Do you think that negative emotions can cause natural disasters? Would you enact laws to help relieve negative emotions? Well, that is exactly what Chosŏn Korea did. The Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910) was Korea's longest-lasting dynasty. It is typically characterized by its strong Confucian influence and its rigid hierarchical and patriarchal social structure. However, less well understood is the role emotions played in Chosŏn's legal realm.

Emotions were able to influence law because of the concept of wŏn. According to Emotions of Justice by Jisoo Kim, the term wŏn refers to the negative emotions felt when a person has been wronged in some way, including anger, grief, pain, the desire for vengeance, and more. The stronger one's wŏn, the greater the desire to have the state address the injustice.¹ (Kim 7). To give you an understanding of how important wŏn was in Chosŏn, when natural disasters occurred, the state hurried to pardon prisoners and address unresolved lawsuits.² That is the extent to which it was believed that wŏn affected the harmony of the world. Emotions and law were therefore closely intertwined in Chosŏn because wŏn was the "primary motive" ³ pushing one towards requesting the state to redress their grievance and encouraging the state to take said negative emotions very seriously.

Since wŏn was understood to have the power to upset the natural balance of the world if it was not relieved (Kim 11), it was crucial to relieve everyone's wŏn. That means that every individual, regardless of social status or gender, had equal legal standing in Chosŏn. Women, slaves, and high-status men all had legal standing to petition the courts and address the cause of their wŏn, thereby "neutraliz[ing] gender and status hierarchies to a certain extent in the judicial domain" (Kim 13). However, individuals were only able to petition the courts within the boundaries of their social status. For example, slaves were not able to petition against their masters.⁴They could petition against other elites, but in this way the legal system still reinforced the social hierarchy.⁵

Nevertheless, the courts did view relieving everyone's wŏn as equally important. The most important factor was therefore the feelings of the victim because the main goal of the Chosŏn courts was not necessarily to punish the offender, but to relieve the wŏn. In some cases, this may mean that as long as one's wŏn was relieved, it did not matter if the full extent of the criminal's punishment was carried out. For example, let's look at the case of Konsaeng, a female entertainer whose three daughters were murdered by a county magistrate named Yi Huitae. Yi falsely believed that Konsaeng's three daughters had spread gossip about him, but since he had no proof, he ordered other women to make accusations against the daughters so he could "legally" arrest them. After arresting the daughters, he tortured them to death.⁶Konsaeng wanted to avenge her daughters, so she turned to the Chosŏn legal system and petitioned the courts. After numerous trials that took all the factors regarding Yi's background as an unjust magistrate and the details of the case into consideration, it was decided that Yi would be "exiled to the farthest frontier."⁷ Due to the severity of his crime, Yi was originally supposed to be exiled for life, but just three years later he was reassigned to a different province. How then was justice served? According to a report regarding the case, the punishment was able to "relieve Konsaeng's wŏn at least to a certain degree."⁸ This shows that relieving wŏn was the courts' main goal in serving justice. Punishing offenders and trying to maintain a just society was important, but relieving wŏn was perhaps more crucial.

Another interesting point to look at in the case of Konsaeng is that since she was of a lower class than Yi, the only way that she could take revenge against him without violating the law was through the petitioning system.⁹ Petitions were the tools used to appeal to the courts and to say one's story and explain how they were wronged. Petitions were submitted either in writing or presented to the court orally in a speech. The attraction of oral petitions was that the petitioner was able to use their emotions to directly appeal to the listener, thereby heightening and emphasizing their wŏn.¹⁰ As you can imagine, it was probably much more powerful to hear the petitioner cry and speak from the heart rather than simply reading their words on a paper. Seeing and hearing the petitioner's raw emotions would show just how severe the petitioners' wŏn was and therefore how urgent it was for the courts to address their case.

A petitioners' wŏn was not necessarily based on their own experience. It was believed that wŏn could be shared and passed on amongst family members.¹¹ This is a similar idea to generational trauma, where one inherits the negative feelings of a previous generation despite not having experienced the event oneself. In the same vein, the family members of those who had been wronged still felt wŏn despite not having been wronged themselves. Petitioners who appealed on behalf of their family members would highlight the wŏn felt by their family members and how that shared wŏn pushed them to want to appeal on family members' behalf.¹²

However, these situations were not always recognized as being a valid reason to petition. Originally, when Chosŏn's petitioning system was first institutionalized, the Chosŏn courts definition of wŏn was confined to the petitioner's own emotions due to personal harm, and petitioners could only appeal because of personal wŏn.¹³ Eventually, in the early 18th century, the courts decided that wŏn shared among family members was harmful and therefore allowed four categories of relationships to be legal grounds for petitioning.¹⁴ Specifically, a son petitioning for his father, a wife for her husband, a younger brother for his elder brother, and a slave for their master. These four categories were based on the four fundamental Confucian familial relationships and also highlight the hierarchical order within the family itself, with those in lower social positions petitioning on behalf of their superiors.¹⁵ When petitioning, women also had to emphasize their fidelity, a Confucian virtue meaning devotion to one's husband, in order to appeal to the sympathies of the court and make their petitions heard.¹⁶ The ability to petition on behalf of family members thereby still reinforced Confucian ideals and the hierarchical social order.¹⁷ In this way the definition of wŏn was legally expanded to allow for more people to relieve their wŏn while simultaneously preserving the social hierarchy.

It is important to understand the significance and impact that wŏn had in Chosŏn because it shows a new aspect of Chosŏn culture and values that is vastly different from the more commonly spoken about rigid social hierarchies. Even if the "facts" that petitioners presented were exaggerated or outright lies, the petitioner's negative emotions were still taken into consideration. In one case, a petitioner lied on behalf of her husband who had already plead guilty, but the courts still took her wŏn into account and lessened his sentence.¹⁸ Clearly, based on the extent that wŏn was taken into consideration in the legal sphere, emotions were a significant aspect of the legal culture. But despite new laws being enacted to relieve wŏn, all laws enacted were still within the constraints of Chosŏn's hierarchical and patriarchal system. Just because every individual's wŏn was viewed as being able to have the same negative impact on the world, it did not mean that there was any semblance of equality in Chosŏn. It simply means that in terms of the legal sphere, since everyone's wŏn was understood to have the same impact, everyone was given equal legal standing. But equal legal standing did not mean equality. 

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This story is adapted from the Introduction of Jisoo Kim’s The Emotions of Justice. This story demonstrates that female slaves had the same capacity for legal representation as anyone else in Chosŏn. Kim explains the significance of an emotion called wŏn in how slaves retained these rights in the Chosŏn legal system. In the English-speaking world there is limited information about Korean history, especially these kinds of details about the lives of commoners or slaves. Additionally, this information is often kept within insular, scholastic circles, inaccessible to many outside of academia. This retelling in a storybook format is intended to make this story more accessible to an English-speaking audience of any age or education level. The illustrations were created using contemporary Chosŏn illustrations and paintings for reference, but giving them a modernized and simplified style to suit the storybook genre. The illustrations provide a visual context for the readers to be immersed into the story. Utilizing rounded shapes and clean lines, the art looks to recreate the classic fashions and aesthetics of contemporary Chosŏn art in a unique, updated style. Ideally, a storybook like this would serve to peak a reader’s interest in the history of Chosŏn. Increasing global awareness of Korean history and challenging the Euro-centric view of world history is important so that the lessons learned from these lesser-told stories are not lost to history.

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In this podcast I will discuss women’s education, cookbooks and share some of my experience in training and working in the culinary industry.

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This podcast looks into the history of food and drink culture in Korea. It covers how globalization across Eurasia has developed the culture into what we see today, mainly for soju and distilled alcoholic beverages. Using research and our own experiences as Asian-Americans, we explore the significance of Korean food and drink culture to modern times as it has become popularized to the entire world.

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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)

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These panels are an interpretation of the life of Yi
Pinghogak (1759-1824). She was the author of one of the first extant cookbooks in Korea, contributing to women’s literacy and expanding women’s role in society. The influence of Yi’s family and upbringing will be discussed as a significant influence on her future. These panels also show how Yi Pinghogak’s culinary knowledge brought a sense of freedom for women. This “freedom” is not freedom from domestic work or “the inner chambers” but the freedom that came with “connection to the world of knowledge through her cookbooks” (Ro, 149). The overall focus of this piece will demonstrate how the work of one woman, who was born into a privileged family, helped women from different social backgrounds to read and spotlight the importance of women’s education.

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During the Chosŏn Dynasty in Korea (1382-1897), women's roles were drastically redefined by Neo-Confucianism. Women were expected to "display chastity, obedience, and faithfulness," (Seth 79). These values restricted women's behavior to their husband's needs and wants. Additionally, women lost the ability to divorce, remarry or inherit property, rights they possessed previously in the Koryŏ dynasty, and were housed separately from men (in "inner" chambers) (Seth 106). But even during this extremely restrictive time, women were astonishingly able to develop a fruitful female literary culture. In fact, one could argue that Korean women were the ones who legitimized the Korean alphabet, now known as han'gul. The han'gul alphabet, first introduced in 1443, was called ŏnmun (vernacular script) or amgul (women's script), and was considered "vulgar" or inferior to the Chinese script because the latter was used in the government and by elite men, whereas han'gul had more widespread usage across social classes (Kim 46).

One of the first ways Korean women used han'gul was to keep track of their household duties. For example, cookbooks were popularized as among the first books written by women. According to Ro Sang-ho's article, "Cookbooks and Female Writers in Late Chosŏn Korea," the two female authors of Umsik timibang and Kyuhap ch'ongsŏ, both cookbooks written around 1670, transformed the act of cooking from an illiterate to a literate task (Ro 5). By doing so, they encouraged literacy and education among Korean women. However, women used han'gul for more than just cookbooks: they also documented dress sizing and kept track of religious dates (Cho 14). Each of these household uses of han'gul encouraged a more literate female population.

During the previous Koryŏ dynasty, most Korean women were illiterate (Seth 128). However, the availability of cookbooks and the use of writing for household management showed that female literacy was increasing. Women learning to read and write were only taught han'gul because it was much easier to learn to read and write than the classical Chinese taught to the scholar-elite, who were all men (Kim 55). Elite women were especially well-versed in han'gul because they used reading and writing for their household duties. In fact, even before the advent of han'gul, elite women that were literate read Confucian texts in order to learn their filial duties first-hand. Additionally, women in court were expected to write greeting letters, keep household registries, and copy books for the libraries (Cho 13). Interestingly, another great encouraging force for many women to read came through the spread of the Christian religion in the nineteenth century. The "Bible Women," called kwŏnsŏ puin, encouraged multitudes of Korean women to learn han'gul in order to be able to read the Christian Bible for themselves in an effort to convert them (Cho 34).

Because women could now read and write, they also inserted themselves into the legal system of petitions by expressing their wŏn in writing (Kim 6). Expressions of wŏn (suffering) were an important component of any legal case, and because women could now write in han'gul, they also used it when submitting petitions---impressive considering petitions in han'gul were initially not allowed. By inserting han'gul into the legal system, women legitimized it in the eyes of the Korean government and society (Kim 20). In some instances, women would even ask scribes to submit a petition in Chinese script and submit another themselves in han'gul to increase their chances of a favorable verdict. Ultimately, by using han'gul, Korean women altered the existing legal and literary space, elevating the prestige of the han'gul script.

In addition to using han'gul for household duties and legal petitions, some women also wrote for pleasure. Women wrote many letters during this period. Women who wrote could communicate with those outside of their immediate family, a privilege that not everyone enjoyed (Cho 16). One major change elite and other women made to letter writing was completely changing the spatial landscape thereof by introducing spiral letters, a phenomenal contribution that their husbands later copied (Cho 21). Although women generally had their mobility restricted, letter writing provided literate women with a wider range of social interactions (Cho 11).

Women also wrote poems and novels, and were likely the main consumers of novels as well. The most popular kind of poem women composed in han'gul was the sijo, which was adopted both by the elite and women of lower social status (Cho 10). In these poems women often expressed their true feelings of loneliness about living in the inner chambers or the sadness of love (Seth 104). Women liberated both themselves and their script through art forms like letter writing, and the composition of novels and poems.

Korean women during the Chosŏn period legitimized the Korean vernacular script, han'gul. They were so successful in this endeavor that han'gul is still used in North and South Korea today as the official script. In North Korea it is even called "Chosŏn muntcha." The women legitimized the script through its use in cookbooks and household writing, inserted the script into the legal system through petitions, and employed it in art forms such as letter writing, novels, and poems. The use of han'gul provided women with a separate, female outlet. Women began to prioritize their education, increasing literacy rates, and could now access an all-female audience that related to their feelings of loneliness at home.

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It is commonly known, among historians, that Europe underwent a military revolution during the early modern period (1500-1800). They developed new, upgraded styles of warfare, which is often seen as giving them "a clear advantage over the other peoples of the world" (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 52). However, were these military developments truly unique to Europe? In reality, when set in a global context, this "European" way of war was not entirely unusual (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 52). Similar developments were occurring at the same time in East Asia. In Japan's Warring States Period (1457-1615), frequent battles among regional lords led to significant improvements in military technology. During the Imjin War (1592-1598), when Japan invaded Chosŏn Korea and the Koreans fought them off with the help of the Ming Chinese, the Koreans took notice of these technological improvements and decided to make use of them as well.

At this point, readers may be wondering what exactly this upgraded military technology was. In particular, the fuel behind the revolution was the adaptation of musketry. Both Europe and Asia were developing musket technology and something called the "volley fire" technique, (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 55) which will be discussed further on. Koreans especially took hold of this technique and made it their own

Korean cannon makers first came into the possession of muskets in the middle of the 16th century (Kang, 241). However, as they were trying to reverse engineer the muskets (or basically figure out how to make these new weapons for themselves), they did it using preexisting Korean cannon making technology, which was quite different from how the guns were originally made. This resulted in muskets that were actually similar in shape to the ones they found, but with crucial differences that would lead to some problems in battle (Kang, 241). Most notably, they were casted in bronze as opposed to being forged with iron, and they were missing important parts, which made the guns liable to burst when fired (Kang, 249). This changed after Koreans encountered Japanese muskets first-hand in the Imjin War. The power of these iron-forged muskets were shown, and so Koreans started forging their own muskets with iron as well (Kang, 250). They were still not exactly the same, but much closer and definitely less likely to burst. With this, Korean musketeers became a common sight in the East Asian military sphere, and Chosŏn Korea continued to develop their musketry as time passed.

Just as important as the muskets themselves was the way they were used, both in Europe and in Asia. Andrade, Kang, and Cooper discuss the importance of drill in the European military revolution and how it allowed their soldiers to be so dominant. The concept of drill combined with musket technology is what allowed for the volley fire technique. To explain in more detail, early guns had a very low firing rate (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 54). In order to keep musket fire constantly raining down on the enemy, musketeers took turns firing and reloading, cycling in and out as they were ready (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 54). This is essentially what volley fire is all about. It allowed for continuous fire, which made it very difficult to handle for the enemy force. Integral to this process working out properly, however, was drill. Soldiers had to be disciplined and experienced enough with this technique to actually be able to use it in real combat. Musketeers were largely left vulnerable as they were firing, so they had to be protected by other soldiers. In Europe, during the cycling process, they moved behind pikemen as they were reloading, which allowed them to be protected from charging cavalry (Andrade, Kang, Cooper 57). When they finished reloading, they had to be able to quickly get to their position, fire, cycle back, and then reload to do it all over again without being distracted by the cavalry running at them, and this required discipline. The best way to achieve such a state was through intense drilling (Kang, Andrade, Cooper, 58): repeated practice of the technique until it was so ingrained in the soldiers that they could carry it out in battle without even thinking about it.

Drilling in such a way is often attributed as being a European invention, but there is evidence that similar techniques were developed in Asia. In fact, the start of the military revolution itself can be attributed to China in the 14th Century. The founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) first incorporated guns and new firearm tactics in his armies as he formed the Ming dynasty in 1368, and then he turned those techniques outwards, which caused them to spread throughout the neighboring states and eventually reach Europe (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 59-60). During the Warring States period in Japan, infantry was trained to face down cavalry in order to cut down costs using discipline and drill, and they carried not only swords but also muskets within their ranks (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 60). Various Korean sources show that Japan used volley fire against them in the 1590's, so it is quite certain that Europe and Asia both developed this technique within two decades of each other (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 61).

"Before the Japanese invasion, Korea's armed forces were largely unprofessional and inadequately drilled" (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 62). This was a fact that originally caused the Koreans to be outmatched by the invading Japanese, and so they were forced to change their system from the ground up. Their new military was specifically formed around musketeers and did not use many cavalry units (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 62). They managed to fight off the Japanese with the help of Ming soldiers, especially troops trained by the famous Chinese general Qi Jiguang (1528-1588), who was well versed in drilling techniques, and so they incorporated his ideas into their own military force (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 63). Adapting his principles into the volley fire technique, they created the "three-unit technique," involving a musketeer unit, an archer unit, and a swordsman or spearman unit where the latter two would provide support for the more deadly musketeers (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 66), similarly to how Europeans used their pikemen. Korean musketeers became core to their army, and they were deployed to help the Manchus fight back Russian invaders in the mid-1600s. By this time, Korean musketeers were very experienced in their techniques and had developed them to be quite effective, and so they were able to play a large role in victories against the Russians (Andrade, Kang, Cooper, 78). The Korean musketeers came to be known for their accuracy and discipline, crucial to the allied military effort.

Europe developed use of muskets and volley fire tactics during their military revolution which gave their troops a solid advantage, but East Asia also developed similar techniques at around the same time. The Japanese and the Dutch invented the volley fire technique within twenty years of each other, and the Koreans further refined the technique, leading it to become a core, effective part of their military force. There is no doubt many people out there knowledgeable about the European military revolution who have no idea about the Asian, and notably in this context, the Korean military revolution, and so this discussion has aimed to bring this knowledge to light. Doing so can create a more fully informed global context during the early modern period and lead to future discoveries and comparisons from historians within such a context, or it can simply provide some cool information to anyone who would be interested.

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The identity of the nation and people of Korea are often seen as homogenous and unchanging. In reality, throughout its history, Korea has gone through dramatic changes and taken an active part in the political stage. Diverse peoples have settled in, traded with, warred against and otherwise contributed to the cultural, linguistic and political composition of Korea. Here I will focus in particular on the Chosŏn dynasty view of Japanese foreigners and their descendants living in Korea.

Hyanghwain: People Who Move Towards Edification

Pirates from Japan and islands to the southwest of Korea were referred to as waegu, Japanese raiders. These pirates attacked even as far as inland southern Korea, with fleets of fifty to two hundred ships (Bohnet, 33). There was frequent violence between Chosŏn and these raiders. The Sillok, the Chosŏn court annals, describes the first king of Chosŏn shooting an arrow into a pirate that dared to moon him, in 1377 (Baker, 45). Then, in 1419, after decades of conflict, a Chosŏn naval fleet attacked, the island of Tsushima, beheading a hundred people, razing their homes, destroying their fleet and uprooting their rice plants (Baker, 48).

Despite this apparent enmity, large numbers of Japanese merchants and pirates were allowed to settle in Chosŏn Korea and, in some cases, gain wealth and social status. For centuries, foreigners settled in Korea had been referred to as hyanghwain which literally means "people who move towards edification", with the implication that these foreigners emigrated to Chosŏn in order to become civilized. In the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty, for a "submitting-foreigner" to settle they simply took on a Korean name and were not drafted in military service. For higher status submitting-foreigners, they would also be given land, clothing, and wives; this warm reception was originally conceived as a way of increasing tax revenue for the Koryŏ (dynasty preceding Chosŏn) court (Bohnet, 26).

This policy was more than a one-time measure taken to settle foreigners, though; it resulted in a specific social status group. Since the people of Chosŏn were already categorized into distinct social groups, the hyanghwain became a hereditary group with its own taxation rules and ranking (Bohnet, 42). In 1368, 2,000 Japanese raiders were settled in Gyeongsang province, and even more came as refugees from Tsushima. In 1494, up to 3,000 Japanese merchants lived in three ports on the southern coast. These hyanghwain could occupy many different social ranks. There was work for skilled laborers such as shipbuilders from Ryūkyū and monks from Japan. In one case, a Japanese raider named P'i Sago gained in rank as a royal guard after being defeated by T'aejo in 1395. His son was then able to become an official without taking the standard civil examinations and even interpreted on diplomatic missions for the Chosŏn court (Bohnet,46). Of course, this was an exceptional case; for the most part, submitting-foreigners had limited social mobility. But this exception is notable because it shows that his origins as a Japanese raider, somewhere between criminal and enemy, did not preclude him and his son from achieving significant social rank.

During the Chosŏn dynasty, social hierarchy was very important, and the court took increasing care in administrative efforts to categorize people. As such, Japanese hyanghwain were supposed to be kept separate from Japanese living in Japan, but this was impractical because of the diverse circumstances of hyanghwain (Bohnet, 50). Some of these submitting-foreigners actually lived in Japan but were granted this status because of displaced Korean parents caught up by pirates. Not only that, but some hyanghwain of Japanese parentage living in Chosŏn Korea became interpreters for diplomatic meetings with Japanese and Ryūkyūan rulers.

These diplomatic meetings required a certain amount of delicacy and caution, due to the nature of political instability within Japan and the tributary status of Chosŏn and Japan to the Chinese Ming dynasty. Moreover, at the time Japan consisted of multiple political entities. The Ryūkyū kingdom, which became the present-day Okinawa prefecture of Japan, had a different relationship with the Chosŏn dynasty than Japan. The before-mentioned island of Tsushima, now part of the Nagasaki prefecture, was a province of Japan lying between Korea and the Japanese mainland. Still, Tsushima was largely independent (Baker, 44), subjected at different times to Mongolian Yuan (Lee, 61) and Korean (Lee, 70) invasions, and acted as a diplomatic bridge between Korea, Japan and China (Bohnet, 17).

Chosŏn Diplomacy with Japan and the Ryūkyūs

In the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty, Ming China set up tributary sea lords in the Ryūkyū islands to act as trade intermediaries, which ultimately resulted in the formation of the Ryūkyū kingdom (Bohnet, 33). There was also a scholarly exchange between Ming China and the Ryūkyū kingdom, with Chinese scholars from Fujian settling in the city of Kume-mura, and a three-to-four year overseas program in Fujian for Ryūkyūan students. At the same time, Chosŏn, also a Ming tributary, met with Ryūkyūan diplomatic envoys from 1389--1637, effectively using them for the same purposes as the Ming and establishing a hierarchy and trade network of tributary states. The close contact with the Ming was a sign of merit for the Chosŏn court, and Ryūkyūan people were held in higher regard than those from the Japanese mainland (Baker, 47).

On the other hand, the governance of Japan went through a lot of upheaval during the Chosŏn dynasty, and the language used to refer to Japanese people was often derogatory. In the early Chosŏn dynasty, Japan was ruled by the Muromachi shōgun, a military dictatorship, but there was a high degree of local control by powerful landowners called daimyō. So, the Chosŏn court established diplomatic relations with both the shōgun and the daimyō, carefully recognizing their hierarchies and shifting power dynamics with diplomatic etiquette (Bohnet, 33). In fact, the Ryūkyū kingdom was overtaken by one of these Japanese states in the early seventeenth century unbeknownst to Ming or Chosŏn and continued acting as a tributary state to both, facilitating trade between Japan, China and Korea (Baker, 44). There is a situational irony here because the scholars of Chosŏn continued to write about the Ryūkyūans and Japanese in very different terms, unaware of the political reality.

Korean Images of Japan

The word waegu is written with the character "倭" or wae, which is a Chinese character used to denote the ancient Japanese Wa kingdom but with the derogatory meaning of "submissive" or "dwarf". Thus, the word can be read as "Japanese pirates" or "dwarf pirates" and similarly for waeno (dwarf minions) and waejeok (dwarf bandits). Such terms were used even in the Sillok, the official court annals (Baker, 49). This may be surprising for a court that highly values etiquette, welcoming foreigners, and even civilizing its subjects through moral behavior. However, it makes sense given a context of violent disputes and enmity. These terms were most frequently used during the sixteenth century, when the Disturbance of the Three Ports, frequent pirate raids and most importantly the invasions launched by Toyotomi Hideyoshi devasted Chosŏn. During the war that followed, the Imjin War (1592-1598), a third of the farmland was destroyed, villages and palaces burned, and nearly a fifth of Koreans died or were taken captive (Lee, 127).

All the same, negative attitudes towards Japan did not immediately disappear with the return of peaceful relations. The broad-scale political relations between Korea, Japan and China had an impact even on a personal level for Chosŏn scholars' views of Japanese people. Immediately following the Toyotomi invasions, Chosŏn writer Kang Hang, who had been held captive in Japan, wrote that it was "a repugnant place...not yet graced by King Yu's influence," the legendary King Yu here representing Chinese and Confucian values and mannerisms. A century later, Chosŏn diplomat Wŏn Chunggŏ wrote that the Japanese people were not as barbaric as many had come to believe, citing their literacy and social cohesion -- it was not a glowing testimony but enough to change the conversation (Baker, 49). After Japanese scholarship on Confucian philosophy reached Korea, the Chosŏn aristocracy had a chance to see a side of Japan that fit in with their idea of civilization and could thus be given greater consideration and engagement. A prominent example of this is the pair of essays written on Japan at the end of the eighteenth century by Chŏng Yagyong, also known as Tasan. In one, he drew a parallel between Japan and ancient Korea, arguing that literature, scholarship and moral pursuits drove the Chosŏn court's peaceful diplomacy and the beautiful prose written in Japan indicated the same change. In the other, he argued that it was not in Japan's best interest to attack Korea again (Baker, 53). These arguments are interesting because they suggest 1) that the sources of concern for Koreans were fear of war and cultural differences, 2) a shift in opinion, or at least an atmosphere that could allow such a shift, and 3) for Tasan, this was a topic of enough significance to merit publishing a persuasive essay.

Conclusion

The relationship between the peoples of Japan and Korea during the Chosŏn dynasty was characterized by war, overseas trade, and the spread of culture and idea through diplomacy. There were also intermediate regions, such as areas in the southern provinces of Korea and the islands north of Japan, where people of different parentage and speaking different languages shared common space and culture. Japanese people occupied many roles within the Chosŏn dynasty, which influenced national identity as understood by Chosŏn writers.

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The Chosŏn Dynasty (1392--1910) has long been characterized as a loyal adherent of Confucianism. It has even been described as a "blind follower" of Chinese culture for adopting Confucian traditions that originated in China. However, just because Confucian traditions were practiced in Chosŏn did not mean the Chosŏn court identified with all the political and cultural practices in China or that they simply copied everything. Chosŏn Koreans adopted Confucian culture selectively to its own context, which was distinct between the two countries. Moreover, adopting Chinese-originated Confucianism did not mean that Chosŏn was, at all times, a friendly subject of Chinese imperial dynasties. For example, the transition from Ming Dynasty to Qing Dynasty in China exposed ideological conflicts between Chosŏn's ruling elite and Chinese literati, which led the Chosŏn court to see itself as the only legitimate heir to Confucian civilization after the Ming Dynasty fell. Through exploring the changing diplomatic relationships between Chosŏn and China, as well as the differences on political and legal practices between the two countries, this essay refutes the aforementioned misconceptions that suggest a complete replication of Chinese Confucianism by the Chosŏn court, but rather sheds light on the Chosŏn court's selective adoption and reception of Confucianism.

In the case of statecraft, Chinese-originated Confucian ideologies cannot explain Chosŏn's political and legal system, as their actual practices revealed some differences between Chosŏn and China at the time. Official, state-sanctioned historical records such as the Veritable Records of the Kings of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Chosŏn wangjo sillok) contained many cases in which Chosŏn people filed petitions and appealed to local state authorities for diverse matters regardless of their gender and social status. For instance, "in the second month of the year Kyŏngo, a female slave named Malgum filed a plaint with a magistrate against Sungun, her husband's male relative" regarding the ownership of her deceased husband's land property.¹ The fact that Malgum, as a woman and a member of a lower social status group had the ability to file such a plaint against a male individual suggests that legal prerogatives were not exclusive to the higher classes or the dominant gender in the Chosŏn society. That even people in minority groups possessed this legacy capacity can be surprising given the common impression of Chosŏn society as patriarchally oriented, rigidly stratified, and strictly hierarchical.

So why did Chosŏn authorities allow such latitude in the legal realm? Indeed, the simple and the most fundamental reason was still to protect and secure the existing hierarchy, rather than genuine concern for people's desires. Many of the appeals to the authority involved expressions of wŏn, a "sense of being wronged"² and a type of emotion that signified one's justice being ignored. According to Jisoo Kim, author of The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Chosŏn Korea, "if subjects continuously internalized the feelings of wŏn, this would cause moral and ritual impropriety that would disrupt the social, legal, and cosmic harmony, ultimately destroying equilibrium."³ In other words, it was the state's need to relieve wŏn that led to such legal freedom, which could then continuously maintain the harmonious coexistence between society and the state. The rationale here stemmed from the Chosŏn court's desire to project itself as the holder of the "Mandate of Heaven," the Confucian notion of political legitimacy. According to Confucian doctrines, to possess "Mandate of Heaven," the state ought to be "listening to the people" and recognizing "'people as the basis of the state' (minbon)."⁴

While Confucian ideologies could be partially responsible for "minbon"-oriented legal practices in Chosŏn, Chosŏn did not simply replicate legal practices from China, Confucianism's country of origin. While Malgŭm was able to file the plaint to argue for land property despite the absence of her husband, but during the Ming period, "women in China had to employ a male proxy" in order to enter the court.⁵ Such differences points to how Confucianism circulated in East Asia, suggesting that when integrating Confucianism in its ruling practices, the Chosŏn court adapted Confucian ideologies based on the need of Chosŏn's own political context and applying its own interpretations.

Chosŏn Korea's context-dependent reception of Confucianism also prepared it for its later encounter with the Qing Dynasty, when Chosŏn and Qing laid competing claims of legitimacy over Confucian legacies. Chosŏn saw itself as a capable and appropriate heir of Confucian culture and even affirmed its ideological disconnection from and cultural superiority over the Qing Dynasty.. Following the 1685 border accident in the Changbaishan region, the Qing court wished to jointly survey the region with the Chosŏn side in order to ascertain the availability of ginseng in the region and demarcate the boundary between Qing and Chosŏn. However, such requests were not welcomed by the Chosŏn court, as "the Koreans did not completely accept Manchu supremacy even though they fulfilled all of their obligations as a vassal state to the Qing court."⁶ Chosŏn did not recognize the Qing because of the two states' different connection to Confucianism. The Qing court was ruled by Manchus, whom Chosŏn considered "barbarians." For this reason, "the Koreans believed that the (Confucian) civilization had been lost or greatly compromised in China," and thus "[the] civilization should be protected from barbarians and transmitted to Korea."⁷ Chosŏn also asserted cultural supremacy over the Manchus by viewing itself as the true heir of Confucian culture⁸ The Chosŏn court adopted the term "Sojunghwa" (literally "Little China"), which they used to identify itself as the center of Confucian civilization after the fall of Ming China to the Manchus. Moreover, by performing ritual commemorations for Ming emperors and continuing Ming traditions,⁹ Chosŏn also claimed to claimed a close cultural connection with the already-fallen Ming Dynasty, even though it performed diplomatic submission to the Qing court on the surface.

Whether in its legal system or fluid diplomatic relationship with Ming and Qing China, the Chosŏn court developed its own ways of understanding and applying Confucianism which originated not in Chosŏn but ancient China,to its own context. The development of Confucianism in Chosŏn thus illustrates the distinction between a philosophical ideology from its actual application, which depends on the context in which the ideology is realized.

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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.

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The Chosŏn dynasty, which ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910, enacted many policies that might appear through a modern lens to have expanded the representation and rights of marginalized groups in their society, including commoners and women. The increase of female participation in legal cases discussed by Jisoo Kim in Emotions of Justice and the spread of literacy as a result of the invention of the Korean alphabet addressed by Hwisang Cho in The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea are some examples of such arrangements. I argue these policies in Chosŏn Korea reinforced oppressive ideologies and social hierarchies, despite appearing to have expanded the social and political participation of women and commoners.

In her book, Jisoo Kim describes how in 1401, the Chosŏn state institutionalized a physical "petition drum" to allow people (including slaves, women, and other groups of subordinated people in the Chosŏn state) to directly petition the sovereign by striking the drum installed which was purposefully placed in front of the Chosŏn State Tribunal (uigŭmbu, 義禁府, 의금부). The petition process (sowŏn, 訴冤, 소원) allowed negative emotions caused by injustices (wŏn, 冤, 원) to play a central role in the performance of legal justice in Chosŏn society. As the petitioners embodied more wŏn in their pleas for justice, the stronger their case became. Kim refers to a specific example of a female slave named Malgŭm who petitioned a magistrate against a male relative who had stolen her late husband's land. Malgŭm's petition follows:

I, the humble petitioner, address my grievous situation that occurred in this world... In the year kapcha when my husband passed away, Myŏngbok's cousin Sungun... stole the deed [to her late husband's land] when he visited us several times during my husband's funeral... While my husband and father-in-law had cultivated the fields for two generations, he [Sungun] remained silent. How could he attempt to deprive me of my land now? When my husband, Myŏngbok, was alive, he did not say a word to stop him from selling the fields. Now that my husband is dead, how could he file suit?... Please restrict Sungun from selfishly scheming to dispossess my land and help save this widow by cleaning a false charge made against me so that I can relieve my grievance. I address Your Honor and sincerely wish you to settle the case by giving an order (Kim 3-4).

After listening to her speech, the Chosŏn state magistrate upheld Malgŭm's case and returned the stolen land back to the female slave. While this petition did create a space for Malgŭm to speak in Chosŏn Korea, it still underscores oppressive Chosŏn ideals of female fidelity that subordinated women to their husbands (Kim 7). These ideas were largely supported by the dominant Confucian ideology that treated Chosŏn women as inferior to men (Han 117). For example, in contrast to men who were not widely held to requirements of chastity, Chosŏn women were barred from remarrying once their husbands had passed away (Han 118).

These ideals are highlighted in Malgŭm's speech as she pleaded with the magistrate to "help save this widow" in her speech: Malgŭm relied heavily on a narrative of pity as she emphasized her pain as that of a weaker and subordinate woman in comparison to the powerful, male magistrate. In doing so, she was only able to receive justice with sowŏn when reproducing Confucian gender ideologies that reinforced the belief that women were inferior and dependent on the sympathy of men. Malgŭm's petition also highlights how the sowŏn process reinforced the female obligation to chastity. This ideology can be seen in Malgŭm's petition and many other petitions of the time as she pleads a case on behalf of her deceased husband. In petitioning her case, Malgŭm's emotions were only recognized and validated by the Chosŏn state when concerning her dedication to her late husband and his family's honor. Petitioning, therefore, not only dismissed female value outside of the needs of her husband and his patriline but also reinforced limits to female agency in the Chosŏn society. Sowŏn resulted in a woman's domestic role as a wife now carrying into her legal status as a representative of her husband. In this way, petitioning in Chosŏn proves to be a government system that, while appearing to increase female representation, still reinforced patriarchal ideologies.

Similar patterns of social hierarchy can also be seen with the inception of the vernacular Korean script (ŏnmun 諺文, -- now known as hangul 한글 today). Though a reader today may assume that its invention in 1443 would have increased literacy among commoners in Chosŏn, hangul also reinforced social hierarchies and limited the production of knowledge by newly literate commoners. Prior to its invention, the only writing system used in Korea was a complex writing system that required knowledge of Chinese characters (hanja 漢字, 한자) that did not align with spoken Korean. The high barrier to entry for learning and properly using this writing system meant that writing had long been reserved for the elite of Korean society -- mostly men of yangban (兩班, 양반) background. 

The vernacular script, being a much more simple writing system based on an alphabet, was created specifically by King Sejong to make writing more accessible for commoners in Chosŏn (See Wikipedia entry on Hunminjeongeum). One may assume that this, in turn, would have expanded the role of commoners in literature and other people who previously did not have an outlet to express themselves in Chosŏn society. However, the alphabet also created a new outlet for the Korean male elite to continue their social and literary superiority in the Chosŏn state. Scholars of yangban background produced vernacular translations of classical texts to control the production of knowledge now accessible to commoners. Since the traditional Confucian texts that dictated the values of Chosŏn society had previously only been available in hanja, the yangban remained the custodians of these important texts as their translators.

Furthermore, yangban decided that texts that might have impacted the lives of commoners were never translated into hangul. In Power of the Brush, Hwisang Cho explains how a well-known manual for agricultural techniques, Straightforward Explanation of Agriculture (農事直說, 농사직설, nongsa chiksol), was never made available to Chosŏn farmers in the vernacular script. Instead, it was kept in hanja, accessible only to state officials like local magistrates and yangban who had the means to read the complicated writing system. While hangul clearly had the ability to democratize the spread of knowledge, Chosŏn yangban, and the Chosŏn state still "intended to control the flow of information by selecting the types of knowledge to be translated" (Cho 17).

In analyzing the Chosŏn implementation of sowŏn and hangul, one can see that Chosŏn systems which -- as seen through modern ideals -- might seem to have expanded the opportunities of marginalized classes, still reinforced strict Chosŏn social hierarchies. In the history of the United States, there are also cases where seemingly emancipatory policies still reproduced oppressive hierarchies. The 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution enacted in 1868 and 1870, respectively, granted Black Americans the right to vote, but -- just as with sowŏn and hangul -- these supposedly egalitarian reforms reinforced oppressive hierarchies for marginalized populations; extreme suppression of the Black voter in the United States continued along with other forms of oppression in the United States despite the wording of the law promoting ideas of equality and new opportunities for marginalized Black populations. Just as in Chosŏn Korea, it is not enough to conclude based on the progressive framing of a government policy that it necessarily resulted in concrete changes to oppressive hierarchies. However, in analyzing and understanding the true social implications of such policies, one can develop the means by which to construct fair and just policies in the future.

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