A History of Korea (46 page)

After its brilliant first century the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty gradually declined in administrative efficiency and effective unity. The turn of the dynastic cycle manifested itself in disruptive factional struggles within central officialdom. Chos
ŏ
n had already experienced sahwa between the hun’gu and sarim factions in the first half of the sixteenth century, and then, in the second half of the century, as the Neo-Confucian literati grew in strength, tangjaeng began in earnest. The number of literati eligible to serve in the bureaucracy markedly increased, while the number of government positions remained essentially fixed. Thus, when those aspiring to government office all competed to occupy the limited number of posts, conflict between the aspirants inevitably developed. Furthermore, because actual appointments to office and subsequent promotions frequently
depended on the patronage of high officials, competing factions formed in the bureaucratic hierarchy based on shared scholarship and political inclinations, and centering on well-known scholar-officials. Because Neo-Confucian teachings originally encouraged s
ŏ
nbi to organize in cliques, it was quite natural that factions formed in the Neo-Confucian state of Chos
ŏ
n.

According to conventional wisdom, factional strife appeared in the early reign of King S
ŏ
njo (1567–1608). In 1575 a conflict developed between two segments of the bureaucracy coalescing, respectively, around Sim
Ŭ
i-gy
ŏ
m and Kim Hyo-w
ŏ
n. Those who sided with Sim
Ŭ
i-gy
ŏ
m were called the
S
ŏ
in,
or Westerners, because Sim lived in the western part of Seoul, and those who supported Kim Hyo-w
ŏ
n were called the
Tongin,
or Easterners, because Kim lived in the eastern part of Seoul. At first the Westerners were mainly the established literati from Seoul, Ky
ŏ
nggi, Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng, and Ch
ŏ
lla, and the Easterners were largely the newly rising literati from Ky
ŏ
ngsang.

The immediate cause of the conflict between Sim
Ŭ
i-gy
ŏ
m and Kim Hyow
ŏ
n was a personal quarrel over appointments to coveted positions in the Yi-jo, known collectively as the
ch
ŏ
llang.
Although these posts were mid-level (5th or 6th rank), their holders were authorized to recommend and appoint candidates to some lower offices in the ministry. Because the ch
ŏ
llang were important positions, they were usually filled by officials of high academic repute from the Office of Propagation and Literature. The posts also functioned as a shortcut to promotion to the highest offices. Incumbents customarily recommended their successors; for example, Kim Hyo-w
ŏ
n, as a younger reputable official, was recommended for a ch
ŏ
llang position by his predecessor O K
ŏ
n in 1574. But Sim
Ŭ
i-gy
ŏ
m accused him of being a sycophant and opposed his appointment. Although Kim Hy
ŏ
-won had once been supported by Yun W
ŏ
n-hy
ŏ
ng, who was hated by the Neo-Confucian literati, Kim nevertheless secured the post. When Kim left office in 1575, Sim
Ŭ
i-gy
ŏ
m’s younger brother, Sim Ch’unggy
ŏ
m, was suggested as a potential successor, and this time it was Kim Hyow
ŏ
n who objected. Sim Ch’ung-gy
ŏ
m failed to obtain the appointment to the post. Soon officialdom began to take sides between the two protagonists and to regard their opponents with contempt.

Immediately after a factional split between the Easterners, who were mainly disciples of Yi Hwang and Cho Sik, and the Westerners, who largely followed Yi I and S
ŏ
ng Hon, a balance of power was achieved between the factions. Then, in 1589, the Westerners, led by Ch
ŏ
ng Ch’
ŏ
l, charged Ch
ŏ
ng Y
ŏ
-rip, a member of the Easterners, with high treason, which resulted in the execution of many
Easterners, including Ch
ŏ
ng Y
ŏ
-rip himself. This incident exacerbated the conflict between the two factions, and two years later, in 1591, Ch
ŏ
ng Ch’
ŏ
l and his Westerners proposed to designate an heir to Sonjo’s throne. This incurred Sonjo’s wrath, and they were driven from power. At this point the Easterners split into two sub-factions over the issue of how Ch
ŏ
ng Ch’
ŏ
l and the Westerners should be punished. The sub-faction known as the
Pukin,
or Northerners, urged a harsh punishment, as it was the scholar-officials of Northerner background who suffered a severe blow in the Ch
ŏ
ng Y
ŏ
-rip incident. The opposing
Namin,
or Southerners, on the other hand, was took a more moderate stance. In terms of philosophy and scholasticism, the two sub-factions represented the division between the disciples of Cho Sik and those of Yi Hwang. Initially the Southerners were in the ascendancy, and then the Northerners took the lead. The victorious Northerners then differed internally over the appointment of Hong Y
ŏ
-sun as inspector-general and split into two sub-factions, the
Taebuk,
or Senior Northerners, and the
Sobuk,
or Junior Northerners. Consolidating their power in the years during and following the war with Japan, the Senior Northerners helped Kwanghaegun, or the Prince of Kwanghae, ascend to the throne, and, accordingly, they dominated the political scene during the king’s reign (1608–1623).

Factional strife was a life-and-death struggle between political cliques. Whereas successful factions constantly split into sub-factions, defeated factions retired and recouped their strength in rural villages, where their leaders surrounded themselves with large numbers of relatives and disciples for support. Members of a particular faction bequeathed their factional affiliation to their descendants as an inheritance, and thus, rather than remaining ephemeral groupings, the factions were essentially foreordained and permanent. Factionalism was seriously disruptive, as no mechanism existed for reconciling policy differences if the throne failed to settle them through strong leadership. Because of the Confucian emphasis on ethics as the basis of good government, opposing policies were frequently regarded as signs of the opponents’ depravity and even tantamount to treason. The factional struggles were so ferocious and enduring that even wars with foreign countries could not resolve them.

Despite successive harsh purges, the Neo-Confucian literati increasingly consolidated their strength and ultimately dominated the political scene thanks to the
s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n
, or private academies, and the hyangyak. Along with agricultural
landholdings, these provided the literati with a solid power base in the rural community. In their early years the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n contributed to greatly reinvigorating Neo-Confucian scholarship. Soon, however, by dividing education along family and factional lines, they accentuated the growing factionalism in officialdom involving the highest scholar-officials to the lowest student candidates in controversies dividing the government.

In the late Kory
ŏ
period, Confucian scholars built
s
ŏ
jae
, or private academies, where they devoted themselves purely to education. In the sixteenth century, for the first time in Korean history, the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n, which added Confucian shrines dedicated to worthies of the earlier period to the existing s
ŏ
jae, appeared.

The first s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n, the Paekundong, was established in 1543 by Chu Se-bung, then magistrate of P’unggi county in Ky
ŏ
ngsang province. In his s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n, Chu honored An Hyang (Yu), the famed Kory
ŏ
Neo-Confucian scholar. In 1550, when Yi Hwang became magistrate of P’unggi, he presented a memorial to King My
ŏ
ngjong, in which he persuaded the king to bestow on the Paekundong s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n a wooden hanging board inscribed, in the king’s own hand, with four Chinese characters, the
sosu s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n,
meaning “academy of received learning,” as well as books, farmlands, and slaves. Now known as the Sosu s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n, the Paekundong was the first of the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n to receive a royal charter. The s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n was also granted the right of exemption from taxation and corvee labor. The king’s gift of a hanging board represented the state’s official approval of the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n.

Subsequently s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n sprang up throughout the country, and by the end of King S
ŏ
njo’s reign, in 1608, they numbered more than 100, distributed mostly in Ky
ŏ
ngsang province. At the same time the number of royally chartered s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n greatly increased, amounting to one-third of the total. Following the precedent of the Sosu s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n, the state bestowed grants of books, farmland, and slaves on the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n. At first the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n competed with the hyanggyo for leadership in education, but soon they not only outnumbered the hyanggyo but had greater authority than the local schools. The s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n now occupied a position that had been enjoyed by the Buddhist temples in the Kory
ŏ
period. Since the late sixteenth century the s
ŏ
w
ŏ
n were the major foundation, or stage, of the internal power struggles plaguing the Neo-Confucian literati and functioned, in particular, as a political base where the defeated literati regained their strength.

The hyangyak was another mechanism through which the Neo-Confucian literati strengthened their position in the rural community. The hyangyak basically sought four objectives that originated in Song China: encouragement of moral integrity, regulation of misconduct, observance of decorum, and provision
of aid in the event of disasters. Cho Kwang-jo had initially implemented the hyangyak in 1519, but his downfall brought its enforcement temporarily to a halt. When the Neo-Confucian literati finally gained strength in King S
ŏ
njo’s reign, the hyangyak became widely instituted throughout the country. Because powerful figures among the local Neo-Confucian literati usually administered the hyangyak, it actually had great authority over the peasantry in the rural villages.

Through the widespread operation of the hyangyak, self-government took root in the countryside, and the yangban literati held real power in the rural community. This was accompanied by the reinforcement of the landownertenant system in rural villages. Scholar-officials were employed by the government service in the capital and at the same time were sustained by their agricultural landholdings in the countryside. Meanwhile, the defeated faction patiently waited for a ripe opportunity to return to power in the rural villages.

As already pointed out, Neo-Confucianism had two overall aims: to cultivate an individual’s own virtue and to establish an ethical basis for a virtuous, enlightened political order. As the literati increasingly emphasized cultivation of the mind following successive literati purges since the early sixteenth century, Neo-Confucianism increasingly became a metaphysical philosophy that sought to find the essence of the human psyche and the seminal components of the universe. Following the same path as their Chinese peers, Korean NeoConfucians divided all existence in the universe into two interdependent, inseparable components,
i
and
ki
(
li
and
qi
in Chinese), and they pursued the essence of human nature more deeply compared to their Chinese counterparts.

According to the Neo-Confucian doctrine, i was a patterning or formative element, and ki a concretizing and energizing element understood as matter or “ether.” Fundamental principles of form could not exist concretely without ki, which, without i, would only be directionless energy. Thus, for example, i could provide the plan of a boat or house but actual boats and houses are made of ki. Elaborate theories specified the relationships between i and ki, and to explain the essence of the universe and human nature, two distinct schools of Neo-Confucian thought emerged in Chos
ŏ
n: the Y
ŏ
ngnam school, which primarily emphasized i, and the Kiho school, which stressed the primacy of ki.

Yi
Ŏ
n-j
ŏ
k pioneered the theory of the primacy of i, but Yi Hwang (T’oegye) developed a full philosophy based on this view and is known to posterity as “Korea’s Zhu Xi,” after the Chinese founder of the Neo-Confucian school. In fact,
a street in downtown Seoul is named T’oegye, his pseudonym, in his honor. In centering on the role of the metaphysical element i, Yi Hwang saw the universe as essentially spiritual, and because human nature was pure and good, all of us could perceive moral principles, norms, duties, and inner experience. This school of thought was carried on by such figures as Yu S
ŏ
ng-nyong, Kim S
ŏ
ng-il, Ch
ŏ
ng Ku, and Chang Hy
ŏ
n-gwang; it became known as the Y
ŏ
ngnam (Ky
ŏ
ngsang province) school and exerted great influence on Confucian scholarship in Japan.