A History of Korea (26 page)

The period of the “Northern and Southern States,” which includes Parhae and unified Silla, occupies a unique place in Korean history. Both kingdoms competitively introduced advanced culture and institutions from China and achieved highly developed civilizations, which were inherited intact by the Kory
ŏ
kingdom. By ending the period of the Three Kingdoms and accepting the survivors of Kogury
ŏ
descent from the Parhae kingdom, Kory
ŏ
accomplished the second national unification of Koreans. By integrating all the people and culture of Korea into a single homogeneous nation, Kory
ŏ
was able to achieve a flourishing indigenous civilization.

After unifying the later three kingdoms, King T’aejo (Wang K
ŏ
n’s posthumous, official title, meaning “Great Progenitor”) sought to achieve national integration by forging alliances with members of the local gentry, who were scattered throughout the country, and by recovering the former territories of Kogury
ŏ
and Parhae. He regarded his state as the successor to Kogury
ŏ
and pursued a policy of northern expansion. He extended Kory
ŏ
’s borders to the Ch’
ŏ
ngch’
ŏ
n River, some 45 miles north of Pyongyang.
¹
Meanwhile, in domestic affairs, T’aejo faced difficulties dealing with the recalcitrant local gentry. Despite unification, members of the local gentry, within their regional strongholds, still maintained quasi-independent status. As a result, the central government could not dispatch its officials to administer the local areas. Needing consent and cooperation from local gentry figures to rule effectively, T’aejo forged marriage ties with 29 local gentry families throughout the country, including the Ch
ŏ
ngju Yu clan, the Naju O clan, the Ch’ungju Yu clan, the Hwangju Hwangbo clan, and the Ky
ŏ
ngju Kim clan. He fathered 25 sons and 9 daughters. In some cases he strengthened the alliance by bestowing the royal surname, Wang, or other family names on powerful local elites and creating
fictive family ties with them. To curry favor with the local gentry, to whom he owed his throne, T’aejo adopted men of local gentry lineage as merit subjects, bestowing upon them land and high office ranks.

Despite these policies, powerful political forces among the local gentry continued to pose a grave threat to royal power. Thus T’aejo made every effort to restrict the privileges of the local gentry to prevent them from dominating the populace. He wrote and promulgated
Ch
ŏ
nggye,
or Political Precautions, and
Kye paengnyo s
ŏ
,
or Book of Bureaucratic Precepts, setting forth norms to govern the conduct of the king’s subjects. Up to his death in 943, however, T’aejo was never able to establish stable royal power. For his heirs, he left behind the testament known as
Hunyo sipcho,
precepts to be observed and honored by his successors in the realm of government. In his
Hunyo sipcho,
T’aejo instructed later kings to protect Buddhism and monasteries, to rule their state based on Confucian virtues, to promote the peasants’ livelihood, to follow geomantic theories, to preserve Korea’s cultural traditions, to attach great importance to S
ŏ
-gy
ŏ
ng (Pyongyang), and not to draft men into government service from the region south of the Ch’ary
ŏ
ng mountain range and the K
ŭ
m River, in other words, men from the former territory of Later Paekche.

In 943 T’aejo was succeeded by King Hyejong (943–945), the son of his second queen, but after only two years Hyejong died of illness and was succeeded by his half-brother, King Ch
ŏ
ngjong (945–949), the son of T’aejo’s third queen. Ch
ŏ
ngjong also died of illness in 949 and was succeeded by his younger brother, King Kwangjong (949–975).

In the course of these successions, in which the throne was passed between princes born of different queens, a serious power struggle ensued. This was the inevitable result of T’aejo having fathered a number of princes, all potential candidates for the kingship, from 6 queens and 23 royal concubines. Each prince’s bid for power was based on the power of his maternal in-laws or on his own connections with powerful forces in the local gentry. Thus the same policies that helped T’aejo win over men of local gentry in order to take the throne ultimately threatened his successors’ throne.

In 945 Wang Kyu, a royal in-law, plotted to kill King Hyejong. He had given T’aejo two of his daughters as his 15th and 16th concubines—the latter of whom bore a son, the Prince of Kwangju—and sent another daughter into the palace as a secondary queen for Hyejong. He then resorted to every strategy to bring
the Prince of Kwangju to the throne, ultimately even attempting to assassinate King Hyejong. With his position in dire threat, Hyejong survived uneasily for a time, protected day and night by an armed bodyguard. Before long, under heavy stress, he died. Immediately before Hyejong’s death, Wang Sing-ny
ŏ
m, the commander of the S
ŏ
-gy
ŏ
ng garrison, killed Wang Kyu, crushing his treason plot and demonstrating the frailty and instability of royal authority at the time.

Having defeated Wang Kyu’s treason plot with the help of Wang Sing-ny
ŏ
m, King Ch
ŏ
ngjong tried to strengthen royal authority by transferring the capital to S
ŏ
-gy
ŏ
ng. In this design, geomantic theories played a role. But Ch
ŏ
ngjong had a strong desire to escape the hands of those influential men who, as merit subjects at the founding of the Kory
ŏ
kingdom, wielded enormous power in the capital. But after a brief reign of just four years, Ch
ŏ
ngjong died of illness.

Two kings, Kwangjong (949–975) and S
ŏ
ngjong (981–997), enacted reforms that greatly strengthened royal authority in Kory
ŏ
. To weaken the power of influential men, Kwangjong enacted the
Nobi an’g
ŏ
m p
ŏ
p,
or Slave Review Act, in 956. During the chaotic period of the Later Three Kingdoms, warlords of local gentry lineage had illegally forced prisoners of war and refugees, mainly commoners by birth, into slavery. This increase in slaves in turn increased their masters’ economic and military strength. The Slave Review Act determined those who originally had been commoners and restored their free status, thus undermining the local gentry’s power and influence. In addition, by increasing the number of commoners who were liable for taxation, the law increased state revenues while remaining popular among the people who had been unjustly forced into slavery. Despite stiff opposition to the law from powerful warlords in the local gentry, Kwangjong held his ground.

In 958 Kwangjong adopted the proposal of the naturalized Chinese scholar Shuangji and established a system using a civil service examination as the principal means of selecting government officials. The results of the state examination gave a presumptive measure of one’s loyalty to the king, and candidates were selected as government officials on the basis of learning, not bloodline. The institution of this civil service examination constituted a fundamental effort to create a new bureaucracy that would strengthen regal power. Thereafter the institution of yangban, consisting of civil and military officials, emerged.

A firm hierarchy was necessary to establish a new bureaucracy. A number of aesthetic or symbolic steps were also undertaken by Kwangjong as part of his effort to consolidate royal authority and enhance national prestige. In
960 he designated purple, red, scarlet, or green as the colors for official attire. New rules specified the proper terminology to be used in the courts, adopting the title system of an empire rather than that of a kingdom. For example, the capital, Kaes
ŏ
ng, was called
Hwang-do,
or Imperial Capital, and the palace was referred to as
Hwang-s
ŏ
ng,
or Imperial Palace. Other terms, such as “your majesty” and “imperial ordinance,” also suggest that Kory
ŏ
adopted the title system of an empire. He also reinstituted independent era names for his rule, which had been temporarily suspended in the reign of kings Hyejong and Ch
ŏ
ngjong.

Kwangjong answered the continuing resistance to his reforms from powerful men at court with a series of merciless purges. In 960 he executed two high-level officials, Chunhong and Wang Tong, on charges of treason. Finally, Kwangjong was able to assert royal authority over at least the aristocracy in the capital. In 976, following his political reform, the next king, Ky
ŏ
ngjong (975–981), enacted a stipend land law, the
Ch
ŏ
nsikwa,
meaning farmland and forest land institution, designed to guarantee the livelihood of the newly created bureaucracy.

It was King S
ŏ
ngjong who firmly established centralized government in Kory
ŏ
. He filled government posts vacated by high-level officials of local gentry origin and replaced radically reformative officials appointed by King Kwangjong with new bureaucrats who had passed the civil service examination. He also ruled his country in a more refined way based on Confucian virtues. He relied on Confucian scholars of Silla’s head rank 6 lineage, such as Ch’oe S
ŭ
ng-no. Ch’oe, unlike members of the local gentry, had no power base in the countryside and so preferred a centralized government structure. In 981, when S
ŏ
ngjong ascended the throne, Ch’oe presented a 28-point policy memorial to the king, suggesting that Confucianism become the country’s governing philosophy and that Buddhism become the religion by which individuals cultivate a moral culture. Based on his proposal, Kory
ŏ
established its version of the principle of separation of government and religion. He also recommended the creation of a new political structure modeled on Chinese education, ethics, and political institutions but adapted to Kory
ŏ
’s cultural climate, with its own unique customs which were quite different from those of China.

Under S
ŏ
ngjong, a foundation was laid for a centralized political order in Kory
ŏ
. In 983 S
ŏ
ngjong, for the first time, dispatched central officials to head provincial administrative units, called
mok.
He reformed the local government structure in a way that weakened the power and influence of the local gentry throughout the country, and in 992 he established the Kukchagam, or
National University. These accomplishments earned him his posthumous title “S
ŏ
ngjong.” Kory
ŏ
followed the Chinese style which, unlike in Silla, named kings using the posthumous titles of
cho,
or progenitor, and
chong,
or ancestor.
²
In East Asia the posthumous title “
S
ŏ
ngjong
” (Chengzong in China) was usually given to a king who completed the establishment of the ruling structure of his kingdom or empire.

Kory
ŏ
’s centralized government drew on the Chinese model in organizing its political institutions. Based on the institutions of the Tang and Song dynasties, Kory
ŏ
’s new political structure began to take shape in 983 under King S
ŏ
ngjong and was completed in 1076 under King Munjong (1046–1083). The administrative structure was centered around three chancelleries. Unlike Tang China, Kory
ŏ
merged the first two of the three chancelleries (Chungs
ŏ
-s
ŏ
ng, Munhas
ŏ
ng, and Sangs
ŏ
-s
ŏ
ng) into a single organ called the Chungs
ŏ
munha-s
ŏ
ng, or Chancellery for State Affairs. It was also called the Chae-bu, or Directorate of Chancellors, and was headed by
munha sijung
who, as prime minister, oversaw various aspects of governmental affairs. The officials of the Chae-bu consisted of
chaesin,
or directors, who made policy decisions and held an office rank of 2 or above in the 18 office-rank system, and
nangsa,
or deputy directors, of office rank 3 or below, who were responsible for proposing and criticizing policy. The third chancellery, the Sangs
ŏ
-s
ŏ
ng, or Secretariat for State Affairs, was empowered to carry out policy through six subordinate ministries: the Yi-bu, the Py
ŏ
ng-bu, the Ho-bu, the Hy
ŏ
ng-bu, the Ye-bu, and the Kong-bu. The Yi-bu was responsible for personnel matters for civil offices, including the ennoblement of merit subjects; the Py
ŏ
ng-bu managed personnel matters for military offices, other military affairs, and postal stations using horses; the Ho-bu handled the census of the population, households, and farmlands, and was also responsible for tax collections; the Hy
ŏ
ng-bu administered statute law, litigation, and the management of slaves; the Ye-bu dealt with the conduct of ceremonies, foreign relations, government schools, and state examinations; and the Kong-bu was empowered to administer the state’s woodlands and fishing ponds, the output of artisans at government workshops, and general construction activities. Unlike those in the subsequent Chos
ŏ
n dynasty, the highest officials in the Chancellery for State Affairs headed the six ministries
directly in accordance with office rank, and thus the ministries were seen as unable to properly manage matters under their purview.