellow Sea for the rest of the war (Hawley 455-463).

            What did the Ming think of the second invasion? For starters, they were astonished and outraged that Hideyoshi would break the truce. They immediately ordered a battalion of fresh troops under the command of General Yang Hao to Chosŏn to deal with the barbarian threat once and for all. The arrival of Ming reinforcements in even greater numbers forced the Japanese to retreat further south. In late December 1597, the entirety of the Ming force, coupled with a few Chosŏn divisions, advanced upon the stronghold of Ulsan (Swope 168-195). The defenders put up a desperate fight, using their musketeers and the cover of pouring rain to make a siege untenable. Even after wave after wave assaulted the walls, the Japanese managed to hold back the combined attack until Yang Hao gave up and lifted the siege.

Hideyoshi approved of his army’s performance. The punishment that he had inflicted upon Chosŏn, particularly in the Chŏlla and Ch’ungch’ong provinces, had upheld Japan’s military strength and honor. However, the obstinate Koreans still refused to give him concessions, whether it was one of their princes as a hostage, or even some loose gifts as a sign of their submission. Faced with his military position slowly becoming weaker and his own health failing him, Hideyoshi ordered an evacuation of his troops in 1598 (Hur, “The Politics of Food and Governance in the Imjin War”). He would die later that year in August. A poem he composed on his deathbed embodied the futility of the war he would never see end.

I am as / The dew which falls, The dew which disappears. / Even Osaka Castle / Is only a dream.

(Hawley 501)

 

Keeping in line with their behavior in 1593, the Chinese were not as willing as the Koreans to pursue the retreating Japanese. From the Ming’s perspective, the Japanese had given up the fight and were returning home. For the Koreans on the other hand, it was not enough that the Japanese were fleeing. They desired revenge, something that could feasibly be carried out by the one force that had proven to be consistently effective throughout the war: Admiral Yi’s navy.

Yi had not been idle following his victory at Myŏngnyang, with him increasing the size of his fleet to roughly a hundred during the later months of 1597 and even playing a supportive role at the Battle of Ulsan through naval bombardment.When the Japanese forces began to evacuate, he attacked their supporting navy with the reluctant aid of Chinese general Chen Lin at Noryang Strait. The combined fleet annihilated the enemy armada, though tragically, Admiral Yi was killed by a Japanese sniper (Haiying 165-203). The Battle of Noryang would be the last major battle of the Imjin War. The rest of the occupying force would limp back to Japan, never to return to Korea again.

In seven years of war, the Koreans had endured much hardship. The violence and chaos brought upon by the Japanese invasions of 1592 to 1598 wreaked havoc upon the small nation-state. And yet, they had survived. The Chosŏn dynasty under King Sŏnjo was kept intact, and his countrymen had successfully pushed back the enemy into the sea.

Japan, meanwhile, achieved nothing. Their conquest yielded little in terms of material wealth or political gains. Hideyoshi’s demand for concessions went unanswered by the Koreans, who refused to grant him even the most insignificant forms of tribute that he could use to justify the bloody conflict. The Imjin War weakened Hideyoshi’s regime, with his death only marking the beginning of the end. His son, Hideyori, would not live long. Following the return of Japanese troops to the mainland, a rival daimyo by the name of Tokugawa Ieyasu murdered Hideyori and established himself as the ruling shogun of Japan (Eisenstadt).

The outcome of the war is then clear: Korea, with the assistance of the Ming, successfully defended their kingdom against Japan, which was ultimately forced to withdraw. The logistical difficulties that Japan faced were compounded by local guerilla resistance on land and by the Korean navy at sea. These factors alone were able to stop the Japanese advance. The addition of the Ming forces accelerated the decline of the Japanese occupation and aided the Koreans in pushing the Japanese out of Chosŏn. Although Hideyoshi made the order to evacuate in 1598, the war had already become a lost cause far earlier. It was this fiasco that would earn the conflict’s name in Japan: the Dragon’s Head-Serpent’s Tail campaign, alluding to the conflict’s initial gains that ended in abject failure.

While only spanning seven years, this period captured the Korean consciousness and would be remembered as the first time that Japan had invaded its shores. It would not be the last. Over three hundred years later, in the nineteenth century, Imperial Japan made another attempt to control the Korean peninsula, culminating in Korea’s occupation as a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. Although this period is undeniably more prevalent in the minds of modern Koreans today, the 1592 to 1598 invasions are nevertheless an important episode in the tumultuous relationship between these two countries. It is apt then, that the Imjin War is becoming more well-known in English language circles, and it is the hope of the author that more people choose to engage with its history.

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This paper was originally published in Korean as "Koryŏ wa Chosŏn ŭi pyŏnhwa mit chisoksŏng," in Han’guk chungsesahoe, eds., Koryo wangjo wa 21 segi: K’oria mirae yusan (Seoul: Kyungin munhwasa, 2019).

Introduction

The effort to identify and explain elements of change and continuity has long been a central task for historians. How we understand change and continuity helps us to construct models of interpretation, and at the same time is also informed by the models we choose. We are all painfully aware of how the imperialist powers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chose to emphasize change in their societies and continuity in the societies they colonized. We also know that the Stalinist version of Marxist historiography held that progressive change was necessary and inevitable in all societies. In the case of south Korea, we saw the rise from the 1960s of the internal development theory which refuted the stagnation theory of the apologists for Japanese colonization and sought to demonstrate that Korean history featured a series of changes along a path of linear progress that would have led to modernization had it not been for imperialist intervention in the nineteenth century.

More recently a new generation of scholars working on Korea, influenced by what has come to be known as cultural studies, have begun to argue for a sudden and radical change in the form of an epistemic break (인식체계의 단절) that happened in the late nineteenth century. These scholars are almost all working on twentieth and early twenty first century Korea. However well this approach may serve their purposes in deconstructing various twentieth century discourses, it leaves those of us working on pre-1876 Korea feeling as though we and our research have been thoroughly “othered” (타자화) and rendered largely irrelevant to the effort to understand and explain today’s. Western historians working on earlier Korea have responded to this in a number of ways. Some of us have opted to try to undermine the notion of a radical epistemic break by showing that there are interesting similarities between aspects of more recent and earlier Korean historical experiences.¹ Others have begun to question the way in which the “modern” has been privileged as the telos of history in historical scholarship.² While these interesting issues suggest how the study of pre-1876 Korea is changing, to the extent that they interrogate the “modern” and raise questions about historical time, they are also relevant to how we evaluate the significance of the change from Koryŏ to Chosŏn, and how we understand Koryŏ and Chosŏn within the context of world history.

For purposes of the topic that has been assigned to me, “Change and Continuity between Koryŏ and Chosŏn”, I find it necessary to turn back to the notion of historical time that framed my book, The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty. In that study, I used Fernand Braudel’s conceptualization of historical time that recognizes plural temporalities (short-term event, intermediate duration conjuncture, and long durée) but emphasizes the long durée as the underlying structuring element that enables us to distinguish fundamental historical change from simple events or trends that can be seen in the conjecture that may or may not prove to be enduring. I found Braudel’s approach appealing for two reasons. One, he rejected the positivist linear conception of historical time and emphasis on the event. Two, his emphasis on the long durée allowed for consideration of the kind of underlying, elemental change that is hard to detect without looking over several centuries of history.³ Here I also feel constrained to point out how long durée is translated in Korean. The usual rendering is changgi chisok 장기지속; that captures the emphasis Braudel placed on certain structural conditions such as the natural environment. But it seems to disregard the important point that for Braudel the focus on the long durée allows us to perceive fundamental long-term change. Perhaps a better translation of long durée for my purposes would be changgi chŏk pyŏnhwa 장기적 변화.

Many scholars have understood my work to emphasize continuity over change, apparently because I took issue with the “new scholar-official” hypothesis and argued instead that the old Koryŏ aristocracy continued to occupy positions of power and prestige well into the new dynasty. But one of the points I was trying to make in the Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty is that the institutional reforms that accompanied the founding of the Chosŏn resulted in the creation of a new socio-political order that, while it represented the working out of the tensions and contradictions of the early Koryŏ system, constituted fundamental long-term change of the kind that can only be fully appreciated perceived over the long durée.

In this paper, I will begin with an overview of what I perceive to be the ways in which the early Chosŏn differed from the Koryŏ. But the main focus of the paper will be on the question of how we understand the Koryŏ and, more importantly, the Chosŏn in the context of world history. For that purpose, I will be drawing from the scholarship of the “California School” of historians and historical sociologists. As many of you are aware, the California School, as seen in the work of such scholars as Kenneth Pomeranz and R Bin Wong among others, has presented a serious challenge to Eurocentric interpretations of history by arguing that up until the nineteenth century, there was no significance difference between the economies of China and Western Europe. Both areas were struggling with problems related to population growth: shortages of land intensive crops and agrarian raw materials such as foodstuffs, wood used for both construction and fuel, and plant and animal fibers used for clothing. The initial rise of industrial capitalism in England was not the result of some uniquely Western process of historical development but rather was the outcome of what might be termed a historical accident, the fortuitous convergence of such factors as easily available sources of alternative fuel in coal, access to the resources of the “new world”, and a labor force of slaves from Africa that could be utilized to exploit those new resources.

The comparative nature of the California School’s research has led to an intense engagement with world history, a field that has emerged and grown rapidly in tandem with the process of globalization that has accelerated over the past three-four decades. Various interpretive schemes have been advanced for world history, but perhaps the most widely used one for historians of Asia divides historical time into pre-modern, early modern, and modern/contemporary. Several of the most prominent members of the California School argue that Ming and Qing China were “early modern” societies; they are joined by historians of India and Japan, who also use “early modern” for those countries’ histories in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This is reflected not only in the research these scholars do, but also in world history courses taught at the college, high school, and even middle school level. This situation presents us with a challenge: how do we depict Korea within the context of world history?

II. From Koryŏ to Chosŏn

Over the past few decades, there have been numerous studies dealing with various aspects of Koryŏ and Chosŏn politics, society, and thought. Most of those, however, have given us a more detailed and nuanced understanding without advancing major revisions of the generally accepted views of Koryŏ and Chosŏn. For the most part, therefore, I will focus here on what seem to me to be the mainstream interpretations of what might regard as the mature Koryŏ and Chosŏn systems.

A. Status Systems

The Koryŏ status system, as seen in eleventh and early twelfth century Koryŏ, was made up of four major groups: the central aristocracy or munbŏl, which was dominated by a number of civil branch descent groups such as the Kyŏngwŏn Yi, the Haeju Ch’oe, the Chŏngan Im, the Kyŏngju Kim, the Munhwa Yu, the P’apyŏng Yun and others; the hyangni, whom I regard as a local aristocracy because of their origins as local strongmen of the Later Three Kingdoms period, their hereditary nature, their high degree of autonomy, and their guaranteed access to positions in their central government through the examination system and other means;⁴ the commoners, mostly peasants but also merchants and craftsmen; and the mean people, mostly persons of servile status (nobi) or of despised occupations. One of the features of the Koryŏ status system, as seen over three or four centuries, was the ability of certain descent groups to maintain themselves at the top of society; another was, the first feature notwithstanding, was a kind of limited social mobility in which persons of non-munbŏl origins, hyangni and others, were able to rise to high office and, in some cases, establish themselves as members of the munbŏl. The Koryŏ status system underwent a number of challenges, during both the period of military rule from 1170 to 1258 and the period of Koryŏ’s incorporation in the Mongol empire from 1259 through 1368. Both those periods saw the rise of elements of elements of low social status, but in the final analysis the nucleus of the ruling stratum remained descent groups of munbŏl origins.⁵ Simply put, the Koryŏ status system, despite challenges and fluctuations over the centuries, was made up of four major groups: a central aristocracy composed primarily of civil bureaucrats; a local aristocracy (hyangni) made up of people who were descendants of the local strongmen of the Silla-Koryŏ transition; a common stratum mostly of peasants; and a servile stratum.

There is, of course, some controversy over the Chosŏn status system. The conventional view, as advanced by scholars such as Yi T’aejin and Han Yŏngu, is that the late Koryŏ period saw the rise of a new social group, commonly called by modern scholars as the sinjin sadaebu or similar terms, who were locally-based medium and small landlords using as their ideology Cheng-Zhu Learning (commonly referred to as Zhu Xi Learning or Nature and Principle Learning in Korea). This new group, it is argued, overthrew the late Koryŏ ruling stratum, made up of centrally-based absentee large landlords who were adherents of Buddhism. The outcome was the advent of a new social system, defined in the early Chosŏn legal codes as one of free and non-free people (yangchŏn) whose status was determined in terms of their duties toward the state. These scholars contend that the four status group system of yangban/sajok, middle people (chungin), commoners, and servile people came into being in the mid-/late Chosŏn period. Other scholars, such as Yi Sŏngmu, have argued that, early Chosŏn legal codes notwithstanding, the yangban had already become a distinct and privileged social group by the late fourteenth century and that the early Chosŏn saw the beginnings of the formation of the four status group system.⁶

I think that there is no doubt that the status system was in some degree of flux immediately after the founding of the Chosŏn. Nonetheless, if we are to compare the mature Koryŏ system with the mature Chosŏn system, the pansangje of the mid-dynastic period, there are a number of features that command our attention. One similarity is that there was a four-group status system in both dynasties. Another is that the highest elites were civil official descent groups. And, of course, the two lowest status groups were commoners and servile people. But a major difference was the second group—whereas in the Koryŏ the second group, made up mostly of hyangni, comprised a stratum of local aristocrats socially qualified to be a source of new members of the central ruling stratum, in the Chosŏn the second group, or chungin, were excluded from access to the highest levels of the bureaucracy. The story behind this is complicated, but basically it signifies the long-term victory of the central bureaucratic yangban/sajok as the dominant social stratum. This can be seen in the pŏllyŏl/kyŏnghwa sejok of the late Chosŏn. Ch’a Changsŏp’s analysis of the late Chosŏn pŏllyŏl indicates that the dominant descent groups of that period included the Andong Kim, P’ap’yŏng Yu, Hwangnyŏ Min, Kwangsan Kim, Namyang Hong, and the Kyŏngju Yi. My own analysis of the early Chosŏn ruling elites shows that those descent groups were also at the very top of the political elites. Furthermore, my examination indicates that most of those descent groups had been major members of the Koryŏ munbŏl elites from the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

There are two recent studies that require consideration here. One is Han Yŏngu’s extensive examination of the graduates of the Chosŏn period civil service examinations, which lays out clearly many examples of men of non-elite origins passing the examinations and, in some cases, even rising to high offices. Professor Han concludes that the Chosŏn civil service examination constituted a ladder of social mobility.⁷ The implication is, as suggested by the term social mobility, that the Chosŏn status system was, unlike conventional views that stressed domination, if not monopoly, by the hereditary yangban stratum, open to upward mobility. The other is Martina Deuchler’s recent book, Under the Ancestors’ Eyes: Kinship, Status, and Locality in Pre-modern Korea,⁸ which contends that elite Korean kinship groups maintained power from the Silla through the late Chosŏn period. What are we to make of the radically different views of these two authorities on pre-modern Korea?

I think it important to note two issues here. One is that recruitment of new officials of non-central official backgrounds was not a new phenomenon of the Chosŏn. To the contrary it was a central feature of the Koryŏ system; although our conventional understanding is that such recruitment was limited to members of the Koryŏ local aristocracy (hyangni), we cannot rule out the possibility that men from commoner backgrounds may have also passed the Koryŏ examinations. The second is that the kind of aristocratic continuity that Professor Deuchler notes is hardly unique to Korea. To the contrary, centuries-long aristocratic continuity was a major feature of European history, but was not a phenomenon that precluded the rise of new elements, as seen—for example--in the noblesse de robe of France. Simply put, these two apparently divergent views of Chosŏn society are not as mutually exclusive as they may seem at first glance. The social structures of Koryŏ and Chosŏn, while somewhat different, do not, in my view, display some sort of radical change, except perhaps for status of elite women who, by the seventeenth century, had lost many of the privileges they had enjoyed during the Koryŏ period.

B. Bureaucratic Systems

As seen on paper in the description in the Koryŏsa, the Koryŏ bureaucracy appears to have been a faithful replication of the centralized bureaucratic system of the Tang dynasty. Such appearance notwithstanding, the actual organization and functioning of the Koryŏ political system differed substantially from that of the Tang model. As Pyŏn T’aesŏp and others have shown, a relatively small number of high ranking officials in the Privy Council (재주/도당) were not only responsible for policy formulation, but also exercised control over almost all the other major agencies in the government, including the six boards, the Hallim Academy, and even the Office of the Inspector General (어사대). Furthermore, the Koryŏ system of local administration was also quite different from the Tang model. Whereas the Tang had a regular hierarchy of governors, prefectures and counties, Koryŏ had a somewhat unusual system of local administration. Koryŏ governors were relatively low-ranking officials with minimal staffs and limited authority over prefectures and counties. Furthermore, centrally-appointed magistrates were not posted in the vast majority of Koryŏ’s prefectures and counties, which formed an irregular patchwork in which some prefectures and counties (속군/속현) were subordinated to other control prefectures and counties (영군/영현), an arrangement that reflected the relative power and status of the leading families of each locale, who enjoyed a substantial degree of autonomy in handling local affairs. Below the counties and prefectures were other units, such as the pugok, whose leading families had limits to how high their members could rise in the central bureaucracy. Perhaps the best way to describe the Koryŏ system was that it was based in a “territorial status system.”

Superficially, the Chosŏn central government can perhaps be seen as similar to that of the Koryŏ. There was a body of high-ranking officials that was charged with formulation policy recommendations in the State Council (의정부) and which also, except for the reigns of T’aejong and Sejo, exercised some supervision over the six boards. But a major difference between Koryŏ and Chosŏn was that the practice of giving the high-ranking officials concurrent appointments as the heads of the six boards and other agencies was discontinued. Unlike the Koryŏ, such key offices as the Censorate, the Office of the Inspector General, and the Office of Special Counselors were independent of the State Council and reported directly to the throne. This, in my view, meant that Chosŏn kings, while perhaps not total autocrats, had the potential to exercise significantly greater power than their Koryŏ predecessors. But the greatest difference between Koryŏ and Chosŏn lay in the system of local administration. As the consequence of a series of reforms carried during the late fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries, the new dynasty created a regular hierarchy in which the governors held high rank, had large staffs, and exercised a much more authority over the prefectures and counties. Furthermore, the old system of subordinate and control prefectures and counties was abolished, as were the lower levels of administrations such as the pugok, and centrally appointed magistrates were posted in all prefectures and counties. The outcome was a highly centralized system of bureaucratic rule that was effective in registering the populace for purposes of taxation, military service and corvee labor; the state was even able to relocate thousands of households, some described as prosperous, from the more densely populated southern provinces to the sparsely populated northern provinces. Simply put, whereas the Koryŏ displayed features of a decentralized system of governance, the Chosŏn constituted a very centralized system in which status was determined not by one’s territorial origins but rather by one’s access to positions in the central government.

C. Thought and Culture

Despite the conventional depictions of Koryŏ as a Buddhist society and Chosŏn as a Confucian society, we all know that Confucianism was a significant part of Koryŏ intellectual life and that Buddhism, despite periodic bouts of oppression, remained an important element of Chosŏn religious and cultural life. There is no doubt, nonetheless, that the flourishing of Confucianism in the Chosŏn brought major changes in Korea’s political and social aspects. We can also note that artistic tastes changed from a more aristocratic and refined style in the Koryŏ to a more plain and simple style in the Chosŏn, as seen most clearly in the production of ceramic ware. We can also mention the rise of True View (chin’gyŏng) landscape painting in the mid-Chosŏn period and the genre paintings of such artists and Kim Hongdo and Sin Yunbok in the late Chosŏn.

What interests me for purposes of this paper, however, is the creation in the mid-fifteenth century of the phonetic writing system known as Hunmin chŏngŭm, commonly referred to in the Chosŏn as ŏnmun. Even though literary Sinitic (referred to in the Choson as Chinmun but now known as Hanmun) remained as the form of writing for official, philosophical and most literary works and many scholars relegate ŏnmun to the writing form of women and commoners, it seems to me that ŏnmun gradually became more widely used, even by male elites, as time passed. I have in mind not only the mixed-script (kukhanmun honyong) sijo poetry and ŏnmun narrative fiction such as the Tale of Hong Kiltong, but also such eighteenth and nineteenth century writings such as Hapkangjŏng ka and the Kŏch’ang ka, both written in mixed script, or Pak Chŏngyang’s 1871 P’oswae ilgi, a lengthy description of his trip to Muju beautifully written in the phonetic script. Whereas the Koryŏ period saw the use of such hybrid writing systems as hyangch’al and idu, as well as various text-pointing techniques, (kugyŏl), it wasn’t until the Chosŏn that Koreans developed a genuine phonetic system for writing vernacular Korea. This has to be seen as a major change from Koryŏ culture, one that reflected a new, stronger awareness of Korea’s cultural distinctiveness.

D. Economy

Both Koryŏ and Chosŏn were primarily agrarian economies. There appears to have been some sporadic use of silver-based money in the Koryŏ period and trade with Chinese and Arab merchants calling at the port of Kaegyŏng, but there is little evidence of anything we might see as a flourishing market economy. There was substantial growth in trade and commerce during the Mongol period, but the men who founded the Chosŏn adopted a policy of tight control of the economy and of the suppression of commercial activities, apparently under the influence of the model laid out in the Zhouli (周禮). Early Chosŏn policies notwithstanding, by the end of the fifteenth century private markets began to appear in parts of the country, and, as has been demonstrated by many historians, there was substantial growth in the market economy during the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leading to a substantial degree of monetization of the economy. This came about within the context of increasing agricultural productivity and substantial increase in the population and constitutes a major change from the Koryŏ period.

In sum, despite what appears to be substantial (but not total) continuity in the structure of society between Koryŏ and Chosŏn, in systems of governance, culture, and economy the two dynasties were quite different. Now let me turn to the question of how to assess the significance of these changes, of how we place Korea and particularly Chosŏn in the context of the burgeoning field of world history.

III. Questions of Interpretation

As mentioned earlier, the field of world history has become increasingly important in recent decades and, because of their focus on China, the California School has come to play an important role in the development of world history since at least the 1990s. Most scholars identified as the California School have focused on the “early modern” 근대초기, arguing that Ming and Qing China constituted “early modern” societies. There is one other alternative view advanced by another member of the California School, Jack Goldstone, who remains skeptical of the teleological implications of the “early modern” model and argues instead for an “advanced organic society” 고도 개발 유기사회. In this section I will consider how Chosŏn might be seen within both models.

A: Chosŏn as Early Modern

Typical efforts to describe the “early modern” include: 1) the period immediately prior to and leading to industrialization; 2) a period that saw the rise of centralized bureaucratic states; 3) a period that witnessed an increase in commerce and of global trade; 4) the rise of vernacular language in literature; and 5) fundamental religious change. Perhaps the most comprehensive and thoughtful effort to date is that set forth by Kenneth Pomeranz. Pomeranz is somewhat leery of attempts to apply the “early modern” can be applied across the world without taking into consideration temporal differences (or time scales, as he terms them), but he provides an extensive list of criteria for the “early modern”. the key features of the “early modern” include: 1) population growth; 2) increased commerce and overseas trade; 3) rise of centralized bureaucratic states; 4) upwardly mobile literate groups; 5) new kinds of organized lay piety; 6) growing use of print; 7) production of maps; 8) enumeration of plant and animal species; and 9) cataloguing the diversity of human beings.⁹ The question here is how the Chosŏn compares to Pomeranz’ list?

Let me begin with the question of population increase. Most scholars dealing with Chosŏn era demographic trends estimate that there was an increase in population of 200% to 300% between the early 15^th century and mid-18^th century.¹⁰ These estimates show steady growth through the 15^th and 16^th centuries, followed by a decline in registered population in the wake the Japanese and Manchu invasions of the late 15^th and 16^th centuries and renewed population growth through the mid-18^th century. The overall trend was an increase in population that suggests that Chosŏn was following the same trend as other countries identified as “early modern”.

As noted earlier, scholars have demonstrated that there was significant growth in the Chosŏn market economy during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Furthermore, studies have shown that Chosŏn played an important role in the triangular trade among Korea, China, and Japan during that period, profiting from the import of silver from Japan and the re-export of silks from China.¹¹ Given the importance silver in overseas trade in the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, we can perhaps argue that Chosŏn was at least tangentially involved in the world trading system of that time.

It is abundantly clear to me that the Chosŏn constituted a strong centralized bureaucratic system not only in comparison to its predecessor the Koryŏ dynasty but also in comparison to Western Europe, where similarly strong centralized bureaucratic systems did not emerge until the seventeenth century. From the late 14^th century through the mid-15^th century, reformers implements a profound restructuring of local administration, replacing the locally autonomous Koryŏ system with one in which provincial governors enjoyed broad powers and all the kingdom’s prefectures and counties were put under the direct control of centrally appointed magistrates, who carried out comprehensive land and population surveys, required all inhabitants to carry identification tags that specified names and places of residence and even carried out the force relocation of thousands of commoner households from the southern reaches of the peninsula to the sparsely population north. This may be the strongest area for which we can argue that Chosŏn was “early modern,” although there is reason to think that the Chosŏn state was much less efficient in later centuries. One instance of this was the way in which land surveys (yangan) which the Chosŏn legal code (Kyŏngguk taejŏn) called for conducting every twenty years were only carried out sporadically in the late Chosŏn, and only three times on a kingdom-wi8de basis during the second half of the dynasty.

There was increasing use of print media in the Chosŏn, at least in contrast to what we know about the Koryŏ.¹² There were numerous instances of state-sponsored printing projects, including the late 15^th Kyŏngguk taejŏn, morality handbooks such Samgang haengsil to of the 15^th century, the Sok samgang haengsil to of the 16^th century, and the Tongguk sinsok samgang haengsil to of the 17^th century, as well as private printing of such handbooks like Kim An’guk’s early 16^th century Kyŏngmin p’yŏn or Song Siyŏl’s Kyenyŏ sŏ of the 17^th century. And we must take into consideration the rise of commercial printing enterprises around the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th centuries in such locales as the capital city, Chŏnju, and Ansŏng.¹³

The production of maps was an important enterprise for the Chosŏn state. The early 15^th century Kangni-do has been acclaimed for its surprisingly accurate depictions of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Both Han Young Woo and Gari Ledyard have devoted much effort to showing the sophistication of Chosŏn period maps, especially in the 18^th century.¹⁴

Chosŏn dynasty Koreans also engaged in the cataloguing of plant and animal species. From early on, literati interested in hyangyak 향약 鄕藥(local medicinal botanicals) had compiled lists of medically useful plants.¹⁵ The Sejong sillok chiriji also detailed local products from each county and prefectures throughout the country, although the primary motive was probably less science than efficient taxation. We can also note is the Chasan ŏbo, Chŏng Yakchŏn’s taxonomy of sea life which he compiled while he was in exile on Hŭksan (Chasan) Island in the early 19^th century.

The rise of the vernacular is often cited as an important feature of “early modern” Europe as intellectuals began to turn away from the more-or-less exclusive use of Latin to write in vernacular languages as seen, for example, in Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German. It seems to me that we can make a strong case for the invention and gradually spreading use of ŏnmun in the Chosŏn period as conforming to the “early modern.”

This brief survey, however, is quite superficial and requires more substantiation. Furthermore, there are important areas in which the Chosŏn doesn’t seem to be “early modern”. One of the key issues for the proponents of the “early modern” is incorporation into the new world-wide maritime trading system. While we may argue that Chosŏn’s trade with China and Japan was indirectly influenced by the maritime trade that arose between Europe and Asia from the 16^th century on, that fact is that Chosŏn was never a direct participant in that system until after the opening of the ports in the late 19^th century. Furthermore, we have to take note of the way in which Chosŏn’s importance in the China-Korea-Japan triangular trade declined significantly after the Qing established direct trading links with Japan in the late 17^th century.¹⁶ Simply put, the importance of overseas trade in Chosŏn, never that great, was in decline from the late 17^th century on.

Although Han Yŏngu has argued for upward social mobility through the examination system and many scholars have contended that the late Chosŏn was a time when the so-called “feudal status system” was collapsing, other scholars—mostly in the West—argue that it was only after the opening of the ports in 1876 that social groups like the chungin began to rise and challenge the *yangban *monopoly on high position and social prestige.

It is also difficult to ascertain the appearance of an organized lay piety in the Chosŏn. Prior to the 19^th century, such a phenomenon may have emerged emerge among believers in Buddhism. We know that lay societies (kyŏlsa) were a prominent feature of Koryŏ era Buddhism, but the current state of research in Buddhism in the Chosŏn period provides no indication of the reappearance of organized lay piety,¹⁷ although there is some indication of the formation of Buddhist lay societies in the mid-19^th century.¹⁸ We can perhaps argue that the development of the underground organizations of the Tonghak movement after the execution of Ch’oe Che-u in 1864 represented the rise of an organized lay piety in Korea,¹⁹ but that, like the new Buddhist lay associations, came very late in the dynasty, right before the opening of the ports in 1876.

This brings us to another important issue in seeing the Choson as “early modern”: the time lags between various elements. Although we can see the rise of a strong centralized bureaucratic system in the early 15^th century and population increase from the 15^th century through the mid-18^th century, significant growth in commercial activity does not appear to have developed until the mid-17^th century, roughly 250 years after the founding of the Chosŏn. Although the *Hunmin chŏngŭm *system for writing vernacular Korea was created in the mid-15^th century, it does appear to have been widely used until the late 18^th or 19^th centuries, and current research provides no evidence for the rise of an organized lay piety until the mid-19^th century. One would assume that there needed to be some sort of temporal convergence among key elements in order to have the kind of synergy that would produce the “early modern” as a distinct new stage of historical development. Pomeranz, in fact, notes in his discussion of the problems of the “early modern”, that unless we find a way to develop multiple but interrelated time scales, we are left with a huge time frame that is inadequate to explain the “early modern”.²⁰ Otherwise we are left with “moments of modernity” that did not eventually develop in to full-fledged “modernity”.²¹ Here we need to think about “time scales”. Rather than conceiving of scales as set classifications of time with distinct beginnings and ends, perhaps it is more useful to think of them as being like the scales 비눌 of fish skin that overlap each other. Such could certainly be the case in the West, where Pomeranz notes that although the steam engine was invented in the late 18^th century and is conventionally used to mark the beginning of a new time, horses and oxen were still widely used in major Western cities all the way into the early 20^th century.²²

It seems to me that the “early modern” as currently conceived is in some ways an awkward fit for Chosŏn era Korea and that any attempt to force the Korean square peg into the “early modern” round hole will inevitably produce serious distortions in our understanding of the Korean past.

B. Chosŏn as an Advanced Organic Society

Is there an alternative approach that challenges the teleological and Eurocentric biases of the “early modern” and that can apply to the Chosŏn? One intriguing possibility is Jack Goldstone’s “advanced organic society.” Goldstone engages in a thorough critique of the “modern”, the “early modern”, as well as the Eurocentric and teleological conceits in which those concepts are based. He notes that such supposed characteristics of the “early modern” as thriving commercial economies and centralized bureaucratic political systems can be found in many places throughout the world over a very long span of time, and yet failed to progress to the “modern”. To explain this, Goldstone developed the idea of the “advanced organic society.” To quote Goldstone ,

“Nonetheless, if there are common social practices to be found among merchants from ancient Assyria to Song China to sixteenth century Europe, it is worth bracketing the issue of transitions to modernity, and simply asking if there is, in fact, some social formation that is extremely widespread c. 1500 and does represent a common stage of political and economic development in world history. I believe that there is, and that it corresponds to what E.A. Wrigley has called the ‘advanced organic societies.’ Wrigley coined this term to point out that, prior to the exploitation of coal for cheap energy, all societies were dependent on organic sources of energy­ biomass from crops that could be converted into muscle power of men and draft animals, and forest wood that could be used for fuel and (as charcoal) for industrial processes. The problem with these organic sources (and with wind and water-power that supplemented them) is that they existed as fixed flows--muscle power from draft animals was limited by how many animals the land could feed, and wood fuel from forests was limited by how fast forests would grow and how much land could be kept out of food cultivation… Thus, although advanced organic societies could grow mightily through exploitation of efficiencies of manufacturing and trade, such societies would inevitably reach a limit to growth when they fully tapped their arable land and forest.”²³

For Goldstone and other California school scholars, the first place to overcome the limits of the advanced organic society was England in the early 19^th century. As discussed earlier, that is seen as having come about almost as a matter of chance, of the fortuitous circumstance of having large and easily accessed deposits of coal near major population centers that allowed the English to make use of non-organic sources of power. That this did not happen in China, for example, was because China’s large deposits of coal in Shanxi lay far way from centers of commercial activity and population density in central and southern China. Hence, the English breakthrough becomes not the universal norm but rather an aberration. The historical mainstream, according to Goldstone, was the “advanced organic society.”²⁴ Goldstone notes that Holland was the most advanced country in Europe in the 17^th century but had fallen behind the rest of Western Europe by the 19^th century because it made no use of coal and thus had no industrial revolution. China had seen extensive commercial development since the Song period and had a huge commercial economy at the end of the 18^th century but was still an organic economy with no movement toward industrialization, due in part to the remote location of its coal deposits. Japan experienced extensive commercial development and urbanization in the Tokugawa period, but was not a growth economy from the mid-Tokugawa period on and was undergoing demographic stress as reflected in infanticide and other birth control practices. Goldstone notes that Japan’s coal deposits were in Kyushu and Hokkaido and that there is no evidence that Japan was on its way to industrialization before being forced to open its ports in the mid-19^th century.²⁵

Goldstone lays out what he sees as the key characteristics of advanced organic societies. They were primarily agrarian with predominantly peasant populations, but also had substantial urban cultures, centralized bureaucratic governments, substantial commercial activities, and some degree of differentiation or tension between religion and state (here Goldstone notes Buddhists and Confucian literati in the case of East Asia).²⁶

How, then, do the features of Chosŏn era Korea fit with this model? Chosŏn was, of course, primarily agrarian and the bulk of its population was made up of peasants. While Chosŏn did not see urbanization on the same scale as China or Japan, Hanyang (Seoul), P’yŏngyang, Kaesŏng, Chŏngju, Chŏnju, and Ansŏng did constitute centers of urban culture. Chosŏn, as noted before, had formed a centralized bureaucratic state in the 15^th century. Chosŏn also experienced rapid growth in commerce during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Finally, the early Chosŏn saw the separation of state and Buddhism and, one can argue, also experienced considerable tension between the state and rural Confucian literati based in private academies (sŏwŏn) from the mid-Chosŏn period, if not earlier. As JaHyun Kim Haboush has argued, from the mid-17^th century on provincial private academies engaged actively in criticizing the state, often in collaboration with each other.²⁷ Pending further elaboration of the “advanced organic society” model and more detailed investigation of how Chosŏn may have conformed to that model, I will suggest at this point that it appears that Chosŏn era Korea might fit rather comfortably within the parameters of Goldstone’s concept. Indeed, I would be inclined to say that Chosŏn Korea was in the mainstream of 15^th-18^th century world history.

IV My Dilemma

Although it seems to me that Goldstone’s “advanced organic society” model may be the best fit for Chosŏn period Korea, I have been reluctant to use it in my research and my teaching. Goldstone’s model has failed to gain traction and the largely Eurocentric and teleological “early modern” continues to dominate the field of world history. This presents me with a practical and ethical dilemma.

If we do not make an effort to present Chosŏn Korea as “early modern,” we run the risk of relegating Korea to the status of a kind of historical backwater outside the main stream of world history, in much the same as did the historian apologists for imperial Japan. Hence, I have begun to use “early modern” in my classroom, distinguishing the highly centralized system of Chosŏn from the largely decentralized system of the Koryŏ, which, I suppose means that I see the Koryŏ in the same light as most historians have viewed medieval Europe and medieval Japan. But in my research, I will continue to problematize the “early modern,” even as I show how the Chosŏn conformed in some important ways to the “early modern” model of world history advocated by most of the members of the California School. Perhaps such research and writing will help to illuminate the limitations of the “early modern” model and lead, eventually to a less Eurocentric and less teleological way of researching and teaching world history.²⁸

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