Korea: Outline of a Civilisation [1 ed.] 9789004300057, 9789004299719

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Korea: Outline of a Civilisation

Brill’s Korean Study Library Edited by Ross King (University of British Columbia) In co-operation with Boudewijn Walraven (Leiden University) Sun Joo Kim (Harvard University) Rüdiger Frank (University of Vienna)

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bksl

Korea Outline of a Civilisation By

Kenneth M. Wells

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This book is published with the generous support of the International Center for Korean Studies, Korea University’s Center for research, publication, and development in Korean Studies. The International Center for Korean Studies was established in 2003 to support scholarship and exploration of Korea in the humanities and social sciences, and to promote new research in Korean Studies to a wide international audience. Cover illustration: A blend of old and new in central Seoul, late 1990s. Photo by author.

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1876-7079 isbn 978-90-04-29971-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30005-7 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix List of Maps and Illustrations xii Political Chronology of the Korean Peninsula xiii Introduction 1 1 From Tribes to Monarchies 10 Location and Territory 10 The Mists of Time 11 Wiman Chosŏn 13 The Three Kingdoms 15 The Silla Bone-rank Aristocracy 17 United Silla 19 The Problem of T’ang China 21 The Challenge of Regional Aristocracies 22 Rise of the Koryŏ Dynasty 27 The Mongol Presence 29 2 Buddhism, Confucianism and the People 32 Silla Religion and Culture 32 Classical Religion 33 Buddhism 36 Buddhism and Art 39 Koryŏ Buddhism 40 Confucianism 45 The People 50 Social Policy and Welfare 50 The Status of Women 51 The Rise of the Military 54 3 The Grand Tradition I: The Pillars of Orthodoxy 59 The Neo-Confucian World 61 The State and Economy 62 The Metaphysics of Orthodoxy 67 Education and the Growth of Factions 73 The Japanese Invasion 75 Science and Technology 79 The Grounds of Longevity 83

vi 4 The Grand Tradition II: The Other Side of Orthodoxy 85 The Regulation of Women 87 Religion 90 Buddhism 90 Classical Religion 93 Catholicism 97 Literature and Thought 99 The Scholars’ Revolt 107 5 The Tradition Under Siege 111 The Imo Incident 111 The Taewŏn’gun 114 Challenges to the Grand Tradition 115 The Enlightenment Party and the Kapsin Coup 120 The Tonghak Movement 124 The Peasant War of 1894 125 The Kabo Reforms 127 The Independence Club 129 Formation of the Independence Club 131 Independence Club Activities 132 The Enlightenment Movement 138 6 The Nation in Question 143 Japan’s Annexation of Korea 145 Economic Developments 150 Land Management 150 Industry, Trade, and Commerce 151 Independence Movements 153 The March First Movement 154 The Movement Abroad 155 Prescriptions for a New Korea 159 Culturalist Movements 159 Socialist and Communist Movements 161 The United Front Movement 163 Cultural Developments 164 Education 164 Publications 165 Literacy and Literature 166 Gender Movements and the ‘New Women’ 168 Liberal Feminists 170 Ideological Divisions 171

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Religious Movements 173 Buddhism 174 Ch’ŏndogyo 174 Christianity 176 Christianity and Socialism 181 The Shintō Shrine Edict 183 War and the End of Colonial Rule 186 Conclusion 187 7 A Nation Divided, 1945–1990 188 The Road to Permanent Division 189 The Korean War 195 Orthodoxy in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 197 Chuch’e Ideology 197 Economic Policy 205 Orthodoxy in the Republic of Korea 211 Self-reliance and Unity 211 Economic Policy 213 The New Yangban 217 Confucian Categories and Mass Society 218 Dynastic Politics and the Cause of Communism in the North 219 Autocracy, Military Rule and Democracy in the South 223 The Struggle for Democracy in South Korea 227 Student Movements 227 The Kwangju Uprising, May 1980 230 8 Civilisation, North and South, 1945–1990s 233 Education 235 The Meaning of the Family 239 South Korea 240 North Korea 242 Women and Society 243 Women’s Employment in South Korea 245 Women and Politics in South Korea 248 Literary Reflections in South Korea 251 Literature of Engagement 253 The Minjung Movement in Literature 254 Pure Literature 256 Literary Reflections of Gender 257 Religion and Society in North Korea 260 Buddhism 263

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Folk Religion 264 Christianity 265 Religion and Society in South Korea 268 Christianity 268 Buddhism 274 Confucianism 276 Shamanism 278 9 Unfinished Business The Democratic Transition in the South and the Question of Reunification 284 Legacies of the Kwangju and Minjung Movements 284 The Economic Crisis of 1997–98 287 The Nature of Democracy 292 The Sunshine Policy and North-South Relations 296 Concluding Remarks 305 Bibliography 307 Notes on Sources 307 Bibliography 308 Index 319

Preface and Acknowledgements This book has been a long time in the making, and has grown out of my experiences of teaching at universities primarily in Australia and the United States of America and to a lesser but still important extent in South Korea, The Netherlands and New Zealand. While teaching and interacting with students from many backgrounds, I began to develop the kind of course contents on traditional and modern Korea that I should like to have had access to in my own students days. There are several excellent surveys of Korea’s history framed by a political chronology of changes in political leadership or administration. Rather than replicating their contributions, I wished to present Korea’s long history as a story of a civilisation framed by developments and changes in conceptions of human relations, the optimum shape of society and how its parts fit together. I became concerned, to give one example, that treatment of animistic beliefs and practices during the Chosŏn period was almost entirely missing from general histories of Korea. Yet these played important roles among the vast majority of the population and were recognised at the highest cultural and political levels. An appreciation of the depth of the subscription to these beliefs and practices in traditional times is vital to understanding that which often takes contemporary visitors to and scholars of Korea by surprise: the pervasive vitality of animism and shamanism in Korea today. By the same token, one cannot leave major “political” events covered in other histories out of a general history simply in order to make it different. This would not be useful as a textbook, for example, if it did not include narrative on key events or the nature of administrations. It is important also that readers gain an overall sense of Korea’s history, by which I mean happenings and developments that have had an impact on the majority of the population at the time and thereafter. What I aim to achieve is an understanding that behind or intertwined with (leaving out issues of causation here) such happenings and developments are systematic ideas, systems of belief, networks and emphases of culture, lineage structures, ideologies of gender and of hierarchies and so forth. In what we call “modern” Korean history, the alignment of “­political” and “cultural” chronologies is much closer than in earlier times, largely because of how the development of mass culture attendant on the “death of the p ­ easantry” and rapid urbanisation has taken place in recent history. I have devoted some discussion to this feature of modern Korea both in the introduction and as it arises in the later chapters, and have provided a political chronology for ­readers’ convenience.

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preface and acknowledgements

I have used the McCune-Reischauer (M-R) system of romanisations for Korean words and also for most personal names. Where a Korean has chosen or is commonly known by a particular spelling, such as Rhee Syngman, Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee, the M-R version is provided in parentheses. Placenames likewise are given in M-R version, excepting only Pyongyang and Seoul. In footnotes to writings in Korean by Koreans, I follow the Korean custom of placing family names first, followed by given names. Where a Korean author has published in English, I have followed the Chicago Manual of Style order of putting the family name last. For all authors in the bibliography, I follow the standard practice of family name followed by given names. For dates in the early period, I use BC and AD rather than BCE and CE, because the argument in favour of using the latter, that it is culturally neutral, does not in my view hold water. To name a dating system that originated from and still concurs with the western calendar based on periods before and after Christ a “common era” appears to me certainly more culturally imperialistic than the BC–AD system, which at least leaves room for people of other calendric traditions to employ their own system. Imposing on the whole world what obviously is a cultural artifact of one part of the world as if it were not so, is hardly a neutral procedure. This survey is necessarily based on my readings of a great deal of literature produced by numerous scholars on a large variety of topics and periods. It also owes much to feedback from undergraduate and graduate students especially at the University of California at Berkeley and the Australian National University, and to insights gained from discussions with colleagues in East Asian and other fields at many institutions around the world. But it is also the fruit of my own primary research, mostly but not only in the modern period. I have kept footnotes to a minimum. I have followed standard procedures for general surveys, avoiding footnotes on information that specialists in the area concerned would regard as common knowledge, except for direct citations and where I employ important ideas and interpretations of others. All the photographs are my own, and except where otherwise acknowledged, translations of original materials are also my own. I appreciate greatly the financial support given to me in the form of a writing grant by the International Centre for Korean Studies at Korea University in Seoul. I am grateful, too, for the opportunity given me to concentrate on research for this book by the History Department at Berkeley during my three years of teaching there. My thanks go to the students in tutorial and seminar sessions especially, whose lively participation in discussions on thought, religion, literature and gender assured me of the value of such content and of the approach taken in this work. I am very thankful to the readers of the initial

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manuscript, whose reviews alerted me to several factual errors and offered excellent suggestions on how to improve it. Many colleagues have helped me in various ways. In particular I thank Jurgis Elisonas for his contribution to the section on the late-fourteenth-century Japanese invasion of Korea, Choi Kyeong-Hee for her provision of information on and insights into the relationship between literature and social change, Stephen Bokenkamp for sharing from his considerable wealth of knowledge and understanding of religion, Boudewijn Walraven, Remco Breuker and Koen de Ceuster at Leiden University for their practical and moral support, and my son, Jeremy, for the time he spent composing the maps. Finally, I wish to express my deepest thanks to those among my family, friends and colleagues who supported me through the dark years of recovery from head injuries and helped me regain belief I could resume my academic work. That I was able to complete this book is a testimony to their encouragement, and their forbearance.

List of Maps and Illustrations Maps 1 2

The Middle Three Kingdom Period 23 Korea after 1953 198

Illustrations 1 An animist shrine and carved wooden spirits 35 2 A Koryŏ period Buddhist stupa 41 3 A gilded Buddha seated in the Koryŏ period Pohyŏnsa Temple 43 4 The tomb of the Koryŏ King Kongmin near Kaesŏng 49 5 Two sheep in front of Koryŏ King Kongmin’s tomb 57 6 Refined Buddhist architecture: temple artwork in the Sŏrak Mountains 92 7 The first issue of the Tongnip Sinmun, 7 April 1896 134 8 Comparison of Classical Chinese and vernacular han’gŭl scripts 135 9 Modern Pyongyang, showing the May Day Stadium 201 10 Massive bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, founder of the DPRK 201 11 Monument in front of the Revolutionary Museum in Pyongyang 202 12 The Juch’e Tower, Pyongyang 202 13 School children from Japan beneath the Juch’e Tower in Pyongyang 203 14 View across the Taedong River of the Grand People’s Study House 203 15 The Great Hall of gifts in the Myohyang Mountains 204 16 The Namp’o Barrage, North Korea 204 17 Mausoleum of Kim Il Sung 205 18 A Seoul street in 1971 215 19 Seoul city street scene near the City Hall, late 1980s 216 20 A blend of old and new in central Seoul, late 1990s 278 21 Confucius’ birthday celebration in Seoul, 1971 279 22 Honouring Confucius in Seoul, 1971 279 23 South Korean Buddhist family’s ancestral service, 1972 280

Political Chronology of the Korean Peninsula

The Early Period: c. 400–108 BC

4th century BC Formation of Old Chosŏn in central north to parts of Manchuria. c. 1120 BC Rise of Kija Chosŏn (legendary) in Old Chosŏn territory. c. 190 BC Wiman Chosŏn replaces former Chosŏn territory. 108 BC Han China conquers Wiman Chosŏn.

Lo-Lang Period: 108 Bc–c. 300 Ad

108 BC Han China establishes the Three Commanderies, with the administration centred in Lo-lang (Nangnang) in the northwest. c. 30 BC  Koguryŏ tribal confederacy becomes a hereditary monarchy. c. 50 AD Ma Han, Chin Han & Pyŏn Han form in southern region.

Three Kingdom Period: c. 300–688

c. 234 Paekche tribal confederacy becomes a hereditary monarchy in the southwest. 245  Chinese Wei/Puyŏ alliance attacks Koguryŏ to halt its northwest expansion. 316–319 Koguryŏ absorbs Puyŏ and expels Lo-lang Commandery. c. 356 Silla tribal confederacy becomes a hereditary monarchy in the southeast. 357 Remaining Chinese commanderies leave the peninsula. 660–663 T’ang/Silla forces defeat Paekche. 667–668 T’ang/Silla forces defeat Koguryŏ.

United Silla Period: 668–936

671 Silla gains independence from Chinese T’ang. 696–713 Parhae (P’o-hai) Kingdom arises in former Koguryŏ territory, north of (present-day) Pyongyang.

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822 Armed regional conflict breaks out in Silla; embassies to China cease. 892–900 Later Paekche rises in southwest, Later Koguryŏ in north. 918 Koryŏ Kingdom established out of Later Koguryŏ. 926 Parhae falls to Khitan and Jurchen forces. 935 Koryŏ conquers Silla. 936 Koryŏ conquers Later Paekche.

Koryŏ Period: 936–1392

993 First Khitan Liao attack on Koryŏ. 1010 Second Khitan Liao attack on Koryŏ. 1170 General Chŏng Chungbu revolts and military regimes begin. 1231 Mongol invasions of Koryŏ commence. 1258 Mongols subjugate Koryŏ. 1356 Mongols withdraw from the peninsula. 1392 General Yi Sŏnggye proclaims himself ruler of a new dynasty.

Chosŏn Period: 1392–1910

1592–1598 Japanese invasions of Chosŏn. 1627 First Manchu attack on Chosŏn. 1637 Second Manchu attack on Chosŏn. Chosŏn forced to recognise Manchu Ch’ing dynasty and pay tribute. 1800 --> Period of chronic rebellions begins. 1866 French gunboat raid on Kanghwa Island. 1876 Kanghwa Treaty signed with Japan, opening up ports to trade. 1884 Abortive Kapsin Coup staged in December. 1894 Tonghak Kabo Peasants War. 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War waged on Chosŏn territory. 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War waged on Chosŏn territory. 1905 Korea becomes a Japanese Protectorate in November. 1910 Japan annexes Korea in August.

Japanese Colonial Period: 1910–1945

1919 March First Movement on behalf of Korea’s independence. 1919 Korean Provisional Government established in Shanghai.

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1927–1931 Korean United Front Movement (Sin’ganhoe). 1937 Outbreak of Sino-Japanese War; Korea put on war footing. 1942 Outbreak of Pacific War following Pearl Harbour attack in December. 1945 United States and Russian forces move into Korea and expel Japan.

Divided Korea: 1946 -->

1948 Republic of (South) Korea and Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea established. 1950–1953 Korean War 1960  R OK President Rhee Syngman resigns following the April 19th Movement 1961–1988 Period of military rule in the ROK. 1980 Kwangju Uprising in May in the ROK. 1993 --> Civilian democracy in the ROK. 1994 Kim Il Sung, founder and leader of the DPRK dies, succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il. 2000 First Summit Meeting between the ROK and DPRK in June.

Introduction What [Tolstoy] sees is not the one, but, always with an ever-growing minuteness, in all its teeming individuality, with an obsessive, inescapable, incorruptible, all penetrating lucidity which maddens him, the many. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953)

Almost everything in the Korean tradition, from its high learning in Buddhist metaphysics and Confucian moral science to its popular cosmologies and nostalgic shamanist epics, earnestly sought universal harmony. And yet Korean society is also characterised by regional strife, competing versions of orthodoxy, trenchant challenges to established doctrine and outright dissent, and not only in modern times has been labelled a contentious society. The yearning for harmony, the imperative felt for oneness in the face of divides across region, gender, class, education, religion, ideology, and access to power and wealth, might be the reason for the severity at times of the contention. The ideal was perhaps too high and too pure to permit pluralism beyond a clear unity within diversity, and was on occasion so relentlessly politicised that at times the system was unforgiving of any straying from the true course. There are cultural and economic divides across many contemporary states, including the English-speaking western states, so that parallels may be drawn between features of Korea’s story and present concerns in many countries. I am aware that in these countries certain developments and phenomena in Korea’s recent past, or my treatment of the same, relate to diverse and at times mutually hostile positions. Nevertheless, I do not endeavour to speak to these concerns or debate them, though readers may draw their conclusions. This book is a book about the Korean peninsula and the people who have lived and moved and had their being on it over the past two millennia. It has over the past two decades or more been recognised afresh that beliefs affect the course of history and the shape of societies and the nature of human interactions at many levels. This re-recognition, however, has been forced on us by tragic developments. As a consequence, religion has been associated generally with negative outcomes. Hence it is often not the case that religions are regarded as having positive contributions to make to societies. More importantly, they are not regarded as legitimate fashioners of societies. They are influences to minimise if it is not possible or advisable to eliminate them. Their operation is more to be regretted than explored and appreciated. So although it might appear that a place has been once again restored to religion and other belief systems, in actuality almost the reverse has occurred: the idea that they

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004300057_002

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Introduction

should not have any place in public life or lie behind state and international decision-making has been strengthened. Nevertheless, the past is not an area in which to campaign for that which we wish had been the case, and records of Korea’s past indicate that the policies of administrations and their rationales had to conform to the ideas and beliefs current at the time rather than the other way round. It might take an imaginative leap in our own times to conceive a world where politics and economics were answerable to religious and philosophical frameworks, but making this leap is not only necessary to grasp the dynamics at work in pre-modern Korea but also advisable if one wishes to understand certain consequential developments in the contemporary world. In the case of Korea, it is unusually difficult to make this imaginative leap because in contemporary Korea almost everything in life appears to have been politicised to an unusual degree. When we come to the twentieth century, one is expected by historians, social scientists and indeed even by most literary critics to relate Korean affairs primarily to ideology and politics. There is good reason for this expectation. A leading literary critic and historian in South Korea, Kim Uch’ang, has pointed out that contrary to the established idea in Korean tradition that human affairs moved from the inward to the outward and that culture sets the stage for politics, the mood of the country in the 1980s, particularly among its artists and academics, “become wholly political and therefore anticultural.” But he went on to suggest that this seeming arrest of the cultural “may also be part of the cultural dynamic, part of the process by which a nation forges a new consciousness that will eventually encompass the necessity of community and the freedom of individuals.”1 In the same vein and in faithfulness to the record, this brief history necessarily presents the period from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries as substantially politicised times, but attempts to provide some insight into the relation between this politicised mindset and the cultural dynamics of the times. A consideration of the roles of Buddhism in the Silla and Koryŏ periods and neo-Confucianism in the Chosŏn period reveals that the political leaders naturally wished to employ ideas and cosmologies to their advantage—and at times indubitably forced religious and philosophical ideas to serve naked political ends. However, one cannot do justice to the neo-Confucian transformation of Korean society in the Chosŏn era simply by focusing on the politics of power. We have also to recognise that the intellectual, social and political leaders in the Chosŏn period genuinely subscribed to the central principles

1  Uchang Kim, “The Agony of Cultural Construction: Politics and Culture in Modern Korea,” in State and Society in Contemporary Korea, ed. Hagen Koo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 163.

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and doctrines of neo-Confucian thought and earnestly strove to ensure that not only the practices of the administration at all levels but also the shape and ordering of society from top to bottom conformed to these doctrines. Politics never conquered these ideas: it was expected to measure up to them. Even in recent times, in the midst of momentous economic and political developments in modern South Korea, not all Koreans regarded cultural developments and culture in general as matters of secondary importance. Early in 1972, a year in which the two Koreas held their first substantive talks on reunification, a renowned Korean historian of ideas stood before a class at Seoul’s Yonsei University and began breaking down their confidence in some of the most common-sense, taken-for-granted notions, indeed things they considered exempt from argument, in preparation for their induction into the principles of Daoism. His lecture drew questions from students about its relevance to contemporary life. The professor considered that the contemporary political scene in South Korea, where General Park Chung Hee, the president since his coup d’état in May 1961, was drawing up the new ‘Revitalisation Constitution’ that imposed on the nation a species of martial law, was of only superficial moment. It was not, he believed, the real indicator of what was important in Korea at the time: far more important was how the people’s views of the world and their place in it were shaping up under a host of more important changes that at bottom were fundamental to human understanding and identity. Political matters, irritating and even dangerous though they might be, were not driving these fundamental changes, and the people should not be making politics their reference point in the search for their place in the sun. It is of no small significance that the professor was dealing with the ideas of Daoism. For Daoism was long a competitor with Confucianism for the minds and social ethos of East Asia and opposed the Confucian emphasis on assigning names to things, people and relationships in accordance with essential ideas of their functions; it resisted the Confucian principle of the Rectification of Names, which often and for rulers conveniently had a political edge to it, ascribing roles and limits to the people who made up society and buttressing cultural, social and political hierarchical orders. But the way in which we find and use names is fundamental to human understanding, to the question of who we are and how a society best fits together. The basic idea behind Confucian political and social prescriptions was that there was a cosmic pattern replicated throughout life in all its forms, from the movement of the sun, moon and stars in the heavens through the natural and animal worlds to human society from family to state. This pattern was also conceived of as a melody, and playing and practising this melody was the secret to harmony in the world in all its aspects. Unity depended on all players learning their parts, knowing the notes they were to play, even those who could not grasp the overall symphony.

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Introduction

How were people to know their parts? Confucius had his answer: “In putting at ease those above and governing the people, nothing is better than ritual. In altering customs and changing habits, nothing is better than music.”2 Ritual, and to a lesser degree music, were indeed employed in East Asian statecraft. But Confucian scholar-officials laid great emphasis on names and naming. Not that using a name created realities or gave them their character, but that using an incorrect name or using a name incorrectly would create a confusion of roles, functions and relationships, in turn creating disorder. Harmony rested on correct names. There were times when names were out of tune: wrong notes revealed the need to rectify names and restore the melody. For Daoists, however, to use names in this manner was to obscure the melody, which could only be heard in the natural order of things, not prescribed or imposed. The argument between Daoism and Confucianism over names draws our attention to what underlies the whole life experience from birth to death. Einstein’s question whether the universe is a friendly place is not a scientific question. It is a question of names. Many names we now take for granted, but if someone challenges us, demanding an explanation why we use this name, we are brought up short. And nothing brings us up so short as change in society and nation that is so rapid and irrevocable as to cut us off from the past. The twentieth century was a time of massive, far-reaching change on a global scale. It was a century of transitions from dynastic realms to ever multiplying nation-states, from agricultural to secondary industries, from élite to mass education, politics and culture. It was a time of rapid and momentous advances in knowledge and technology. But it was also a century of crises and of extremes, of disruption of traditions, of widespread social dislocation and increasingly large gaps of understanding between generations. Across the globe whole populations were cut off from the past by seismic shifts in the crusts of their civilisations. At such critical times, people affected by them and in particular the educated among them reflect on history in order to gain self-understanding and retrieve some sense of stability and confidence in the present. Korea is certainly no exception. The past one hundred and fifty years is a story of crisis after crisis, from internal rebellions to foreign domination, to the division into two states, North and South, and the recent economic woes. The small Korean peninsula experienced in concentrated form almost every feature of twentieth-century change: colonialism and post-colonial dilemmas, the force of nationalism, the ideological antagonisms of the Cold War, rapid urbanisation and the rise of global economics and culture. In terms of the 2  Cited in Sue Tuohy, “The Sonic Dimensions of Nationalism in Modern China: Musical Representation and Transformation,” Ethnomusicology 45, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 107.

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speed and depth of the transformation, and in the density of its recent history, very few countries can rival Korea. Not surprisingly, the Korean people have become masters at handling crises and wresting from them achievements that surprise the rest of the world. They have risen high above numerous challenges to produce a fascinating and vibrant culture, from which there is much to learn and still more to expect. Nevertheless, by force of the sheer number, depth and rapidity of the changes, Koreans today are more cut off from their own country’s pre-­ twentieth-century past than from the values, mindsets and material cultures of their contemporaries from a multitude of nations across the globe, whose histories at least up to the mid-twentieth century have followed quite different paths. Naturally they feel a sense of loss, to make up for which they have developed a keen interest in history. For Korean historians, it has produced something of a Golden Age: seldom before have their learning and opinions and courses captured such widespread, popular attention. While the leaders of North Korea and the Russian Federation, and indeed interested parties in South Korea also, are devising strategies to extend the Iron Silk Road—the TransSiberian Railway—into the Korean peninsula, Korea’s archaeologists and historians are pressured to journey the original Silk Road back to its ancient roots. To produce a history of a nation, it is required that one postulates a heritage, a coherent line of continuity. And because traditional times are replete with data on élites but starved of any consistent or reliable information on non-élites, yielding indirect data that supports only inconclusive debates, and because in nation-state horizontality all aspire to élite status, the people of a modern nation are very ready to assume solidarity and identify with the élite culture of the ancients. This readiness to find an unbroken historical dynamic for the nation is something of a paradox, for the present system of nation-states, and of international relations based on nation-state sovereignty, is a late and minuscule portion of human history. But because people take the nation-state order for granted, they seldom recognise that there has occurred a profound name-change, which in the Confucian sense entailed a wholesale reordering of social, economic and political relations that amounted to a break with the past. There is now a different melody and citizens of a nation-state play and dance to different tunes than did subjects of the former realms. But to give the score of contemporary times legitimacy and security amidst rapid change, there is a need to trace it backwards forever, to find a lineage in which the present is foreshadowed. This discovery, or invention, of a national historical dynamic is particularly important for Korea. When Korea was annexed by Japan on 28 August 1910, the last formal vestiges of independent statehood in Korea disappeared. Japan

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was unopposed: Chinese and Russian influence had already been removed by Japan’s victories in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese and 1904–05 Russo-Japanese wars, while Britain and the United States indifferently withdrew their legations. Indeed, America’s president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, considered Japan deserved Korea since the latter, he opined, was utterly unable to defend itself and was in dire need of proper management. Whatever the merits of Roosevelt’s position, it does raise an enduring question: the accountability of Korea for its own political fate and even its national history. Korea’s causal position in East Asian history has often been denied, not only in connection with international or regional developments but even with respect to its own national history. In this light, it has not been uncommon to attribute determination of Korea’s lot to other powers. Descriptions of Korea have by and large reflected a geopolitical view of Korea’s position in the northeast Asian region, ranging from it being a political football of the surrounding powers to a bridge linking Japan to the continent. A rather insidious version of this latter characterisation, offered in justification for Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, was that Korea was a dagger that could be wielded by both China and Russia and pointed at the heart of Japan. But there is also a Korean version of this geopolitical position: the metaphor of the shrimp between whales. When the whales thrash about, the shrimp is tossed in all directions. The tussle for dominance among China, Russia and Japan at the end of the nineteenth century robbed Korea of its independence. When the Allied whales ‘liberated’ it from Japan in 1945, the shrimp was cut in half. As if that were not enough, the two halves were bruised and battered in a fierce super-power contest waged on Korean soil from 1950 to 1953. Even the 1997–98 economic crisis invited use of the metaphor: Korea’s plight was the consequence of sudden, self-serving movements by the economic whales belonging to the IMF. But alongside this doleful metaphor operates a much more positive vision of Korea’s national historical dynamic, according to which Korea is not somehow situated on the fringe of the modern world, helplessly subject to its gyrations, but is a central participant in its development. Korea’s relation to the rest of the world is such that it not infrequently stands at the forefront of developments that define the way the world moves forward. Not in the sense that Korea is a microcosm of the wider world, the world system writ small, but rather that it is an intense, most concentrated form of it, in which every feature is brought out in sharper relief than anywhere else, so that the way Korea responds to its own challenges provides valuable pointers on how the rest of the world might seek solutions to what are now called global issues.

Introduction

7

The sources of this vision of Korea’s present role are naturally sought in Korea’s past. People want to converse with those who went before, to feel they are not alone, that the events that buffet them are not simply contained within the moment with no links to past or future. And rightly so, for although the present nation-state system is new and its continuity with the past is, as everywhere, largely invented, it is not invented out of nothing. The very act of studying the past puts one in communication with a host of ideas and activities of people who have gone before and forges a genuine link with their thoughts, actions and encounters with the issues of human life, creative or otherwise. And although it might be true that the links forged are perforce mostly with the interests, activities and worldviews of the cultural and political élites, this does not necessarily involve an inaccurate or overly distorted understanding of a people’s history. For it is itself a matter of history that the exercise of power by these élites entails the creation and inculcation of a basic framework within which all subjects of the realm, even the slaves, live and move, and that therefore must include the cultures of the populace in its embrace. Humanity builds big at the beginning, the renowned anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss discovered, and however diverse the classes, educational levels and other elements of its composition, a society requires a framework that in principle encompasses all within it. A short account of a nation with as long a history as Korea’s naturally requires a very precise selection of topics and themes, and it is the establishment, transformations, breakdowns and renewals over time of the overall cultural and material frameworks that operated on the peninsula that comprise the focus of this short history. Where possible, I endeavour to present both the folk and élite perspectives of these frameworks and to honour the real divisions that existed and that at times brought one era to a close and ushered in another. There are unavoidable gaps consequent both on the impossibility of doing any justice to all themes of human civilisation and to my own lack of expertise in certain areas. One very large area I have had to leave out almost entirely is the story of Korea’s relations with its neighbours and beyond: this is simply too large a topic to include in a brief history. For reasons of space, I have included very little discussion of architecture and the visual and performative arts and even less on music. Further, because this is a survey of history over many centuries, I have limited endnotes to as few as possible. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations and illustrations are my own. This short account is not a political history, of which there are many, nor an economic history, but a cultural history. A cultural history is not quite the same thing as a history of culture. Nor does it mean that the importance of

8

Introduction

economics and politics is disregarded: rather, these are situated whenever sources allow in relation to the ideas and debates that occupied the lives and minds of the people on the peninsula. It does mean that my narrative is not framed by a political chronology, such as transitions in dynasties, so much as by changes in views over what constitutes true civilisation. Although the second and third chapters are demarcated by the transition from the Koryŏ to the Chosŏn dynasty, this was not so much a change of leadership as a determined move away from the prior largely Buddhist order towards an implementation of a neo-Confucian vision of state and society that had been gathering a following over many decades. A political chronology is, however, included in the front section of this book, and may be referred to when needed. In this survey, I do not treat religious beliefs and rituals, social philosophies, family and gender ideologies, or pursuit of learning and literature as caused by or subordinate to the so-called hard structures of political power and economic practice, or vice-versa. Reliance on a scheme of causal connections of this nature generally leads to unsatisfactory linear explanations of human civilisation. Cultural components and political-economic structures are at bottom autonomous developments. Nevertheless, they do mutually influence and provide the contexts for each other, so that particular political outcomes can be genuinely motivated by religious or philosophical positions. Indeed, not infrequently in Korea’s story, we can speak of such a fusion of deeply-held religious or philosophical beliefs with clear political and even military objectives, that an attempt to portray the former as a function of propaganda misses one of the central axioms of the time by imposing on the agents a separation of sources of their actions they did not hold to themselves. This is thus a story of the ways the Korean people over time viewed their place in society, how they believed things held together. In the traditional era, up to the nineteenth century, the interaction between several broad religious and philosophical traditions—principally animism, Buddhism and Confucianism—and social institutions, state interests and, at times, external pressures, provides the framework of the story. In the modern era, although external pressures have exerted a greater and in some respects fractious impact on the peninsula and social and state institutions embody secular principles of economics and governance, the chief concern of the narrative is with the rapid, widespread and momentous cultural changes that have occurred over the past one and a half centuries. Particular attention is paid therefore to the changes in the idea and spread of education, the rise in influence of students, the development of mass culture, the redefinition of gender, and the continuing importance of religion.

Introduction

9

This outline of Korea’s civilisation begins in prehistoric times and ends in the early 1990s, when the founder of the North Korean State, Kim Il Sung passed away and genuine democratic processes overtook the military regimes in the south. However, in view of the recent tense developments on the peninsula that have made it a focus of international action, the uncertainties that envelop its present and future, and the way in which these contemporary developments have begged all the vexed questions of the meaning and effects of what is currently termed globalisation, my account closes with a chapter titled ‘Unfinished Business.’ I do not for one moment proffer any predictions. My intention is to present the contemporary dilemmas against the backdrop of Korea’s own history, so that they might be understood as far as possible in terms of the people most affected by them. My hope is that this short account will remind readers that the Koreans on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel have a history of tremendous resilience and should be permitted to take the lead in solving the present serious challenges, for which they have abundant energy and resources.

Chapter 1

From Tribes to Monarchies

Location and Territory

Korea is a peninsula protruding southwards from the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent towards the islands of Japan, encompassing today a territory of approximately 220,000 square kilometres. The two main features of this area are its mountainous terrain and its harsh winters. The principal mountain ranges are the T’aebaek, Nangnim, and Hamgyŏng ranges. The T’aebaek and Hamgyŏng mountain ranges are located along the East Coast. The Kaema plateau, the ‘roof of Korea,’ is situated in the north, and thus the land is high to the north and east, low to the west and south. Seventy per cent of the land is mountainous but only ten per cent of the mountains are higher than 1,000 meters. To the far north stands Paektu Mountain, a mighty matter of myth and legend and the highest in Korea at 2,744 meters, from which issue the two deeply-gorged, meandering rivers that today form the political boundaries between North Korea and China and Russia. These are the Amnok and Tuman rivers, called the Yalu and the Tumen in Chinese. The Taedong River that runs through modern Pyongyang and the Han River flowing through modern Seoul are edged by fertile plains that span out wide as they approach the Yellow Sea on the west. The Naktong River, passing near modern Pusan on its way out to the southern seaboard, is bordered with plains of rich soil that have supported double rice-cropping for some centuries. The mountains have played a significant role in the organisation of life on the peninsula, impeding interaction in the early period and determining the kind of agriculture pursued. The higher ranges became the natural borders of administrative units, such as the Honam, Yŏngnam, Kwansŏ and Kwanbuk districts, which developed distinctive dialects, housing, agriculture and customs. Mountain passes such as Taegwallyŏng, Ch’oryŏng and Ch’up’ungnyŏng became important transport and trading routes and townships developed around these passes. The larger rivers also functioned as natural divisions of administrative units, while their alluvial soils provided rich fields for cultivation. The Korean peninsula has a typical coastal continental climate along temperate latitudes. The winters are harsh and dry, affected by the cold Siberian air currents, limiting the length of the growing period. Ask someone from the north how cold it gets in winter, and you’ll likely be told that if a man pauses

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From Tribes To Monarchies

11

and spits over his shoulder, his spittle will have frozen solid before he resumes his walk. Summers are hot and humid due to the ocean, and rainfall reaches monsoonal proportions in some areas. Typhoons, too, are not uncommon in the summer months. The extremes of climate and the ruggedness of terrain called for an organised form of settlement.

The Mists of Time

It is not possible yet to determine with any precision the ancestral origins of the peoples who by the first centuries BC formed the bulk of the inhabitants of the Korean peninsula. Archaeological finds do not directly reveal either ethnic or cultural identity. Nor do patterns of culture, such as pottery and tools and weapons, equate with racial or ethnic patterns.1 The earliest written records of human settlement and organisation on the Korean peninsula are found in Chinese sources of the second century BC. There is, however, considerable archaeological evidence of habitation in the northern regions dating back to at least the later Palaeolithic period, that is, about 30,000 years ago. But it is uncertain whether the area was actually inhabited or whether it served chiefly as hunting grounds for hunter-gatherer peoples from further north or even from southern China. Up until about 3000 BC, therefore, there is no conclusive evidence that the more or less direct ancestors of the present Korean people settled in the peninsula. But sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC, a relatively settled population inhabited the northern region. These people were not quite sedentary, since they appear not to have engaged in agriculture until about 1000 BC. They subsisted on fish and other hunted animals, and thus naturally clustered around coastal areas. These fisher people and hunters knew how to fire pottery, and it is here that we gain clues about their origins. The type of pottery they made was what is called combware, a term derived from the pottery’s appearance, from the furrowed markings that suggest a comb-like instrument was drawn across the wet clay before it was placed in the furnace. Pottery of this nature has been found to exist from a similar period in parts of Europe, Scandinavia, Siberia, Mongolia and the Japanese islands. The pottery of Siberia at this time is particularly close in design and markings. Linguistic evidence has at times been 1  See Hyung Il Pai, Constructing “Korean” Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State-formation Theories (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000).

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adduced to support the claim that these combware manufacturers were the earliest ancestors of the Korean people. Yet it is hazardous to claim that replications of linguistic features or artifacts in different regions of themselves indicate movements of people from one place to another rather than movements of trade and ideas. The appearance in the peninsula of a more flat-bottomed pottery with wavy designs from approximately 2000 BC might be evidence of newcomers, but is far from conclusive. After 1000 BC, however, we may be more confident in supposing that a significant wave of peoples and cultures entered the northern area. For this is what we call the advent of bronze culture, and it is clear enough that its expansion was helped along by the military conquests that its possession enabled. Bronze had already been used for some time in China, but scholars differ over whether the initial bronze culture brought to Korea was of Scytho-Siberian origin or developed independently in the territories to the immediate north of the peninsula. It is not known whether these bearers of bronze culture were another wave of the same stock as the earlier combware fisherfolk, but what is important is that they were sufficiently advanced in the science of agriculture to be able to settle inland and tide themselves over the bitter northern winter by conserving the harvest produce. Close on the heels of these settlers from the north came migrants from more southern regions of the Asian continent, who established sedentary culture for the first time in the central northwest, in what today is North P’yŏngan Province, and the shape of their agricultural implements suggests Chinese influence. Thus by 800 or 700 BC there were possibly three ethnic groups moving in and about this region: Siberian, or Tungusic people from the north, Mongolian and Manchu peoples from the west, and Chinese peoples from the south. The next major development was the advent of iron culture, about 400 BC, which was brought by a people who travelled in horse-drawn carriages, used bows and arrows besides iron swords, and quickly established supremacy over the region, though without displacing the Scytho-Siberian bronze artifacts which continued to be cast and used. The iron culture, however, favoured better agriculture than the bronze, and consequently the newcomers were able to settle larger areas and gain a political and military edge over the earlier inhabitants. In the fourth century BC, while Yayoi culture was cementing its position in the Japanese islands, on the peninsula a tussle among several groups that had been enlarging their power and territory, including the Puyŏ, Yemaek and Chinbŏn north of the Han River and the Chin to the south, was won in favour of a federation of clans in the basins of the Liao and Taedong rivers, which eventually set itself up as a kingdom in the northern regions and is known to posterity as Kojosŏn, or Old Chosŏn.

From Tribes To Monarchies

13

From at least the early twelfth and officially by the late fifteenth century AD, Old Chosŏn has been regarded as the beginning of the organised history of the Korean people. This kingdom has become associated with the story of the divine progeny, Tan’gun, who in time took on the status of the founder of Old Chosŏn and thereby the progenitor of the inhabitants of the whole peninsula. A bear and a tiger, the story begins, besought the Lord of Heaven on Mount T’aebaek to endow them with human bodies and life. He gave them a supply of enchanted mugwort (a plant) and some cloves of garlic, led them to a cave, and promised them that if they remained for one hundred days out of light of the sun, they would be transformed into humans. The fidgety tiger was unable to stay the course, but the bear persevered and was changed into a woman. But there was no man, so she prayed on the mountain under a Tan tree that she might have a child. Thereupon Kwanung, son of the Lord of Heaven, changed himself into a man, and she bore a son, named Tan’gun, who established Old Chosŏn in 2333 BC and ruled over it for a considerable period (1500 years in one version) before returning to the heavenly realm. Another account, with more historical grounds than the story of Tan’gun, credits Kija with being the founder of the earliest genuinely Korean state, referred to as Kija Chosŏn, which arose or possibly supplanted Old Chosŏn, around 1100 to 1122 BC.2 The later kingdom of Koguryŏ claimed him as an ancestor, and the name Kija has been appealed to as a mark of origin and thereby legitimacy right through to the early twentieth century. In any case, the early rulers of Old Chosŏn went by the title of Tan’gun wanggŏm, which endowed them with a family relation to the supreme divinity.3 Although Old Chosŏn has thus become a focal point of much speculation about the origins of the Korean ethnic nation, very little yet is known about this early kingdom. Historical knowledge becomes firmer from the second century BC, when the dominant political force in the region was of Chinese origin. This brings us to Wiman Chosŏn.

Wiman Chosŏn

In 221 BC, a number of states in what is now China were unified under the Ch’in dynasty, which put military pressure on the tribal units in northern Korea 2  Sarah Milledge Nelson, The Archeology of Korea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 156. 3  Carter J. Eckert, et. al., Korea Old and New: A History (Cambridge MA: Korea Institute, Harvard University, 1990), 11.

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Chapter 1

and Manchuria, spurring the confederation of Old Chosŏn south of the Yalu River. In 207 BC the Han dynasty replaced the Ch’in, but in the process had to fight off and crush a number of revolts, some of which originated in northern states close to the peninsula. And into the Korean peninsula, refugees of these defeated states fled. Among these refugees was one called Wiman, or Wei-man in Chinese, a general of the state of Yan, who managed to flee with around 1000 of his soldiers. Although precise dates elude us, by about 195 BC, Wiman felt powerful enough to try his hand against the leadership of Old Chosŏn, and indeed, succeeded in proclaiming himself the new king soon thereafter. One element in Wiman’s ability to grasp supreme power in Chosŏn was undoubtedly the greater sophistication of the iron weaponry possessed by Chinese groups. But he also appears to have made alliances with strong clan leaders within Old Chosŏn who nursed grievances against the former ruler, King Chun. Further, Han China was willing to leave Wiman alone because of problems within China, and even agreed to recognise him as rightful ruler of Chosŏn in exchange for pledges that he would restrain troops from provocations along the northern border and protect the trading routes across that ­border. So for upwards of eighty years, Wiman Chosŏn enjoyed peace, and even enlarged its territory. Its capital was in the region of modern Pyongyang. At the time of Wiman’s seizure of power, iron culture had facilitated the expansion of sedentary agriculture, which in turn supported more inland settlement. During the bronze age, self-contained clan units amalgamated within walled towns, and some chieftains had acquired reasonable political power. The advent of iron culture had accentuated their power, and here perhaps the formation of an aristocracy began. Not simply superior weaponry but the adoption also of the Chinese money system enhanced the ability to settle and preside over a more socially complex society. Thus by the Wiman Chosŏn period, the communal clan-centred system was giving way to a stratified society that included more than one or two clans and which was stratified chiefly as a corollary to the influx of bronze and iron and the practice of settled agriculture. Besides Wiman Chosŏn, there were, in the northern region extending well into Manchuria, several other tribal confederacies of varying strength, including Puyŏ, Okchŏ and the Hsien-pei. Puyŏ was centred in northern Manchuria near the Sungari River basin, Okchŏ was moving across the Tumen River, and the Hsien-pei and Hsiung-nu confederacies (an inclusive but somewhat derogatory Chinese term for the various tribal groups in the north) were penetrating eastern Manchuria, much to the anxiety of Han China. These movements in the region prompted the Han Chinese Emperor, Wu Ti, in 121 BC to take steps to contain them. First, he established a ­commandery

From Tribes To Monarchies

15

along the Yalu River but was forced in short order to withdraw. Next, he attempted a diplomatic solution but his envoy was sent back from Wiman Chosŏn empty handed. The envoy, incensed by the failure of his mission, turned upon his Chosŏn escort at the border and killed a number of them, possibly including the Chosŏn Premier. On returning to Chinese territory he claimed he had killed a Chosŏn general. This attempt to save face had drastic consequences. The envoy was pursued to Liaotung by Chosŏn troops and killed in 108 BC. Han China, now more successful in its various border campaigns, immediately responded with an invasion of Wiman Chosŏn. There was also a mutiny within the Chosŏn kingdom, culminating in the assassination of its ruler, King Ugŏ, grandson of Wiman, whereupon Chosŏn surrendered to Han China. The Chinese emplaced three commanderies in Wiman Chosŏn territory, the chief of which was called Lo-lang (Nangnang in Korean). A fourth commandery was established subsequently in Okchŏ territory in the east. Given that it was staffed and supported mostly by Chinese military officials and migrants, the culture of the Lo-lang commandery was virtually indistinguishable from China. The local people, however, were actively hostile to these commanderies and in 30 AD staged a major revolt. Although this was crushed, the Chinese saw much wisdom in turning local administration over to local leaders, while maintaining overall jurisdiction in the northern part of the peninsula. But although it maintained suzerainty over Lo-lang for a considerable period, any further ambitions on the peninsula by Han China were overtaken by the emergence of three energetic and competing kingdoms: Koguryŏ, Paekche, and Silla.

The Three Kingdoms

The earliest Korean record, the Samguk Sagi, or Annals of the Three Kingdoms, which was written by Kim Pusik in the twelfth century AD, assigns dates to the founding of these kingdoms as follows: Silla in 57 BC, Koguryŏ in 37 BC, and Paekche in 18 BC. Except in the case of Koguryŏ, where the tribal domains evidently coalesced into a kingdom in the north late in the first century BC, these dates appear too early for fully fledged monarchies: Paekche in the southwest and Silla in the southeast took shape as genuine kingdoms hardly earlier than the third century AD. Situated east of the Puyŏ confederacy in mountainous terrain, the Koguryŏ people were hunters, warlike and aggressive. The suppression of the Nangnang revolt in AD 30 spurred Koguryŏ into action and it quickly became militarily very strong, till it was all but destroyed by the Chinese Wei in AD 245. But by

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313 Koguryŏ had revived sufficiently to relieve the Chinese of their control over Nangnang (Lolang), and began taking over territories, especially to the south. In the third-century Chinese history, the San-kuo-chih, it was estimated that Koguryŏ was populated by some 35,000 people belonging to five tribes, among whom around 10,000 formed its upper, ruling stratum. Evidently, in Koguryŏ a stratified society existed even before it broke away from the cultures and forces of northern China. Every source, ancient or mediaeval, agrees that Koguryŏ rose out of the Puyŏ tribal confederacy that was already settled in the lowlands along the upper course of the Sungari River during the second century BC. From Puyŏ came the ancestors, not of the entire Koguryŏ population of later times, but at least the greater part of the well-defined ruling élite. Occupying the upper echelons of this aristocracy were the great nobles, called taega, who possessed prestigious ancestral shrines and were buried in tomb chambers built of massive stones and covered with earth, remains of which have been found as far as the western borders of the modern Chinese province of Liaoning. The famous King Kwanggaet’o Stele inscription of 414 suggests that construction of these tombs most probably was imposed on non-Koguryŏ locals who were descended from groups of early agriculturalists who had settled in northern Korea and whom the incoming Koguryŏ tribes had taken over and sometimes resettled. The Paekche rulers were also descendants of Puyŏ, who under pressure from other groups went south into the Han River valleys, bringing superior iron weapons and farming implements. The brothers Piryu and Onjo, offspring of the legendary Tongmyŏng, established Paekche as a kingdom in the third century AD south of the Han River and established their capital in Wirye, a fortified town near what is now Seoul. The Silla kingdom emerged some decades, possibly a century after Paekche in the Naktong River basin in the southeast, with its capital in Kyŏngju, but the first effective Silla monarch was probably King Naemul, who reigned from 356 to 402. Along the more rugged, less arable mountain ridges that ran between Paekche and Silla settled tribal groupings sometimes named the Kaya principalities, which were for some centuries the hub of the iron trade in the region. Silla allied initially with Koguryŏ, to which it paid tribute in return for protection against the encroachments of Paekche—an alliance which stood Silla in good stead. Although it was the slowest to develop, it was Silla, which in the seventh century allied with T’ang China, that would unify most of the Korean peninsula under one authority. The Three Kingdoms had thus all developed from tribal confederacies to full-fledged sedentary monarchies by the fourth century AD. Paekche and Silla, which were relatively small areas, but also Koguryŏ, which covered a large territory stretching north into modern Manchuria, quickly centralised under

From Tribes To Monarchies

17

a­ ristocracies. At the zenith of the aristocracy in each kingdom were the lineage of kings and queens, consort families and their relatives, that is, a hereditary ruling class, which was shored up by economic advantages. It was a very restricted and rigid aristocracy of only a few extended families. In Silla at least, political and social power related directly to one’s proximity to or distance from royal lineages, down to exact descriptions of the type of house one may dwell in, clothing one may wear, even the utensils one may use when eating. At the bottom existed a sizable slave class, made up of an ever-increasing number of earlier settlers who had fallen victim to the expansionary activities of the Puyŏ and Okchŏ tribes. Slavery also resulted from drought, when parents sold their children, and sometimes themselves, to pay off agricultural losses. The economy was diversified to some degree, but on a small scale. Indeed, there had not yet developed the large farming estates that were the backbone of the economies of later periods. The population was also relatively small, and a significant minority was employed in gold and iron mines, ceramic production and woodwork. There was cultivation of hemp, silk and even wool, and trade with T’ang China in ginseng. A general feature of all the kingdoms, it was nevertheless in Silla that social stratification was most detailed and incisive. Since it was the Silla kingdom that unified the three kingdoms under one dynastic order in 668, it is important to pay its social system closer attention. The Silla Bone-rank Aristocracy The aristocratic families of the Silla Kingdom were stratified according to a highly developed system called ‘bone-rank.’ At the very top was Hallowed Bone, the qualifications for which were extremely narrow: direct blood relation to the royal family. Next were the True Bone aristocrats, who had to descend from a marriage in which one of the parents was of direct royal lineage and the other of high noble rank. There is some question whether Hallowed Bonerank existed more than a few generations. By the fourth century AD, when the monarchy came into its own, three clans partook of this highest line, Pak, Sŏk and Kim, and the last became the hereditary monarchical line. What is reasonably certain is that True Bone had taken pre-eminence over Hallowed Bone shortly before Silla unified the peninsula, possibly when King T’aejong Muyŏl (r. 654–661) chose to marry outside the royal consort Pak clan to a Kaya princess (because of the fateful sterility of the Pak line), since the descent system was governed by the principle that children took the class of the lower-ranking parent. From the beginning of the sixth century, the kings took the Chinese title, wang, replacing former variants of indigenous terms that included notions of priesthood and heredity. Beneath the bone-ranks were six ‘head-ranks.’ Ranks six, five, and four were reserved for the non-royal aristocratic strata, who filled

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Chapter 1

the higher levels of administration, while ranks three, two, and one were possibly drawn from commoners, those whose ancestors did not include any of the tribal nobility of pre-Silla Kingdom times. The Silla Kingdom’s rank system may have evolved out of several processes, but its function was, in short, to put in place and maintain a highly organised form of governance. It consolidated a hierarchical society, fixing by heredity who could become a monarch, who could take ruling positions under the monarch, who could execute policy formed by the rulers and who could assist in its implementation. As Silla expanded, rank became divided into two broad categories, or inner and outer rings: those stationed in or originating in the capital, Kyŏngju, and those stationed outside the capital. The inner ring consisted of the original Silla ruling lineages and consort families; the outer ring comprised the local aristocracy or power-holders, including village headmen, of regions as they were absorbed into Silla. This rank system was consolidated at least by the early sixth century and became so central to the organisation of the kingdom that inherited rank and entitlement to office came to be regarded as one and the same. The status of the royal Hallowed Bone lineages was undergirded by the foundation myths of the Silla Kingdom, each supporting the royal lines competing for supremacy. Of these, the most well-known and possibly original myth relates to the Pak lineage, as follows. One day a horse led a nobleman to a mountain, at the foot of which was a large egg. Out of this stepped a lad of ten years named Pak Hyŏkŏse, and due to the miraculous manner of his appearance it was understood that he was anointed by the gods, as a true descendent of the divine line, to found a new kingdom, that of Silla. After ruling 62 years, Pak Hyŏkŏse ascended to Heaven, authenticating his divine origin. Seven days after his ascension, the ashes of his body fell to the earth and scattered, and the soul of his queen ascended to join him in Paradise. Yet it was neither the Pak nor the Sŏk lineage that established the first dynastic realm on the peninsula, but members of the Kim clan. And so the Kim clan, too, had its story of origin. A man saw a bright light and purple clouds descending on a forest. On venturing into the forest, he found a gold box from which the light radiated. The box was carried to the palace and when opened by the king, a beautiful boy emerged. He was named Alchi, meaning infant, with the family name Kim, meaning gold; his descendent, Naemul (r. 356–402), consolidated the Kyŏngju Kim clan’s position as the hereditary monarchy of the Silla kingdom thereafter. The most illustrious of this Kim clan was Kim Ch’unch’u, who ascended the throne in 654 and was given the reign name of T’aejong Muyŏl. Through his diplomatic skills, the Silla Kingdom forged an alliance with the powerful T’ang

From Tribes To Monarchies

19

Chinese that greatly aided its unification of much of the peninsula under the United Silla dynasty in the year 668. However, the figure whose military prowess is credited with Silla’s unlooked-for defeat of the Paekche and Koguryŏ kingdoms, Kim Yusin (595–673), was not a member of the royal Kyŏngju Kim line but of the Kaya Kim clan. Yet his younger sister became the bride of Kim Ch’unch’u (King Muyŏl), and once the fruit of their union, Munmu, assumed the throne of United Silla, the Kaya Kim became a royal consort clan and Kim Yusin’s status as the genius behind the Silla unification was sealed.

United Silla

The conquest in the mid-seventh century of the Paekche and Koguryŏ kingdoms by Silla, the latest and in many respects weakest of the three, needs some explanation. Relations between each kingdom and China had been complex, characterised as much by mistrust and antagonisms as alliances. Koguryŏ had followed the conventional strategy of friendship with distant states and aggression against neighbours. Silla likewise had pursued alliances with the central or dominant Chinese kingdoms, the Sui in the sixth and the T’ang in the seventh centuries. The alliance with the Sui had not been promising: Koguryŏ effectively stymied its military advances and crushed an offensive in 612. Led by an extraordinarily gifted general, Ŭlchi Mundŏk (whom patriotic scholars in the first decade of the twentieth century held up as a heroic example of the true Korean spirit), Koguryŏ troops also rebuffed several attempts at subjugation by T’ang China after 618. At this point, Koguryŏ might have prevailed against Silla and Paekche and taken the entire peninsula but for a change in SillaT’ang strategy pioneered by leading members of the aristocratic Silla organisation known as the Hwarang, and the development of dissensions among the Koguryŏ rulers. The Hwarang (Flower of Youth) organisation stretches back to early Silla times, when a peer-group training system was set up involving communal life and rites and schooling in performative arts, poetry and music together with military skills and strategies. With the development of the kingdom and especially of its expansionist ambitions by the mid-sixth century, the Hwarang transformed into an élite corps of crack soldiers who were also trained in arts and scholarship. There is evidence that women took a leading role in the recruitment of Hwarang youth at this point, although some of the evidence has a legendary colouring. It is recorded in the Annals of Silla, for example, that in 576 a group of women who went collectively by the name Wŏnhwa, literally Original Flower, was presented to King Chinhŭng as the cream of the Hwarang

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leadership, whereupon two beautiful young women, Chunjŏng and Nammo, were selected to head, or attract, a band of talented youths. The two began to compete, however, and after plying Nammo with drink, Chunjŏng drowned her in a nearby river. For this she was executed, but the matter caused so much discord that the practice of employing women as recruiters was discontinued and thenceforth accomplished young men were entrusted with the selection of Hwarang members.4 Whatever the truth of this story, the important point is that the Hwarang were the cream of Silla society, being drawn from young people of royal blood and True Bone nobility. Their rank entitled them to ownership of the maximum number of horses and the finest saddles. Female members were entitled to horses and saddles according to their rank, in the same number and style as male members. By the early seventh century, the Hwarang had become a very tight-knit group whose communal solidarity was characterised by shared observance of the Buddhist monk Wŏn’gwang’s code of five principles: love one’s country; honour one’s parents; be faithful in friendship; be courageous in battle; and take life only if absolutely necessary. These principles reflect, in addition to the expected exhortations to patriotism and military honour, core ethical features of the Confucian and Buddhist traditions in which they were also educated. Nevertheless, the Hwarang were not a religious community per se so much as a state-centred organisation, one of whose objectives was the extension of the power and the interests of the Silla ruling stratum. In the mid-seventh century, there arose among the Silla Hallowed Bone aristocrats a statesman distinguished by considerable diplomatic skills, the aforementioned Kim Ch’unch’u. Once he became king, Kim Ch’unch’u convinced the T’ang court of the advantages to be gained by ousting Koguryŏ from the peninsula in a two-pronged movement of Silla-T’ang forces. But first, it was necessary to remove Paekche. On the Silla side, the forces were led by the accomplished Hwarang general and foremost leader of the Hwarang forces, Kim Yusin. In 660, the Silla-T’ang forces defeated Paekche, although refugees sought assistance from Japan and caused difficulties for another three years. In the mid-660s, a succession dispute over the Koguryŏ throne offered the Silla-T’ang alliance its opportunity and, aided by Koguryŏ defectors, the allied army finally defeated the northern kingdom in 668, the foundation date of the United Silla dynasty. 4  The Samguk yusa, or Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms written in the thirteenth century by the Buddhist monk Iryŏn (1206–1289), contains an alternative version, which includes a similar account of the murder but adds an account of the transformation of Maitreya, Buddha of the future, into a Hwarang member. Translations of both versions are included in Peter H. Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 49–50 & 55.

From Tribes To Monarchies

21

Although the period 668 to 936 is normally named the United Silla period, its rule extended hardly as far north as Pyongyang. The northern third of the peninsula was ruled over by another kingdom called Parhae, which rose from the ashes of the former Koguryŏ kingdom. Parhae was a relatively large kingdom, whose domain encompassed a good deal of Manchuria. Strictly speaking therefore, one might argue that this period should be named the Two Kingdom period. That it is not so named derives chiefly from two factors. First, Parhae might just as well be known as an early Manchurian state rather than an extension or continuation of peninsular culture and power; and those who favour this position tend to call it P’o-hai. In the second place, there is an enduring perception among Koreans since at least Koryŏ times that it was under the Silla dynasty, which maintained detailed contact with T’ang China, that the fundamental cultural and material forms of traditional Korean civilisation were shaped. This position was certainly the orthodox one by the time of the Koryŏ dynasty, whose records of the United Silla dynasty, written in the twelfth century, are largely silent about Silla’s closest neighbour. Sources on the Parhae Kingdom are to this day far less abundant and precise than those on United Silla, and an enduring consequence of the view that the latter is the authentic source of Korean civilisation was a tendency to adjudge the inhabitants of the northern provinces to be culturally inferior to the inhabitants of central and southern regions. Yet the Parhae kingdom was far from insignificant. As the T’ang became enmeshed in wars with the Khitan Liao and later with Turkish forces, a number of groups in the northern regions, which included remnants of the former Koguryŏ leadership, organised a new kingdom and were recognised as such by T’ang China in 713. Parhae turned out to be an aggressive, formidable state, annihilating Silla expeditionary forces and finally taking back the Liaotung territory from China in the mid-eighth century. Peace with China was later attained, and in the ninth century Parhae reached its zenith as a culturally refined monarchy that boasted advanced skills in the mining and processing of iron. The kingdom ultimately dissolved internally because of divisions between the interests of the ruling élites, possibly exacerbated by ethnic division, but lasted almost as long as the Silla dynasty and thereafter contributed culturally to the Koryŏ dynasty, which unified the whole peninsula under one political centre for the first time in 936. The Problem of T’ang China The alliance with the T’ang, though decisive, was also hazardous. Kim Ch’unch’u’s success in enlisting China’s aid was a rather easy project when compared with the problem Silla faced after Koguryŏ’s defeat. The proverb advises against looking a gift-horse in the mouth, but this Chinese horse was

22

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a Trojan horse, and once invited into the peninsula, the T’ang revealed they had every intention of staying. The T’ang naturally had their own objectives in consenting to the alliance. Constant defeat at the hands of Koguryŏ had become irritating and the court began to rankle at the loss of face. Besides, defeated Chinese generals were liable, on their return to the capital, to suffer the ignominy of public execution in the market-place. But face and heads were not the only losses. The Koguryŏ presence deprived China of the Liaotungsouthwestern Manchuria corridor (a strategic territory that it considered its own by right), aided China’s enemies along its long inland borders and interfered with trade. There were thus several solid reasons for the T’ang willingness to help Silla remove Koguryŏ. Unfortunately for Silla, these were precisely the same reasons T’ang now had for preventing Silla from moving into the Koguryŏ vacuum, and indeed, for controlling Silla itself. Frequently, an empire employs a divide-and-rule policy to maintain dominion over conquered peoples. The T’ang policy on the contrary was to cement and rule. First, five commanderies were established in the former Paekche realm and placed under the governorship of a descendent of the former Paekche royalty, Puyŏ Yung. Next, Silla was itself declared a commandery under the oversight of the Silla monarch, Munmu (r. 661–680), who was obliged to seal a pact of friendship and cooperation with Prince Yung. Nine additional commanderies were created to govern former Koguryŏ territories, and finally, a central organ, the Protectorate-General to Pacify the East, was emplaced in Pyongyang for the purpose of superintendence of the whole peninsula. Although this was in some ways an enlightened policy in that it took care to rule through the indigenous power bases, it failed in terms of securing direct oversight. Silla quickly moved against the commandery units in the Han River basin until, within a decade of Koguryŏ’s defeat, T’ang China withdrew the commanderies and removed the Protectorate-General to Mukden, Manchuria. Nevertheless, Silla was cheated of its designs on most of the former Koguryŏ territory and was unable to unify the whole peninsula. Moreover, the Silla alliance with the T’ang had drawn it decisively into the orbit of the Chinese world order, and Chinese administrative and educational forms and principles were institutionalised even more assiduously after the T’ang commanderies withdrew. The Challenge of Regional Aristocracies Whereas it would be inaccurate to say that the Silla monarchy was welcomed by the ruling classes of the conquered territories, nevertheless the fact that it adopted the same enlightened approach as China of bestowing local political powers on the indigenous ruling élites eased to a degree the task of ­unifying the

23

From Tribes To Monarchies

R.

en

lu Ya Ta ed on g

R.

Tu m

R.

Eastern Sea

Koguryŏ R. Han

P’yŏngang

Hansŏng

Yellow Sea Paekche Puyŏ

Silla Kyŏng ju Kaya

Tsushima T’amna Map 1

The Middle Three Kingdom Period

24

Chapter 1

territories. For inasmuch as all the aristocracies of the former Three Kingdom period jealously guarded their inborn right to rule, to be wealthy and to own slaves, Silla had to compromise its own strict and restricted aristocratic system of administration. Thus the chief challenge, politically, of the United Silla monarchy was containment of regional power. The Silla bureaucracy had been facing these imperatives for some time; the unification did not pose a sudden challenge so much as raise the stakes much higher. As we have seen, by the early sixth century the Silla Kingdom had developed a dual system of bureaucracy that corresponded to a dual system of ranking according to inner and outer rings. Upon unification, the outer/inner ring distinction was abolished. All official posts throughout the kingdom were raised to the status of the former metropolitan offices, and ranks were extended to new groups, particularly those leaders among the Paekche and Koguryŏ peoples who sided with Silla during the decisive wars of 660 to 668. As a result, the strict rules governing one’s place in the Bone-rank system were loosened, although the status of the ranks and the distinctions among them were rigidly maintained till the demise of United Silla in the tenth century. The principal purpose of this rationalisation of rank and office was to encourage loyalty to the central monarchy by aligning every regional bureaucracy equally and directly with the Silla court in the capital, Kyŏngju. Two further measures were taken to discourage the formation of independent regional power-centres. First, members of the royal Silla line were sent to all significant regional centres to head the local bureaucracies, while at the same time a ‘hostage’ system was instituted of calling local leaders to serve in Kyŏngju. An attempt to extend this logic by relocating the capital to the Han River area failed because of the anxiety of the Kyŏngju aristocracy: power depended on landholdings and local tribal lineages. Secondly, the court abolished in 689 the nogŭp land system, whereby land on which taxes could be levied was given to high officials on a permanent, hereditary basis. Although this latter measure proved temporary—concerted local aristocratic resistance forced the reinstatement of the nogŭp system in 755—the Silla dynasty succeeded in holding together the southern two-thirds of the peninsula in relative peace for over two hundred and fifty years. During this period, a civilisation took form that in many respects long outlasted the political demise of the Silla dynasty. From the late eighth century, however, the regional gentry grew in independence. The gentry were aristocrats both around Kyŏngju and in the provinces who were educated in Confucian and Buddhist texts, propertied with large farming estates and, as descendants of former royal and royal consort families

From Tribes To Monarchies

25

from the Three Kingdom period, politically ambitious and well connected. The linkage between the clan-based aristocratic line, official rank and government office was so strong that the separation of rank from office that centralisation logically required was viewed by the regional aristocracy as a threat to their power. And so it was, not simply because regional administration became subject to the centre but rather more because the power and status of these aristocrats were materially based on their possession of property and loyal troops in the regions, away from the centre. Hence, for a regional aristocrat to travel to the capital to take up the government office to which his rank entitled him was to separate himself from his power base. This was, of course, the point of the hostage system. If his entitlement to high office were also removed, this would doubly undercut his standing in the capital. Indeed, the names of ranks had become also the actual names of offices in government. This became highly impractical. Centralisation under United Silla logically required a move away the former system of hereditary bureaucracy where rank and office were both inborn to a system where both rank and office could be given or earned. Compromise had been effected in the Head Rank Six system, those lesser ranks given to non-true-bone aristocracy employed in the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. The problem lay with the higher echelons, however, that part nearest to the political centre. While disaffection with centralised monarchical power grew in the regional centres, the former true-bone aristocracy in the capital also were manoeuvring to check the authority of the throne and to usurp that authority themselves. This ambition issued in very mistrustful alliances between true-bone lineages against the monarch. Two major targets of their opposition were the land reforms and the subsequent political reforms of King Kyŏngdŏk (r. 742–765). As already noted, the hereditary nogŭp land-holding and taxation system had been abolished in 689. What replaced it was the kwallyojŏn, or office-land system, whereby officials received incomes from designated farming areas but did not have direct authority over the people, that is, rank and office were being separated. Sixty years of concerted opposition by the true-bone families finally persuaded King Kyŏngdŏk to withdraw the office-land system and restore the hereditary nogŭp system in 757. This was an important step in the gentry being able to increase direct local powers and achieve a measure of political independence. King Kyŏngdŏk’s political reforms were essentially an attempt to introduce a more or less Chinese bureaucratic system whereby education and ability were the passport to governmental service. This attempt to impose a meritocracy on the aristocracy was a frontal assault on the rank-office notion and, under the circumstances, almost failed completely. The aristocracy’s ambitions to curb the monarch’s authority were aided by two further developments. First of all,

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events set in motion by an abortive coup d’état spearheaded by Kim Taegong in 768 led to the self-enthronement of Kim Yangsang in 780, known as King Sŏndŏk (r. 780–785), who thereby established a new royal line. In the second place, accession to the throne did not proceed from king or queen to the eldest son but in accordance with the decision of the monarch at the time. This situation lent itself to assassinations, coups and intrigues, and in the process royal authority became increasingly a matter of alliances and came undone as soon as the alliances fell apart. This has little or no parallel in either China or Japan and flows from the contradictions and conflicts stemming from the strength and sanctity of the aristocratic form of Korean society. This state of affairs had perfectly natural, if ironic, consequences. Built on mistrust, alliances against the royal family quickly fell apart once the two main objectives of restoring the nogŭp land system and reversing King Kyŏngdŏk’s reforms had been attained. The restoration of the nogŭp system drove the clans apart, for they had thereby attained positions of economic, military and political strength but there was now no power strong enough to conciliate or arbitrate between them. More ironically, their success weakened the very blood lineage system the aristocratic families around the capital had thought to protect when diminishing monarchical authority. Political affairs in the peninsula became subject by the ninth century to the common interplay of armed force and political manoeuvring, in which opportunities were grasped wherever they offered themselves. The first two decades of the ninth century were marked by bad weather and poor harvests throughout northeast Asia, a circumstance that led to a considerable amount of piracy. The need to protect coastal areas, especially the trading ports, enhanced the power of the local leaders in those regions. One such leader was Chang Pogo (?–846), who in 828 established a military garrison on Ch’ŏnghae, an island in the southwest that is today called Wando, and who on the basis of his success against piracy was appointed the same year as Commissioner of Ch’ŏnghae with responsibility for the Japan-Korea-China trade route. In the course of his duties he amassed a large force of some 10,000 troops, virtually monopolised the Yellow Sea trade, and taking advantage of political ties forged with T’ang China, in whose naval forces he served for a time, acted as a de facto intermediary between the United Silla and T’ang courts. Chang Pogo’s strong position enticed a claimant to the throne to seek his assistance, and Chang’s eagerness to take advantage of the ensuing succession crisis became his undoing. He stormed the Korean court, assassinated the monarch and placed the claimant on the throne. He then demanded that the new monarch take his daughter as queen, but in so doing stepped too far over a line of tolerance—a line marked by the aristocratic sensitivity to lineage. Outraged

From Tribes To Monarchies

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capital aristocrats declared war against Chang, who was murdered by one of his own generals. The Ch’ŏnghae settlement was dispersed and Korea’s foothold in the maritime trade of the region was taken over by other trading clans. Silla-T’ang relations, however, soured to the point where Silla stopped sending its tribute. The consequent isolation of the court weakened both its legitimacy and power vis-à-vis the gentry. Queen Chinsŏng (r. 887–897), the last female monarch in Korea, attempted conciliation, but by 890 the central government had lost its ability to collect provincial taxes. The Silla monarchy was by now just one gentry power-base among several. Chang Pogo was indeed only one of several clan leaders to amass a private army, gain economic power and eye the capital. By the close of the ninth ­century the indigenous provincial gentry were equally as powerful as the truebone nobility who had gained power in the provinces when sent there as overseers under the nogŭp system. City forts developed as independent economic units and centres of gentry power were protected by armies whose manpower was drawn from displaced labourers and roaming, starvation-ridden peasants who were only too willing to enter the ranks of a gentry army for shelter and food. They were often already skilled fighters, many having served as bandits in organised bands, variously named the Red-trousered Bandits, Grass Brigands, and the like, of which there was a marked increase during this period. In concert with gathering pressure from restive forces across the northern borders, these developments spurred the gentry to reorganise their military power and regional administrative control into realms politically independent of the Silla monarchy. In this way, from the latter half of the ninth century, Later Paekche arose in the southwest provinces under Kyŏnhwŏn and Later Koguryŏ arose under Kungye, an exile from Silla, in the north. Wang Kŏn, who succeeded Kungye, renamed Later Koguryŏ as Koryŏ in 918, secured the Silla monarch’s submission in 935 and the following year overthrew Later Paekche. Parhae had been devastated by attacks by the Khitan Liao and Jurchen Chin and all of its territory south of the Yalu and Tumen rivers fell to Wang Kŏn.

Rise of the Koryŏ Dynasty

The imbalance in favour of capital and regional lineages that gathered momentum from the ninth century spelled the end of the United Silla dynasty, yet it also opened the way for a genuine unification of the peoples on the peninsula up to the Yalu and Tumen rivers and a greater integration of the traditions of the former kingdoms in north and south. The regional quest for autonomy remained a thorn in the side of the Koryŏ monarchy, however, re-emerging

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in serious form in the early twelfth century when military cliques virtually pushed the throne aside, and continuing to fester under the hundred years of Mongol domination from the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries. The monarchy in early Koryŏ proved to be hardly more secure than late Silla. The territory under the Koryŏ monarchy was significantly larger than that of the United Silla, and the number of regional powers had thereby increased. In fact, gentry power was at its height in the early decades of the new dynasty and Wang Kŏn’s position of supremacy rested chiefly on personal support from the gentry based in Kwangju in Kyŏnggi Province under the powerful Wang Kyu, two of whose daughters became his Queen consorts. Cognizant of the weakness of the throne and the approach of political storm, Wang Kŏn, named King T’aejo (r. 936–943), urged Wang Kyu to respect the throne before he died, and also arranged protection for his successor from the gentry leader Pak Surhŭi (?–945). But shortly after his coronation, King Hyejong (r. 943–945), Wang Kŏn’s son, was confronted with challenges from two quarters. Wang Kyu, who through another marriage became Hyejong’s father-in-law, desired that his grandson Wŏn’gun become king. To this end, he plotted two assassination attempts against Hyejong, who took to wearing armour and hiring bodyguards. Fearing for his own life, Pak Surhŭi travelled with a retinue of 100 guards. At the same time, Hyejong’s stepbrothers consolidated their power through their maternal and wives’ families in Kwangju, and in Ch’ungju and Sŭngju. Hyejong’s position was practically hopeless and he died within two years of acceding to the throne, whereupon his stepbrothers seized power, outwitting and overpowering both Wang Kyu and Pak Surhŭi. The first of these brothers became King Chŏngjong (r. 945–949), who was strongly supported but then drew antagonism upon himself through his efforts to reduce the power of the Kwangju gentry and move the capital to Pyongyang, then known as the Western Capital. Power finally stabilised under the second brother, King Kwangjong (r. 949–975), who once on the throne carried out a purge of some powerful figures. He also managed to put the government service examination system into operation finally in 958, whereby recipients of the chinsa—red diploma—were given the highest positions in the bureaucracy. Even so, the very top ranks continued to enjoy protected appointments at the highest level. By the end of the century, land and taxation laws were instituted that in principle treated all land as crown land but in reality provided for exercise of rights over land controlled by the nobility as if it were their own private estate. In this way, a judicious balance of monarchical and aristocratic power was achieved that augured well for the future. From the late twelfth century, however, the dynasty found itself in serious political trouble. A number of factors, but mainly the relegation to an inferior status of the military class, which had hitherto enjoyed respect and influence

From Tribes To Monarchies

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at court, engendered a military takeover in 1170 by Chŏng Chungbu (?–1179). The military rule that lasted for practically a century amounted to a virtual interregnum and was cut short only by the Mongol conquest of vast territories across central and eastern Asia.

The Mongol Presence

The Mongol Empire grew out of a group of clans organised under a skeleton central government. As nomads, they were constantly on the move and acquired superlative skill in horse riding, besides developing a system of w ­ arfare suited to horse riding far superior to the Chinese. Northeast China was taken with ease and little bloodshed between 1206 and 1209. The conquest of the rest of China was, on the contrary, an extremely violent affair, completed by Qubilai Khan only in 1279. From 1219–1225 Ginggis Khan also brought Transoxiana and Afghanistan to their knees, and so devastated Central Asia that it is believed that some areas have still not recovered from the destruction. In Korea, the military regimes had already deeply alienated the educated classes, and their suppression of powerful temples with private armies, which involved curtailment of much of the commercial activity associated with temple establishments, prompted the development within Koryŏ of a sizeable proMongol element, if only as a means of counteracting the military Ch’oe clan that took power in 1196. Not surprisingly, the Mongol presence deepened the rift between military and civil offices. The latter, supported by the weakened monarchy, advocated peace with the Mongols and by 1274, after the military resistance was overcome, Koryŏ became one more state in the Mongol empire. The Mongol and Koryŏ royal lines became linked by marriage and the Koryŏ families which provided princesses and queens became powerful in the peninsula. These and other gentry families moved into the landholdings formerly owned by the now expelled military cliques. At this point, land became of supreme importance: official stipends were very poor and even non-existent under the Mongols, so that non-landed officials lost social authority and it now became a distinct advantage to take up provincial posts in the vicinity of one’s landholdings. Furthermore, the evacuation of the bureaucracy by the military meant that those who had passed government service examinations could take up office, and generally the successful examinees were from landed gentry families who were attracted to the neo-Confucianism that had developed in Sung China prior to the Mongol conquest. The most direct and in the event most costly consequence of the Mongol invasion for the Korean people was the decision to launch attacks on Japan from southern Korea. Two abortive invasions were conducted in 1274 and 1281.

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Mongol military colonies were established to oversee the planning and execution of these invasions, and they geared virtually the whole land and agricultural system in support of military campaigns: horses, grain, cloth, timber, and metal. The colonies also became technology centres, especially for the construction of ships: 770 vessels were built for the first invasion, 900 for the second. The greatest cost, however, was in human life. Such a large proportion of the commoner populace was conscripted into labour and battle, with extraordinary loss of life during the disastrous sea campaigns, that not only was agricultural production seriously reduced but the kingdom also suffered a serious shortage of young, marriageable men. So dire was the situation that the ­question of whether the noblemen should take commoner women as secondary wives or even concubines was debated at court. However, the mixing of commoners’ blood into aristocratic lineages was too much for the high officials to countenance and the proposal was rejected, but only after much discussion.5 There was, on the other hand, considerable mixing of blood between Mongol and Korean aristocracies. Not only did families of high and middle officials intermarry, but between 1275 and 1374 seven Mongol princesses married into the Koryŏ royal family and three offspring from these unions became kings. High-born Korean women were also delivered to the Mongol Yüan throne. One of these, the daughter of a noble named Ki Chao, was sent to the imperial harem and rose to become second empress to the last Yüan emperor in 1341. True to the style of such marriage politics, her brother Ki Ch’ŏl instantly became leader of the strong pro-Mongol faction, which included Kwŏn Kyŏm, No Ch’aek and others whose daughters were in the Mongol royal harem. Indeed, Empress Ki attempted to have the Yüan emperor replace Koryŏ’s King Kongmin, who was himself married to a Mongol princess, with her brother. But the tide was turning against Mongol power. Kongmin revolted against the pro-Mongol elements in 1356 and Ki Ch’ŏl, Kwŏn and No were slain. The Mongols reposted with a force of 10,000 soldiers, which was virtually wiped out: some records claim a mere seventeen survived. Then in 1368 the Chinese Ming dynasty replaced the Mongol Yüan. Kongmin immediately allied with the Ming and drove the last Mongol overseers out of Korea in 1370. Nevertheless, the Koryŏ period was also near its end, and but twenty-two years later gave way to Chosŏn, a new, neo-Confucian dynasty, which was to last for over 500 years. 5  A gripping account of the invasions of Japan and their impact on Koreans is found in Yasashi Inoue, Wind and Waves, trans. James T. Araki (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989). Although strictly speaking this is a historical novel, it is thoroughly researched, meticulously faithful to the records, and the characters are not fictional but actual historical actors under their own names.

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Despite the interruptions of military and Mongol rule, the key features of the tenth-century balance of monarchical and aristocratic powers that enshrined the central features of the hereditary, tribal-aristocratic tradition, tempered by the monarchical-bureaucratic values of merit and training, survived as a remarkably stable compromise throughout the succeeding nine centuries. The viability of the synthesis rested to a large degree on the lack of land-ownership rights of the vast farming population, who were liable to double taxation by central and regional powers, at times far in excess of half the fruit of their labours. In addition, there was the hereditary slave workforce inherited from the United Silla dynasty of some thirty per cent of the population. But on another level, the search for a cement that would hold the centre and the regions together in some form of harmony entailed a quest for a religious and intellectual culture of sufficient altitude to embrace and reshape the several traditions that had developed on the peninsula. In this respect, there was no significant departure from the contours of United Silla’s civilisation, and the two periods may thus be considered together.

Chapter 2

Buddhism, Confucianism and the People The tribal confederacies that developed into the Three Kingdoms and served as the basis for the aristocratic clan lineages competing for wealth and influence under the United Silla and Koryŏ monarchies had each their own religious system. In each system the functions of priest and chieftain were undifferentiated, often fused in the same person. As the territories expanded into the Three Kingdoms, the tribal belief systems had to lose their specificity as local religions and be subsumed under the more universal character of the Buddhist, Confucian and to a lesser extent Daoist systems that were introduced throughout the peninsula from the fourth century AD. In the process, a religious and philosophical syncretism evolved, whereby more or less equivalent elements were blended or admitted so long as there was no conflict with the normative principle that all was under the way or pattern of Heaven, the overarching order of interdependence and harmony.

Silla Religion and Culture

By the mid-eighth century, United Silla culture was at its prime, and from the ninth century it began to decline until it gave way to the Koryŏ dynastic system. The centre of this culture was Kyŏngju in the southeast, which reached a population of almost 900,000, and which was a city of great affluence with solid, sumptuous buildings. The principal source of this culture, or rather the form of its expression, was religion. In this it is comparable to the cultures that thrived in Japan, China and India, and also in Europe’s Middle Ages. And in fact, the religious system which inspired a great deal of Silla’s cultural refinement and products originated in India, that is, Buddhism, a Buddhism albeit that had undergone some changes before it spread across China into the Korean Peninsula, where it would again be modified before being passed on to Japan. Buddhism was the religion of the Silla period. Confucianism, as we shall see, at this stage functioned mainly as a set of administrative principles. Buddhism did not, however, enter a religious vacuum when it reached the peninsula: there was extant already a religious perception with its own rites and deities, which we may call Korean Classical Religion.

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Classical Religion The central organising feature of Korea’s classical religious system is animism, the belief that all living beings and all material and natural phenomena are animated by spirits: animals, trees and other plants, humans, wind, rain, thunder and earthquakes, and all the celestial bodies. In the case of animate life at least, the animating spirits are detachable from the bodies that they animate, but usually only after death, as in the case of humans whose spirits survive death of the body and remain active, affecting the lives of the living for good or for ill. This sense of the spiritual structure of the world and universe extended through all spheres of life, from political to personal realms. From the time of the tribal confederacies, there was a belief in animal gods, some of which were transforming gods, and these possibly lay behind the carving of tribal totems depicting animals. The story of the birth of Tan’gun from the union of a divine being with a bear-turned-woman reflects precisely this belief system and was employed in each of the Three Kingdoms to establish the sacred entity of their states, their supernatural origin, and the descent of the royal line from an important deity. Although not as explicit as the Japanese foundation myth of the sun-goddess, Amaterasu, from whom the emperors were supposed to descend in an unbroken line, these foundation stories served the same function of establishing legitimacy at a time when tribal chieftains and later, monarchs, warred for supremacy. Insofar as the state had divine legitimacy, the monarch at first had priestly functions. Depending on the version of the tradition one consults, Tan’gun lived between 200 and 1500 years and after abdicating the throne became a mountain god, an important state-defending deity. In one section of the Annals of Silla, it is written that the king personally sacrificed in the Great Shrine— that is, to the deity on whose grace his rule was thought to depend. He did not always assume the office of a priest, but he was authorised to do so if he chose. One of the Silla Kingdom’s royal titles, ch’ach’aung, meant priest, perhaps even shaman. It was not until after the United Silla dynasty was established and Buddhism became a state-protecting creed that priestly and monarchical functions became formally separated, but even then palace and temples were modelled on very similar lines. Classical beliefs ascribed considerable importance to animals, and in relation both to state affairs and the rhythm of family life animals could be omens. Marvellous sightings, the presence of red birds and so on were duly reported to the court; but a tiger seen in the palace gardens was not at all an ­auspicious thing and led not infrequently to demotions of high officials and ministers

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of state. Of significance for human and state affairs were earthquakes and heavenly phenomena such as eclipses and meteorites. At one point in the Silla Kingdom, torrential rain was taken as a sign of who should be heir to the throne. This correlation of heavenly events with earthly affairs was a tradition that dovetailed remarkably finely with the Confucian principle of the unified pattern of all phenomena and inspired the Chinese and Koreans of later centuries to conduct extraordinarily precise surveys of the movement of the stars. In addition to the spirit-animation of phenomena, the classical tradition included belief in a pantheon of gods and goddesses, which were also often supportive of rulers. For instance, there were water gods and dragon gods, and the Silla King Munmu, under whom the United Silla dynasty began, became a dragon deity after his death. There were also gods of animals, forests, mountains, hell, and sickness. There were human deities, such as commander gods, whom the priests would call upon for state protection or expansion, and deities in the service of families, such as bride goddesses. Specific pantheons held sway over seasons, harvests and other markers of the agricultural calendar. Thus we discover in Silla culture a broad religious framework that encompassed all elements of life, a perception of the universe that it was alive, that it was animated by living spirits; and in which the heavens were not a distant concern of astronomical science, they were a galaxy of deities. This belief in the spiritual structure of the universe did not mean that an invisible spirit or a spiritual force or essence lay behind everything, but rather that the actual visible universe was itself spiritual. A stone was not dead, and the substance of a mountain was holy. It would likely as not have been unthinkable to bore tunnels through a mountain simply for the sake of traffic, and stone was to be used for images of the sacred or for the dwellings of human beings—but then only together with consecration and sacrifice. Rain was not mere precipitation, it was the act of a deity: a natural result of a spiritual act. The sun was not a symbol of the great god, it was, in its actual, physical form, literally the great god. The title of Tan’gun wanggŏm that was given to the early rulers of Old Chosŏn alleged their descent from the sun itself. Given the considerable advances in knowledge of the physical universe we enjoy today alongside religious ideas that in surprising contrast to the material sophistication of our cultures are weak and even shallow, it may be difficult to grasp what it means to live according to a belief in the innate spirituality of life and the universe. What we have to grasp about Silla is that the spiritual conception of life was normal. We have to imagine what it was like then to walk beneath a clear night sky or beneath the sun by day. It has been said that the Koreans’ watch in these times was too large to wear on their wrists, for their watch was the sky. And indeed it was for the vast majority of the

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An animist shrine and carved wooden spirits representing the forces called upon by shamans, such as the Great General under the Earth. Photo by author.

population, who were rural and tilled the fields. But when they walked and worked beneath the sun, it was not only not huge, it was not ninety-three million miles away. The sun, the stars and the earth were close and enjoyed an intimacy. At that time, no figure anywhere on earth walked under the stars and said, like Blaise Pascal centuries later, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” Nowhere was the planet earth described as a mathematical point of no significance in relation to the vastness of the universe, although Buddhist thought had by this time introduced vast scales of time. Classical religion also accounted for the difficulties, disappointments and even tragedies of life—disease, death, crop failure, flood, earthquake and war— assigning causes to the whims of deities and antagonisms of departed human spirits. The role of priests and shamans was to relieve this fear, and so the rites and sacrifices were also a system of manipulation, a means of influencing the spirits and deities. The divine-human intervention consisted of two sides—and the human side was interested in learning techniques which would bring about favourable activity by the deities. But this amounts to saying that these were the laws of the cosmos. And indeed classical belief formed a broad religious cosmogony. But it did not have an explicit theology or doctrine nor a codified system of ethics. This was made good by Buddhism and Confucianism.

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Buddhism Founded in India by Gautama Buddha in the late sixth century BC, Buddhism spread and thrived beyond the Indian sub-continent throughout Southeast Asia and China. By the late fourth century AD, Buddhism in its Mahāyana or more religious, eclectic form was putting down deep roots in Korea and the Japanese islands. The traditional date for its entry into the peninsula is 372 AD, when the monk Sundo bore the doctrine back to Koguryŏ after a visit to China. During the reign of Koguryŏ’s most illustrious monarch, King Kwanggaet’o (r. 391–413), Buddhism began to blend with and enrich classical traditions. In 384, Buddhism spread into the Paekche Kingdom and thence to Japan. In all three kingdoms, it was the royal houses that took the initiative in accepting Buddhism. In Koguryŏ and Paekche, the royal sponsorship of Buddhism does not appear to have caused tension with the aristocracy. In Silla, however, where the hereditary aristocratic system was so rigid and sacred, the non-royal aristocratic families were initially implacably opposed to Buddhism. Consequently, Buddhism spread among the Silla commoners in various forms for up to a century before the ruling Kim family was able to surmount aristocratic opposition and proclaim Buddhism as the official religion in 528 (or 535 according to some sources). Once this occurred, Buddhism developed at remarkable speed, influencing Silla society at all levels. On the eve of the T’ang-Silla defeat of Paekche and Koguryŏ in 668, Buddhism had already been developed by the rulers in both Paekche and Silla as a state-protecting, state-legitimising creed. Naturally, those forms of Buddhism which emphasised the harmony of all inhabitants were officially patronised, in p ­ articular the Hua-yen or Garland School, known as Hwaŏm in Korean. Temples on a grand scale were built in Paekche and Silla, most notably the Pulguksa Temple in Kyŏngju, the Silla capital. Festivals and assemblies for prayers for the well-being of the state were held, at which readings of the Inwang pan’ya paramil kyŏng (仁王般若波羅蜜經), or Sutra of the Benevolent Kings figured prominently. The chivalric code of the renowned Hwarang organisation, under Silla’s King Chinhŭng (r. 540–76), was infused with a faith in Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. This fusion of a Messianic faith with their sense of being the guardians of the kingdom generated tremendous zeal to transform Korea into a Buddha-land, which in turn gave impetus to the Silla unification wars. Although many rulers certainly used it as such, it is important not to over-emphasise the role of Buddhism in Silla as a state-protecting creed at the expense of its more enduring contribution to the development of a rich

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civilisation on the peninsula.1 The non-royal aristocracies soon learned to turn Buddhism to their own ends by developing the textual schools of Buddhism, that is, those which were bookish and philosophical and demanded a great deal of study and time, and by arguing that their pre-eminent social status was the result of their noble karma, their former virtue. The commoners, however, found in Buddhism those elements which offered solace in the midst of their difficult lives: reward for sufferings patiently borne. Following the establishment of United Silla, Buddhism was energetically promoted as a unifying theme among the people. It enjoyed a period of special brilliance from the late seventh through to the early ninth centuries. In the process of its development it became suffused with elements of the classical religious cosmology described in the previous section. The classical interpretation of life, of its vicissitudes, of the signs of times out of joint and so forth, are masterfully recorded in Kim Pusik’s twelfth-century “Annals of Silla,” the largest part of his Samguk sagi, or Annals of the Three Kingdoms. In early 766, it is recorded, “two suns appeared simultaneously and a great amnesty was proclaimed.” In June 770, a comet appeared in the sky, and in July, “a tiger got into one of the government bureaus, and seized and killed people,” on account of which the Palace Attendant was fired. In two consecutive months in 777 an earthquake struck in the region around the capital, Kyŏngju, which prompted the Grand Councillor to submit “an outspoken review of the government of the day.” (A severe winter storm got a Palace Attendant sacked again in 791 and again in 797 after a plague of locusts.) Then in 779, another earthquake struck near the capital and “Venus passed behind the moon. . . . A ceremonial reading of the Prajnaparamita-sutra [Tae pan’ya paramil kyŏng: 大般若波羅蜜經] was held in the palace.”2 The most influential school of Buddhism in United Silla was Hwaŏm. The monk Ŭisang (625–702), who imbibed Hwaŏm doctrines while studying in T’ang China, established upon his return the Pusŏksa Temple in 676 as the centre of the Hwaŏm network. The focus of this school was on all-encompassing harmony, whereby all sentient beings were contained within the single Buddha mind. This doctrine was well tailored to the rulers’ design of l­egitimising a 1  See Pankaj N, Mohan, “Myth of the ‘Nation-Protecting’ Tradition of Korean Buddhism: A Critique,” in Han’guk pulgyo ŭi pop’yŏnsŏnggwa tŭksusŏng (The universal and the particular in Korean Buddhism), ed. Kim Yong-ho (Seoul: Han’guk haksul chongbo, 2008), 391–419. 2  These and following translations from the “Annals of Silla” are courtesy Kenneth J. H. Gardiner of Canberra, from copies in my possession.

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c­ entralised bureaucracy under an authoritarian monarchy that transcended social and hierarchical distinctions derived from the local nobilities of the conquered Paekche and Koguryŏ realms. But at a more fundamental level also, Buddhism as a whole, a universalist creed respecting no boundaries of race or region, had sufficient altitude to embrace the local tribal social and religious systems within one impartial framework. Buddhism has, however, a sophisticated philosophical bent supported by an array of difficult if not abstruse literary texts, and its highly educated devotees acquired a degree of knowledge and understanding so recondite as to be wholly unapproachable by the illiterate majority of its adherents. The educated élites, especially the non-royal élites, tended to focus on the kyo, or textual schools, whereas the commoners and slaves sought comfort and meaning in the Pure Land (Chŏngt’o) school, which offered salvation immediately on passing from this world of pain, sorrow and weariness. It was a creed of hope, neither intellectualist nor time-consuming, and easily blended with the classical scheme of things, admitting into its orbit familiar pantheons of deities such as gods of harvest and prosperity. The royal élites and high governing officials in the provinces, however, held firm to the Hwaŏm school because of its legitimising properties. The favourite text among the United Silla monarchs was titled “Scripture for Royal Wisdom and National Protection” (Inwang hoguk pan’ya paramil kyŏng: 仁王護國般若波羅蜜). Temples were erected by the ruling class in honour of Buddhist deities and sacrifices were offered to them on the understanding that these would bring internal and external enemies to their knees. It was nothing if not an ideology of unification. Buddhism could thus have become a system that accentuated the gulf between folk and élite societies and deepened the sense of disadvantage among the conquered Paekche and Koguryŏ aristocrats by reinforcing the superiority of the Silla aristocracy, if it were not for dedication of adherents deeply committed to the original texts, such as the monk Wŏnhyo. Wŏnhyo (617–686) was himself associated with the Hwaŏm school, but founded the Pŏpsŏng or Dharma-nature school and was something of a maverick. Having in his own life witnessed the unification of the peninsula under the Silla monarchy, he considered texts such as the “Scripture for Royal Wisdom and National Protection” to be a distortion of Buddhism and refused all the many offers of royal honour, prestige and accompanying wealth that the Silla royal house extended to him. A priest who was supposed to be celibate, he shocked the orthodox by taking up with a Silla princess, and became the first ‘man of the people,’ an itinerant preacher. Since textual Buddhism dealt in vast scales of time that rendered one speechless and small, it was not well suited to guiding the commoners on how

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to live meaningful lives in the present. Wŏnhyo’s message to the commoners, therefore, was infused with Pure Land axioms and comfort. Any person, however humble, could attain Buddhahood by constant remembrance that all whom one meets and deals with in one’s everyday life and chores are one with oneself. For the core message of the Pure Land, he taught, was that the promise of Buddhahood was extended to everyone, not only to those few who had attained the level of being a Bodhisattva. Hope might be deferred in this life, but a sure hope it was: though one cross an ocean of suffering and finally death, all these particulars would vanish and one would participate in the pure oneness of the Buddha nature. This hope could be realised in part in one’s present life, Wŏnhyo preached. For all sufferings, from wars to oppressions, family feuds, enslavement—which was reality to most people of Silla—were caused by pursuit of desires in violation of the principle that all were one in Buddha. The antidote was to return to the Source which, Wŏnhyo taught the common people, meant observance of a five-fold rite: praise of the Perfect One; acts of contrition; reception of Buddha’s instruction; expression of joy at being with him; and firm resolution to follow the Way. Such provided a graspable spiritual unity for all people. But more than that, Wŏnhyo popularised Buddhism as a personal religion, indeed a salvation-religion. Nicknaming himself ‘Small Layman,’ Wŏnhyo mixed with royalty and commoner with equal ease and won great popularity from all. On one occasion he is credited with healing a serious illness that had afflicted a queen. He was far ahead of his time and his ideas were seminal to the formation of Ch’an Buddhism in China. He well earned his posthumous title, Hwajaeng (Harmonious Quiescence), and his reputation as the greatest thinker and populariser of Buddhism in Korea’s long history. His ability to interpret Pure Land doctrines in such a way as to bridge the divide between aristocrat and commoner has for some time now recaptured the imagination and respect of Buddhist intellectuals in South Korea. Buddhism and Art The sculpted images of Buddha from the Three Kingdoms through the United Silla period were commissioned by the higher classes, but nevertheless had a broad purpose, not only to add legitimacy, grandeur and protection to the realm but also to spread the faith. The first Korean Buddhist sculptures were made in Korguryŏ at the close of the fourth century, and from these the whole Buddhist sculpture field developed. Paekche sculptures excelled in grace and gentleness, and sixth century Paekche images of Maitreya influenced Buddhist art in Japan. After the Silla unification, artists began to fuse all three traditions along with T’ang styles, and fashioned their images in stone, gilt-bronze, gold

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and iron. The mid-eighth-century Sŏkkuram Buddhas in a grotto on the hills overlooking the East Sea near Kyŏngju mark the peak of Silla sculpture in their blend of realistic bodies with a transcendental beauty. Buddhist temple architecture reached its peak also in the mid-eighth century with the construction of Pulguksa, one of the architectural wonders of the world. The design of Pulguksa was a synthesis of Buddhism, sporting the Hwaŏm lotus flower roof-tiles but incorporating even the common Pure Land beliefs. Even so, the layout of the temple was closely patterned on the Silla royal palace. The Prayer Hall was situated in the centre of the temple compound, facing south, with two three-storey stone pagodas, one in the east and one in the west, in front of Prayer Hall. The seat of Buddha stood in the centre of the main hall, symbolising spiritual authority. In the palace the royal throne was similarly situated in buildings similarly laid out, symbolising political authority. This view of the inseparable relation between the fortunes of the state and its religious life was underlined by placement of the main Buddha in the Sŏkkuram grotto so that it looked out over the undersea mausoleum of King Munmu, the founding monarch of United Silla, who was believed after his death to have become a sea dragon, to guard Silla. Whereas China was famed for its brick pagodas and Japan for its wooden pagodas, Koreans fashioned theirs out of granite and earned the peninsula the nickname, ‘the land of the Stone Pagodas.’ Instead of the one pagoda in Paekche and early Silla, two pagodas framed the Buddhist temples in United Silla. Ostensibly, this was in order to draw on the grace of both Sakyamuni (Sŏkka[moni]: 釋迦[牟尼]), the founder of Buddhism, and Prabhutaratna (Tabo[bul]: 多寶[佛]), the Many-Treasured Buddha who is supposed to have returned from extinction in the presence of Sakyamuni, drawn by the wisdom of his teaching. The two pagodas were of dissimilar shape, perhaps signifying that although there may be two or more ways to reach the truth, there was only the One Truth. Since the pagodas in United Silla typically had three storeys, they are open to the interpretation that the former Three Kingdoms must become one in form and in spirit. During the Koryŏ dynasty, pagodas reached fourteen storeys, became less solid and angular, and exhibited remarkable grace and tranquillity, as in the Pohyŏnsa Temple in its idyllic surroundings in the Myohyang Mountains in North P’yŏngan Province.

Koryŏ Buddhism

According to the first of the Ten Injunctions, attributed to the founder of the Koryŏ dynasty in 943 and the supposed basis of the Koryŏ polity, “All the great enterprises of our kingdom depend upon the protective power of all the

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A Koryŏ period Buddhist stupa with its distinctive 14-storey pagoda, at the Pohyŏnsa Temple in the Myohyang Mountains of North P’yŏngan Province, North Korea. Photo by author.

Buddhas.” Although this proclamation was most likely composed well after T’aejo’s passing, the dynasty did from the outset give tremendous support to Buddhism, though certainly not to the exclusion or cost of other religious systems. During the eleventh century temples proliferated and numbered seventy in the capital, Kaegyŏng (modern Kaesŏng), which became a thriving Buddhist metropolis. Temples gathered immense economic power and became p ­ restigious social institutions that held large estates of tax-exempt rice paddies, procured exclusive use of forests and amassed fortunes in

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­ recious metals. Rural monasteries, free of Confucian taboos against trade, p became commercial centres. They operated distilleries and refined the arts of tea-drinking and noodle production and cooking. The rural monasteries also owned slaves to work their fields and in some cases even had private armies. When in the late tenth and again in the mid-eleventh centuries the monarchs introduced measures designed to curb Buddhism’s wealth and power, there was little visible result. Indeed, Buddhism attained such political stature that at the close of the twelfth century seven sons of the king became monks. During the Koryŏ period a number of new Buddhist schools gained a niche. The major religious development accompanying the rise of the regional gentry was domination of Buddhism in rural centres by the Sŏn school, which in Chinese is pronounced Ch’an and in Japanese is pronounced Zen. The preeminent meditative school of Buddhism, Sŏn held that through quiet, ascetic meditation one achieved sudden enlightenment from within, which suited the military classes and those disposed to discipline and single-mindedness. Although the bulk of the farming community remained devoted to Pure Land Buddhism, the rural aristocratic landowners, particularly as they grew in military strength, presumed to include the farmers on their domains under Sŏn and challenged the authority of the aristocratic urbanites and officials who favoured the Hwaŏm school. King Kwangjong (r. 949–975) responded by dividing Sŏn and non-Sŏn groups into two officially sanctioned schools, namely the scripture-reading and meditative schools. Kwangjong personally supported Hwaŏm, but many schools of Buddhism flourished at this time for the religion was a genuinely international system: Korean monks travelled to China, where they helped spark a revival, and Sŏn, or Zen, connections with Japan were strong. Several unofficial regional Buddhist societies also flourished, often in opposition to the aristocratic families, such as Paeg’yŏnsa (White Lotus Society). Towards the end of the eleventh century an earnest attempt was made to reconcile the textual and contemplative schools through the introduction of the more inclusive Ch’ŏnt’ae (Chinese: T’ien-t’ai) school from Sung China by the monk Ŭich’ŏn (1055–1101). Ŭich’ŏn, however, was the fourth son of King Munjong (1046–1083), and his activities amounted in essence to a political device to ensure that Hwaŏm dominated Sŏn. Thus although he drew a good number of the Sŏn leadership into his circle, he redefined meditation as something to engage in only at the end of a long textual phase. Moreover, Ch’ŏnt’ae was undeniably biased towards the kyo or textual schools, since it failed to include a single Sŏn text in its corpus. At the end of the twelfth century, after the seizure of power by the militarised regional gentry, Sŏn Buddhism began to reassert itself. A monk named Chinul

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A gilded Buddha seated in sumptuous surroundings, in the Koryŏ period Pohyŏnsa Temple, in the Myohyang Mountains of North P’yŏngan Province in present-day North Korea. Photo by author.

(1158–1210), a scholar of some brilliance who has had an enduring influence on Korean thought and practice down to the present, perceived that Ŭich’ŏn’s reform of Buddhism from within the official establishment had robbed the Sŏn school of some of its best monks. He urged instead reform of Buddhism from outside the establishment and founded the Chŏnghye (Samādhi and Prajñā) Community, which regained the allegiance of those in the Sŏn school who had become associated with Ch’ŏnt’ae. By laying down the principle of an initial sudden awakening followed by a period of personal cultivation through textual study, Chinul succeeded where Ŭich’ŏn had failed in reconciling the textual and contemplative traditions, although the rise of the military doubtless worked greatly in his favour. Chinul urged, however, the severance of all connections with political power and privilege, which he believed distorted the central message of Buddhism.3 Although his followers were again afforded royal protection soon after his death, Chinul’s call for a purer yet less visible 3  For a detailed study of Chinul’s thought, reforms and relation to Ŭich’ŏn, see Robert B. Buswell, Jr., Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983).

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practice of Buddhism added fuel to the charge by hostile Confucian critics towards the end of the Koryŏ dynasty that Buddhism was a world-denying, impractical system. Throughout the Koryŏ period, however, Buddhism was the heart and soul of the country at many levels, and its leaders engaged in learning and educational work with immense energy. Nor was the educational endeavour ‘otherworldly.’ The carving of the Chinese version of the whole Buddhist canon on woodblocks, called the Tripitaka Koreana (Koryŏ taejanggyŏng), an extraordinary achievement that was completed in 1087 after many decades of skilled labour, was carried out with the expectation that it would stave off invasions by the Khitan Liao in the north. When the Mongols destroyed the Tripitaka during an invasion in the twelfth century, a new and even more ambitious carving, amounting to 81,137 woodblocks, was undertaken. It was completed in 1251 after sixteen years of intensive work and deposited in the exile capital of Kanghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River, in order to defend Korea against further Mongol predations. Although Buddhism enjoyed official support and spread throughout the kingdom among all classes, it happily and effectively embraced the classical, animist traditions, incorporating indigenous spirits and pantheons in its own spiritual universe. In some cases there was a very close relation between Buddhism and other belief systems. Wang Kŏn, the founder of the Koryŏ dynasty, while crediting to Buddhism the power to enhance the state’s fortunes, was himself a dedicated geomantist. Geomancy was a creed also amenable to and fused with Daoism. For although it is commonly associated with the belief in what in Korean is termed ki, a natural vitality or energy or cosmic breath that is present in the shape of hills and valleys and in the flow of nature, especially of water, geomantists subscribed to the cosmological system of Yin and Yang, complementary forces whose interaction brought forth and ordered the universe. The four seasons mark their flow and interaction. The operation of the complementary forces are seen also in the Five Elements of fire, water, wood, metal and earth, after which are named five days of the week—Tuesday to Saturday—in Korean and Japanese. Combined with a host of other phenomena and symbols, such as the twelve signs of the Zodiac, these elements supported divinations and revealed auspicious locations for cities, houses, ancestral tombs, roads, bridges and rice paddies. Geomancy was a form of analysis and control of natural phenomena. In the case of water, the expertise of geomantists, who included both Sŏn monks and Daoist adepts, was sought after for locating underground watercourses and for advice on drainage and irrigation practices.

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Geomancy was, not surprisingly, embroiled also in politics. When Wang Kŏn took over the leadership of Later Koguryŏ, he initially retained Pyongyang as the capital on the advice of geomantists. But when the palace was burned in a revolt and his power was threatened by defections, these calamities were blamed on a bad site for the capital, which was immediately moved to Kaegyŏng amidst recriminations against the follies of geomantists. But Kaegyŏng, a city then in Kyŏnggi Province not very far north of modern Seoul, was after all Wang Kŏn’s home base. As we shall see, a later geomantic revivalist move by the Buddhist monk Myoch’ŏng was stymied by the growing influence at court of more broad minded scholar-officials. Confucianism Confucius (551–479 BC) was a nobleman of East China, conventionally considered a political and social reformer. He made no claim to originality: instead, he desired to preserve the ancient wisdom of China embodied in the former Chou periods up to shortly before his birth. He lived during a chaotic period and longed for harmony. Although an unsuccessful reformer, he was an exceptional teacher, interpreting, synthesising and justifying the ‘traditions,’ to produce the system par excellence, in which everything, as set forth in his Analects, is related to the Dao, the Way. He taught the Way of the cosmos and the proper relation of all people to it. There was a Way of the ruler, of the subject, of the father, of the child, of the wife, and so on. The answer Confucianism gave to the question how the world fits together was that all phenomena have a proper and natural relation to each other, and that in human society, when individuals and groups relate to one another in accordance with the functions that are inherent in their names, harmony is assured. There are five basic relationships: ruler and subject, father and child, husband and wife, elder and younger, and friend and friend; all of which save the last were invariably vertical. The centre-piece of the ethical order of society, filial piety, was certainly hierarchical. The father-son relationship was the pattern to which all other relationships, except friendship, were to conform. Although the ruler clearly ranked above a father, he was himself the Son of Heaven and directly subordinate to the Way, the Dao. It is a feature of Confucianism that the Analects do not argue the validity of moral maxims: they are stated, and together they form a picture of the whole. Ethics are not considered to be a value system. The cosmos is an ethical structure itself—it is the Way in concrete, objective form—and Confucian thinkers

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did not believe anyone could invent or create the moral system any more than we believe we can create the solar system. Further, no divinity stands alongside or outside the world and gives humans the law. Humans are born into an ethical relation, and throughout life one is defined by one’s social position and functions. It is, however, possible to be mistaken or confused about the functions one is supposed to fulfil in society, and this is usually caused by the use of wrong names or ignorance of the inherent meaning of the names. Fatherhood is a name that owns a specific function: if fathers fail to act as fathers, society will become disrupted. Education in the Confucian Classics, therefore, has long been considered of vital importance to the administration of a state and the development of a stable and harmonious society. Although all people were deemed morally educable, this did not mean that all people needed to learn their place and responsibilities directly from the classics. Not only was this impractical, but the higher classes generally considered education to be their exclusive prerogative and supported this and other privileges with another doctrine, namely, that the high moral quality of a well-educated ruling class would so emanate out across the kingdom that the subjects would be steered in the right direction by the example of their superiors. Confucian social and political ideas reached the peninsula early in the Three Kingdom period. Towards the end of the fourth century, a Confucian Academy was established in Koguryŏ, and similar institutions arose in Paekche and Silla over the next century. As with Buddhism, Confucian teaching was valued by the ruling strata as a centralising instrument, and alongside its hierarchical model of state and social orders, the main tenet that was emphasised was loyalty. In the code of the élite Hwarang organization of the Silla Kingdom, as we have seen, loyalty to the country and filial piety, or obedient respect for parents, were placed alongside the Buddhist injunction to refrain from wanton killing. During the United Silla period, attempts to instate Confucian institutions, as opposed to selective adoption of administrative principles, had met but indifferent success. An instance of the syncretic nature of religious belief during United Silla, in which are blended classical animist observances, the Confucian principle of moral example and Buddhist ritual, is the record of the usurper, King Sŏndŏk (r. 780–785). In March 781, he offered sacrifices in person at the Great Shrine. On his deathbed four years later, Sŏndŏk issued an edict that stated: I started life as a person of little worth who had not thought of taking the throne. But it was hard to avoid being put forward, and so in fact I became king. But since my accession, times have not been easy, and

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indeed the people are worn out, all because my virtue did not tally with popular expectations, nor did my government concur with the wishes of Heaven. (Knowing this), I always had the intention of abdicating and retiring to private life, but the council of ministers unanimously set themselves against this every time, so that I was unable to fulfil my intention. Thus matters have reached their present pass, and I am suddenly overwhelmed with sickness and can neither stand nor lie. But life and death are decreed (by Heaven), so what cause should there be for regret? After death, let my body be cremated in accordance with Buddhist ritual, and the ashes scattered in the Eastern Sea.4 Upon the decline of the United Silla dynasty, interest grew in Confucianism as a possible agent for political reform, and increasing numbers of scholars travelled to China to study Confucian statecraft. Many of these scholars later filled the ranks of the new Koryŏ dynasty’s administration. The shift of the dynastic centre from the erstwhile Silla Kingdom capital of Kyŏngju to the former Koguryŏ city of Kaegyŏng attended a shift also in cultural focus. In 933, three years before Wang Kŏn established the Koryŏ dynasty, the Later T’ang emperor in China commended him as heir to the wisdom of Kija, the former ruler of ancient Korea and a figure somewhat shrouded in legend. The T’ang viewed Kija as an ancient Chinese feudal overlord of the peninsula. Wang and the Koryŏ establishment, for their part, naturally enough regarded him as the founder of Kija Chosŏn, and claimed to be his successor. King Sukchong (r. 1095–1105) engaged in Kija worship, with a shrine built in his honour in Pyongyang, at the Yŏngmyŏng Temple where Tongmyŏng, the legendary father of the founder of Koguryŏ was worshipped. Geomantic ideas were implicated in this, but it was certainly politically designed to enhance the prestige of the dynasty. By the twelfth century, Kija’s shrine was allotted more land than that of Confucius: Kija was thereby elevated as the unsurpassable Cultural Hero of the peninsula. But the high aristocrat, Kim Pusik (1075–1151), in his Annals of the Three Kingdoms written in the mid-twelfth century, downplayed the importance of Koguryŏ and elevated that of Silla. He took issue with advocates of ‘northern’ traditions of geomancy who, despite the solid Sinitic pedigree of geomancy, became characterised by coolness towards China. Kim accordingly portrayed Kija as subject to China and a purveyor of enlightened Confucian doctrines which Koguryŏ distinguished itself precisely by failing to observe. But as their power rose from 4  Translation by Kenneth Gardiner. King Sŏndŏk should not be confused with Queen Sŏndŏk, who ruled the Silla Kingdom from 632 to 646.

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the late twelfth century, the military cliques made only scant reference to Kija because of this portrayal of him as a former vassal of the Chinese. During the Mongol period from the mid-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, there occurred a convergence between the ideas that Kija was a Koguryŏ hero and a Chinese vassal, since Koryŏ intellectuals decided that identifying with China and thereby defending Koryŏ legitimacy was a means of combatting the Mongols. But they added a fine twist to the tale, a new idea, that Kija lectured the Chinese ruler on the ‘Great Plan’ for state governance and that he founded the Korean state without China’s aid or blessing, in full conformity with the Chinese ideals of civilisation they derived from him. As it happened, a similar interpretation was adopted by the neo-Confucians who supplanted the Koryŏ dynasty in 1392. Regardless of changing positions on the legendary Kija, by the middle of the eleventh century, Confucianism had taken pride of place as the principal guide on state governance, especially with the institution of the state examination system based on close study of the Confucian Classics. In the twelfth century, when as court historian and royal lecturer Kim Pusik exerted his strong influence on King Injong (r. 1122–1146), Confucian precepts extended beyond principles of state ideology to mores informing social relations. Even then, it was valued primarily as a social cement binding together the different regional aristocracies and the different classes during the ups and downs of the Koryŏ era, of which there were many: Khitan Liao invasions, military rebellion, popular uprisings, and Mongol occupation. Through all these tumults, Confucianism steadily won the allegiance of king, official and scholar, but not to the exclusion of other systems of a more consciously religious nature. If there was any religious or philosophical competition among the élite, it was on one level pursued through education, as would be expected. An attempt by King Kwangjong (r. 949–975) to introduce a civil service exam that was predicated on the Confucian principle that merit, demonstrated by excellence in education, qualified a person for office, failed because of continuing resistance by the aristocracy to the severance of the connection between birth, rank and office. But reforms introduced under King Sŏngjong (r. 981–997) were an all-out effort to educate officials from top to bottom chiefly in the Confucian classics, laying the basis for a new kind of aristocracy consisting of scholarofficials and known to posterity as yangban. Yangban literally meant the ‘two orders,’ referring to civil and military ­offices.5 The Silla Hwarang had in a sense combined both orders in their 5  The term yangban is commonly but erroneously thought to apply only to the scholar-­ official bureaucrats and their families during the Chosŏn dynasty. The bureaucratic office of ­yangban, however, formed from the late eleventh to early twelfth centuries, and even as

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figure 4

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At the tomb of the Koryŏ King Kongmin, who died in 1374, Buddhist and Confucian elements exist side by side. And the positions of the four officials, the two civil in higher and the two military in lower positions, reflect the superior status awarded to Confucian scholarship over military expertise. Photo by author.

e­ mphasis on dual training in the arts and in military skills, as exemplified by the general Kim Yusin. The civil and military branches of the state were regarded as complementary and of equal value and status. Recognition of the complementary nature of the two orders remained under Sŏngjong, but a greater emphasis was now laid on civil, Confucian-based education. A National Academy, the Kukchagam (renamed Sŏnggyun’gwan near the end of the dynasty), was founded in 992 in Kaegyŏng. Although advanced education was now obligatory, the reforms hardly moved officialdom any closer to a meritocracy, for the Kukchagam was managed in relation to the lineage system, with eligibility for highest to lowest determined by birth. The Kukchagam or Sŏnggyun’gwan buildings have been reconstructed and renovated several times over the centuries, and today house a museum in North Korea. In the twelfth century, the regional aristocracy made a deliberate attempt to break the power of the ruling lineages in the capital by transforming a s­ ystem of

a term for social status was certainly in use by late Koryŏ times. See John B. Duncan, The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 88–89 & 278.

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‘extension studies’ in the provinces into private education. Confucius was himself a champion of private education, which was a hallowed tradition in China, but an innovation for Korea. The regional aristocracy used the new private system to create a network of political connections, and thereby threatened the government hold over education. In response, King Injong established the Six Colleges of the Capital, each of which was reserved for lineage traditions, with the object of assuring regional scholars of adequate representation. The whole Confucian education endeavour was, however, carried out in Chinese, with Chinese history, lore and people as subject-matter, and resulted in a progressive Sinification of the Korean educated élite.

The People

Although the general populace attended and sometimes performed regular rituals and sacrifices to Confucius, unlike Buddhism it did not become a creed of the common people, even by the end of the Koryŏ dynasty. Nor perhaps was it intended to be. The concern of Korea’s Confucians at this stage was not to promote personal religious rites but to implement moral and technical principles of governance through an educated bureaucracy and thereby guard the harmony and stability of the dynastic realm. It is evident that some Confucian scholars despised the ‘spirits’ of folk belief. Even so, Confucianism was grounded in agrarian society in which land was immovable, occupations were largely fixed, and families lived together in extended form as economic and social units. Hence there was no impediment to popular subscription to that cornerstone of Confucian ethics, filial piety, and the associated hierarchical order ascending from slave to monarch. Social Policy and Welfare In terms of ruling the people and administering society, there were important areas of equivalence between Confucianism and Buddhism. Buddhism emphasised right thinking and right conduct, which in social relations amounted to a strictly impartial practice of compassion. Although far less egalitarian than Buddhism, Confucian doctrine emphasised right behaviour in relation to the functions and responsibilities of one’s position, and taught that those in higher positions must act with human-heartedness towards those in lower positions. To do so was following the way of righteousness. Whereas Buddhists practised compassion through charities, including provision of medical services and construction of granaries in monasteries to distribute to commoners in lean times, Confucians sought to embody their precepts in bureaucratic practices and provisions.

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Although kings, statesmen and their chroniclers in the Koryŏ period progressively measured policies and practices against Confucian norms of humanheartedness, it is by no means evident that the rulers’ moral qualities radiated very far across the kingdom, nor even that the social welfare provisions that did exist derived from Confucianism. For such provisions existed from early in the United Silla period, and nothing of substance was added to them over the succeeding five centuries. United Silla records outline various ways of dealing with social welfare problems, principally the provision of emergency loans, temporary remission of taxes, expression of condolences, relief supplies, performance of religious rites, and declaration of amnesties. There were frequent droughts and times of pestilence (mostly plagues of locusts), floods and typhoons, occasional earthquakes and serious fires. Twice during the dynasty, taxes were remitted in response to natural disasters, and on occasion the government-dispatched commissioners to districts badly affected by flood or drought and organised relief supplies. In cases of particular disaster, such as prolonged famine, the court engaged in acts of penance, beginning with the king going without selected meals, and declared special amnesties. When floods or locusts devastated crops, Buddhist priests and traditional shamans were asked to chant prayers and present offerings to the spirits of the rivers, fields and forests in the affected areas. At a more personal level, there were provisions for relief in the form of food and clothing for widows and the aged, and on one occasion the king delivered the relief in person. Severe poverty, however, was not provided for by any regulation, although there are records of relief being distributed in conjunction with royal tours as an expression of royal beneficence. The Status of Women The position of women is an important area in which religious systems and social philosophies have invariably played a direct and determinative role. The traditional Confucian teaching on the functions of men and women and on their position in public life differed markedly from the Korean Classical and Buddhist religious viewpoints. Nevertheless, whereas the growing influence of Confucian social philosophy did affect ideas about the position and roles of women, their position in practice changed little throughout the Silla and Koryŏ periods. To be sure, apart from female membership in the Hwarang and the tenure of the top position of the Silla monarchy by three queens, there is little evidence that women ever exercised substantial political rights or influence. But the fact that a high degree of personal freedom, public profile and social power for women remained largely intact to the end of the Koryŏ period is a measure of the depth of the indigenous traditions and the Buddhist ascription of equal spiritual status to male and female.

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Gender relations in the earlier tribal confederacies are difficult to ascertain. Indirect evidence, such as the Puyŏ legal code, which listed five crimes for which punishment was inflicted in decreasing order of severity—murder, injury, theft, female adultery and jealousy (by a wife)—suggests women suffered unequal sexual relationships in a patriarchal system that countenanced widespread polygamy. In the Three Kingdoms, however, gender relations appear to have been more even. In Koguryŏ, marriage could be matrilocal, meaning the husband moved to the wife’s household upon marriage, and could be matrilineal, meaning the line of descent went through the mother. It is unknown whether marriage customs and women’s status within marriage differed according to class. Royal women were recognised actors in the circles of state power. For some ten years in the middle of the first century, a time when Koguryŏ was militant and expanding, the kingdom was under the regency of the Queen Mother. Murals in the royal tombs depict the husband and wife together on the same level, signifying marital equality. Indeed, the Chinese records condemned the Koguryŏ kingdom for its marriage culture, in which parents did not make the matches and couples danced and sang together late into the night. There was some worship of an ancestral goddess, the mother of Chumong, legendary founder of the kingdom, a tradition that if anything strengthened during the later Koryŏ period. Female shamans were important in Koguryŏ, enjoying state prestige and functions: one shaman was enlisted in the seventh century to aid the resistance against invaders.6 Apart from murals of kings and their wives seated together on the same level, both wearing crowns, records on Paekche gender relations are scarce. In Silla, whereas social strata were very strictly defined, there is scant evidence of a gender hierarchy. Matrilocal marriage was not uncommon and census details, such as the greater number of females to males, suggest that boy-­ preference was absent. Sumptuary laws included regulation of women’s clothing and accoutrements, but along lines of class, as with males.7 In the Hwarang bands likewise, female members were entitled to horses and saddles according to rank in the same number and style as men. United Silla land-registers indicate that individuals bought and sold land and that private ownership was legally sanctioned. Aristocratic women owned land and in some instances were rewarded with land for services on it. One female aristocrat donated a very large parcel of land to a temple, and others may have sold land to fund the construction of the enormous bronze bell at 6  Nelson, Sarah Milledge, The Archaeology of Korea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 211. 7  Nelson, The Archaeology of Korea, 260.

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Hwangnyongsa Temple in Kyŏngju. In relation to land inheritance, no distinction was made between son and daughter or even, where relevant, between son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Women’s share in family inheritance, the right to remarry when widowed or divorced and to own and dispose of land, and the freedom to participate openly in public life remained throughout the Koryŏ dynasty.8 If anything, women became even more actively involved in Buddhist institutions, managing charitable and other social enterprises and frequenting the temples unaccompanied by male family members. The neo-Confucian establishment that undergirded the rise of the new Chosŏn dynasty at the close of the fourteenth century took great offence at this degree of female freedom, interpreted it as moral laxity and blamed it for the troubles that brought the Koryŏ dynasty to its end. This accusatory moral stand, however, entailed not a little hypocrisy, for during the Koryŏ period a female entertainment industry grew up that was sponsored as much by the Confucian scholar-officials as any and remained an officially registered activity throughout the succeeding neo-Confucian Chosŏn dynasty. The Koryŏ period is indeed noted for the rise of the kisaeng, female entertainers whose role in Korean society was similar to but by no means identical to that of the geisha in Japan. They were a cultural institution, but existed for and on behalf of male culture, including the sexual culture of the higher-class males. This fact has sometimes been ignored or even denied, partly because of differences between the three East Asian neighbours, China, Korea and Japan. In China, especially in T’ang China of the seventh to tenth centuries, there was a pleasure quarter called the Ward of Heavenly Peace and all monarchs had a lavish harem. In Japan, the Yoshiwara quarters have a long, openly acknowledged history. Yet neither the Koryŏ capital of Kaegyŏng nor the Chosŏn capital of Seoul had pleasure quarters as such. Nevertheless, from Silla times some thirty per cent of society consisted of slaves, for whom there were no sexual rights or protection, and records indicate offspring from master-slave relations. In a famous story of that most famous of Hwarang warriors, Kim Yusin, it is clear that prostitution existed in service of the élite and that prostitutes received reasonable material reward, even if, as seems to have been the case, they were also given a low standing, socially and morally. By the Koryŏ period, the kisaeng developed into a kind of class. They were normally drawn from the lower classes, but were given special training in the performing arts, especially singing and dancing. Their registration under 8  Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 79–87.

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the Court Entertainment Bureau meant that they were licensed to perform at official functions and to serve in provincial government offices. Entertainment ranged from sophisticated, artistic performances at state banquets to intimate gatherings in the private quarters of royal and high-ranking families. These women were already in early Koryŏ called kwan’gi, meaning ­government-employed kisaeng, a term that before long signified a licensed government prostitute. The official history of the Koryŏ dynasty is replete with references to kwan’gi. Kisaeng were given pseudonyms, such as White Lotus, and were identified according to their place of origin. In contrast to upperclass women in self-conscious Confucian households from at least the midKoryŏ period, the kisaeng were visible, mixing publicly and privately with men. They became an integral part of court life, although complaints abounded that they were a perpetual source of conflict and trouble, provoking some men to murder and even bringing kings into dissipation.9 The kisaeng developed their own form of music, called yŏak, which literally means women’s music and which later caused considerable controversy. But it was perhaps in poetry that they made their greatest cultural contribution. The kisaeng were the only females who as a group were permitted to study the Confucian classics, so that they could intersperse their conversation with the educated ruling class with allusions to the classics and write amorous notes in the style of classical poetry. Although many of their poems were understandably somewhat disembodied, conjuring up images of ‘figured silks giving off clouds of perfumed air,’ many kisaeng were highly talented. Three major collections of their poetry have survived the Koryŏ period, and one of the greatest writers of the prized sijo style in the Chosŏn era, was the kisaeng Hwang Chini. Indeed, to the kisaeng may be attributed without exaggeration the preservation and development of much of the indigenous artistic and literary culture of the Koryŏ period and beyond.

The Rise of the Military

It is important to understand the early connection between the Confucianoriented officials with the military. The Koryŏ capital was in Kaegyŏng, between Seoul and Pyongyang but closer to Seoul. Taking opportunity from King Injong’s reforms of 1127, which were designed to restore full authority 9  I am indebted for much of this information on the kisaeng literary and performative tradition to Kathleen Louise McKay, “Kisaeng in the Koryŏ Period,” PhD diss. (Harvard University, 1991).

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to the throne, the Buddhist monk Myoch’ŏng had urged the king to move the capital to Pyongyang on the basis of certain geomantic theories of its safer and superior location. This move Myoch’ŏng presented as a strategic move against the Jurchen Chin in Manchuria, but it was at bottom designed also to restore the power of the northern nobility and to reassert the primacy of his own brand of Buddhist and ‘native’ religious traditions over the increasingly China-friendly cosmopolitanism of the officials around the throne. When in 1129 Injong had a palace erected near Pyongyang, state affairs awaited a showdown with the leading scholar-officials. The capital scholars, led by the powerful Kim Pusik, opposed the move to Pyongyang on two grounds. First, they condemned Myoch’ŏng as a recidivist and his brand of geomancy as a narrow, tribalistic creed that threatened the equilibrium attained by Koryŏ’s tolerance of cultural diversity and provided no basis for a rational politics of statehood.10 Second, on simple but inescapable tactical grounds, they argued that Koryŏ had to remain at peace with the Chin, poised as they were to become the ruling power over Manchuria, and possibly China. On learning in 1135 that Kim Pusik’s views were gaining a sympathetic hearing at the palace, and cognizant of a Pyongyang faction in Kaegyŏng, Myoch’ŏng rose in revolt. At this point, however, even his erstwhile supporters grew disillusioned with Myoch’ŏng’s methods and ambitions so that when Kim Pusik was sent out as a military commander to put down the rebellion he enjoyed the support of most of the armed forces. His mission was also made easier by the assassination of Myoch’ŏng by one of his own men. Here we see that the literati included military strategists and leaders, which was the original sense of the appellation yangban, although Kim Pusik was one of the last to fill this dual role and was himself part of the reason for the decline of the literati/military commander identification. It was inevitable that as the political power of scholar-officials under aristocrats of Kim Pusik’s standing and ability became entrenched, they would develop disdain for government by physical force. Kim’s punitive expedition against Myoch’ŏng was precisely that—a punitive act—not a method of rule. The military campaign was justifiable also as something forced upon the 10  Remco Breuker has argued persuasively that far from wishing to exclude other belief systems such as Buddhism and those associated with geomancy in favour of official recognition and patronage of Confucianism, Kim Pusik opposed Myoch’ŏng on the ideological front for his advocacy of an anti-syncretic dogma that excluded other traditions that were equally or even more native to the peninsula. See Remco Breuker, Establishing a pluralist society in medieval Korea (918–1170): History, ideology and identity in the Koryŏ dynasty (Leiden & Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).

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enlightened by the irrationality of those who sought to divest the kingdom of its inclusive civilisation. But the virtually absolute nature of Kim Pusik’s triumph at court became the literati’s undoing: the immoderacy of their disdain for the military backfired and revealed the extent to which not only the peace of the kingdom but also the security of the civil administration relied on accommodation with the military. Under the Silla rulers, the military had enjoyed a position of immense respect. The members of the Hwarang, all of whom were aristocrats, combined high culture, Buddhism, Confucian ethics and the military training that had enabled Silla to defeat the Paekche and Koguryŏ forces and then drive out the military commanderies of T’ang China. The rise of the gentry involved the recruitment and deployment of large private armies, and it was the ­military prowess of the gentry that, by breaking the monopoly on power of the truebone aristocracy centred in Kyŏngju, at least indirectly paved the way for the rise of the China-centred literati. Hence the military leadership considered itself entitled at least to partnership with the scholar-officials and non-military aristocracy in affairs of state. Friction over the demarcation between military and civil functions and prerogatives was therefore seldom far below the surface and erupted at times into outright confrontation. In 1010, for example, disgruntled military officers staged a coup and took over the government administration for a time.11 Following Kim Pusik’s triumph, the over-confident scholar-officials proceeded to exclude military generals from office and to curtail the time-­ honoured practice of rewarding military officers with endowments of land, or the tax rights thereto. Against this two-pronged attack, the military men revolted under General Chŏng Chungbu, and for roughly a century after 1170 the throne and the economy were under their thumb. The military takeover had several ramifications, one of which was the rise of a new yangban, or literati culture that was ideologically committed to neo-Confucianism and which later fashioned the Chosŏn dynasty’s bureaucracy. One of the first acts of the military rulers was to purge the bureaucracy of the civilian officials who had indulged in activities disrespectful to the military establishment. General Chŏng Chungbu, who never forgave the indignity of having his beard singed by mocking civil officials, including a son of Kim Pusik no less, in 1170 ordered the execution of all civil officials in the central government, though there is no evidence that all or even a majority were killed. But 11  On the estrangement between scholar-officials and military officials and the subsequent rule of the military, see Edward J. Shultz, Generals and Scholars: Military Rule in Medieval Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).

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figure 5

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The two sheep in front of Kongmin’s tomb near Kaesŏng, in North Korea, are very unusual, and mark the influence of the Mongol period on Korea’s culture at that time. But the twin tombs embody a far more enduring element in Korean culture, for the second tomb houses Kongmin’s wife and the two are connected by a passage, so that the spirits of the couple could meet after they died. Photo by author.

certainly the civilian core of the bureaucracy was removed one way or another and this created a vacuum which educated members of the lower upper classes sought to fill. In this way, a further blow was dealt to the traditional notion that ancestry alone should determine the level of government office one may hold. Nevertheless, attempts to rise on the social ladder by members of the lowest classes, especially the slave caste, under the military rule of the Ch’oe clan, which supervised the government from 1196–1258, were put down firmly and with typical military efficiency and blood-letting. Another aspect of military rule that favoured the rise of the neo-Confucian literati later was its ambiguous relationship with the Buddhist establishment. The military rulers themselves tended to patronise Sŏn Buddhism, and so it was not Buddhism per se that was opposed but rather the identification of the Hwaŏm School with political power, that is, with the royal and aristocratic lineages. The suppression of this and other textual schools, and indeed the promotion of a pure, non-materialistic Buddhism by Chinul, removed from Korean society precisely those forms of Buddhism that preached engagement with the secular world. Buddhism thus lost status, power and wealth, leaving

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the literati open to the neo-Confucian social and state doctrines that had been developed in Sung China. But the role played by the Mongol invasion in the ascendency of neo-Confucianism in Korea was far from negligible and might partly account for the contrasting experience in Japan, which the Mongols failed to conquer, and where neo-Confucianism was introduced and spread by Zen Buddhist priests during the Ashikaga period of 1336–1573.

CHAPTER 3

The Grand Tradition I: The Pillars of Orthodoxy The effective removal of Mongol power in Korea by King Kongmin in the mid1350s was followed by a period of chaos, marked by incursions from the north by Mongol remnants and Chinese bandit armies called the Red Turbans in the 1360s, and by constant pillaging of the Korean coastal regions by pirate fleets that were based mainly in Japan. Once freed from Mongol oversight, Kongmin also urged a program of reforms that involved purges of the pro-Yüan families. But when his Premier, Sin Ton, a Buddhist monk of lowly birth, struck against the interests of yangban officials with proud aristocratic lineages, they forced him from office and later executed him. Kongmin fared no better, being dispatched from this world in 1374 by palace courtiers and eunuchs. Killing the premier and the king, however, did nothing to alleviate internal tensions and external pressures. To cope with the continuing insecurity of the kingdom, the court called upon the military, which proved fatal to the monarchy. The most important of the new military generals was a man named Yi Sŏnggye (1335–1408), from the northeast, who had gained prominence through his military prowess against the pirates beleaguering Korea’s long coastline. Then, when the Ming dynasty took over power from the Mongol Yüan in China in 1368, Yi Sŏnggye, who was pro-Ming, began forming crucial alliances with the disaffected aristocrats with the object of turning on the Koryŏ court. In 1388 General Yi calculated he had gained sufficient support to mutiny against orders to lead troops against the Ming, who were threatening to take possession of territories formerly held by the Mongols in Korea’s northeast. The general engineered a coup d’état in the capital, killed off a number of other generals, deposed the king, and finally in 1392 proclaimed himself the first king of a new dynasty, the Chosŏn dynasty. This dynasty has at times been referred to as the Yi dynasty, after the family name of the new royal Yi clan. The Koryŏ dynasty had lasted four and one half centuries and the Chosŏn was to last another five. It was thus the only dynastic change in a period close to one thousand years. There were major changes under the Chosŏn rulers, many of them deliberate and considered. These changes resulted not only in a major shift away from Buddhism to a veritably religious adherence to neoConfucianism, but also in different relationships between the aristocracy, the throne and the military forces, a reordering of gender relations, and a new dynamic between élite and folk cultures.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004300057_005

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In deference to these far-reaching changes, it is easy to assume that a change of parallel significance occurred in the leadership of the new dynasty. However, as John Duncan has demonstrated, there is scant evidence in support of a social transition accompanying the dynastic transition. There was no new aristocratic power-base. On the contrary, there was a narrowing of access to power to the traditional leading clans. The top seven clans of early Chosŏn had been well-established members of the Koryŏ bureaucracy. Although these clans had no marriage relations with Yi Sŏnggye’s military clique in the northeast before the late fourteenth century, at that point a number of such alliances were formed that reinforced the power of the leading clans and thereby ensured substantial continuity in the leadership class between the two dynasties. The alliance formed with these landed aristocracies by the new dynasty’s founder, General Yi, underlined his dependence on the traditional leadership élites. It was, therefore, the decision by the latter to back a new horse in support of their own economic and political interests that brought about the demise of the Koryŏ monarchy.1 Yi Sŏnggye, for his part, deemed it politic to embrace neo-Confucianism as the ruling ideology of his kingdom, and so despite the military beginnings of the Chosŏn dynasty, the relegation of the military to a politically and ethically inferior position vis-à-vis the literati is one of the chief characteristics of the Chosŏn era. The Chosŏn monarchy was thereby relieved of the domestic military challenges that from time to time plagued the United Silla and Koryŏ monarchies. Even so, an unassailable bureaucratic centralisation was never attained, and political and economic power rested on balancing the authority of the monarchy against the interests of both the capital and regional yangban. In place of military might, the yangban competed for influence over the throne through membership in schools of neo-Confucianism, which operated as political factions aligned with aristocratic lineages and their home bases. Unlike the Chinese literati, who were employees of a monarchy that had done away with the aristocracies so that they would not be competitors, the Korean yangban remained the aristocracy and maintained a strong aristocratic identity. They married outside the clan in order to retain their own property and slaves and compounded their assets and regional solidarity through marital alliances. Genealogies became very important early in the Chosŏn era, and when they were published for the first time in 1475, which is very early historically, they covered the male and female sides, included codes designed

1  John Duncan, The Origins of the Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000).

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to preserve unity over time and space and took on considerable legal status. The yangban therefore regarded the location of their ancestors’ spirits very seriously and retained strong attachments to the birthplace of the first ancestor of their lineage, not only because of the associated landholdings but also because of underlying geomantic beliefs and a widespread sense that ancestral spirits lived on and must live together with their descendants. So the yangban of the Chosŏn era were mainly civilians, who by virtue of their wealth in land attached to an aristocratic lineage and their high level of neo-Confucian learning associated with a political faction around the throne, comprised the social and political élite of Korea. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that the aristocratic establishment was politically secure during the first 150 years of the dynasty. There were four quite bloody purges of the yangban during this period, in 1498, 1504, 1515 and 1545, which have earned the dramatic title of sahwa, ‘calamities of the scholars.’ These purges were both spectacular eruptions in an always uneasy relationship between the king and the officials who wished to curb his authority and backlashes against campaigns by ideologically driven scholarofficials to implement neo-Confucian principles in an idealistic (or at times self-serving) manner. By the late sixteenth century the ideologues had won the war despite having borne the brunt of the purges, but thereupon they were confronted with extremely destructive invasions from Japan. Indeed, the evolution of Chosŏn neo-Confucianism was not only a domestic process; it was conditioned also by developments beyond the borders of the kingdom.

The Neo-Confucian World

In early Chosŏn, the principle of ‘serving the great’, known in Korean as sadae, informed Chosŏn-Ming China relations. In large part because the notion of sadae became associated with ideas of ‘toadyism’ in the terminology of the fierce cultural debates from the late nineteenth century, the nature of these relations has been either misrepresented as something akin to the international relations between independent, sovereign nation-states in the modern world or, on the contrary, as evidence that Chosŏn Korea was a vassal state of China. Neither construction of the relationship is accurate. As reflected in the characters that comprise its name, the Chinese rulers considered China to be the middle, or central state. Bordering kingdoms, so long as they shared the basic ideals of civilisation embodied in the classical texts in which the rulers and bureaucrats were to be educated, belonged to the same world order, and in Confucian terms related to one another as members of a family. As the empire

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at the centre, the Chinese viewed themselves as the eldest brother, and Chosŏn Korea as the most worthy of the younger brothers. China was, however, a considerable military power, one that was not averse to chastising insufficiently deferential neighbours or to pressing its economic advantage. The Ming rulers were not inclined to grant the new Korean dynasty easy recognition, accused its founding statesmen of using vulgar, improper forms of address in their communications with the Ming throne, and kept relations between the two countries tense for some decades. The Chosŏn rulers and scholar-officials therefore supported China’s status as the Middle Kingdom in part for defensive, pragmatic reasons. They sent four embassies per year, more when circumstances demanded it, throughout the Ming dynasty (1388–1662). These embassies bore with them tribute, to be sure, and these were seals of Chosŏn’s legitimacy and protection. But they also carried out standard diplomatic functions, such as negotiating trade terms for the exchange of cotton, ginseng and precious metals for horses, textiles, medicines, porcelain and books. It was in the early period, under King Sejong (r. 1418–1450), that the Tumen and Yalu rivers became de facto boundaries between Korea and northern China and Manchuria, and garrisons were stationed along them to monitor crossings and shield the kingdom against the Jurchen remnants still active in the region. By the same token, the subscription of the Korean scholar-officials to the cultural explanation of the relationship with China was not simply rhetorical or a function of China’s hegemony. They believed the framework was practical also because it conformed to the order of things, an order that they wished to reinforce domestically. The idea of the Korean kingdom being a younger brother might also have been useful to the aristocratic lineages in curbing delusions of grandeur in their main competitor, the royal Yi family. This was not solely a case of the culture of a strong state being imposed on a weaker state imperialistically. The positive tone of the relationship with Ming China stemmed in large part from their common adherence to neo-Confucian ideology.

The State and Economy

Among Yi Sŏnggye’s chief civilian supporters was Chŏng Tojŏn (?–1398), who some years before the establishment of the Chosŏn dynasty began work on a blueprint for its polity and social order and is sometimes referred to as the architect of the Chosŏn state.2 Chŏng’s Chosŏn kyŏnggukchŏn (Statutes for 2  For the following and further details on Chŏng Tojŏn, see Chai-sik Chung, “Chŏng Tojŏn: ‘Architect’ of Yi Dynasty Government and Ideology,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary and Jahyun

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Governance of Chosŏn) was based on the idealised pattern of China’s ancient Chou kingdom. But Chŏng also appealed to Kija, the legendary ruler of the early Korean kingdom of Old Chosŏn, sometimes named Kija Chosŏn. Kija, Chŏng claimed, received Korea from King Wu of Chou as a feudal fief. Arguing that the recognition of Yi Sŏnggye by the neo-Confucian Chinese Ming was an exact parallel to Kija’s situation, Chŏng asserted that the new Chosŏn dynasty was the true heir to Old Chosŏn. This was in part a condemnation of Buddhism as a desertion of true civilisation; but also was recognition of the Chinese World Order and laid the grounds for a claim that Korea was a partner in the creation of that world order in ancient times. Ming China was the centre of a civilisation of which Chosŏn Korea was a proud and dutiful member. This was a very realistic policy at the time, for Ming China was a powerful empire and Korea thereby enjoyed a full measure of autonomy within dependency on Ming goodwill. In his Statutes for the Governance of Chosŏn, written already in 1394, Chŏng included a Code of Rulership: merit, not birth, was to determine entry to the bureaucracy, a key principle of Confucianism that favoured the less aristocratic yangban. Humaneness and righteousness were to be the state’s moral basis; the military arts were to be kept in an inferior position. In his Code of Justice, Chŏng proposed that ethical transformation and penal institutions be made the twin pillars of administration. He placed emphasis on ethical training on the grounds of the perfectibility of human nature, but added that penal laws were necessary to instruct the ignorant and punishments to deter clouded natures. Regarding the farming community, Chŏng affirmed the Confucian premise that the common people were the foundation of the state, because they produce the material means of its existence. The enemy of the peasants, and therefore of the welfare of the state, were those remaining aristocratic families that dominated the economy through hereditary landholding. Chŏng advocated the abolition of private land and of Buddhist temple land, or its transferal to crown land, so that extortion of the peasantry would be terminated and the government would have an assured revenue base. The role of the monarch was to be a lofty embodiment of the archetypal principle of human nature and the clearest reflection of the Supreme Ultimate. Through his moral excellence, virtue would flow outwards to the people via the government officials, central and local. Intensive education in the Confucian classics and neo-Confucian commentaries thereon was recommended from the earliest possible age. But the actual administration, Chŏng wrote, should Kim Haboush, eds, The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 59–88.

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be handled not by the monarch but by the State Council, composed of state ministers presided over by a Prime Minister. The members of the State Council, after all, earned their position through demonstrating their wisdom and experience; whereas the King inherited his position. Not all Chŏng’s proposals were implemented. His proposals on land reform were too radical and apart from having some Buddhist temple lands put under state control, they failed utterly. The neo-Confucian yangban were not so purist as to give up their power-bases. Again, Chŏng’s proposal that administrative authority be transferred from the king to the State Council was not well received. King T’aejong (r. 1400–1418), the third Chosŏn ruler and son of Yi Sŏnggye, saw precisely the point of Chŏng’s proposal and, taking the opportunity afforded by a foray by Chŏng into court politics that misfired, promptly had his head removed, lest its thoughts develop any further. Chŏng’s fate was a dramatic instance of the tension between ministerial and monarchical power and a precursor of the ‘calamities of the scholars.’ But Chŏng’s principle remained alive, at least as a bone of contention. T’aejong’s successor, King Sejong (r. 1418–1450), restored an active role to the State Council, whereas King Sejo (r. 1455–1468) again withdrew it. And indeed, the conflict continued down to the nineteenth century. Yi Sŏnggye did attempt to implement some key features of Chŏng Tojŏn’s blueprint. In 1390, two years before launching the new dynasty officially, he ordered an extensive redistribution of land. Land was divided into several categories: crown land, military land for state use, office land for bureaucrats, land used by owner-cultivators, endowments to employees in local magistracies, postal workers, river ferrymen, and widows remaining faithful to deceased husbands, and grants of land for artisans. Almost inevitably, the land given to persons on the basis of their rank, high office or meritorious deeds became hereditary, and so in 1466 an Office Land (chikchŏn) system was implemented in order to limit grants of land to incumbent officials. This reform was abolished in 1556, and landholdings other than owner-cultivator land were simplified into six categories, none of which was private. Strictly speaking, land endowed by the government ceded the right to collect rent rather than the right to own the land. But in reality, it became a case of possession equalling nine-tenths of the law. A more or less unified tax system was achieved early in the dynasty and lasted reasonably well down to the early nineteenth century. Together, the royal family and the state owned around one-tenth of arable land, from which was collected from thirty to one hundred per cent of the harvest, depending on the category of farmers employed on it. The small private holdings in the main farmed by owner-cultivators were subject to a taxation of ten per cent

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of produce. Commoners were also subject to corvée labour tax, and paid tribute tax and a military cloth tax to local government offices. A land tax, called the Uniform Land Tax Law (taedongbŏp), was introduced during the reign of Hyojong (r. 1649–59) and implemented with great earnestness by his Chief Minister, Kim Yuk (1580–1658). This law was a very rational correction of waste and graft, simplified the multiple levies, added fairness to the calculations of tax, was reasonably effective in routing taxes to the central revenue office and alleviated some of the burden carried by the non-aristocratic farmers.3 Even so, the majority of arable land fell under the control of the yangban, who manipulated tax categories, sometimes to the benefit of owner-cultivators, in order to exempt much of their estates from central revenue collection. Further, in a specious application of the Confucian concept of social hierarchy, the yangban concocted a principle of ‘estate hierarchy,’ whereby owner-cultivators were pronounced subordinate to yangban estates and could be forced to work on manors. In the end, only a little over half of the arable land was subject to the central government’s taxation. In the later Chosŏn period, land tax was further reformed in order to introduce a more uniform system. King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776), one of the longest reigning and most effective Chosŏn rulers, promulgated the Equalised Tax Law (kyunyŏkpŏp) in 1750 and halved the portion of the cloth tax designated for the military. This uncharacteristic action was prompted less by generosity than a concern to counteract the flight of tenant farmers from the land, a flight that was troubling the economic privileges of the rural aristocracy. The status of the tenant farmers was that they were ‘freeborn,’ but in order that they fulfil their function as the ‘foundation of the state’ in a reliable manner, they could not easily move from the estates on which they worked. They were obliged to carry identification cards and were placed under the surveillance and responsibility of the five-family self-policing system that was adapted from the Chinese pao-chia system. By the mid-eighteenth century, the farmers were becoming restive. Moreover, although one third of the population up to this point was classifiable as ‘unfree,’ some slaves had become virtually independent. Before long, in 1801, most government slaves were emancipated; private slave-owning was abolished under the Kabo Reforms of 1894–1895. Agricultural production itself was an area of positive attention at the beginning of the Chosŏn period. An ambitious review of production techniques and agricultural support systems was initiated by the manual, Straight Talk on 3  The history of the Uniform Tax Law is covered in detail in James Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyŏngwŏn and the Late Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 778–814.

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Farming, compilation of which was presided over by King Sejong in 1429–1430. The Edict for the Promotion of Agriculture of 1444 provided for an infusion of scientific methods into farming lore, such as the principle that human effort, forethought and planning could avert the consequences of natural disasters, whatever causes might be attributed to spirits, and this became a large part of the work and responsibilities of local magistrates. Changes took place also in irrigation engineering. Although reservoirs used to be placed in high areas by damming streams, by the fifteenth century these had become insufficient to meet the demand of expanded farming. Kings T’aejong and Sejong both introduced watermills, but with indifferent results. A new method introduced under Munjong (r. 1450–52), of drawing water from rivers by building embankments to divert the flow, proved more successful. Other changes included adoption of transplantation techniques in place of direct planting into wet lands and moves from a fallow system to continuous cultivation, aided by the adoption of organic fertilizers developed in southern China, and to a more efficient balance of dry and wet farming. The fifteenth century witnessed a dramatic increase in rice production. In addition to the production of the staple rice, there was cash cropping of silk, hemp and cotton, which were important items of foreign trade. Because of their association with the former Koryŏ dynasty, the literati in the old capital of Kaesŏng were barred from meaningful official appointments and so turned to non-official, innovative work, including operation of export markets. But artisans and other suppliers were for the most part under government supervision and apart from production of furniture, pottery, general household equipment and luxuries for the upper classes, they were engaged in munitions and paper manufacture. Shops had to be licensed, and domestic markets were a government monopoly. Although some local markets did operate independently, these were often suppressed and overall there was very little monetary economy in the first two centuries of the dynasty. In the early seventeenth century, a number of important technological advances occurred, such as double-cropping of rice and dry-field cultivation, including barley in winter. Refinements in transplanting techniques and efficacy led to a reduced need for labour and to the development of ‘enlargedscale farming.’ This in turn led to production not simply for subsistence and tax payments but for the market. Tobacco and ginseng were added to export crops and payments for such led to the emergence of nouveau-riche farmers, a proliferation of shops and a growth in private merchants. In 1791, licensing privileges for special merchants were abolished and the three great markets of Seoul passed into private administration. Associated with all these developments was a considerable expansion of the monetary economy and of markets in the provinces.

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The Chosŏn rulers had endeavoured from the outset to substitute money for cloth as the basic exchange item. In 1401, paper money was printed, and attempts were made to introduce coinage. At first the government prohibited cloth-exchange, and when this failed, in 1424 Sejong minted copper coins; these too failed, and cloth and grain remained the exchange commodities into the late seventeenth century when, after the successful minting of the first issue of coinage for general use in 1678, metal coins rose in utility in step with the rise in commercial activities. Neo-Confucian morality took a very dim view of commerce, however, and the Chosŏn dynasty’s highest officials and finest thinkers, such as Kim Sisŭp (1435–1493) and Yi I (1536–1584) openly discouraged commerce. From 1410, all merchants were required to register with the magistrate’s office, and transit permits cost two piculs (ten bushels) of rice per trip. The penalty for failing to register and pay up was confiscation of all one’s merchandise, of which half went to the government and the other half to the informer! But by the late fifteenth century, markets developed in all provinces, originating in southwest Chŏlla. This encouraged private commerce, and although the government attempted to close the markets down, it failed in many instances because the people found them convenient. Markets, usually held once every five days, developed also into social centres, a fact reflected in the literature of the period. By the mid-nineteenth century, given the recommendation by the rather reclusive philosopher Ch’oe Han’gi (1803–1875) for measures to increase consumer spending in order to invigorate the economy, it is clear that markets had developed into units of an increasingly monetary economy among the general populace. The institution of or attempts to institute new land ownership, production and taxation provisions, adjustments made in the wake of the impact of technical innovations on social relations in the countryside, and the policies towards commerce and trade, were all pursued in conscious relation to the claimed neo-Confucian principles on which the dynasty claimed to be founded and in the context of the continuing hierarchical structure of economic and political power, the divide between region and capital and the competition among the leading lineages.

The Metaphysics of Orthodoxy

Neo-Confucianism arose in China during the Sung dynasty in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as a Confucian revivalist movement in the wake of the decline in Buddhism and Daoism. It was given its most refined form by the scholar Chu Hsi (1130–1200). Intellectually, it involved a negative and a positive

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direction. Negatively, it involved a critique of Buddhism, which had been the dominant cultural tradition up to that time, and of Daoism. Positively, it revived interest in knowing what could be known by reflecting on or re-affirming the reality of nature and asserting the meaningfulness of practical social life. In their arguments, the Neo-Confucian scholars proposed two major polarities. At opposite ends of one polarity stood the solitary, which was Buddhism and Daoism, and the communitarian, which was the idea of Confucian social cohesion, or solidarity. The second pair of polar opposites consisted of world denial, which allegedly was Buddhist and Daoist, and world affirmation, which was the Confucian celebration of life as it was experienced everyday. But in order to convey a sense of the metaphysical reality that was supposed to lie behind social harmony and cohesion, neo-Confucians based much of their ideas on elements drawn from Buddhism and Daoism. In a sense, they stole the thunder from the Daoist and Buddhist propositions and reworked them in terms of Confucian morality. Through their studies of classics such as the Book of Changes, which was also a favourite book of the Daoists, neoConfucian scholars became engaged in creating a philosophical system which could explain how material phenomena arose from the five elements of fire, water, metal, earth and wood, how these five elements arose from the complementary opposites of Yin and Yang, and how the Yin and Yang in turn arose out of the Supreme Ultimate, or tai-chi in Chinese. The earlier Confucian thinkers had not considered it necessary, or even advisable, to look for any unseen or abstract entities lying behind all the objects and beings that made up the world and the heavens. Keen, clear observation of the way in which everything related to one another revealed the way things functioned; and the task was to assign proper names to phenomena, especially to humans, that corresponded to their functions. If the Hebrew philosopherking Solomon prescribed the proper time for every purpose under Heaven, it was the duty of the Confucian sage-king to prescribe the proper name for every function under Heaven. Chu Hsi and his followers, however, sought to explain and justify relations and functions by setting out a system of principles that lay behind and determined the nature of everything. These principles were called li in Chinese, ri in Korean. Now the Supreme Ultimate, originally a Daoist term, was that which encompassed all the principles, uniting absolutely everything in heaven and earth. It was the ‘most high, most mystical, surpassing all things’—almost an impersonal idea of one god. The Supreme Ultimate activated the interaction of Yin and Yang, which through the agency of ch’i (ki in Korean), or energy, gave rise to the five elements and all other phenomena, according to their respective principles. A great deal of debate has arisen over the relation

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between ‘principle’ and ‘energy’ (also translated as ‘material force’) in the neoConfucian formulation by Chu Hsi that was adopted in Korea, and perhaps the neatest formula is that given by Joseph Needham, whereby the Supreme Ultimate is an equation in which ‘principle’ and ‘energy’ function as perfect coordinates.4 There was a li, a principle of humanity, and each individual was a specific manifestation of that principle. There were, further, principles governing who one was, that is, of kingship, fatherhood, sonship, wifehood, brotherhood, friendship, servanthood, and so on. All these principles were universally active and objective, not a matter of opinion, and so not to follow them had to result in failure and, if widespread, the collapse of state and society. A society of people not observing their proper functions was like a building that failed to heed engineering principles. Such behaviour—indeed all wrong, evil or criminal behaviour—was a consequence of an imperfect manifestation of the principle of human nature. Yet because the principle behind each individual was itself whole, perfect and clear, a person could be cured of wrong behaviour through education in the principle of human nature. Education was thus the key to eradication of all personal or social evil, and thence to any disharmony in nature. The Supreme Ultimate was thought to be especially present in the exercise of proper relationships, and in particular was embodied in its highest mode in filial piety, the central ethic of Confucianism on which society and state were to be modelled. Hereby the whole outward, practical, social and political ethic of Confucianism had been put on a philosophical basis which, by including some of the more important Buddhist and Daoist concepts, held considerable intellectual appeal—that is, if one was interested in metaphysics. But in Chosŏn Korea, this ethical apologia also took on a somewhat religious hue, and as such gave a religious authority to the rule of the yangban officialdom and to their educational values that was far more compelling to the commoners than its intellectual credentials. However, as we have seen, the adoption of neo-Confucianism did not begin with the new dynasty, but began to gain a foothold among the literati during the Koryŏ dynasty, first under the military rulers and then more strongly under the Mongols. Indeed, had the Jurchin Chin not occupied northern China in the early twelfth century, thereby interrupting Koryŏ’s relations with the Southern Sung, then the stronghold of neo-Confucian ideology in China, it is

4  Joseph Needham and Wang Ling, Science & Civilisation in China, Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 472–85.

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likely that neo-Confucianism would have gathered strength in Korea earlier.5 Once neo-Confucianism became the orthodox form of Confucianism in China under the Mongol Yüan, increasing numbers of Korean intellectuals who had been pushed aside by the military rulers embraced it as the new, cutting-edge thought. The most talented of these was An Hyang (1243–1306), who established the Office for the Promotion of Confucian Studies, devoted to the works of Chu Hsi. But what gave the movement its greatest impetus was the rapid elevation of the low-born Buddhist monk, Sin Ton (?–1371), who not only attacked literati prerogatives but also epitomised the growing reputation of Buddhism as a creed of corruption, moral laxity and political incompetence that endangered both society and state. It was time for a change, or rather a return to Korea’s roots in the legendary Kija, through whom Koreans owned a direct link with the great Way of antiquity. It was time for the false Buddhist rituals to be replaced with the correct Confucian rites.6 Hence the neo-Confucian scholar-officials allied to Yi Sŏnggye aimed at the outset to strip Buddhism of its former social and political roles and create a strong, healthy state based on an ideal vision of harmony. And in fact Korean neo-Confucianism was characterised by its somewhat mystical vision of the cosmos and human nature and its proponents became far more religious in their adherence to their creed than their Chinese counterparts. In Korea there was a high degree of emotional intensity in the commitment to the ultimate value of knowledge. Two scholars in particular advocated a concept of knowing in which knowledge had a spiritual object with moral consequences. These scholars went by the pen-names of T’oegye (Yi Hwang: 1501–1570) and Yulgok (Yi I: 1536–1584). T’oegye, the greatest philosopher of the dynasty and one whose formulations were adopted in Japan, was named the ‘Chu Hsi of Korea.’ Also borrowing heavily from Buddhist and Daoist ideas, he pressed all into the service of human relationships centred on filial piety. In Korea, this became termed sŏngnihak: the science of human nature. It involved moral self-cultivation, and although T’oegye also advocated the ‘investigation of things,’ this meant distinguishing right from wrong and wisdom from folly more than natural science. In 1568, T’oegye dedicated his book, Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (Sŏnghak sipto), to King Sŏnjo (r. 1567–1608) and this classic became the basis of the ruling yangban’s moral and political ideology. T’oegye himself served in political posts for two decades, beginning in the mid-1530s, from local magistracies to Vice-Minister of Justice. As a scholar, he presided 5  Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 15–16. 6  Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea, 17–25.

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over the Sŏnggyun’gwan, the Confucian Academy, besides creating his own academy, named Sosu Sŏwŏn, in the famed town of Andong, which even today is preserved as a symbol of the dynasty’s more vital, aristocratic elements. Following Chu Hsi, T’oegye affirmed the basic Confucian ethical principle of conformity of human behaviour with the Way of Heaven, and endowed it with a metaphysical explanation: the whole cosmos is one single organism and the union of humanity with Heaven is both an expression of that truth and the basis for requiring observance by the people of the li, or principles, of Heaven. To act in accordance with who one is conforms to the nature of the Supreme Ultimate, with which every human being is endowed. To be endowed with the Supreme Ultimate means to be part of the integrated whole, the vast system of principle; to be part of this system is to have a relation with the whole: this relation implies responsibility, a sense of personal purpose, a reverence for life. The purpose is attainment of full harmony with nature, or unity with the imperishable principles of life. This fundamental unity is there already, and has to be; apprehending it is the mission and meaning of an individual, family, society and state. The whole duty of all, therefore, is contained in two imperatives: learn and conform. This is ‘hearing the Way,’ which in practice meant knowing one’s place in the world and the functions that belong to that place. T’oegye taught that as the Supreme Ultimate had existed from the beginning and was the basis of harmony for all times, deep reverence should be held for the sages of old who had grasped its nature and embodied and transmitted the practice of the Way to all who follow down the centuries. The rites of ancestor worship were therefore of supreme importance, for they honoured not only one’s own family ancestors but recognised the unsurpassable wisdom of the sages through whose beneficence the people now knew the road to follow. T’oegye enshrined this doctrine in a poem, in sijo form. The sages of old never saw me; nor have I seen them. Though I have never seen them, the paths they took lie before me. Since their paths lie before me, how can I do else but take them? Yulgok differed with T’oegye over some philosophical questions, but in terms of practical morality, came to much the same conclusions. Moral self-perfection was pivotal to both thinkers, from which it was believed would ensue proper regulation of family relationships and state administration. Yulgok was perhaps

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a slightly less intellectually but certainly more practically accomplished man than T’oegye and held top posts in the departments of Personnel, Punishment and War. As a government lecturer and minister, Yulgok wrote numerous works dedicated to practical application, even experimentation. In 1577, he established a commune to experiment with ideals of Confucian extended family life, on which he wrote a report titled, “On living together and regulating each other.” As Minister of Defense, he wrote his last treatise, “Six Articles,” on strengthening the kingdom’s defenses. He was unusually prescient: not only did he predict the Japanese invasion, which occurred eight years after his early death in 1584, but he had also discovered and promoted Admiral Yi Sunsin (1545–1598), inventor of the turtle ships and scourge of the Japanese navy. Aged nineteen in 1555, Yulgok went to Buddhist lodgings in the Diamond Mountains on the death of his beloved and highly accomplished mother, Sim Saimdang (1504–1551), where he engaged in intensive study of Hwaŏm and Sŏn (Zen) Buddhism. He later judged this a digression from the True Path. Although he never overtly criticised Buddhism and was well versed in its tenets and texts, he was not averse in later life to calling for the execution of the monk Po’u (1515–1565), whose energetic efforts to revive Buddhism he opposed. Leaving the Diamond Mountains, he devoted his life to a single-minded pursuit of the ‘establishment of will’ as the practical objective of neo-Confucian wisdom. This was both a personal commitment and a public mission. In the eleven articles he immediately wrote in a piece titled “On Self-Discipline and Moral Cultivation,” we find a man determined to attain sagehood through ceaseless practice of self-cultivation; overall the articles evince a very religious bent. At the age of 23, Yulgok met T’oegye, then 58, and the meeting left a deep and lasting impression. He differed with T’oegye over the relation between principle and energy, or material force, and had a more practical, realistic concern for social, economic and political issues. One could say that Yulgok was more inclined to put humankind than heaven or the cosmos at the centre of his moral world. His chief cosmological concept was that there was a direct continuity between humans and the universe, and this, with his tendency to focus on humans, led to an anthrocosmology of sorts in which influence can move not only from a morally upright administration out to all the people but also from humanity outwards to the whole cosmos. In effect, a good person, through self-transformation, could transform the entire cosmic order. This inward-outer movement required a balance of yin and yang in the mind; moral cultivation effected this balance, which harmonised all phenomena and restored social and natural orders. There was in this a religious element: self-cultivation was not merely of ethical significance, but had cosmological power.

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This power was sŏng (ch’eng in Chinese), which we might translate as active sincerity, that is, putting into practice what one knows. It was not simply a moral quality or activity but a force which united humans and heaven. It was not an independent medium bringing the two together, as in shamanist ecstasy, but the relationship between humans and the Way that is established, activated and empowered by sincerity. Sincerity also established the will, in a constant upward spiral towards sagehood and power, both spiritual (or personal) and political. For Yulgok, sincerity paved the way for enlightenment about principle, whereas T’oegye held the contrary view that enlightenment inspired sincerity. In other words, Yulgok taught that only in striving to practice the teachings of the sages would one understand how the world fit together; T’oegye taught that only when one understood the principles that lay behind everything would one be motivated to practice the teachings.

Education and the Growth of Factions

The impact of the neo-Confucian doctrines of these and other scholars on the Korean education system was profound. Not only were the texts restricted or changed to the orthodox neo-Confucian interpretations of Chu Hsi and T’oegye, but the whole purpose of education was focused on what might seem to be a narrow point: moral self-cultivation, qualifying one for government office and the exercise of power. For its apologists, however, such a purpose owned cosmic dimensions. Contrary to the tradition of Confucius himself, who was a private teacher, all private schools were absorbed into a state system in 1391, a year before the Chosŏn dynasty officially began. A new Confucian Academy (Sŏnggyun’gwan) was erected in Seoul, with four district schools, and after 1438 a state school was established in every county. In theory, every male child was to be enrolled in a school from the age of eight. Of these, the most promising students were prepared for the entrance examinations into the Confucian Academy at age fifteen. This system naturally favoured the yangban, who were the bulk of those who in reality had access to education. Even though in accord with the Confucian merit principle there was no legal obstacle to the non-aristocratic classes, bar slaves, sitting and passing exams—and thereby becoming yangban— they were prohibited from marrying a yangban and so could not set up a yangban lineage. The same applied to buying yangban status, as indeed happened towards the end of the dynasty: the individual who purchased it might claim it, but it was very doubtful that his descendants could inherit it unless a whole lineage record could be purchased.

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But private academies reappeared in the mid-sixteenth century, created by neo-Confucian scholar-officials as T’oegye’s writings began to lend them greater political power. Establishing private schools was also a tactic whereby the literati sought to protect themselves from possible purges. It was, moreover, a means of establishing themselves as educational gate-keepers, and so once more the Confucian principle of education open to all was being circumvented. In time, many of these private academies were awarded a royal charter, following the example of T’oegye’s Sosu Sŏwŏn, that provided generous donations of books and sometimes land and servants. Technical institutes, however, remained a government enterprise, mainly in law, medicine, astronomy, and agriculture. The neo-Confucian influence on education during the Chosŏn dynasty is also clearly seen in the fact that throughout its five centuries not one military academy existed on a level with non-military educational institutions. Although neo-Confucianism was in an unchallengeable position after the mid-sixteenth century, the attendant rise in influence of the private academies proved fertile soil for disagreements among its protagonists. This was not simply a matter of disputes over doctrines; it had a practical side as well. The number of high-level positions in the Chosŏn bureaucracy did not increase anywhere as fast as did the number of successful yangban examination candidates. In fact, it was a neo-Confucian principle that government should be pursued with the minimum bureaucracy and the maximum voluntary cooperation: example, not force or bureaucratic weight, was the ruling axiom. Hence increasing numbers of yangban degree-holders were being left unrequited for their learning and labours. It therefore became a highly practical matter just which version of neoConfucianism held the allegiance of the throne or State Council at any particular moment. And so arose groups of schools devoted to one or other faction, and each group sought to prevail over the others. Not surprisingly, the factions became identified with aristocratic families, so that it became a matter of crucial importance which family or lineage held sway over the throne and State Council. Further, since the major families had roots in the provinces, the factions also became identified with different regions. Before long, the neo-Confucian scholar-officials had split into two hostile groups, known as the Easterners and Westerners, reflecting the entrenchment of political factions in lineage territories. Politically, the effect of the scholars’ competition for power along regionalfactional alignments was enervation. By the late sixteenth century, rural problems were exacerbated by undisciplined acquisition of scattered land-holdings by the yangban bureaucrats and the breakdown of the earlier provisions for fairer taxation. This weakened the state economy in its most important area

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of agriculture. Factionalism plagued the bureaucracy, causing serious lack of cooperation, stalling on policies and diversion of mental energies to speculative, metaphysical questions. Absolute demands for unity on doctrine amidst a splintered government organism put undue strain on rulers at central and local levels and seriously weakened Korea militarily on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1592.

The Japanese Invasion

It was Korea’s misfortune that it had fallen into military weakness precisely when Japan, through the wars of unification that preceded its early modern era under the Tokugawa military rulers, was rising to a peak in both military capability and imperialistic fervour. It was a misfortune to both Korea and Japan that Japanese political power became concentrated at the end of the sixteenth century in the hands of one Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), a peasant prodigy who had risen to supreme power as a ruthless warlord and who was very likely thrown off balance by his stunning military successes in Japan when he ordered the invasion of Korea as the first step in his grandiose ambition of conquering China. Korea, as we have seen, had been subjected to numerous wars and invasions from the north and piracy around its coasts, but the Japanese campaigns of 1592 and 1597, inspired as they were by Hideyoshi’s unbridled delusions of grandeur, together with a very practical need to keep the large number of troops in Japan occupied once the wars of unification ended, were of a different scale. The widespread, and in places, total destruction caused by the campaigns rivalled the Mongol invasion at its worst. Having overawed Japan into unity by 1591, Hideyoshi invited Korea to join in his conquest of China, but Korea naturally refused to countenance war against the Ming. Hideyoshi thereupon requested free passage of his armies through peninsula. Korea again refused, whereupon Hideyoshi resolved to bring Korea to heel. On 23 May 1592, the first force of over 150,000 men laden with superior weaponry marched virtually unchecked towards Seoul, leaving a path of flattened villages and burnt fields behind them. King Sŏnjo (r. 1567–1608) fled to the northern provinces and requested urgent assistance from Ming China, whereupon a large Ming force was mobilised and finally drove the invaders back to the southeastern shores of the peninsula. After five years of fruitless negotiations, Hideyoshi laid plans for another, more destructive, brutal and openly vengeful assault. Several accounts by Japanese participants and observers of the nature of this second campaign have survived. One samurai described the siege of the Japanese fortress at

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Ulsan, on the southwest coast, where Japan was pitted against the combined forces of the Ming and Korea, as a splendid proof of divine sanction for Japan’s sacred mission in Asia. “The Japanese Army (of 160,000),” he wrote, “took 185,738 Korean heads, and 29,014 Great Ming [Chinese] heads, for a total of 214,752. These were enclosed in [a mound of] earth near the Great Buddha Hall to the east of the Heian City, and a stupa of stone was erected.” Other samurai nobles’ accounts corroborate this description: “The men, the women, down to the newborn infants—everyone was wiped out, no one was left alive. Their noses were sliced off and pickled in salt, day by day . . . And that is [what we have in] the Mound of Noses (Hanazuka) in the Capital.”7 Among the Japanese sent to Korea in 1597 was a non-combatant, a chaplain and physician, the monk Keinen. A priest of the True Pure Land Sect ( Jōdo Shinshū), Keinen wrote an independent, compassionate and harrowing dayby-day account of the campaign. He included no mention of divine mission, no praise for gory exploits, no bombastic prose about the glory of battle. Instead he spoke of atrocities as the result of human blindness, in a tone of despair. He personally witnessed a trade in human beings—children bound up and taken away after their parents were slain before their eyes. Appalled, Keinen employed metaphors of Hell and attributed the carnage to the three poisons: covetousness, anger, and moral ignorance.8 We might compare Keinen to the Christian monk Orderic Vitalis, who alone among the writers of the time gave a realistic account of the brutality of William the Conqueror’s 1066 invasion of England and later suppression. During these campaigns, a certain Korean admiral named Yi Sunsin rose to fame. Today he is venerated as a model hero and in naval warfare his name is associated with iron-spiked, armour-plated ships. These ships are known as turtle-ships because of their shape and because of the iron plating that supported the spikes on the covered top deck of the ships. These numbered no more than a dozen or so, but proved vital. Extraordinarily enough, it appears that Admiral Yi Sunsin had supervised the final construction of the first group of these vessels just two days prior to the landing of Japanese troops in Pusan. 7  George Elison, “The Priest Keinen and His Account of the Campaign in Korea, 1597–1598: An Introduction,” in Nihon kyōikushi ronsō: Motoyama Yukihiko Kyōju taikan kinen ronbunshū, ed. Motoyama Yukihiko Kyōju Taikan Kinen Ronbunshū Henshū Iinkai (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1988), 27–28. 8  Keinen’s diary is titled Chōsen hinikki (朝鮮日日記). My account is taken from Jurgis Elisonas, trans., “Korea Day by Day,” in “The Regime of the Unifiers,” chapter 19 of Wm. Theodore de Bary et al, comp., Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2nd edition, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 467–472.

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Together with the Ming army, it was this Korean fleet with its turtle ships that was most responsible for beating back the Japanese invasion, since it decimated the Japanese fleet and prevented the landing of further reinforcements along the western coast. But here a window opens on the political in-fighting and uncertain status of military officers that characterised the Chosŏn dynasty at this juncture. The first campaign marked Admiral Yi out as a national hero. But opposed as they were to military arts—or rather to any honouring of the military arts—the high officials were perhaps too ready to act on mischievous rumours put about by malevolent Korean tongues, possibly embellished by Japanese spies, that Yi harboured nefarious designs on political power, and so stripped him of his rank. When the Japanese attacked the second time, he was reinstated and once more became a national hero—even more so. Apocryphally no doubt, it is said the admiral realised his danger, recklessly exposed himself above deck after the battle was decided in his favour and was killed by a musket ball. While this story demonstrates the depth of political hostility that stalked Admiral Yi’s military career, it also illustrates how unprepared Korea had been for invasion. The physical impact on Korea was serious: Kyŏngsang Province in the southeast, the richest farming area, was so devastated that it took a woeful century to recover. Thousands had been killed; many more thousands had been carried off to Japan as slaves. The economy, political administration and social system were severely disrupted, while in some provinces opportunistic yangban seized land with relative impunity. Rare and valuable books were burnt, and except for some stone structures, hardly a building survived. On the Japanese side also the casualties had been huge, disproportionately so among the rural farmers who had been conscripted unwillingly into the war. The scale of the war and its casualties contributed to the downfall of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s house, since the Tokugawa forces had escaped participation in the battles and took advantage of their strength after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598. When Hideyoshi’s son, Hideyori, committed hara kiri in 1615, the Tokugawa were able, quite paradoxically, to present themselves to the Koreans as their avengers for ridding the nation of the family behind the invasions, and thereby re-established relations between the two countries on a far more positive basis than expected. Nevertheless, the frightful physical damage inflicted on the peninsula remained and Korea faced a formidable task of reconstruction. Reconstruction was hardly underway when the kingdom was forced for a time into a tributary status under the Manchus, who had conquered China and set themselves up as a new Chinese dynasty, known as the Ch’ing. In January 1637, King Injo (r. 1623–1649) conceded defeat after the capture of Kanghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River leading to Seoul, whereupon the Ch’ing

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took hostage the queen and several princes and princesses. A similar hostage system as employed under the Mongols was imposed for several decades, and the Ch’ing Board of Rites was put in charge of Korean affairs. The Ch’ing gradually softened the terms of the relationship, reducing tribute and embassies to one per year. But the scholar-officials and the educated aristocracy in general regarded the Manchu conquest of China as a tragedy and their impositions on the peninsula as a disgraceful humiliation. The most influential neo-Confucian official of the time, Song Siyŏl (1607–89), instituted ceremonies proclaiming the legitimacy and righteousness of the Ming. These developments gave rise to an increasing level of factionalism and an even greater preoccupation with neo-Confucian purity. Whereas for some, seeds of distrust over the fibre of neo-Confucianism had been sown, the majority of powerholders and rural yangban looked upon the reconstruction task as an opportunity to expand and reinforce the structures of neo-Confucian political and social dogma more thoroughly throughout the kingdom. Although some of the yangban unscrupulously appropriated land after the invasions, they were as a class indispensable actors in the social reconstruction of Korea in the seventeenth century. Through their activities they gained ideological and spiritual legitimation of their privileged position. They enhanced their social influence by reorganising the hyangan, village rosters whose yangban membership was strictly ranked and controlled, into virtual local administrative bodies. Before the wars, local government was characterised by conflict between the centrally appointed magistrate and the local yangban. The magistrate aimed at controlling the county, including its yangban, on behalf of the central government; the yangban aimed at gaining local autonomy through dominating county administration. Assemblies based on hyangan membership were not infrequently suppressed, or forced to cooperate with magistrates. After the invasions, they were given teeth out of necessity, and by attaining official status and drawing up hyangyak, village codes or compacts, the assemblies succeeded in rendering the monarchical-bureaucratic and original aristocratic lineage systems more complementary and interdependent than ever.9 Tension between the two was not altogether removed, since the centrally appointed magistrates and heads of prefectures and counties tended to collude against local yangban, but the mid-seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries were a period of relative domestic peace. Factionalism, with families manoeuvring around the throne, did not incur physical disorder. It did, however, tend to rigidify intellectual life in contrast to the creative 9  See Fujiya Kawashima, “The Local Gentry Association in Mid-Yi Dynasty Korea: A Preliminary Study of the Ch’angnyŏng Hyangan, 1600–1838,” Journal of Korean Studies 2 (1980): 113–136.

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pursuit of practical knowledge during the early decades of the dynasty, the heyday of scientific endeavour.

Science and Technology

At the onset of the Chosŏn dynasty, science in China and Korea was at a high level. From 100–1500 AD science flowed from East to West, and even by the seventeenth century, East Asia’s science was as good as anywhere. Confucian philosophy was very rational in its approach to natural phenomena. Already by the thirteenth century in Korea, fine advances had been made in iron production, animal power, clockwork machinery, printing and refined porcelain. The official recognition of neo-Confucianism at the beginning of the Chosŏn dynasty coincided with a tremendous flourishing of arts and sciences. The first eighty years in particular, through the 1400s, is considered one of the most concentrated periods of cultural activity and development in Korea’s entire recorded history. It is the period in which the Korean alphabet was formulated and refined and in which there was rapid progress in scientific discovery, mathematics and medicine. It is difficult to substantiate clearly the impact of neo-Confucian thought, especially in the more technical disciplines. Certainly, it promoted interest in the ‘investigation of things,’ although the strict neo-Confucian scholars understood ‘things’ to mean the whys and wherefores of proper relationships between members of state and society, areas in which they believed Korea required a great deal of correction. And the greatest champion of creative thought and scientific inquiry was King Sejong, who was a sincere Buddhist (though not at all antagonistic to neo-Confucianism). But in combination with the typical determination of the leaders of a new dynasty to usher in an era of enlightened rule and civilisation, the optimistic vigour with which neoConfucian principles were adopted certainly stimulated advances in a variety of areas. The most accomplished and versatile physical scientist of the period was Chang Yŏngsil. The son of a liaison between a naturalised Chinese man and a kisaeng, Chang’s intellectual precocity was brought to the attention of King Sejong, who sent him to China to study astronomy and on his return appointed him a court technician. In 1424 Chang constructed a water clock, based on Chinese style, whereupon he was awarded a fifth-grade ranking despite his lowly status at birth. He is famed more for his invention in 1434 of an automated drip-system water clock, which he created after studying and comparing devices in China and Arabia. Chang also invented portable (pocket) sundials

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and rain gauges and supervised the construction of a number of astronomical observation instruments, such as armillary spheres or astrolabes. Later, in the early 1660s, a much more ‘modern’ clock using gear-wheels and driven either by weights or springs was constructed. The most famous inventions of the dynasty are the Korean alphabet and movable metal type for printing, both during the reign of King Sejong. Largely because the aristocracy was educated in the Chinese Classics and read, wrote and corresponded in Chinese, they had not been perturbed by the lack of a script for the Korean vernacular language, which was not related to Chinese. Moreover, all official business of state, from the highest offices to the lowliest provincial outpost, was recorded in literary Chinese, referred to as hanmun. Sejong, an accomplished linguist in his own right, considered this most unsatisfactory and over the objections of conservative scholar-officials he commissioned a group of scholars to invent a script, which was called ŏnmun, meaning a writing system for the language that was spoken. The script that was finalised in 1446 was of such calibre that it remains with only a few minor amendments the script used today, and is now known as han’gŭl. The development of a movable metal type some centuries before its appearance in Europe did not take place in isolation from technical advances in China, and controversy continues to this day over where and when the very first movable metal-type printing press was constructed. Within the peninsula itself, there are records suggesting that movable type was utilised in Koryŏ by the late thirteenth century, backed up by a manuscript claimed to have been printed on movable metal type that has been dated back to 1377. In any case, the art was rudimentary, and a movable metal type that was employed in Seoul in 1420 was awkward to use and the type was difficult to replace. A committee of seven, including Chang Yŏngsil, was instructed by Sejong to devise an improved system. Named kabinja, the new type was completed in 1434 and consisted of more than 200,000 characters in two main sizes. The font type was based on the rounded style of the old Chinese Chin dynasty and was of a quality far in advance of previous products, possibly on account of the skill already acquired in their engraving and mechanical work by the astronomers on the committee. The evenness of the printed page was enhanced by using bamboo dividers in place of the former wax technology. The greater versatility and user-friendliness of this type provided for a marked increase in print production in the Chosŏn dynasty, enabling neoConfucian education to spread beyond the centres and facilitating dissemination of official interpretations beyond what was formerly conceivable. By 1434 it was possible to print over forty pages per day, double what was feasible even in 1420. The metal type was recast six more times during the dynasty. It was a labour-intensive, highly technical work, and as such was rather

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easily maintained as a central government operation and monopoly. The Korean alphabet was also set in movable metal type, possibly in 1447, when it appears that a Korean vernacular translation of a Buddhist text was printed, supposedly with Sejong’s own supervision and input. Sejong also ensured a number of practical items for the people, such as agricultural manuals, were printed in han’gŭl. But spurned by the territorial literati as a script for women and commoners, han’gul printing failed even to begin to develop its possibilities until near the very end of the dynasty. One of the factors in the decline of the Koryŏ dynasty had been the disorder into which land surveys had fallen. Hence, as indeed had been the case in the opening decades of both the United Silla and Koryŏ kingdoms, so in the beginning of the Chosŏn era men of mathematical minds were sought after to devise a system for accurately measuring land. King Sejong’s comments on the need for mathematicians reflects the basis of government patronage of science and learning: It is said that mathematics is nothing more than a mechanical skill, but it is indispensable to the administration of the state . . . But for the participation of Yi Sunji, Kim Tam and others in the recent cadastral survey, it is questionable the land could have been measured properly. By all means devise measures to ensure the maximum development of mathematics throughout the land.10 In 1431, Sejong had promising mathematicians sent to China for further studies and took personal interest in the principles of the discipline, attending a series of lectures by an eminent scholar-official, on ‘Mathematical Enlightenment.’ In 1433 a 100-volume compendium of mathematical method and application was printed, resuscitating classics on multiplication and division from the Koryŏ dynasty. In 1438, five mathematics texts were incorporated into the curriculum of the technical colleges, seemingly accounting thus for one half of the educational material of these schools. Under King Sejong, the mathematical revival was extended with the institution of regular, ranking mathematics teaching posts, from the most senior (rank six) to assistant or apprentice instructors (rank nine). Mathematical affairs were placed under the Board of Finances. Upwards of thirty mathematically trained officers were employed in this board to administer census, land, tax, tribute, and government granary matters, as well as regulation of currency, royal assets, and other accounting duties. The premium 10  Han’guk minjok munhwa taebaekkwa sajŏn (Encyclopaedia of Korean National Culture), 27 vols (Sŏngnam-si: Han’guk Chŏngsin Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn, 1991), vol. 13, 318.

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placed on mathematical education in the early decades of the dynasty began to wane as soon as the initial urgent objectives were achieved, in the main cadastral surveys. During Sejong’s patronage, Kim Tam, an expert in inverse calculations, was promoted to Rank Three, a considerable position; later, such a possibility disappears, and generally mathematics withered when the country faced some sort of crisis. In connection with the Japanese invasions, for example, mathematics experienced something of a blackout, and government-patronised research was practically nil to the end of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, this led to middle-level officials, or petty bureaucrats and artisans, developing their own uses of mathematical knowledge, which in concert with the rise of the new private merchants later became of some importance when the economy allowed more room for private initiatives. But it had to await the rise of a new group of scholars, the sirhak or empiricist scholars in the eighteenth century, before mathematics was given renewed attention as a vital discipline by the highly educated. Along with land surveys developed map-making. Before King Sejong’s time, the principle maps possessed some accurate representations together with other rather egregious inaccuracies. But under Sejong, cartography flourished in a much more scientific direction. The whole enterprise was carefully organised: while each district administration was urged to send its own data to Seoul, cartographers were also sent out from the capital to every region to gather and compile their own data. The newly emplaced astronomical observatories were used to trace latitudes and longitudes by measuring and composing the angles of the sun and land: a sophisticated combination of mathematical and astronomical sciences. In 1441, a wheel was constructed which measured distance. By Sejo’s reign, a detailed map of Korea, the Tongguk chido, was completed, which corrected most of the inaccuracies of the previous maps and added detailed information such as the nation’s roadways, towns and seaports. The chief development thereafter was detailed, large-scale mapping of small areas. The earlier maps were of a scale of 1:1,000,000; these latter 1:500,000 or even larger-scale. Finally, the technique of graphically arranged, area by area maps, was perfected in 1834 by Kim Chŏngho in his Ch’ŏnggudo. In medical science, the early Chosŏn period continued the Koryŏ practices by and large, expanding and reforming these according to need. In the capital there were seven institutions dealing with administration, training, research and treatment, and five institutions for parallel purposes in the provinces. A hospital named Tongsŏ Hwarinwŏn, which treated people afflicted with contagious diseases, was situated in areas of low population density outside the capital. Other institutions specialised in women’s medicine, including maternity

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care, and in treatment of the general population. As a science, medicine enjoyed the same official sponsorship, as did mathematics. Medical subjects were broadly divided into two categories: treatment involving herbal medicines and techniques of acupuncture and moxibustion, that is, the practice of burning moxa—a soft, downy substance gathered from wormwood trees—on the skin as a cauterising agent. The major medical achievement of the early period was the compilation of exhaustive compendiums of medical wisdom and information. In 1399 a thirtyvolume medical reference was issued, while under Sejong a work of massive proportions was undertaken: the collection of all available indigenous medical knowledge and practices from every region of Korea, which was then compared with Chinese medicine and compiled into an encyclopaedia of eightyfive volumes, the Hyangyak chipsŏngbang, in 1431. This became a prized source of medical knowledge and attention in Ming China also. In 1445 a major work of classification of all types of medicine was undertaken, resulting in a work of 266 volumes, the Kogŭm ŭibang yuch’wi, covering anatomy, aetiology, diagnostics, treatment and the properties and preparation of herbal remedies. The Japanese invasion, while having a deleterious effect on scientific endeavour generally, might have provided Korean doctors with their first contacts with a Western medical tradition, since Japan had begun to adapt some Portuguese and particularly Jesuit medical practices and principles. At this time spectacle-style eyeglasses were introduced, and tobacco as a herbal remedy. Jesuit missions to China in the late Ming and early Ch’ing periods were a further source of new medical theories and practices. In the 1620s, the Jesuit Joannes Adam Schall introduced the anatomical theories of the Italian scholar Galenos and by the 1670s it is clear that his and other studies on anatomy and the nervous, respiratory and blood circulation systems were becoming known to Koreans. Such items thereafter were included in revisions of medical texts and curricula. It is unclear when the smallpox vaccine discovered in 1796 by the English physician, Jenner, was used, let alone produced in Korea, since by 1800 Catholicism had been condemned as a dangerous, subversive creed. Possibly the practice became known in the 1830s, but was not used in any significant way until the late nineteenth century.

The Grounds of Longevity

The Chosŏn dynasty was established through an alliance of the military general Yi Sŏnggye, who sided with Ming China, and a group of leading aristocratic families that during the Mongol period became convinced a new order

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was needed, based on the neo-Confucianism of the pre-eminent scholar of the former Chinese Sung dynasty, Chu Hsi. The unusual length of the dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910, has to do with the strength of this alliance, which enabled the throne to devise well-thought-out laws and maintain itself first in cooperation with the visionary energy of the yangban scholar-officials and later, following the tumult caused by Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s invasions, by keeping aristocratic regional power in check through judiciously balancing appointments to high office among the schools of thought associated with their power-bases. Such policies endowed yangban power in regions with a healthy stability, which was accentuated through reconstruction activities following Japan’s invasions. The dynasty began on a tremendously high note, even for a new dynasty. It laid the foundations not only for advanced scientific, technical and cultural endeavour, but also for an unusually consistent, coherent administration backed by a highly educated and motivated bureaucracy, and a detailed, rational system of law that while powerful was yet commendably responsive to changes in society. Yet it was not all plain sailing by any means. In addition to serious altercations among the orthodox scholar-officials over policies and interpretations of neo-Confucianism, and between the scholars and the throne, which led to purges and the infamous ‘calamities of the scholars,’ from the mid-seventeenth century attacks on the perceived rigidity of the official neo-Confucian ideological apparatus and on fundamental elements of land, tax and social laws gathered force. Throughout the dynasty there was disquiet over family laws, gender prescriptions and religious policies. The non-yangban absolute majority maintained core beliefs and practices associated with Buddhism, animism and shamans, and various literary and religious groups pursued alternative understandings of the world and how humans related to it and each other. There was, in fact, another side to orthodoxy that operated through the long dynasty and which comprised essential features of its grand tradition.

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The Grand Tradition II: The Other Side of Orthodoxy In the orthodox neo-Confucian scheme of things, rulers were supposed to acquire profound knowledge about relationships and about how to order them from top to bottom. Knowledge, virtue and the laws governing state and society were supposed to lead without break one to the other. In some ways we might compare the ideal Korean monarch to the Platonic ideal philosopher-king. But the specific character of the Korean ideal included two patterns for the state: one, a huge educational institution and the other, a magnified family structure. But whichever analogy operated, all was under one Dao, or Way. There was only one universal Way, therefore only one ethic. Thus family and state were ethically identical. Otherwise, it was argued, there would be two or more different ways with two or more different patterns of virtue, which amounted to a kind of cosmic-ethical perfidy, a recipe for the worst kind of chaos imaginable. It was therefore the prerogative of the Confucian scholar-officials to determine the ethos and shape of society from top to bottom. On this basis, the scholar-officials undertook a protracted revision of the 1395 National Code, the Kyŏngguk taejŏn, from 1486 to 1636, that entailed a thoroughgoing institution of a patriarchal order beginning with the higher classes. From 1636, this order was consolidated and entrenched through the social reconstruction activities of the yangban and its tightening inflexibility was matched by an increasingly narrow party factionalism. By the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century this factional in-fighting was nurtured by a concentration on competing versions of the Confucian ‘perfect man’ (kunja in Korean, chün-tzu in Chinese), that not only sought legitimacy from shifting political interests but also entailed claims of possession of absolute truth resting on a religious kind of sanction. At a social level, the obligatory, tight moral coherence of all human relations, from individual to family, community, state and beyond, could only lead to conflicts of interests.1 Conflicts also arose in connection with the interests of the non-yangban rural populace, the women of all classes, some literary artists and the non-Confucian religious communities that operated uneasily alongside state orthodoxy. Thus although 1  David Chung, Syncretism: The Religious Context of Christian Beginnings in Korea (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 28.

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neo-Confucianism was the dominant cultural system during the Chosŏn dynasty, one that was imposed by the people who had all the advantages, it did not hold complete sway and did not manage to displace everything else. The scholar-officials were not able to will away the other traditions on the peninsula with a flourish of their writing-brushes nor coerce submission entirely through the wholesale revision of the law codes. Alongside the most confident expressions of orthodoxy, one hears dissenting messages. T’oegye, for example, the dynasty’s finest neo-Confucian mind, typified the orthodox certitude in the following sijo poem. The green hills—how can it be that they are green eternally? Flowing streams—how can it be night and day do they never stand still? We also, we can never stop, we shall grow green eternally. However, T’oegye had a contemporary, Hwang Chini (c. 1506–1544), who wrote this: Mountains are steadfast, but waters are not so. Since they flow day and night, can there be old waters? Great heroes are like waters, once gone, they never return.2 Now although the context of Hwang’s poem is likely to be the departure of a lover, it stands nevertheless on its own terms as a logically consistent and critical alternative to the establishment dogma. Hwang Chini had been consigned the lowest social rank (though not born so) by virtue of being a kisaeng, who in the tradition of the entertainment women had undergone a classical education but saw and experienced life from the other side of orthodoxy. And certainly, even in the period of peace and of neo-Confucian supremacy following the reconstruction of state and society in the wake of the Japanese invasions, there was change and development and large areas of life that fell outside the 2  The translation of T’oegye’s poem is by Richard Rutt and that of Hwang Chini is by Peter Lee: Peter H. Lee, ed., The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 90–91.

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competence of state orthodoxy. Throughout the dynasty, tensions continued over the regulation of women, the form and content of literature, the restrictions placed on religious practice, and over the failure of neo-Confucian scholars to attend to the practical needs of the people.

The Regulation of Women

From early in the Chosŏn dynasty, the ‘rectification of names’ was assiduously carried out with regard to gender, the status and functions of male and female. Koryŏ’s downfall had in part been blamed on the ‘immoral’ freedom of gender relations attending the relative degree of personal autonomy enjoyed by women in Koryŏ times, their rights to equal property inheritance, divorce and remarriage, and the persistence of matrilocal marriages. The mission to rectify gender relations was detailed, pervasive and persistent, and the prescriptions regarding women’s status and conduct that come down to us in the documents are clear-cut and absolute in tone. However, documents are one thing and practice another. It is hardly credible that women would easily relinquish the powers and prerogatives that they appear to have held during the Koryŏ period or that time-honoured marriage and family customs could be changed in short order. Traditional marriage and heredity customs continued well into the sixteenth century and the persistence of legal and other measures to ‘rectify’ gender arrangements is testimony to the difficulty of the enterprise. Indeed, an examination of criminal law cases involving women as defendants and plaintiffs shows that even by the end of the eighteenth century, women suffered little if any disadvantage to men before the law and that their social lives were not as restricted as the regulatory regime stipulated.3 Nevertheless, gender laws and regulations were always more stringently applied to high-class women, and in time a gender ideology that accentuated distinctions between the sexes and supported strict control of women’s duties, rights and movements in family and public life became more widespread and informed the gender norms of the population as a whole. The Chinese Classic, the Book of Changes, was cited as authority for bringing Korea’s gender customs in line with the proper meaning of the names, male and female. “From the existence of male and female,” it was recorded, “there came afterward husband and wife. From husband and wife there came father 3  Wendy Kukulies-Smith, “Korean Women as Agents: An Examination of Forty Simni Cases from Late Eighteenth Century Chosŏn,” Honours Thesis (The Australian National University, 2002).

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and son. From father and son there came ruler and minister.”4 The reason why no mother and daughter issued from husband and wife was that in the yin-yang formulation, the male side possessed authority over the female side, and from this it was deduced that both family and state must be ordered along patriarchal lines in order to conform to the Way of Heaven. As it happened, through mothers and daughters survived and developed the whole corpus of indigenous culture, from religion and practical morality to vernacular literature, dance and music. But in relation to family, public life and state laws, the position and role of women were significantly transformed over the course of the dynasty. In the Koryŏ period, polygamy had been customary among the well-to-do, and there was no particular social ranking order in a family of several wives. However, alongside a much more strict application of sexual morality in the official Chosŏn order, the patrilineal descent line became restricted to the offspring of only one partner of a man with several wives. This led to an obligatory legal distinction between what came to be called the primary wife and any other female partners, whose status became more and more one of concubine. In a memorial submitted by the Office of the Inspector-General in 1413, it was stated: “Husband and wife are the mainstay of human morality, and the differentiation between main wife and concubine may not be blurred.”5 The founding monarch of the Chosŏn dynasty ruled that this distinction between primary wife and other partners was laid down by Confucius. In 1415, a law was passed that permitted sons and grandsons of secondary wives, or concubines, to take state examinations but forbade them from entering the ranks of the yangban or holding official positions to which their success in the examinations in principle entitled them. King Sejong was persuaded also to remove legitimacy from another Koryŏ custom, that of the husband moving into the wife’s household on marriage, although he was reluctant to do so. A reform of considerable consequence to gender relations was the legal disabilities suffered by children born of a woman who remarried after her first husband’s death. Fidelity of a wife to her husband was supposed to be lifelong, although no such ethic was ever applied to men. In this instance the monarch, King Sŏngjong (r. 1469–94), decided to rule in favour of the minority opinion amongst his State Councillors, no doubt because the virtue of loyalty of wife to husband was deemed to be the model for loyalty of the ministers to the 4  Martina Deuchler, trans., Sejong sillok 23:30a–32b, in Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, vol. 1: From Early Times to the Sixteenth Century, ed. Peter H. Lee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 552. 5  Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, Vol. 1, 559.

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king. A State Councillor named Im Wŏnjun (1423–1500) appealed to the great Confucian scholars of old to back his proposal to strip sons and grandsons of twice-married women of yangban status and the right to hold high office in government services. The Chinese Master Ch’eng, he reminded the assembled councillors, observed that “women remarry only because people of later generations are afraid of freezing and starving to death. But to lose one’s integrity is a very serious matter. To starve to death, however, is a very small matter.”6 The point of the laws governing remarriage of widows and the disabilities placed on offspring of remarried women, secondary wives and concubines, was not to discourage a yangban from having sexual relationships with these women, but to protect the blood-line from ‘impurity’ by excluding children of these liaisons from the lineage and thereby also from yangban prerogatives. Concubinage was considered a yangban entitlement, and by the end of the fifteenth century, sons of concubines became excluded entirely from government service regardless of the rank of the father. This systemic exclusion led to groups of angry young men, some of whom masterminded the bloodiest factional struggles in the dynasty’s history.7 Even so, there were very few voices even among the most liberal of the reform-minded right down to the nineteenth century calling for changes. Yu Hyŏngwŏn (1622–1673), possibly the most erudite of the scholars of his time, did advocate that sons of concubines should be eligible for government posts, but held firmly to the principle that their social status be substantially inferior to their step-brothers born to the primary wife.8 Yu Hyŏngwŏn did espouse some views that were well in advance of his time. For example, he expressed concern over women being forced to undertake physically demanding work and urged salaries be paid to those employed as government clerks and runners. He decried the practice of forbidding female slaves from marrying if their masters wished to use their sexual services as patently unjust.9 Nevertheless, he had no problem with legal discrimination against women generally: he supported women being punished with twice as many strokes for assault on her husband as for the reverse, as well as the very lenient treatment of men who raped single women.10

6  Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, Vol. 1, 564. 7  Hahm Pyong-Choon, The Korean Political Tradition and Law (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1971), 111–124. 8  James Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyŏngwŏn and the Late Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 748–749. 9  Palais, Confucian Statecraft, 844–845 & 687. 10  Palais, Confucian Statecraft, 727.

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Over time, houses became divided into women’s and men’s quarters. No female (of higher than farmer’s class) was to be seen without a chaperone in public, and serving one’s husband and producing a son and heir became the apex of a woman’s morality. There was of course more leeway among commoners, for whom many of these restrictions on movement were impracticable. But the division between male and female was institutionalised in Chosŏn progressively from the beginning of the fourteen hundreds through to the sixteen hundreds. According to the ‘House Rules’ laid out in 1468, harmony in the household, which was the bedrock of a stable society and state, depended on the wife’s diligence, ethical purity, and fidelity to her household duties: “A wife is loyal and pure, self-controlled, flexible and obedient, and serving others. She minds exclusively the domestic realm and does not concern herself with public affairs.”11 The legal reinforcement of a patriarchal order was accompanied by attempts to suppress or reinterpret certain cultural systems and values that were creating ire among the Confucian scholars and becoming more and more associated with women. For example, early in the fifteenth century as neo-Confucian culture and learning became associated increasingly with men, folk culture became much more associated with women. The division between male and female in society eventually started to percolate down to the villages, but it would be drawing too firm a conclusion to say that the traditional popular values and idea of gender relations were simply done away with. The officially intended and often claimed uniformity of values and principles was never achieved. This is most evident in relation to religion and literature. Religion Buddhism The neo-Confucian impact on religion in Chosŏn was certainly its most negative influence, if one was not a neo-Confucianist. Since Buddhism was the most powerful organised religion with which it competed, neo-Confucianism’s stand on religions is most clearly seen in its antagonism to Buddhism. It was Chŏng Tojŏn who introduced the principle of negation into Chosŏn religious life. He wrote a treatise named Pulssi chappyŏn (Criticisms of Buddha) specifically to undermine Buddhism and promote neo-Confucianism, in which 11  Lee, ed., Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, Vol. 1, 574.

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he portrayed Buddhism as a creed of illusion, nihilism and inaction and neoConfucianism as a positive, world-affirming practice of harmony with nature and productivity. In 1392, the first year of the dynasty, an all-out assault was launched against Buddhist thought and institutions: land was confiscated and temples were appropriated for Confucian schools. But neo-Confucians didn’t have it all their own way, even in the early, more unforgiving period. Sejong (r. 1418–1450), Korea’s most famous and revered king, became a sincere Buddhist, restoring Buddhist ceremony and worship to the palace, while his son, Sejo (r. 1455–68), favoured Buddhism to the extent of publishing sutras in the native Korean script which Sejong had devised. And to be sure, since in its search for a supportive metaphysical framework neo-Confucianism as a system owed much to some key Buddhist (and Daoist) concepts, Buddhists were able to influence the social makeup of the kingdom by aligning themselves with official policy that drew on such key concepts. Yet this worked both ways and overall the dynastic leadership called the tune: Buddhists were not given room to pursue interests that conflicted with neo-Confucian objectives, and where they did align themselves with official positions they were subject to the interpretation of such by the neo-Confucian establishment.12 Further, although the fact that throughout the dynasty individual Buddhists did occupy important posts and some were highly valued for their intellectual and practical expertise does to a degree soften the dynasty’s anti-Buddhist image,13 it nevertheless narrows the importance of Buddhism in this period to the history of a few monks and the proclivities of some monarchs. In some periods, the situation for Buddhism under Chosŏn was at best similar to that of Calvinism under Catholicism in parts of Europe and the Baltics in the mid-17th century, when Calvinists could reside as respected and active figures inside cities such as Hamburg and Vilnius but were forbidden to worship inside the city walls.14

12  See John Jorgensen, “Conflicts between Buddhism and Confucianism in the Chosŏn Dynasty, Pulgyo Yŏn’gu (Buddhist Studies), vol. 15 (1998), 189–242. 13  On reconsiderations of Buddhist influence during the Chosŏn dynasty, see the following works: Boudewijn Walraven, “A Re-examination of the Social Basis of Buddhism in Late Chosŏn Korea,” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 20: 1 (2007), 1–20, and Sung-Eun Thomas Kim, “Marginalization of Chosŏn Buddhism and Methods of Research: A Proposal for an Integrated Approach to the Understanding of Chosŏn Buddhism,” Korean Histories 4, no. 1 (2013), 3–13. 14  See David Frick, Kith, Kin & Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in SeventeenthCentury Wilno (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).

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The eves of this temple building in the Sŏrak Mountains of Kangwŏn Province in present-day South Korea, exemplify the intricate, refined detail of Buddhist architecture, in which an advanced degree of harmony with natural surroundings was highly valued. Photo by author.

T’oegye believed the well-being of the people was undermined by Buddhism, which he regarded as an aberration in Korea’s civilisation from which the kingdom must by all means recover. He viewed society as, on one level, a matter of country and world, and on another level as a matter of lineage and village. This meant regulating the family, properly ordering the country and pacifying

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the world, as prescribed in the Great Learning, a central Confucian text. But lineage and village were the focus of attention because in Korea neoConfucianism originated among the provincial officials and scholars and T’oegye himself was a rural scholar. And in regard to family and village, he branded Buddhism as culpable for its lack of a guiding ethic and likened Buddhist teachings to the appeal of “licentious songs and beautiful women.”15 The neo-Confucians endeavoured to fulfil any ideas of compassion far more concretely than Buddhism had done by creating laws and administrative bodies to put humane rule into practice. These laws and their institutional support structures were a kind of social contract that embodied the finest ideals of the neo-Confucian ideology of state and society. T’oegye’s Ye’an Village Compact, for example, which became a widely favoured model, contained provisions for punishing officials who extorted and villagers who failed to respond to neighbours in need. The Confucian doctrine that expressed this version of ‘compassion’ was taedong, or the ‘Great Unity,’ which T’oegye defined in a pantheistic manner as “Heaven and Earth and all creatures are as a single body.”16 Where Buddhism stated “all in one and one in all,” neo-Confucianism stated “all are born from the same womb”—that is, all humans are shaped by the same principle and that principle is inseparable from the biological family. Classical Religion Shamanism and classical lore also suffered suppression. In 1392, the king ordered all shamanistic rituals be forbidden except selected ones approved by the state. Classical and shamanistic deities were to be tolerated only insofar as they could be used in the state’s interests. At first, the Chosŏn rulers continued some standard Koryŏ practices, such as bestowing loaded titles on popular deities, sacred mountains, rivers and islands, that implied they were protectors of the political realm. But they also erected an Altar of Grain and Millet, a Confucian altar honouring the reputed ancestor of Early Chou, in every county, and one shrine in each village, so that they could be linked to national ceremonies.

15  Martina Deuchler, “Attitudes Toward Heterodoxy,” in The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in Korea, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Jahyun Kim Haboush (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 387. 16  Sasoon Yun, Critical Issues in Neo-Confucian Thought: The Philosophy of Yi T’oegye, trans. Michael C. Kalton (Seoul: Korea University Press, 1990), 165.

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In 1411, palace eunuchs were dispatched to conduct rituals instead of shamans, who by this point were predominantly women. Family shrines were given a Confucian interpretation and by 1433 were made compulsory in officials’ houses of all ranks for Confucian ceremonies. Various honours were bestowed on ancestors, and these supplanted the traditional idea of one’s ancestors as beings whose spirits continued to influence one’s life for good or ill and required feeding and other services, with a more Confucian scheme of rites that enacted respect for the authority of the father and his tradition and subsumed this under loyalty to the monarch and the authority of the scholarofficial world that surrounded him. In 1434, three categories of honours were announced: men of loyalty, men of filial piety, and women of virtue. Eventually, official titles for popular deities were withdrawn and classical religion was also relegated to the private realm.17 But this relegation had an unforeseen, certainly unintended impact. Shamanism, related to the classical tradition of animism, became during the Chosŏn period characterised by the deep involvement of women in its leadership. With regard to shamanism, the dissonance one finds between reports by neo-Confucian scholars in the kukcho pogam and the dynastic records indicates that most of the Chosŏn rulers followed a policy of disguise and utilise. For example, in the late fifteenth century there was a great problem of drought, and the court records of the time reveal lengthy discussions on what ceremonies might be appropriate for attracting rain. A repertoire of rituals was resolved upon that not only involved shamans and Daoist priests but was also accompanied by a series of Buddhist incantations calling upon divine powers to send rain. Ancestral worship was performed at the shrine of the royal ancestors and before the four city gates of Seoul. For three days ceremonies to dragon spirits were held in five strategic locations; each spirit was represented by paper models in their respective colours. It is clear from this procedure that classical, Daoist and Buddhist elements were alive and well and could be called upon whenever the monarch required. It is also evident that neo-Confucian philosophy had not displaced belief in or familiarity with Korea’s religious traditions even among the higher classes. Nevertheless, the use of shamans in times of severe drought and other natural crises posed a dilemma for the scholar-officials. Twice during Chungjong’s reign (1506–1544) shamans were called upon and on both occasions rain fell within three days of their assemblage. Since they acted on the king’s orders 17  Yi Sŏngmu, “The Influence of Neo-Confucianism on Education and the Civil Service examination in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Korea,” in The Rise of Neo-Confucianism, ed. De Bary and Kim-Haboush, 134–136.

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and since they broke the drought, some sort of award was called for. Yet to give female shamans a royal boon was beyond the pale for many of the scholarofficials. Some in the court wondered aloud how they could have caused the rain to fall in any case. No less an authority than T’oegye had condemned shamans’ spirits as “groundless, weird inventions designed to mislead the people.” In the end, in the face of his ministers’ repugnance and scepticism, the king backed down. But the problem would not go away. In the reign of King Injo (1623–49), the propriety of shamans and children holding rain dances and séances and even of the citizens putting out jars and willow branches was condemned by a court official as a vice. Injo himself replied that though these practices were vexing, he could not forbid them since they were long-established and cherished customs. Indeed, the practice of calling upon shamans continued to the end of the dynasty. Were these allowed, as Injo suggested, to give the people something familiar and encouraging to do during crises, were they simply desperation measures or was there perhaps genuine belief even among the educated stratum? Was the neo-Confucian rationalism something of a fair-weather system, deemed lacking in times of natural disaster? The dynastic records indicate that Chosŏn’s monarchs frequently employed Buddhist priests, Daoist seers and sometimes shamans as their counsellors and personal confidants. The founder of this neo-Confucian dynasty, Yi Sŏnggye, had a shaman among his retinue who is recorded to have accurately prophesied an accident suffered while on a hunting trip. King Sejong’s primary queen summoned a shaman to perform an exorcism to rid him of a disease, to expel, in effect, the disease spirit. The same service was provided for King Sŏngjong and others. The final ruling monarch of the dynasty, Kojong (r. 1864–1907), in despair over the declining state of the kingdom, sought aid from river spirits rather than ministers of state and had sumptuous shrines constructed rather than battlements.18 The positions of rulers on shamanism varied considerably. Prince Yŏnsan (Yŏnsan’gun: r. 1494–1506), the nemesis of scholars, orthodox neo-Confucians and religious devotees alike, predictably fulminated against shamanism. An indiscreet exorcism conducted near the walls of a palace gave him occasion to indulge his wonted diatribes. Nevertheless, particularly after his antipathy to the literati reached the point of executing numbers of them, his attitude towards shamans mellowed and he presently became actively supportive. A showdown brewed between him and the neo-Confucian establishment over the case of one Tolbi, a shaman famed for her powers. An official complained 18  Yun Ch’iho Ilgi (Yun Ch’iho Diary): 11 & 30 March 1896.

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that Tolbi not only bewitched and deceived the foolish people with her weird and cunning sorcery, but she muddied the clarity of upright and honest doctrine. The Justice Department sought to arrest her, but she evaded them and their only trophies were some copper beads and four paper charms. It then transpired that these articles had been supplied to Tolbi by the Office of Supplies and, further, that claiming the title of National Shaman, she had been interfering minutely with the day-to-day business of that office, that is, she had amassed quite a stake in the domestic trade. Prince Yŏnsan, however, refused to allow her to be interrogated. Shortly after this incident, Yŏnsan had an affair with a kisaeng who fell sick and died, leaving him disconsolate. He awarded her a posthumous title and resorted to shamans to assuage his sorrow. In the process, he heard, for the first time, the actual words of their chants and séances. He attended séances more frequently and at length even participated in them. He had shamans lodged in the palace quarters. On one occasion, after driving out the scholars and completely emptying the Confucian Academy, he brought in shamans and indulged in an unbridled orgy. The interest of other monarchs was on the whole more innocent, and generally related to sickness and drought. But the important point is that shamans were not only called upon but were afforded some official recognition. The office of National Shaman goes back to the Koryŏ period. In early Chosŏn, this office was placed in the Sŏngsuk ch’ŏng, or Office of the Constellations, which is where Daoist matters were handled. Shamans, Daoist initiates, and certain monks with healing powers or knowledge, were also officially employed in public health clinics. The connection between shamanism and medicine was very strong and enduring, being one of the more urgent services requested of them. Yet the policy of placing the National Shaman under the Office of Constellations was designed to ensure a measure of control over shamanist belief and influence. During Sŏngjong’s reign, government ministers memorialised the throne to the effect that all the people relied upon shamans and associated beliefs for almost everything, and daily visit shrines and séances, contrary to the law of the land. Worse still, former strict prohibitions on shamans residing in the capital were being relaxed: they were there deceiving and tempting the womenfolk, wasting good rice and wine, causing a rumpus with lewd dancing and raucous singing and even bewitching some government ministers. It was in response to these complaints and evidence that these classical beliefs were an integral part of the country’s culture that Sŏngjong had the National Shaman placed under the jurisdiction and oversight of the Office of Constellations.

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The high officials were not entirely mollified. In Chungjong’s reign (1506– 1544), two further memorials were submitted to the throne to request that shamans be expelled from the court, the capital and the Office of Constellations. Finally, during Sukjong’s reign (1674–1720), shamans were once again banished from the capital, at least temporarily, although they were permitted to remain in medical clinics in some instances. Throughout the dynasty, the stricter neo-Confucian scholars persisted in denying the reality. Sin Hŭm (1566–1628), a leading scholar-official, opined that whereas at the onset of the dynasty Buddhists and shamans entered even royal buildings and officials sang and danced in their ceremonies, and the very paraphernalia of the shamans was made in licensed government offices, such was put a stop to by Sŏngjong’s time. With the exclusive employment of bona fide Confucian scholars by Chungjong, he asseverated, the whole of the country’s customs changed dramatically to conform with those of China. But contrary to his sanguine and politically correct view, shamans continued to frequent the capital and even the monarch’s chambers at will during Yŏngjo’s long reign (1724–1776). Classical religion had deep popular and cultural roots and remained active to the end of the dynasty. It was an inseparable component of Korea’s civilisation, and despite its tension with élite Confucian culture, which contemned it, the two interacted and “often in complementary ways . . . shaped the behaviour of Chosŏn period Koreans.”19 Catholicism Catholic Christianity, a foreign creed associated with nations that fell outside the boundaries of the civilised Confucian world, was a different story and attracted strong opposition from the court as soon as it established a physical presence on the peninsula in the eighteenth century. The first real contact with Catholicism was not of a kind liable to inspire any positive interest. The Japanese troops who invaded Korea in 1592 were led by General Konishi Yukinaga, an influential samurai who with his clan had converted some years earlier to Catholicism and because of whose prowess Hideyoshi entrusted with the invasion of Korea. A Spanish Jesuit priest, Gregorio de Céspedes, and a number of Japanese Jesuit chaplains accompanied the Japanese troops, but their duty was to cheer and urge the troops on with prayers and rituals. A Korean scholar, Yi Sugwang (1563–1628), introduced a general outline of Catholicism shortly after the war, but he was not a mainstream scholar. 19  Boudewijn Walraven, “Popular Religion in a Confucianized Society,” in Culture and the State in Late Chosŏn Korea, ed. JaHyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 162.

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Catholicism began to attract more sympathetic notice towards the end of the seventeenth century when official posts failed to satisfy demand and unemployed, provincial scholars became incensed at the high-handed treatment meted out by bureaucrats in the central government. There arose a sense of the emptiness of the neo-Confucian metaphysics that dominated factional confrontations, and once the scholar, Yi Ik (1681–1763), an admirer of western scientific reasoning he had come across in Chinese translations of Ptolemy, Euclid and others, propounded an idea of knowledge in which the neoConfucian heaven appeared vacuous, the way was opened for a search for a new sanction for truth both religious and political. Although Yi Ik subjected the religious ideas of Matteo Ricci, a Catholic missionary intellectual in Beijing, to criticism on the basis of Confucian philosophy, the seeds of genuine interest had been sown.20 In 1784 Yi Sŭnghun, a member of a diplomatic mission to Beijing, was baptised there by Jesuits and on his return set up a Catholic church with two others. The faith quickly gained followers among scholars of high reputation and also middle-ranking people. When in 1794 a Chinese Jesuit priest, Father Chou Wen-mo, came to Korea, he discovered there were already 4000 Catholics. By the end of the century, the number had risen to 10,000, at which point a nervous court issued orders for Chou’s arrest on charges of propagating a creed that claimed higher authority than the king. Chou avoided arrest and carried on in secret. But in 1801, troubled by factionalism and under the sway of Dowager Queen Kim, the court proclaimed a far more severe campaign against Catholics that almost extinguished the church; Chou, Yi Sŭnghun and other leaders were executed; the lay believers scattered and went into hiding. The main reasons for official hostility against Catholicism at this stage were largely political. Long before any followers appeared in the kingdom, T’oegye had warned that Catholicism was politically dangerous because of its doctrine of the absolute authority of a personal God, an authority also over king and parents. T’oegye had himself used the image of the Most High Lord (Sangje in Korean, Shang Ti in Chinese), because it served as a powerful symbol for the idea of monarchical authority: the father as king and king as father.21 In Catholicism, however, conflict could arise between a king and subject, son and father, thus undermining the central ethic of filial piety. His followers criticised Catholicism as a ‘religion without a king.’ And indeed, in 1791 two high-class adherents were executed for refusing to fulfil their duties of ancestor worship. 20  David Chung, Syncretism, 29–30 & 66–70. 21  See Sasoon Yun, Critical Issues in Neo-Confucian Thought: The Philosophy of Yi T’oegye, trans. Michael C. Kalton (Seoul: Korea University Press, 1990), chapter 6.

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But on a more practical level, Catholicism had become involved in political quarrels as soon as it was embraced by scholars who were opposed to the neoConfucian scholar-officials who dominated the court, and thereby became complicit in factional manoeuvring for power. Even more seriously, misgivings about the implications of the Pope’s headship of the Catholic church were justified dramatically by the interception in 1801 of a petition inscribed on silk from the Korean Catholic Hwang Sayŏng to Bishop Alexandre de Gouvea in Beijing that denounced the Chosŏn political system and requested, though as a last resort, that troops be sent to Korea to open and protect missions in the kingdom.22 Thereupon the faith was officially declared illegal, all books of Western origin were burned, and executions continued on and off for several decades, culminating in the execution of over 6000 Catholics in 1866–1868.

Literature and Thought

Literature is another area in which unorthodox viewpoints and lifestyles are frequently manifested, although on another level and in a different manner than religion. Literature is a form of art, a skilled, aesthetic mode of expression; it is also a reflection of beliefs and values individually or corporately held, and a purveyor of new lines of thought and consciousness. Although related to political and social history, literature dwells in a different time-scale. It reacts far more slowly than politics to changes in one sense, but in another it anticipates change far earlier than politics. Literature at times follows, at times precedes, the growth in favour of world-views and their supportive philosophies, religions and so forth. Political and social upheavals have precise dates and are extremely tangible. The Japanese invasions are datable to the day and hour; their impact is ascertainable in ordinary, physical terms. The development of the yangban Village Compacts and the reinforcement of the synthesis of tribalaristocratic and monarchical-bureaucratic streams were responses to a grave crisis. But literary history is less tangible. There is a lot of overlap, periods of transition, and even after the transition, earlier literary traditions still press on. The first century of the Chosŏn period was characterised by a displacement of the Koryŏ dynasty’s later genres and styles, which neo-Confucian scholars deemed were incommensurate with social and political developments of the time, with Confucian literature that was written, read and controlled by the yangban literati. This new literature continued to be written in Classical Chinese but its subject matter was determined more directly by the state 22  David Chung, Syncretism, 7.

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examination curriculum. Expertise in the Chinese Classics and composition, especially of Chinese poetry on neo-Confucian themes, were popular. Poetry generally took the form of kasa, epic narrative poems, very didactic in aim and nature. Two schools of literature emerged in this period that were equally faithful to Confucianism and both committed to literature as a didactic function designed to promote Confucian morality and state welfare. The first of these schools is the sajang, which in Koryŏ times referred to devotees of aesthetically fine literary work and commentary but became associated during the Chosŏn with the literary formalism of yangban literati who occupied official posts in government. Chŏng Tojŏn, the famed architect of the Chosŏn state, and Kwŏn Kŭn (1352–1409), the foremost neo-Confucian apologist of his time, were early adepts of this school. Its high point came in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and we could posthumously endow it with the motto: Do not create, but emulate. It advocated imitation of the great classicists of the past and forbade the study of books written by non-Confucian sages such as the Daoists Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. The second school, the sarim, is at times misleadingly translated as the ‘School of the Recluses,’ because literally it means the gentry in the forests. However, its founders were not hermits but aristocrats based in or around the capital who towards the end of the fifteenth century wished to restore the creativity that characterized the opening decades of the dynasty. They were pure neo-Confucians who specialised in metaphysics and speculative philosophy. They opposed the stylisation of the sajang literati as excessively dull and argued that both literary excellence and sound character flow from profound scholarship in neo-Confucian principles. In addition, being desirous of office, the sarim scholars aimed to outshine the sajang bureaucrats and displace them. They did at times achieve their aim. Kim Chongjik (1431–1492), for example, a writer of unrivalled literary skill in his time, advanced to high office under King Sŏngjong (r. 1469–94). But in 1494 and 1506, that is, in the first and last years of the reign of the knavish Prince Yŏnsan, there were perpetrated against the literati the ‘Two Calamities of the Scholars:’ bloodthirsty purges by Yŏnsan, who was fiercely anti-Confucian, anti-Buddhist, and anti-Yangban in general. He was, in fact, one of two Crown Princes to have received the special education recommended for rulers from an early age. Later, the other, the hapless Crown Prince Sado, who was a secret devotee of Daoist texts, became grievously disturbed in his mind, perhaps criminally deranged, and was executed by his own father, King Yŏngjo.

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Following the purges, the literati were reinstated by King Chungjong (r. 1506–44) but plainly depended on the patronage of the throne, which viewed them as handmaidens of the neo-Confucian social and state order. Song Sun (1493–1583), who himself lived to the ripe age of ninety, commemorated the calamities of the scholars in a sijo poem. Do not grieve, little birds, over the falling blossoms: They’re not to blame, it’s the wind who loosens and scatters the petals. Spring persists in leaving us, don’t hold it against her.23 By the second half of the sixteenth century, as the metaphysical philosophy of T’oegye carried all before it, the sarim scholars rose to a position of supremacy as the truest neo-Confucians and dominated high officialdom right through the post-war reconstruction period. T’oegye allowed nature as a theme of poetry, but not in its own right: it was to be a source of metaphors to explicate and exalt Confucian virtues. T’oegye was a many-sided genius, and his own poetry was of high calibre. Not so that of many of his successors, however, and the sarim school degenerated into a sterile didacticism in the mid-seventeenth century. In the face of this decline a movement arose among the sajang adherents, who had bided their time, to reform literature by retuning to the Chinese T’ang model instead of deferentially emulating the Chinese neo-Confucian Sung writers. This involved the fusion of the moral and aesthetic functions of literature, which they claimed T’oegye’s disciples had torn apart. And so arose the ‘Three T’ang Talents of Korea,’ Ch’oe Kyŏngch’an, Paek Kwanghun, and Yi Tal, three great poets who mark the transition from the narrower neo-Confucian tradition to a broader scope of literary activity which developed into a type of realism. In their writings, refined expression of intense feeling, of nature’s beauty and the sorrows of life, of romantic love and indeed unrequited love, took precedence over the customary social and philosophical discourses. Yi Tal (fl. 1568–1608), however, moved much further from the orthodox view of the scope of literary imagination and ventured to use Daoist imagery to express his sentiments. Yi Tal is an important and interesting writer. He marks two transitions, first from what is called backward-looking to forward23  Peter H. Lee, Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry, 86.

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looking literature; secondly from official literature to what may be termed the ‘Literature of the Outsiders.’ Forward-looking literature meant literature that envisaged change, chiefly change in social and political organisation. Representative of this group is Hŏ Kyun (1569–1618), whose tutor was none other than Yi Tal. A member of an illustrious yangban family, Hŏ passed the highest government service examination in 1594, two years after the first Japanese invasion, and was awarded the position of Minister of the Board of Punishments; he later served two terms as a State Councillor. He excelled in poetry and prose, but was also a literary theorist. Literature he regarded as not a hobby of the literati but a vocation, a calling. Literary works carried a message, but for Hŏ Kyun it was not extremely important what version of philosophy one held so long as it served superior moral insights. He was therefore a didactic writer, but as a student of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, even indeed of Catholicism, he had a highly imaginative style and content. Hŏ Kyun was also a political and social reformer, and is remembered most for his novel Hong Kiltong, the Robin Hood of Korea, although there is a question whether he actually wrote the work himself. In this novel the author describes vividly the miseries of the common and low-born folk as well as the corruption of the officials who cause their suffering. Hŏ’s concentration on ‘realism,’ on detailed accounts of socially deprived and socially despotic people, brought down the wrath of the establishment upon him. He was internally exiled several times. In 1618, he was finally put to death on charges of treason. There were others like Hŏ Kyun who adhered to a view of literature as a vehicle of moral instruction yet were dissatisfied with the existing social and political order. These men failed to gain power with the throne: they never attained official status. Their writings anticipated, however, the development of the sirhak or practical learning movement and the entry of Catholicism, and were the most popular works of the period. Hŏ wrote some of his pieces in the vernacular han’gŭl script, and from this point han’gŭl became the vehicle of underground and popular literary works. The ascendancy of neo-Confucianism in time engendered inflexibility in many areas of life, as well as curtailing the personal freedom especially of the women in the yangban families. During this period, paradoxically, we discover the rise of non-Confucian and anti-Confucian literature, especially among women. The paradox diminishes once we understand the connection between ultra-orthodoxy and the rise of literature protesting that ultra-orthodoxy. Yi Tal himself was the illegitimate son of a high-ranking yangban, and this barred him from taking a government service examination despite his obviously exceptional abilities. He spent much of his time wandering about as a beggar, writing unconventional, defiant poetry, the literature of an outsider.

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Yi was not only Hŏ Kyun’s tutor, he was tutor also of Hŏ’s elder sister, Hŏ Ch’ohŭi (1563–1589), better know by her penname, Nansŏrhŏn. After Hwang Chini, Nansŏrhŏn became the foremost female writer of the Chosŏn era, besides excelling in calligraphy and painting. She was disenchanted with Confucian ethics and reacted strongly against injustices against the lower class. Married when very young to a frivolous man who could neither appreciate not approach her intellect, she wrote a harrowing piece titled “Woman’s Sorrow,” in which she wonders why of all places she had to born in Chosŏn. Daoist influence pervades her poetry, which expresses eternal yearning to divest herself of earthly shackles and fly beyond the stifling Confucian universe to the realm of Daoist immortals. Though her themes were not always original, her mood was uncharacteristic of the times: it reflected extreme melancholy and a sense of rejection and neglect. She died at the age of twenty-seven. As the literary expression of a superlatively gifted woman who was tormented by the conflicts between her role in a rigid yangban society and her passion to transcend social barriers, Nansŏrhŏn’s writings represent a clear break from Confucian and other didactics. She wrote poetry for its own sake, as aesthetic self-expression. Leisurely taking my two young sisters, I go to pay my respects in Heaven; Immortals of the Three Islands call to see us, I command the scarlet Dragon to be harnessed under the flowers; At the palace of the Purple Emperor Watch the Dart and Bottle At night in dream I climbed Mt Pongnae, Stepping on the dragon of Kop’o bank. An immortal with a magic bamboo cane Invited me to the Madonna Lily Hill. I looked down the Eastern Sea, As tranquil as a cup of water. Beneath the flowers a phoenix played a flute; The moon shone on the golden jar.24

24  This translation of Hŏ’s poem is by Yang-Hi Ch’oe-Wall in her Vision of a Phoenix: The Poems of Hŏ Nansŏrhŏn (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2003), from which book also much of the information on Hŏ is drawn.

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The late seventeenth century to the end of the dynasty in 1910 is marked out chiefly by the unofficial popularity of non-Confucian literature, some of which was written in the vernacular han’gŭl script. Much of this literature comprised social criticism and was therefore concerned with the daily life of the common people. One major writer in this vein was Pak Chiwŏn (1737–1805), who wrote biting satires on the aristocracy, such as Story of a Yangban. In this short story, a ruined yangban ends up selling his status to one of the new-rich peasants. But at the signing over of the deed ceremony, the peasant says to the magistrate, “I have heard that a yangban is like an immortal. Please amend the deed so as to make it profitable for me.” So the magistrate did as he was bid, enumerating in graphic detail the yangban’s tyrannical privileges. The story concludes with the distraught ruined yangban shouting at the magistrate to stop making him out to be a scoundrel and a thief, before he slinks off, never in his life to mention the word yangban again. In fact, the rich peasant had no real need of the yangban’s title; the rich commoner was powerful even without the title, because he was participating in the new economy and social order and had a far more realistic and practical outlook on life.25 It was no accident that Pak Chiwŏn was a sirhak scholar. For a practical outlook, one that measured itself empirically against both the real conditions of life for the bulk of the populace and the changes that were affecting the social and cultural order of the dynasty, was the hallmark of the group of leading scholars from the mideighteenth century who are known today as sirhak scholars. Women in particular wrote vernacular prose and poetry in the han’gŭl script and often dealt with personal experiences, possibly autobiographical, as in this poem, “A Widow’s Song,” by Pak Yunmuk. Married to a farmer at the age of fifteen My husband and I tilled a small patch of land. Feeding ourselves barely in summer and winter, We endured biting hardship. Leaving one little son behind, He [husband] died of starvation last spring. Going out to gather firewood in darkness, The son was carried off by a tiger on the near mountain.26

25  Cho Dong-il, Korean Literature in Cultural Context and Comparative Perspective (Seoul: Jipmoondang, 1997), 97–98. 26  Translation by Yi I-Hwa, “People’s Movements during the Chosŏn Period,” Korea Journal 25, no. 5 (May 1985), 9.

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But the poem goes on to portray the corrupt practices of local officials, who levied two cloth taxes on her husband and son though both were dead, and so is itself a literary protest against the order in the countryside. Kasa, too, the traditional ballad genre of poetry that was hitherto the pride of the Confucian literati, increasingly featured epic narratives of the hazards and uncertainties of existence rather than eulogies to past exemplars of virtue. They also became a literary avenue for women’s themes and in the latter half of the Chosŏn period were often associated with female performers. Although precise dates and other details of their origins are hidden from us, it is evidently during this period that there took shape a genre of epic adventures that were initially orally transmitted and performed as p’ansori, a musical drama-ballad form unique to Korea. These included the Life of Ch’unhyang (Ch’unhyangjŏn), the earliest to be recorded, in 1754,27 and the Life of Simch’ŏng (Simch’ŏngjŏn), stories universally known and loved in modern Korea, whose heroes and moral exemplars are females. The particular virtue at the centre of Life of Ch’unhyang is perfectly amenable to Confucian gender mores, since Ch’unhyang excels beyond reasonable expectation in waiting patiently and faithfully through much emotional and physical suffering for the uncertain return of her high-class lover, or de facto husband. That the heroine, a daughter of a kisaeng and therefore of the lowest, ch’ŏnin class, outshines most women of yangban rank is, however, a challenge to the orthodox position that pre-eminent exemplars of virtue are found only among those of the highest class who have been nurtured from infancy in the elevated ethical tenets of Confucianism. The Life of Simch’ŏng, although suffused with the virtue of filial piety, is an openly Buddhist narrative, in which figure rebirth in a lotus flower and the cure of blindness alongside a narrative of a young girl going on a sea voyage and marrying an emperor, which bears comparison with the legend of the origin of the fourth-century Buddhist Kwan’ŭm Temple recorded in 1729.28 In a related and perhaps even less official literary work, the shamanist epic of Princess Pari (Pari kongju), which is often performed in modern Korean ballad singing and in funeral rites, we discover that the common people continued to view even the monarchical system through popular cultural lenses. In this epic, the King wants a son as a royal heir but has daughter after daughter, until when the seventh daughter is born he orders that she be cast into the East Sea, while his wife is filled with remorse and shame at her failure to produce the 27  Cho Dong-il, Korean Literature in Cultural Context, 66. 28  Boudewijn Walraven, Songs of the Shaman: The Ritual Chants of the Korean Mudang (London: Kegan Paul International, 1994), 138.

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required son. But the lord Buddha sweeps her up and delivers her into the care of a humble rustic couple who raise her until one day in her adolescence she is mysteriously summoned to the royal palace to save the king and queen from a rare and incurable disease. Pari learns the truth about her birth, tells her royal parents that their illness was due to her lack of daughterly piety and departs on a magical journey to heaven to secure the divine waters which alone are able to cure her parents. When she finally reaches the spirit god himself, who guards the water of life, she has to marry him and bear five sons before she can return to the world of the living with this water, only just in time for the funeral procession of her parents. No matter, this divine water is strong enough, she applies it, and they are restored to life. There are a number of elements from several traditions in this epic, which has certainly been developed and changed and added to over time. The Confucian elements of filial piety—of son preference and duty towards one’s parents even to the point of crossing the boundary between life and death— are obvious. So also are the Buddhist elements—the Lord Buddha himself is involved—but we also see shamanist elements, namely the idea of spirit beings, of crossing the boundaries between the ordinary, phenomenal, mundane world and a more noumenal world in which spirit forces may be called upon for various purposes. Further, we see a narrowing of the gap that had been opened up between women and men in Korean society. There is, to be sure, fatherly authority, the King’s authority, but it ends up with a great deal of fatherly affection when he is restored. There is a patriarchal spirit, but it is countered by a matriarchal one, and there is an attempt here to mellow and even go beyond the disciplinarian order of Confucianism, through the activity not of educated men but of a girl who had been brought up in a lowly rustic setting. There is an alternative idea of harmony that is based not simply on strict social hierarchies as in Confucianism but on bringing together all the various components of life. Crossing boundaries or mixing elements was ‘impurity’ to the neo-Confucian leadership, but to dominant folk traditions it was a means of reconciliation and healing. The stories of Ch’unhyang, Simch’ŏng and Princess Pari were part of the repertoire of male actors, singers and musicians called kwangdae and female shamans called mudang, both drawn from the lowest class, the ch’ŏnin, to which belonged also kisaeng and slaves. Kwangdae and mudang often married and performed these and other epics as p’ansori dramas, which functioned at times as shamanic rituals for the departed.29 However, although they were popular entertainers, p’ansori performers were not sealed off from the ruling classes, 29  Walraven, Songs of the Shaman, 105–110.

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nor did they necessarily perform in the service of folk animist or shamanist culture. Indeed, as literacy in han’gŭl developed alongside the growth of a nouveau riche of middle men (chungin), independent traders and enterprising owner-cultivators, performances began to include satirical treatment of shamans and their services. At the same time, demand grew for more secular performances not related to religious themes or events, and p’ansori performers injected classical allusions to Chinese poetry in their songs. They performed in fishing and farming villages, at yangban banquets before officials and foreign visitors of rank, celebrations of successful civil-service examinees, and even in front of the king on occasion.30 That they did so is another indication of the degree to which popular culture was a vital element within the whole culture of the kingdom. Among the literary forms of middle to late Chosŏn were fantasies that were heavily influenced by Buddhism and Daoism. The most famous of these is Kim Manjung’s Dream of the Nine Clouds (Kuunmong), written in 1689, which although it followed a reasonably common Buddhist plot, employed a considerable amount of Daoist imagery. Daoism in Korea had no institutions or priesthood, and its main outlet was in literature, where the theme of the pursuit of immortality was strong, together with stories of sŏnin (heavenly nymphs), hermits with magical powers and angelic beings. All in all, this unofficial literature was a literature of questioning or of dissatisfaction, whether realism or fantasy. As such, it coincided with the rise of a movement among scholars for an alternative vision of the social and state order, to which we now turn.

The Scholars’ Revolt

During the process of reconstruction after the Japanese invasions, a sub-faction of the Easterners, called the Namin or Southerners, proposed a thorough reform of the national administration based on a return to the fundamentals of original Confucian ideology. The movement they founded, named sirhak or practical learning by scholars in the twentieth century, was in some sense an empirical one that rose out of dissatisfaction with the metaphysical preoccupations of late Chosŏn neo-Confucianism. Despite its claim to be a return to pristine Confucianism, it was a synthesis of three basic elements: a Confucian respect for the agricultural foundation of society; selected principles of Western science, politics and philosophy, including Catholicism; and knowledge of the history and specific social and cultural make-up of the Korean 30  Cho Dong-il, Korean Literature in Cultural Context, 68–72.

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people. Sirhak possessed no institutional form and was more an intellectual movement than a school, but the propagation of its ideas by some members of the highly educated establishment ensured the movement considerable influence and it became the most serious challenge to the mainstream neoConfucian scholars and power-holders. Sirhak leaders urged that the kingdom be opened up to foreign trade and that it adopt principles of applied science from the West, especially agricultural science and handicrafts. Although they did not advocate any defection from neo-Confucianism as such, some among them urged scholars to become acquainted with the fundamentals of Catholic philosophy, which they believed undergirded Western science, technology and social organization. They also launched pointed social criticism against yangban status and privilege, which invited a major political confrontation at the close of the eighteenth century. Yi Ik (1681–1763) and Chŏng Yagyong (1763–1836), the most renowned of the sirhak scholars, engaged in research on Korean history and advocated a kind of empiricism. That is, they argued that ‘investigation into the nature of things’ must entail inquiry into the actual experiences of the people and places in their own right, before one can claim to have gained pertinent knowledge on which to base policies. This approach to knowledge naturally involved detailed observation of social and political conditions within the framework of Korea’s own history, not the history of the ancient Chinese Chou kingdom. In short, they advocated self-knowledge and based their reform proposals on their perspective on Korean history. Yi Ik, who lived a whole generation before Chŏng Yagyong, was himself influenced by the writings of Yu Hyŏngwŏn on the deeply anti-Confucian consequences of the entrenched hereditary yangban system at the top and the unconscionably huge (and un-Chinese) hereditary class of unfree at the bottom.31 Yi remained strongly attached to the Confucian Classics and had no argument with education in the principles that governed all phenomena. He argued for a more serious conduct of Royal Lectures to ensure that the monarch was equipped with a proper understanding of the Classics. He recommended a revision of the legal codes, not because he found fault with their sources or framework, but because they had proved too amenable to abuse: strict enforcement of good law was indispensable, he claimed, to the stability and strength of government. It was in relation to agriculture, economics and the role of monarch and aristocracy that Yi Ik departed most clearly from orthodoxy. All agriculture should be nationalised, he argued, and regulated and supervised by government 31  Palais, Confucian Statecraft, 272.

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employees. The farmers should work diligently and be taught how to save. Likewise, taxation burdens and revenue collection should be regulated by government and rationalised according to local needs and capacities.32 At the root of factional struggles, he pointed out, was economic self-interest of the yangban, who therefore commonly indulged in unscrupulous opportunism that oppressed the farmers and impoverished the government. To rectify this evil, Yi proposed reform of access to and the content of the government examination system and subjection of officials to regular inspection. Finally, and here he stretched the monarchy’s patience, Yi reminded his peers of a line from the Confucian Classics that said the people existed before the king, and since it was the local administrators and not the king who actually ruled the people, their performance should be evaluated carefully and rewarded when deserved. Chŏng Yagyong, also known as Tasan, carried Yi Ik’s principles further. He took a traditional and uncontroversial axiom, that the agricultural economy was the foundation of the state’s welfare, and turned it into a devastating critique of Korea’s social and political orders. In a fashion similar to Pak Chiwŏn in his literary writings, Chŏng on the basis of personal investigations described in graphic detail the exhausted condition of rural life, the corruption of administrators and their collusion with socially powerful lineages. His reforms were consciously aimed at the amelioration and stabilisation of peasants’ livelihood. He called for a greatly reduced bureaucracy, the use of paper and coin currency and development of science and technology. Relations between officials and the farmers were to be based on an ethical understanding of the responsibility of administrators to work on behalf of the peasants—the germ of a non-hierarchical idea of public service—and the common-sense principle that harm done to farmers was harm done to the kingdom. To eradicate the endemic misuse of land and extortion of the farmers, Chŏng recommended that the economy be founded on land cultivation, not on land-ownership, which should be abolished. Tillers were to cultivate land under the direction of a head of a village of twenty-five families; all produce was to be distributed to farmers in proportion to the number of days they actually worked, after crop taxes for government, set at 10%, and remuneration to the village head were deducted. This arrangement, he believed, would encourage maximum efficiency. Finally, Chŏng outlined a system of division of labour, so that the necessities of life would be distributed to teachers, agricultural technicians, builders of irrigation systems, and the like. A highly accomplished scholar, in 1784 Chŏng began lecturing on the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean to King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800). At this point, 32  Palais, Confucian Statecraft, 368.

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however, he began to embrace Catholicism, which he claimed was intimately related to Western science and technology. His brilliant but stinging critique of the yangban order incited a determined campaign against him by factional leaders, who plotted to expel him from government and assassinate him. He was only saved by Chŏngjo, who dispatched him on a tour of Kyŏnggi Province as a secret Royal Inspector.33 On his return, Chŏng submitted a report of administrative shortcomings and the miseries of the farming population. But by this stage, the sirhak scholars were being branded treasonous Catholics, and a showdown was imminent. By 1795, Chŏng and a number of sirhak scholars were forced out of high office and fled to lesser appointments in the provinces. Then in 1801, one year after Chŏngjo abdicated, Chŏng was arrested and exiled to Kyŏngsang Province and later to Chŏlla province. His elder brother Chŏng Yakchong was executed the same year for his Catholic activities, a turn of events that appears to have persuaded Chŏng Yagyong to step back from further forthright avowals of Christianity. In exile, he systematised his views and in 1817 and 1818 released his major works, although it was not until the twentieth century that his writings gained a significant following. In 1818 Chŏng was freed from exile and returned to Seoul, but the sirhak movement had been neutralised, factional power struggles had been overtaken by competition between royal in-law families and the dynasty was about to face new pressures that would bring its long tenure to an end.

33  Mark Setton, Chŏng Yagyong: Korea’s challenge to Orthodox Neo-Confucianism (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1997), 59.

chapter 5

The Tradition Under Siege To follow his own feelings and proceed directly into the state in which there is neither propriety nor righteousness is the custom of the barbarian. To follow only along the single track of eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty is to do what even beasts know how to do. If we practise this kind of doctrine, we will straightway fall into the bottomless pit, from where we shall surely never emerge alive. How can good and superior men upon seeing such a situation fail to try to alter it with outcries and reproaches? Yi Hangno, Diatribe against the Calamitous Influences of the Perverse Teachings of the West (c. 1836)

The death of King Chŏngjo (r. 1776–1800) in 1800 marks the end of political stability based on the long armistice between the monarchy and the power of the landed, educated and hereditary aristocracy. With Chŏngjo died also an experiment begun in the 1720s under his grandfather, Yŏngjo, to reduce the influence of the factions by a policy of even-handed appointments to high office. The ostensible purpose of this policy was to enhance government efficiency through appointments on the basis of proven ability rather than through favouring the yangban lineages attached to the school in favour at the time. An objective of greater import, however, was to strengthen the monarchy and central bureaucracy by diminishing the relevance to power of factional competition. This policy of impartiality did indeed undergird a good period of effective and in many respects enlightened rule, including the operation of a tax regime that lightened the burden on the farming population to a degree. However, the factional spirit flared up once again in relation to an extraordinary event in the royal family itself: the execution by Yŏngjo of his son, the Crown Prince, in 1762 on charges of political subversion. Known as the Imo Incident, this event precipitated a bitter factional stand-off that eventuated in a significant change in the factional landscape.

The Imo Incident

The Imo Incident was a family matter, and it was a state matter. It concerned jealousies of court women, and moral dissipation of court men. It was a struggle © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004300057_007

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of orthodoxy against heterodoxy, and a showdown between principle and expediency. It was a story of domination versus nurture, of the resilience of the human spirit and the crumbling of human psychology. It was a panoply of interwoven elements that we should hardly know the half of if Lady Hyegyŏng (1735–1815, a.k.a. Lady Hong), the wife of Yŏngjo’s son, the Crown Prince Sado (1735–1762), had not written of it in such moving detail. In Lady Hyegyŏng’s Memoirs we find not only a feminisation of the Korean memoir tradition but a literary masterpiece. In her records, individual psychology and affairs of state, personal relations and public duties, innocence and experience, tragedy and mystery are woven together.1 Lady Hyegyŏng wrote her account to prove that her husband was sick, mentally ill, not treacherous towards his father or the kingdom. She wanted to tell her grandson, who in 1800 became King Sunjo (r. 1800–1834), the truth. Her memoirs reveal an intimate, deep understanding of the human aspect of every detail of the tragedy of the Crown Prince. Although cognisant of the factional politicking that surrounded the drama leading to her husband’s execution, in relation to which she claimed her family was victimised, Lady Hong exhibited a comparatively limited understanding of the tensions created by the sirhak movement and Catholicism. Even so, her remarks on the Noron, or Elders’ faction suggest something a little less than naivety, insofar as they appear somewhat disingenuous. Lady Hyegyŏng clearly understood that the political factions which were related to the differing schools of emphasis on neo-Confucian thought had social bases and that these social bases were clan lineages traced through the male line. The policy of impartiality in making appointments to high office adopted by Kings Yŏngjo and Chŏngjo was a brittle one. For however much the faction members might claim to base their positions on genuinely competing interpretations of neo-Confucian dogma, Lady Hyegyŏng knew that they were conditioned by clan lineages. And it was precisely to exonerate her father, the patriline of the Hongs, a powerful, prestigious clan and now royal in-laws through her marriage to the Crown Prince, that she wrote her Memoirs. That the Hongs were members of the Noron faction, she understood, was an effect of its lineage, its place in the basic fabric of Chosŏn society. Lady Hyegyŏng thought to go the root of the matter, as if to say, factions may come and go, 1  There are two scholarly translations into English of Lady Hyegyŏng’s memoirs, with introduction and commentary: Yang-Hi Choe-Wall, trans., Memoirs of a Korean Queen (London: Kegan Paul International, 1985); and JaHyun Kim Haboush, trans., The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

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but lineage never. As the high-class wife of a primary son, she was required to promote her husband’s line, but here she wanted to guard the good name of her own father’s line and thereby remove any stain from her own son’s and grandson’s names, linked now to the royal Yi clan. There was something almost subversive about Lady Hyegyŏng’s defence of her own father’s line, and it was this possibility, inherent in the Korean clan system and inadvertently encouraged by the Korean version of vertical extended families and patriarchal loyalty, that changed things after 1800. Yŏngjo’s and Chŏngjo’s policies of impartiality broke down because lineage, not high academic disputation, was the basis of the political, factional culture of the time. By weakening the relevance of ideological difference they exposed factional competition more directly to naked struggles over lineage power. And paradoxically, once the patriarchal lineage system was stripped of its metaphysical clothing, a few women, albeit aided by Chŏngjo’s own strategies, began to exercise real power over politics since it was through them that the royal consort lineages manoeuvred into power. Prince Sado’s political misdemeanours centred on his father’s lack of evenhandedness in applying the policy of even-handed appointments. He disliked the growing bias towards the Noron faction. His wife’s family, the Hongs, were themselves Noron. It is possible that Sado wished to go further than simply balancing the Noron faction’s power with more appointments of the more liberal Soron faction and to cripple them outright. He became involved in activities designed to subvert the direction his father’s appointments were taking. His enemies accused him of treason. Yet his death was unprecedented: a father putting his son to death was a grave aberration in the Confucian world. The party factions had formed alliances across groups that were named the Party of Expedience (sip’a) and the Party of Principle (pyŏkp’a). The former, which included more open-minded factions, deplored the execution whereas the latter, which included many Noron adherents, naturally supported the action. But the consequences were damaging for the factional system overall. As the line dividing the parties of Principle and Expediency became superimposed over the traditional factional borders, mutual uncertainty and mistrust became endemic and the whole experiment in impartiality gave way to partiality of a different kind altogether: membership of and alignment with the royal consort family. The consort families were the in-law families of the monarchs. When Chŏngjo passed away, the heir to the throne, King Sunjo, was only ten years old. Consequent on the derailment of the factional engine, the family that provided Sunjo’s bride stepped into a relative power vacuum and took full advantage of the opportunity to engage in distribution of high posts to bride relatives.

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This family was the Andong Kim family. Its rise to power marks the decline of literati factionalism as a primary influence on power-sharing and government policies and the rise of in-law politics, or sedo chŏngch’i. In the mid-19th century another clan, the P’ungyang Cho clan, supplied a royal bride and political influence began to see-saw between the Cho and Andong Kim clans up until the late 19th century, when the Yŏhŭng Min clan began manoeuvring its way to the top through marriage to King Kojong. Meanwhile, the yangban élites who had the misfortune of not belonging to a consort clan found themselves excluded from their traditional access to high office in the central government. Those who had land took measures to ensure at least their economic advantages, but this required squeezing the peasants harder and blocking revenue collection by the central administration. The tenant and day-labourer farming population was itself under increasing strain from the early nineteenth century and hungry commoners sought common cause with the government slaves who had been emancipated in 1801 but had few employment prospects. Among those literati families that had traditionally supplied members of the main factions, some turned dissident and even at times used the farmers’ grievances to support their own disaffection. In 1811, a ruined and dissident yangban, Hong Kyŏngnae (1780–1812), led a hastily drilled but determined army of disgruntled men in a revolt in the northern province of P’yŏngan that took several months to overpower. Although the immediate cause of this rebellion was a central government attempt to tax the merchants in the China trade, its success in harnessing much wider disaffection was a precursor of more serious rebellions later in the century.

The Taewŏn’gun

There was one man who tried to check the rise of the in-law families, restrain the yangban gentry and officials from acting against state interests, end the suffocation of the farmers and restore the prestige and authority of the Royal Yi family. This was the man known to posterity as the Taewŏn’gun, regent from 1864 to 1873. When in 1864 King Ch’ŏlchong (r. 1849–1864) died without heir, the Dowager Queen, hoping thereby to shore up the power of her Cho clan, chose as heir the obscure, twelve-year-old son of Yi Haŭng (1821–1898), a man who had no court or factional affiliation. This Yi Haŭng proved surprisingly capable and strong-minded, and as Regent, drew up a raft of thoroughgoing reforms. His title, Taewŏn’gun, referred to his princely status as the regent for his son, still a minor. The Taewŏn’gun himself, however, became snared in the in-law net,

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setting a trap for himself by choosing a woman of the Yŏhŭng Min clan as his son’s bride in order to undermine the influence of the P’ungyang Cho clan. Cognisant of the blatant corruption of court families and regional yangban and dismayed by the severe rural depression, the Taewŏn’gun was eager to effect a conservative revolution along pragmatic but still Confucian lines. In some ways his reform policies are comparable in spirit to those of the Chinese Tung-chih emperor at the same time. The Taewŏn’gun was fiercely anti-foreign—not only towards the West but China and Japan as well. His overall aim was to reform aberrations from the traditional order, suppress corruption, raise the prestige of the royal Yi clan and keep the kingdom free from what he regarded as the pernicious influence and predatory designs of non-Korean and especially non-East Asian nations. This, he believed, would alleviate peasant discontent and strengthen the central administration and treasury.2 In order to undermine in-law family politics and power, the Taewŏn’gun in 1866 chose a daughter for his son from the Yŏhŭng Min clan on the grounds that it was better to have three consort groups than two, since their influence would thereby be diluted. His choice of bride proved unfortunate: Queen Min (1851–1895) became the ablest politician of the time and contributed much to his later decline and fall. His reform programme did not help, since in spite of his claims to be restoring tradition he provoked a head-on clash with the literati-based factions and the regional yangban. Members of the powerful Noron Faction, whose sense of purity and high-mindedness was outraged by his openly violent methods, which included using ‘henchmen’ from the lower classes to remove his opponents, mounted vigorous and effective protests. At this point, however, both the monarchy and the neo-Confucian order faced the challenge of a restive, militarised West intent on expanding its trading territories.

Challenges to the Grand Tradition

That Korea was threatened with invasion was not new, and even that it was threatened by an alien, or non-East Asian culture was also not new. Nor were the material reasons for the threat—superior technical and organisational skills—at all novel. The Mongols had defeated China and enforced Korea’s subservience in the thirteenth century because of advances in engineering, 2  For a detailed analysis of the Taewŏn’gun’s reforms and policies, see James B. Palais, Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Monographs 159, Harvard University Press, 1975).

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such as in horse saddles and bridles, and the Manchus overthrew the Ming dynasty and forced Korea through military strikes to recognise their legitimacy in the seventeenth century because of adoption of musketry ahead of China. Now, in the mid-nineteenth century the British and French forces had humbled China and caused great disquiet in Korea due to their technological superiority. What then was new? Was it the perception that this assault on Chinese power involved a wholesale threat to the very foundations of East Asian civilisation, folk and élite, and that unlike the Mongol and the Manchu the Westerner was not liable to Signification that was new? Or that not just the ruling élite but the cultural élite, the very pillars of East Asian civilisation and the fabric of the social order, were under dire threat? That whereas the Mongols and Manchus had no better or stronger cosmology than the Chinese and Koreans and so were themselves ‘conquered’ by the superior civilisation they had taken over, the Western powers’ religious order was so inextricably bound up with its material might and system that it would inevitably strike at the heart of the Eastern civilisation? In some sense, this was the case, but in a sense far less distinct from the earlier examples than is usually understood. For the rise of the Mongols was at the time and for a considerable period after its acquisition of China regarded with deep misgivings, and the Chinese Sung loyalists and their counterparts in Korea never came to terms with the Mongol presence. The Manchus, too, were considered beyond the pale of true civilisation, and their defeat of Ming China was deemed at the time to be nothing less than a political, social and cultural cataclysm.3 Even after three centuries of rule, the Manchus were still regarded by many Chinese and Koreans as representatives of an inferior, even alien, culture. Thus the cultural chasm that the Taewŏn’gun and Korean conservative scholars warned lay between East and West was not an entirely new perspective. Nor has it proven significantly more accurate in hindsight, as now a century and a half later we observe a variety of dynamic syntheses of Korean culture and ‘Western’ technologies, knowledge and even religion. What was significantly different was something else, something that was soon to shake the Koreans’ sense of themselves and their place in the world to the core. This was the rise of nationalism on a global scale, the doctrine that political and cultural boundaries must accord and that each nation must rule itself as a sovereign, independent state. From this it followed that the state was the guardian—in fact the only effective guardian—of the national culture, from which it followed in turn that should a foreign state take power over 3  See Lynn Struve, Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers’ Jaws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

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a nation, that nation’s culture would be erased. But the immediate issue for Korea’s conservatives was not whether a foreign power would take control so much as whether foreign ways would gain a foothold in the land through adoption and dissemination of those ways by misguided Koreans who believed that this was necessary to keep Korea abreast with changes in the world order and preserve its independence. Should foreign ways be afforded entry and given authority in the land, the conservatives asked, would it not also follow that the nation’s culture would be erased? Answers to this question differed markedly. Moderate reformers of the Confucian mould but with nationalist leanings believed that so long as the state remained in their own hands, Koreans could determine what elements of foreign ways could be chosen and how they would be blended with Korean ways. Radical reformers, who were attracted by Western ideas and even religion, considered the traditional order was a dangerous anachronism and that the nation-state principle itself demanded a complete transition from old to new orders. They were to some degree therefore cultural iconoclasts, and believed a new political order freed from the traditional identification of Korea with Sino-centric civilisation would enable the state to forge a new national culture that better served the interests of the Koreans. Then there were the strict traditionalists, sometimes referred to as isolationists, who believed that foreign ways were all of the same weave, so that one could not pick and choose between the threads: they had to be rejected in their entirety. It was to this last group that the Taewŏn’gun belonged, although he was hardly welcome to many of them and the debate had been raging some time before he ascended the stage.4 But the advent of nationalist ideas around the known world entailed a different view of the relation between civilisation and local cultures. The traditional view was that civilisation, called munmyŏng in Korean, was something that had high altitude, high enough at least to draw a myriad of local cultures together in unity. Local cultures, needless to say, were deemed to be lacking in this altitude. In Korea’s case, the subsumption of the local cultures associated with the Three Kingdoms, which had been organised each according to its own tribal-based kingship-priesthood systems, was effected under the tutelage of Buddhism, which as time wore on was harmonised under the ‘three religions are one’ principle with Daoism and Confucianism. In the Chosŏn dynasty, as

4  For an analysis of the critical conservative position on the Taewŏn’gun’s reforms, see Chai-sik Chung, A Korean Confucian Encounter with the Modern World: Yi Hang-no and the West (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Korea Research Monograph 20, 1995), 67ff.

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we have seen, this principle was judged impure and neo-Confucianism presumed to occupy the heights alone. But by the end of the nineteenth and increasingly so during the twentieth century, ‘civilisation’ began to lose its altitude. Local culture now became endowed with all the importance and hype of ‘national’ culture, and the notion of high-altitude civilisation was dropped as an encumbrance of the Old Order. Yet it is inaccurate to claim that the old was replaced as a matter of course by the new order. What first presaged the transition was the appearance of cracks in the civilisational edifice. These cracks were exposed by the defeat of China at the hands of the British in the Opium wars of 1839–1842 and the subsequent sacking of Beijing by the French, whereupon it was acknowledged that the foundations of the European powers, however they might stand outside the borders of the civilised world, had at least to be examined, even if for strategic, defensive purposes. Yet consideration of European civilisation led to deep cultural ambivalence. The ambiguities of the nationalist definition of culture were quickly manifested. Whereas on the one hand letting go the old order entailed an enormous loss of altitude, on the other hand the new order rested on a bold elevation of popular culture. And whereas the move appeared to involve an equality of different cultures relative to each other, it involved none the less an absolutisation of particular, national cultures within their own borders to a level of obligatory loyalty that the Old Order hardly achieved. Again, whereas the harnessing of religious systems such as Buddhism and Christianity in the service of particular national identities and objectives led to a truncation of these religions’ meanings, they nevertheless endowed nationalisms with a sense of ancient validity and the nation-state system with a universal essence. In the course of cultural rethinking among Korea’s scholar-officials, we see not only the power of the sword, manifested by British and French predations on China, but also the power of the pen. Published in 1842, two years after the conclusion of the Opium War, and revised and enlarged several times up to 1852, an illustrated book on Western countries by the Chinese scholar and reformer Wei Yuan (1794–1856) called Haeguk toji (Chinese: Hai-kuo t’u-chih 海國圖志) exerted a profound impact on the educated classes in China, Korea and Japan. It alerted East Asia to the material strength of the West and prompted self-strengthening movements in all three countries. In Japan, the mood had turned distinctly anti-Western after America’s naval adventurism in 1853, and it was this book that reversed the mood and prompted Japan to open the country to selective adoption of Western systems and technologies. The book entered Korea in 1845 and reached the height of its influence in the 1870s, among moderate reformers.

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The scholar-official Kim Chŏnghŭi (1786–1856) judged the book in 1850 to be very timely and argued that it was crucial to follow its call for military selfstrengthening in preparation for continued onslaughts from the West. Given the accuracy of the British map of China, Korea and Japan, Kim was convinced that they must have sailed close by the peninsula several times without Koreans having the slightest inkling. Supposing that the West was only interested in China, since it could have, he believed, invaded Korea by then had it so desired, Kim maintained that the real threat to Korea was religious. Once the already aggravated mind of the general populace learned of the power of the West, he feared that Catholicism would gain a sympathetic reception in the land and threaten its traditional ethical foundations. Thought-control was therefore paramount, a position that became the hallmark of the anti-reform, isolationist lobby led by one of the foremost neo-Confucian scholars of the time, Yi Hangno (1792–1868), and his accomplished disciple Ch’oe Ikhyŏn (1833–1906). Nevertheless, when a combined Anglo-French expedition did the unthinkable and seized Beijing, there was tumult in Korea, wild rumours of an imminent take-over by Westerners abounded and many fled to remote parts of the provinces. The Taewŏn’gun’s response was to execute thousands of Western ‘sympathisers,’ that is, Catholics, in 1866 and to construct the canon and warships described in the Haeguk toji. In 1866 also, the American trading vessel General Sherman was burned in the Taedong River near Pyongyang and a French foray was beaten back. Again, an American expedition seeking trading rights was defeated off Kanghwa Island in 1871, reinforcing the Taewŏn’gun’s defiant contention that accepting trade with Western nations was appeasement, a betrayal of the nation. Thus was the example of Japan, which since 1854 had signed successive unequal treaties with Western powers, rejected. But the staunch neo-Confucian scholar-officials themselves rejected the Taewŏn’gun and with the aid of his daughter-in-law’s Min clan had him sidelined in 1873, although he retained some measure of control until his son reached his maturity, especially over relations with Japan. Yet the demise of the Taewŏn’gun hardly played into the hands of the purists who evicted him, for it opened the way for less hard-line scholars to inquire more precisely into the nature of Western material and mental cultures. In doing so, they finally acceded to the urgings made in the late 1850s by the philosopher Ch’oe Han’gi (1803–1879), an unusual and remarkable thinker who in his own philosophical musings had woven some elements of Western sense-based epistemology into his system of logic.5 King Kojong himself began asking those of his 5  Park Byung-kun, “Hyegang Ch’oe Han-gi: The Development of his Philosophical System.” PhD diss. (Australian National University, 2004).

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advisors who had read Haeguk toji about North America, Russia, Vietnam and Burma. Among many scholars a shift occurred from the utilitarian impulse to self-strengthen to a genuine desire to understand the bedrock of Western civilisation. On his return from a mission to China in the early 1870s, the high-ranking scholar-official Pak Kyusu (1807–1876), who was the grandson of the sirhak scholar Pak Chiwŏn and was inspired by Chŏng Yagyong’s reformist vision, urged his disciples to heed the descriptions of the West in Haeguk toji. He revived the sirhak idea of history, in which there was a specific and independent Korean history, not simply an adjunct or variation of Chinese history and culture. Through informal reading and discussion groups, Pak influenced both the government minister Kim Yunsik (1835–1922) and the brilliant scholar Yu Kiljun (1856–1914), who presently became leaders of the moderate and radical reformers respectively. By the early 1880s, a more focused movement arose, one that might have led to a constructive convergence between Korean and Japanese reformers if it had not been for the precipitate prematurity of the abortive 1884 Kapsin Coup led by the radical reformers. The throne desired to learn of Meiji Japan’s selective adoption of western ways and organised two ‘Gentlemen’s Tours’ of Japan in 1880 and 1881. At this point, two more books attracted considerable notice, one titled Policy for Korea (Chosŏn ch’aengnyak), written by the Ch’ing diplomat and poet Huáng Zūnxiàn (Hwang Chunhŏn in Korean), and the other, On Change (Yŏgŏn in Korean; Yiyan in Chinese), written by the Chinese scholar Cheng Kuan-ying (1841–1920). The former caused a ruckus because it urged an alliance between Korea, China, Japan and the USA against Russia. The latter writing was more amenable to the conservatives because of its concern with practical self-strengthening measures. However, On Change shifted thinking in China and Korea away from the notion that one could simply accept Western technology on its own to recognition of the integration of the West’s material culture with its political and social structure and thought.

The Enlightenment Party and the Kapsin Coup

The Enlightenment Party, known in Korean as the Kaewha Tang was, strictly considered, not a party so much as a club of concerned scholars and aspiring politicians who wanted to replace the old social, political and economic order with what they believed were forward-looking policies that met the domestic and international challenges of the times. Yet in one important respect it was

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a far more genuine political party than many that have arisen in South Korea since the late 1980s, for it was defined by a clear, consistent and specific policy platform. The Enlightenment Party grew out of distaste for the monarchical restoration policies of the Taewŏn’gun and his blanket rejection of all ideas from abroad, and antipathy towards the power intrigues of the Min clan and their pro-Ch’ing stance. Whereas the Taewŏn’gun believed his policies against foreign powers were working, since their naval adventures had been defeated, the apparent ease with which Britain and France crushed Chinese troops and the encouragement this gave Russia in the 1860s to pressure China to cede Manchuria, establishing military posts along the border, caused many Korean officials to think differently. But the scholar-officials who were able and anxious to tackle the new challenges not with old and blunt but with new and sharp instruments were generally inhibited from exercising any influence by the paucity of government posts, the obstructionism of both the Taewŏn’gun’s cronies and the hard-line factional leadership, and traditional rules determining the eligibility or otherwise of applicants to high office. It was also a misfortune for the country that the reform-oriented elements had to construct platforms for their ideas and movements in the midst of growing competition among the Chinese, Japanese and Russians for a dominant economic and even direct political foothold on the peninsula. In 1876, the Japanese succeeded in ‘opening’ Korea to international trade by manoeuvring the court through gunboat diplomacy into signing the Kanghwa Treaty. In line with their object of diminishing Ch’ing China’s influence over the kingdom, the Japanese inserted a clause in the treaty that affirmed Korea’s independent statehood. Thereupon the pro-Ch’ing Queen Min and her clan pressured King Kojong (r. 1864–1907) and the government, albeit with the support of some progressives and strong dissent among some conservatives, to refocus their attention on China. And so it happened that a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States, signed in May 1882, was negotiated on behalf of Korea by China, which insisted that Korea had ‘from time immemorial’ been subject to Chinese oversight. At the same time disagreements over whether a long overdue reform of Korea’s military establishment should be supervised by the Japanese or Chinese enflamed bitter tensions, which erupted in a military mutiny in July 1882, sparked by embezzlement of regular army wages by a member of the Min clan and the special treatment shown the new, ‘modern’ recruits by a Japanese trainer. Seizing his opportunity, the Taewŏn’gun rode the popular anti-Min wave, gained momentary supremacy and began to sabotage the Chinese reform programme. But the Min family prevailed upon China to send 3000 troops,

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the Taewŏn’gun was kidnapped to China and Chinese officials took charge of major departments in Korean government, including the customs office. This Chinese victory encouraged a fit of hubris in the Chinese official assigned to Korean affairs, General Li Hung-chang (1823–1901), a former warlord in northern China but now the Viceroy of Chili and virtual foreign minister of China. In 1883 he claimed that he would preside over Korean affairs as king whenever he deemed it was in China’s interests to assert the prerogative. A spate of unequal treaties with Western states was negotiated under Chinese oversight, which in concert with Li’s supervision of the customs office tightened China’s hold on the economy and international relations of Korea. The reform lobby was naturally given short shrift. But China’s obstructionism of Korean reform, interference with treaties and military shouldering tactics strengthened the case and resolve of reformers, whose anti-Ch’ing policy was further fuelled by reports of atrocities committed by Chinese troops. The Chinese behaviour also created a degree of ambivalence in court circles. In the wake of the 1882 mutiny, Kojong issued an invitation to all who had ideas on how to strengthen the kingdom to forward their opinions. Within five months, over one hundred responses were received, of which twenty were penned by reformists, who copiously cited sections from the book On Change that proposed the abolition of unequal treaties, development of scientific skills, industry and commerce, participation in the new norms of international law and diplomacy and the integration of Western thought and material culture with that of the East. Several travelled to China to visit the author, Cheng Kuan-Ying, and one of these, a poet named Kang Wi (1820–1884), became a pioneer of radical social movements, inviting participation in debates by the chungin, the ‘middle people’ whose composition by the nineteenth century included hereditary local government clerks, many of whom had technical qualifications and whose stipends depended on farmers’ taxes. Consequently, clerks, artisans, professionals, and practitioners of traditional medicine joined the reform movement and persuaded the throne to authorise a han’gŭl edition of On Change. At this point, the Enlightenment Party under the leadership of Kim Okkyun (1851–1894) sought to change the political landscape of the kingdom. Up to the end of 1881, Kim was to all appearances a reasonably orthodox, traditional politician and thinker. However in the mid-1870s he had participated in the meetings organised by the sirhak revivalist, Pak Kyusu, where he had discussed ‘new thought,’ such as the idea of equality of all humans with a number of Enlightenment Party members including Prince Pak Yŏnghyo (1861–1939), a royal in-law. Kim was also a Buddhist, and remained so till his death. The fact that he could not be awarded a high rank despite his talents because he

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was adopted began to rankle, and after travelling to Japan in February 1882, he turned from a pro-Ch’ing to a pro-Japanese stance. In Japan he met the Meiji reformer and founder of Keiō University, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), who considered Korea was in much the same situation as Japan had been on the eve of the 1868 Meiji Restoration. When in September 1882 Prince Pak Yŏnghyo was appointed Ambassador to Japan, he joined Kim Okkyun and other Enlightenment Party members in frequent consultations with Fukuzawa on the means of securing Korea’s independence from China and neutralising the power of Queen Min and her family. Regarding Korea’s servitude to China in the wake of the July 1882 mutiny as a bitter humiliation, Kim designated Japan as Asia’s Great Britain and resolved to make Korea the Asian France. In particular, he toyed with the idea of parliamentary politics as a means of breaking down the discriminatory socio-political structure and ensuring Korea’s strength as a modern nation. But by the end of 1883, the conservative backlash had gained even greater momentum and successfully blocked the appointment of Kim Okkyun, Prince Pak and other reformists to central administrative posts. Concluding that a revolution in politics must precede thoroughgoing reform, the reformists resolved to decide the issue by force and began plotting a coup d’état, which was mounted on 4 December 1884. Known as the Kapsin Coup, the occupation of the palace and promulgation of modernising reforms were hastily organised with insufficient back-up and lasted only four days. The Min once again called on the Ch’ing troops, and those core reformers who were not slain fled into exile in Japan, China and the United States of America. The reform movement lacked a social and political base for the sweeping revolution envisaged and the coup amounted to little more than a failed palace revolution. But key elements of the reformist agenda gained wider currency thereafter and the core reformist leadership bode its time for a campaign of a different kind a decade later. Following the 1882 mutiny and the failure of the 1884 Kapsin Coup, reliance on foreign powers increased markedly, especially with the Min family again ascendant and supported by the Ch’ing. In October 1885, Li Hung-chang appointed as the resident director of diplomatic and commercial affairs in Korea a man named Yüan Shih-k’ai (1859–1916), who outdid Li in his chauvinism and constructed for himself a grandiose, palatial residence in the centre of Seoul. King Kojong, unexpectedly supported by Queen Min, responded by courting the favour of the Russians, who were only too happy thus to attain a position that threatened the interests of China and Japan. The situation in the capital became extremely complex and developed into a system that has been described as a balance not of power but of intrigue.

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Economically, it was Japan that was making the most significant inroads onto the Korean peninsula by taking energetic advantage of the new trading ports and the rise of merchants independent of the Korean government. Although this strengthened some large landlords it entailed a further impoverishment of tenant farmers, who swelled the numbers of insecure day-labourers. By partially absorbing the Korean rice market, Japanese traders brought Korean farmers up against international market pressures on prices. Those whose lot deteriorated as a result of such trading practices and changes in production turned their ire against corrupt officials and yangban landlords. As foreign encroachments created a sense of crisis and popular consciousness of the relationship between foreign policy and social conditions grew, local revolts steadily transformed into wider regional movements. This development gave dissident yangban an opportunity to gain organisational strength and prepare an assault on the throne in concert with the commoners.

The Tonghak Movement

The Tonghak movement is a classic example of conflicting interpretations. The uprising associated with it goes by different names that represent different views: Tonghak Rebellion, Tonghak Revolution, and Kabo Peasants’ War. Although technically, an uprising or armed revolutionary movement that fails is termed a rebellion, the Peasant War is the term by which it will be referred to in this chapter, without thereby implying support for a particular interpretation. For some it was a radical new departure, a truly modern, popular-based, mass nationalist movement that looked forward to a new form of national administration that was centred on the Korean people themselves, not on China, Japan or Russia, nor on the aristocrats’ preoccupations with their own families’ power and with classics written in a foreign script. It was a movement that not only presaged but also took concrete steps towards the implementation of a democratic process of rule, a popular-based economy, and a more equal gender arrangement, where women would exercise the same rights and powers as men. For others, it was little more than a traditional peasant-based revolt against oppressive local power-holders, a revolt that unexpectedly became caught up in the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War and which disaffected yangban tried to wrest from the peasants and direct towards their own interests, causing a fatal break-down in the Tonghak leadership. On this view, there was no forward-looking substance to the revolt, but simply a disordered combination

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of sectional interests struggling for power, redress of wrongs and so on. For yet others, it was primarily a religious development, in the context of disenchantment with the neo-Confucianism of the ruling scholar-officials, uncertainty about Western religious inroads, insecurity about livelihood and loss of community solidarity and identity. It was thus an initially strongly motivated and inspired movement that ran into the sands of its own lack of practical ideas and programmes, but which endowed the population with a new, indigenous religion around which later to rally in resistance to Japanese colonial rule. Part of the reason for these conflicting evaluations is that in the Tonghak movement there was concentrated many of the critical problems that dogged the kingdom from the beginning of the century. In the 1890s there was an overwhelming concatenation of events, of troubling changes, foreign pressures, and a raft of ideas on how to surmount the difficulties and forge a strong base for the approaching new century. It is therefore impossible to isolate any single feature of the movement, whether social, economic, political or religious, since all contributed to the weave of the Tonghak fabric. Tonghak was a religious, philosophical and ethical system devised by or, as he sometimes claimed, revealed to Ch’oe Cheu (1824–1864) in 1860. Ch’oe was the son of a yangban whose clan was politically out of favour, and because his mother was a remarried widow, his birth was deemed illegitimate in terms of the neo-Confucian orthodoxy of the time. After his father’s estate fell into ruin, Ch’oe Cheu wandered disconsolate around the countryside pondering the meaning of everything. The meaning he found he named Tonghak, meaning Eastern Learning, which combined ethical principles drawn from Buddhism and Confucianism, spiritual elements drawn from Daoism and some rituals that invited comparison with Catholic practices. The overall tone was antiforeign and the thrust of his message was that the rulers had forsaken the proper paths and must return to them or be driven from office. It is uncertain whether Ch’oe countenanced recourse to armed insurrection, but he was nevertheless tried and sentenced to death for subversion in the wake of a serious farmers’ revolt that swept the land in 1862. Before long, the Tonghak movement became chiliastic, characterised by a mission to establish a Golden Age in Korea through mass political action by Koreans. The Peasant War of 1894 The armed uprising began in the town of Kobu in Chŏlla Province in response to two outrages. First, a yangban was beaten to death for refusing to give a corrupt local magistrate a large sum of condolence money on his mother’s death. Second, the same magistrate ordered a new and onerous water-tax on the farmers, who had already come under pressure because of the negative

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effects on their rice prices of the trading competition facilitated by the new port treaty system. At dawn on February 15, a rural Confucian school-teacher named Chŏn Pongjun (1854–1895), who had become the local Tonghak leader, led a force of 3000 men recruited from the area in an attack against the Kobu militia. Not many of these men were Tonghak members, but they held Kobu for ten days and distributed rice from the local government granary to the people. When a militia unit sent by the central government to manage the uprising inflicted savage brutality on villages on the way, word spread mong Tonghak adherents and sparked a movement that threatened to reach national proportions. Chŏn Pongjun was named general and supreme commander of the Tonghak army, which soon numbered 13,000 men. Fearing matters were getting out of control and that core tenets of Tonghak were being compromised, Ch’oe Sihyŏng (1829–1989), who had donned the mantle of leadership following the execution of Ch’oe Cheu, sent an emissary to General Chŏn in May 1894 bearing the message: “Inciting tumult is not in accordance with the Way.” But the forces rejected the order to lay down arms and on 31 May took Chŏnju, capital of Chŏlla Province, where they established the headquarters of the Tonghak offensive. As increasing numbers of official troops deserted and joined the Tonghak army, plans were laid to advance on Seoul with the intention of ousting the Min clan from power. The Min naturally called yet again on the Chinese Ch’ing for aid, but China’s accession to the request became the immediate cause of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. On 11 June the court hurriedly proposed a truce, promising redress of major grievances. Chŏn Pongjun and the Tonghak leadership in general retained the ethic of filial piety, to which was attached loyalty to the monarch, and were moved to accept the truce on the understanding that the government would end any further intrusions by the Chinese and Japanese on the peninsula. The farmers for their part needed to return to the villages in order to manage their crops. One intriguing condition of the truce was the reinstatement of the Taewŏn’gun, who was empowered to work with the Tonghak leaders in implementing political and economic reforms. Given the Taewŏn’gun’s position, these reforms overall were of a reasonably conservative nature. But the impact of Tonghak ideas spread to other provinces, and for a short period from June to October 1894, Tonghak leaders succeeded in transforming certain rural administrative offices called chipkangsŏ into self-governing organs of the local populace in over fifty counties. In principle, the head of these offices was to be a farmer, with two or three administrators involved in management of popular affairs, and the local government bureaucracy was to work in accord with the

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policies formulated at the Tonghak headquarters in Chŏnju. These policies included the emancipation of slaves and servants, redistribution of land, the use of granaries and local tax monies for local needs and the organisation of local militia units. In reality, implementation of these and other policies, such as membership of women on councils and abolition of aristocratic privilege, were irregular. In some cases the local administrative offices remained under the thumb of traditional local yangban lineages, and even where dissident or ruined yangban were involved there was not often a good understanding between them and the commoners. Nor was there any concrete interest in the earlier vision of a new dynastic order, let alone the abolition of the monarchical superstructure itself. There was to some degree a new understanding of the national dimensions of local issues, a sense of the link between foreign trade concessions and domestic economic deprivations. There was also in some quarters a fusion of patriotic sentiment with religion, and the concurrence of the movement with war generated popular consciousness of the importance of guarding independent statehood, for the immediate cause of the war was the entry of Chinese troops, at the behest of Queen Min, in contravention of an understanding between China and Japan that no such action should take place without prior consultation and agreement between the two states. But the Sino-Japanese War overtook the Tonghak movement and its experiments in local administration were cut short. By late October 1894 the Japanese had taken Seoul and in April the following year a bloody showdown with resurgent Tonghak forces in Kongju was concluded in Japan’s favour. Chŏn Pongjun and other Tonghak leaders were tried and executed on 23 April 1895. But reforms as such were by no means precluded by the fall of the Tonghak movement. In a sense, the Tonghak reform programme was pre-empted by the Japan-sponsored Kabo Cabinet under the liberal Kim Hongjip (1842–1896) who, though sympathetic with a number of the Tonghak demands, feared mass armed action would invite the Polandisation of the peninsula.6

The Kabo Reforms

In response to the Korean court calling on Chinese troops to quell the Tonghak rebellion, Japanese armed forces overran the palace, took charge of the 6  In their discussions, reformers did use the term “Polandisation,” according to entries in Yun Ch’iho’s diary in the 1890s.

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government, brought in pro-Japanese reformers and presided over an intensive period of reform, which on paper at least brought to an end official support for the traditional yangban prerogatives, removed the disabilities suffered by remarried widows and their children and provided for the release of the remaining slaves.7 By February 1896, the Kabo reform cabinet had introduced some 200 separate pieces of legislation under Kim Hongjip, Kim Yunsik and later Yu Kiljun, the author of the famous Observations on Travels in the West (Sŏyu Kyŏnmum) in 1895. In this long publication, which was closely modelled on writings of his mentor in Japan, Fukuzawa Yukichi,8 Yu urged a synthesis of Confucian ethics with a Western-style constitutional monarchy, the separation of powers and a bill of human rights. Under the reforms, the appointment of officials, administration of the economy and control of the military were removed from the king’s direct authority and handed over to the relevant departments. The chief benefits of the reforms for the populace were social reforms that opened the avenues of economic and political participation to a broader section of society. For example, the Chosŏn civil service examination system was abolished and a new Ministry of Education was established, which introduced new examinations on technical subjects that did not require rote memorisation of the Classics. Government scholarships were instituted to provide education for able but impecunious persons. Special scholarships were awarded from 1894 to 1898 for foreign language training in English, French, Chinese, Russian and German, reflecting the reformers’ desire for engagement with the wider world. (Facilities for Japanese language training were already in place in 1891.) These reforms encouraged an increase in private scholarships, which before long outstripped government scholarships in number and importance. Although key social and educational reforms remained active, many reforms were rescinded or disregarded within two years and attempts to establish a constitutional monarchy and rationalise government appointments and departments fell by the wayside. This backlash against the reform agenda was caused by a number of factors. The king for his part did not appreciate the diminution of his powers nor the yangban their loss of privileges. There was outrage at the fact that the Korean cabinet continued passing reforms despite the murder of Queen Min on 8 October 1895 under the direction of the Japanese legation minister, Miura Gorō (1847–1926). An edict that was supposed to symbolise the ‘modernising’ thrust of the Kabo Reforms, namely, the 7  Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 29. 8  Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 110–111.

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cutting of the male topknot that reformers argued symbolised subservience to China and a backward-looking mindset, caused deep anger among the literati, who led bands of Righteous Armies (ŭibyŏng) in forays against Japanese and Korean government troops. But the final blow to the Kabo Reforms came when King Kojong was smuggled out of the palace and into the Russian Legation compound on 11 February 1896, where he was safe from Japanese threats and interference.

The Independence Club

The failure of much of the Kabo reform programme caused tremendous anxiety among the radical reformers, who were cognisant of the precarious position in which the country was placed. The Sino-Japanese War might have finally put an end to the interference of Chinese pretenders to sovereign rights over the peninsula such as Li Hung-chang and Yüan Shih-k’ai, but that simply left Russia and Japan manoeuvring against each other for dominant influence over the Korean peninsula. It was this blatant jockeying for power in such an open manner that moved the diplomatic historian, George Lensen, to name it a ‘balance of intrigue.’9 And intrigue it was. The radical leaders were as sure as the leaders of the Righteous Armies that Korea’s national survival was under grave threat and they feared lest the programme of the Kabo Reforms was the last chance, now fast slipping away. They were doubly dismayed to discover that the reforms and the murder of Queen Min had inspired guerrilla action among isolationist groups rather than confirming in the minds of the élite and commoner that only thorough-going reform designed, passed and implemented by Koreans themselves would save Korea from foreign domination. The flight of Kojong to the Russian Legation compound in February 1896 only deepened anti-reform and anti-foreign sentiments. Premier Kim Hongjip was lynched and the principle designer of reform, Yu Kiljun, escaped certain death only by fleeing to Japan, as did Prince Pak Yŏnghyo, a former leader of the Enlightenment Party. Russia immediately took full advantage of this turn of events to gain a number of economic concessions and so set off at train of events that led to the Russo-Japanese War a decade later and, as a consequence, the loss of Korea’s national independence. It was therefore of tremendous importance that the reform lobby refined and spread among a reasonably 9  George Lensen, Balance of Intrigue: International Rivalry in Korea and Manchuria, 1884–1889, vols 1 & 2 (Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1982).

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broad section of society its doctrines of an independent nation-state founded on a new cultural, social and political order, before the final collapse of the traditional dynastic order. Perhaps the most salient features of social change at the end of the nineteenth century were the rise of an active commercial class and the growth of farming associations and power, conditions that supported the radical reformers’ campaign to change the idea that the people were the subjects of a monarch to the notion that the people were citizens of a state, loyal to the nation. In concrete form this involved the growth of commercial trading establishments and modern limited companies controlled independently of the government. The opening of ports and the treaties of 1876 to 1888 had raised the profile and augmented the wealth of this commercial class. Hence, the idea of a national economy distinct from the royal treasury was given substance. The Tonghak movement had given farmers also a sense of themselves as a group across local and even larger regional boundaries, and the idea of doing away with traditional landlord-tenant arrangements had been expressed in a popular Tonghak slogan, poguk anmin, meaning protect the nation and secure the people’s welfare. The development of this consciousness among farmers was matched, but in a different way, by the new and growing class of labourers— wharfies, or longshoremen, and miners especially—who had little connection with land, more so with urban centres, no sure position or identity, were easily exploited, and were ready to join any movement that promoted citizens’ equality. Included in this group were emancipated slaves and untouchables, the outcome of one Kabo reform that survived. Finally, there was a new intelligentsia formed principally of former Enlight­ enment Party members who were returning from exile in China, Japan and the USA, such as Pak Yŏnghyo, Sŏ Chaep’il (1866–1951) and Yun Ch’iho (1865–1945), who learned on 15 August 1894 they had been ‘pardoned.’10 A self-conscious set of intellectuals, they now viewed violent measures—the Kapsin Coup, Peasant War, Righteous Armies—as both inefficacious and beside the point. The Korean political system was an anachronism: why spend time and lives defending it? The only relevant point now, they argued, was the development of a fully-fledged modern nation-state, a nation-state on an equal footing with other nation-states in a world made up of nation-states. They called for legal, constitutional means of achieving thorough reform, which required the formation of ‘public opinion.’ The new citizen class of technicians, professionals, farmers, labourers, freed slaves, and women should all support the new intellectuals. And indeed, during the three years’ duration of the Independence 10  Yun Ch’iho Diary: 15 August 1894.

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Club, from 1896 to 1898, these ideas did fall on fertile soil, aided largely by three factors. First, the Tonghak movement had demonstrated that foreign interference directly affected the livelihood of the common people. Secondly, it was clear that both the farmers and the intellectuals needed each other against the still very strong power of the yangban bureaucrats and landlords. Finally, the positive effects of the Kabo social reforms now penetrating society validated the call for legal methods. Formation of the Independence Club In April 1896, Sŏ Chaep’il returned from exile in the USA, where he had not only trained as a medical doctor but had become a US citizen. Rejecting an offer from the Korean government to serve as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sŏ accepted instead an invitation by King Kojong to serve as a government advisor. He immediately set about organising the Independence Club. At this stage Yun Ch’iho was on a diplomatic mission to Russia, followed by a sojourn in France, but on his return in early 1897 he committed himself to club matters. Yun initiated public club debates and a proto-democratic forum for popular participation in national affairs called the Assembly of All Peoples, led a number of effective memorial campaigns to the throne on reform policies and from May 1898 served as its president. The Independence Club was formed out of a range of groups so diverse that Yun Ch’iho worried that it might prove to be “a conglomeration of indigestible elements.”11 The main energy of the club, however, came from the heirs of the Enlightenment Party, who had learned from the mistakes of the Kapsin Coup and were committed to popular participation in political change. Members of what was called the Seoul Club, they were radical reformers who, initially at least, were on friendly terms with Westerners and several of whom were or soon became Protestant Christians. In exile many had gained first-hand experience of Western cultures. Although less numerous than other groups within the Independence Club, the radical reformers were far more articulate, organised and active, and it is with their methods and ideas that the Independence Club came to be associated. The largest group consisted of moderate Confucian reformists, who were less iconoclastic in relation to tradition than the Seoul Club intellectuals and proposed the line of synthesising traditional values with new science and social thought. Unlike the isolationist Confucians who believed no fusion of Eastern and Western traditions was possible, this group advocated a marriage of reformed Confucianism with civil politics and a modernised economy, and 11  Yun Chi’iho Diary: 25 July 1897.

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many became more radical over time. Typical of this group were the Confucian scholars and activists, Pak Ŭnsik (1859–1926) and Kim Yunsik (1835–1922), who based their trenchant criticism of Korean polity and society on a ‘heretical’ school of Confucianism, and pioneered a degree of fusion with Western ideas. The Independence Club drew support also from a somewhat intermediary group led by Yi Sangjae (1850–1927) and Namgung Ŏk (1863–1939), who were constitutional monarchists and who attempted with some success to bring the radical and moderate reform parties together. They played an important role in making pivotal ideas of Western political and social theory understandable and therefore more palatable to the more traditional members. To some degree, they saved the Independence Club from being cut off from the people by the very ideas that it wished to disseminate among them. Before long, Yi Sangjae turned to Christianity, as did Namgung Ŏk. Independence Club Activities One of the most important innovations of the Independence Club was its publication of the Tongnip sinmun (Independence Newspaper), a newspaper printed entirely in the vernacular script, the first time since the invention of the script in the fifteenth century that this had occurred. This was an important step in the move from the old, overarching order based on the cosmology of the Chinese Classics to a new national order based on the indigenous language and focused on local realities. Other innovations under the aegis of the Independence Club included the construction of a large monument to the nation called the Independence Arch, still standing in the West Gate district of Seoul, composition of the national anthem and design of the national flag. These were the symbolic hallmarks of the new nationalist ideology, and as such gave visible form to the Club manifesto printed in the first issue of the Tongnip sinmun on 7 April 1896: KOREA FOR THE KOREANS A periodical in the interests of the Korean people. First of all, being without prejudice or partiality, we have no connection with any political faction, nor do we make any distinction touching rank or ancestry. We recognize only Koreans, and resolve to speak for Korea alone and to its citizens with strict impartiality. We stand, not for the people of Seoul only, but for the citizens of the whole nation in all its parts. We pledge to inform the people of the government’s activities, and the government of the condition of the people, so that each knowing in detail the affairs of the other, both shall profit and all resentment and mutual distrust may be laid to rest.

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We are not publishing this newspaper to make a profit and have kept the price low accordingly. Further, we use only the vernacular script so that all may be able to read it, and have laid the contents out in convenient sections so that all may be able to understand it. Much of the Independence Club campaign through its newspaper comprised critiques of antecedents, such as the Kapsin Coup, and of élite and populist traditions contained in Confucianism and shamanism. But the main focus was on new ideas about the nation, the state and the world. At first there were no explicit political or national goals, but as the composition of its membership stabilised, the central desideratum became self-reliant statehood in which all domestic and foreign policies would be determined in accordance with the will and interests of the Korean people. To secure national rights, the Club leaders insisted that what was required was a complete, final and total repudiation of the habits ingrained in the political establishment of ‘bowing the head to China in the morning and the knee to Russia in the evening.’ Whereas any genuine nation had to be anchored consciously on its own history and culture, Korea’s subservience to China, consisting as it had in a preoccupation with Chinese civilisation, history and political interests had spiritually and materially enervated Korea. Korea needed its own version of the Japanese Meiji Restoration of 1868, or it would fall prey to the ambitions of other powers. The Club campaign stimulated a reinterpretation of Korean history as a national history as opposed to the traditional ‘toadyism’ that, if it bothered with the Korean peninsula at all, viewed it as an adjunct of China. The Korean vernacular script, long dismissed by the literati as a vulgar script and sometimes a woman’s script, was named the ‘national script’ for the first time. Under the guiding energies of Chu Sigyŏng (1876–1914), a graduate of the Pae Jae Methodist School in Seoul and founder of the Institute of Korean Language, scholars began serious linguistic investigations of the Korean vernacular, systematising its spelling and syntax and producing a dictionary. In a direct affront to yangban privilege, an ‘Abolish Classical Chinese, Employ the National Script’ campaign was launched. Intimately related to the people’s self-perception, it was intended that this and related campaigns would create a sense of solidarity among ordinary Koreans as national citizens and by opening the doors to new knowledge would enable the populace to participate in or at least support modernisation of the state. The Club’s newspaper, the Tongnip sinmun, devoted editorial after editorial to civic rights, citizens’ responsibilities, parliamentary politics, new economic methods (including a very rosy view of capital outlay and investment principles), and the urgency of education in new knowledge.

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The first issue, on 7 April 1896, of the Tongnip Sinmun, the first newspaper to be published entirely in the vernacular script, han’gŭl. Photo by author.

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The traditional script of the literati and of all government records, Classical Chinese, is not only an entirely different script from the Korean vernacular, han’gŭl, but it is a completely different language, and one which virtually no commoner and very few women understood. The top section is in han’gŭl, the bottom in Classical Chinese. Photo by author.

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The most radical activity of the Club, and one which caused the government and the conservative scholars much consternation, was its implementation through the Assembly of All Peoples of ‘democratic patriotism,’ or the idea that the people must be trained to take responsibility for the management of their own nation. Although malicious charges were made that the Club leadership was following a covert agenda of installing a republican system, the stated aim was a constitutional monarchy, which was not a wholly novel idea: the arguments at the onset of the Chosŏn dynasty and several times later over the relation of the State Council to the monarchy concerned much the same issue bar the participation of the wider populace. But when conservatives argued that any elevation of people’s rights logically entailed the diminution of the monarch’s authority, Yun Ch’iho’s counter was of course novel: the stronger the people’s rights, the more elevated and legitimate the monarchy and the stronger the nation. The isolationists countered that while voting and citizens’ participation in national affairs might act as a check on despotic power, it also meant a thinly spread, unacceptably diluted sense of responsibility. Anything mistaken or wrong that was acted upon according to the ‘will of the citizens,’ would amount to only a tiny fraction of responsibility per person. To this Yun responded that ‘subjects’ have less responsibility than ‘citizens’ because they have no participation at all in decisions. The influence of Yun Ch’iho on Club activities and objectives was considerable, and he transformed the club from being a group of new intellectuals into something approaching a mass movement.12 The idea of commoners participating in political policy making is of course a call for mass politics, at the time a radical and frightening idea for many, and however much it might now be taken for granted is still more observed in theory than practice. Yun, whose father was a government minister, persuaded government officials and bureaucrats to join debates and meetings. He himself submitted numerous memorials on issues of modernisation, education and foreign affairs, and enjoyed a reasonably congenial relationship with King Kojong. In August 1897, Yun moved to incorporate commoners in the Assembly of All Peoples debates, an action that shifted the Club’s tactics towards mass protest and demonstrations against government policies and foreign exploitation. By 1898, the Club became involved in activist methods to block the sale and lease of national resources to foreign governments. In protest against the establishment of a Russo-Korean Bank, the Club called upon all members to swear 12  For an account of Yun Ch’iho’s and other leaders’ Independence Club activities and views, see Kenneth M. Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), chapter 2.

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an oath to fight it to the death, and membership cards were issued on this basis. On 10 March 1898, thousands joined anti-bank demonstrations on the central streets of Seoul. Although these were non-violent public rallies based generally on moral grounds, and this reliance on the power of moral remonstrance was a traditional literati strategy, the inclusion of non-literati was very new. Moreover, the rallies proved successful in preventing the grant of several concessions to Russia, Japan and the USA. Nevertheless, the overall trend was hardly reversed: between 1883 and 1898, twenty-one concessions of natural resources, territory and economic rights were made to Russian, Japanese, British, American, French and German governments and individuals. Rallies against government policy were at times successful, but in major instances were not. In response to attempts by the Minister of Education to revoke educational reforms, the Club engaged in memorials, petitions, demonstrations and direct negotiations with Kojong, as a result of which the minister was impeached. This kind of action, however, prompted most high officials to withdraw membership and even support from the Club, which thereupon began to turn more to mass support. Matters came to a head in late October 1898, when the Club protested against the government’s use of rougher elements of the Pedlars’ Guild (pobusang) to disrupt Club rallies and debates. Convening an Assembly of All Peoples meeting that consisted of a dozen or so social and political organisations that included students, urban gentry, commoners, monks and outcastes, Yun Ch’iho declared, “We are gathered here to deliberate upon a plan for a proper government and national security.” The Assembly remained in front of the palace grounds several days. On the second day, on 29 October, the famous Six Articles were presented to the court. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Termination of undue reliance on foreign powers. Prohibition of treaties alienating national resources and rights without proper approval of all Cabinet Ministers and the Speaker of the Privy Council. Consolidation of all state finances under the Ministry of Finance. Establishment of right to open trial for all criminal defendants. Transferral of right to appoint officials from monarch to government. Guarantee of actual implementation of laws and regulations.

At this point, a number of government officials stepped out and joined the gathered crowds, which was thereupon renamed the Assembly of Officials and People. The throne acceded to all six demands and a date was set for elections to the Privy Council. But this was a cynical move, and on the eve of the elections, on 4 November, the government went back on its promises and instead

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arrested the Club leaders, as indeed it had intended from the outset. This was not the end of the affair, or not quite. Protest rallies were organised and the indignation of the people was such that the government resorted to force: the Pedlars Guild was set upon the crowds, many of whom were seriously injured. Yun Ch’iho, no doubt on account of his father’s post and his good reputation with Kojong, was not jailed but dismissed from his position as Vice-President of the Privy Council and offered the mayoralty of Seoul. This he declined, and on his father’s advice accepted instead, as a kind of internal exile, the magistracy of Wŏnsan, an important trading port on the northeast coast. The experiment had in its immediate objectives failed but it had its sequel in the enlightenment movements of the 1900s and enjoyed a long legacy. One of its most active members in 1898, Rhee Syngman (1875–1965), became the founding president of the Republic of Korea in 1948.

The Enlightenment Movement

In October 1897, thirteen months before ordering the dissolution of the Independence Club, the monarchy had issued an ‘Imperial decree’ that proclaimed the former Kingdom of Korea was henceforth an empire ruled by an emperor. The purpose of this elevation of the status of the nation and its ruler to the highest level was to recast the country during a period of domestic and foreign threat as a sovereign, fully independent state under the firm, respected leadership of its monarchy. The Independence Club had supported this assertion of national independence: it had earlier organised the erection of the Independence Arch in place of the ‘Welcoming Imperial Grace Gate’ through which Chinese imperial missions had passed for half a century; and Yun Ch’iho gave a speech in honour of the decree.13 The kingdom was renamed Great Han (Tae Han), and a new name was chosen for the imperial reign: 1897 became the First Year of Kwangmu. The Imperial decree was aimed at raising the prestige of the monarchy not only among foreign powers but also among the Korean populace at large. For a period of five years following the imprisonment of the leaders of the Independence Club, the monarchy carried out its own programme of reforms known as the Kwangmu Reforms, which addressed some pressing problems such as land management and the demand for expansion of education. But these reforms failed sufficiently to address key international and domestic 13  Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 72–73; Wells, New God, New Nation, 61–62. Privately, however, Yun thought no good would come of it: Yun Ch’iho Diary: 12 October 1897.

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issues. Although the Japanese and Russians had agreed in principle to a policy of Russian expansion into Manchuria in exchange for Japan’s pursuit of economic and political interests on the Korean peninsula, this understanding rested on fine-drawn distinctions that were fast breaking down, and a serious confrontation was looming. In Korea itself, the thirst for meaningful political participation at all levels had far from abated, and the Kwangmu educational policy contained no promise of improving on a situation where little more than a quarter of one per cent of the population of around twelve million were engaged in important areas of political policy and administration. Among the literate class, there was a growing sense of unease at the seeming inability of the traditional Confucian view of the world to cope with the demands of the times. At the grass-roots level, especially in the provinces, the short-lived experiment under the Tonghak with a more egalitarian, community-based organisation of society had given way to increased lack of cooperation and communication between the administration and people. To make matters worse, whereas the rise in social power of the ‘middle people,’ or chungin, mostly local government administrators a level below the yangban, certainly contributed to the breakdown of a social system wherein the only meaningful division was between the yangban and the rest, it did nothing to alleviate the hardships of the farming population. On the contrary, the chungin were adept at conspiring with the landowners to extract more taxes from the farmers and were responsible in no small part for the rural disturbances and uprisings from the middle of the nineteenth century.14 The consequent lack of regard for any of the central government’s initiatives or officials had important side effects, which distinguish the Korean case from that of Japan. The bulk of the people felt a very weak identification with the dynasty; the extended family was the largest unit of loyalty. This had a two-fold effect. In the first place, the king could not rely on popular loyalty in times of stress. In the second place, neither the reformers nor the isolationists could effectively mobilise the masses around loyalty to the monarch, as in Japan, or even around a notion of a national community. Thus, in Korea the isolationists and the Righteous Armies did not adopt the equivalent of their Japanese counterparts’ tennō jōi ideology, meaning ‘revere the emperor and expel the foreigner,’ because the king could not serve as a banner under which to rally the people. They had, many decades since, chosen instead the more abstract slogan, wijŏng ch’ŏksa, meaning ‘uphold the right and reject the wrong.’ Likewise, the radical reformers were severely handicapped in their nationalist endeavours, 14  James B. Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyŏngwŏn and the Late Chosŏn Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 685–686.

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since there was only a weak pattern of loyalty among the people to transfer to the idea of a nation. Under these circumstances, there sprang up around the country groups of scholars and concerned persons of lower social status who committed themselves to a movement to ‘enlighten’ the people as a necessary step towards creating a strong enough identity among the populace to build a secure, independent nation-state. The movement had no headquarters or membership or formal identity: the term ‘enlightenment movement’ is extended to all activities that aimed to introduce new knowledge about the natural world, new ideas about society, politics and the economy, new visions of the way the world of nations fitted together, and arguments for changes to Korea that would strengthen it in the face of the present array of challenges. Many, but by no means all of the enlightenment campaigns were led by former reformists, such as Independence Club members who were released from jail in the early 1900s. Some campaigners proposed, for their time, radical measures to mobilise the masses on behalf of the nation. The dynamic reformist Yu Kiljun, for example, wrote compellingly on the ethics and benefits of drawing the common workers into the national enterprise by providing nightclasses for their education and impressing on them their value to the nation. Yu himself was very patrician in his outlook, and regarded himself as a patron or benefactor of the working stratum. Give them work and the rudiments of modern education, he argued, and they would build the new nation. Yu was nothing if not idealistic and could not see the exploitative core of modernity. For him, an educated workforce was a valued workforce, not the paid minions of the later twentieth century. Pak Ŭnsik, the moderate reformer, further elaborated the moderate reform position of fusing traditional Korean values and principles with those of the West, particularly in educational and social philosophy. The mind was the ruler of the body: every thought that arose was to be examined and if good, extended to others, but if bad, stopped in its tracks. If one’s mind was clear, no doubt could arise over what was right or wrong. Pak’s position was rooted in the Confucian view of the human being, whereby sound knowledge was the basis of a sound society and state. Alongside this, Pak toyed with socialDarwinism, but with a Confucian twist: the claim that the fittest and healthiest prevailed whereas the weak were eliminated was not in conflict with the maxims of benevolence and humaneness, because such marked the character only of the learned, wise and courageous, never of the weak and ignorant.15 .

15  Min-Hong Choi, A Modern History of Korean Philosophy (Seoul: Seong Moon Sa, 1980), 222–226.

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In this regard, Pak represented a fairly broad consensus that revealed the impact of the social-Darwinist Herbert Spencer’s ideas across East Asia through translations of his works in Chinese and Japanese. Pak supported the principles of democracy as then understood: the nation was an assembly of the citizenry and its power rested on the technology, wealth and patriotism of the people. Together with his Confucian regard for the power of education and his social-Darwinist views, this led Pak and his reformist colleagues to the view that advanced scientific knowledge and the formation of a united national ethic were the twin pillars of a strong, independent nation. He nevertheless wished to retain a central analogy from the neo-Confucian tradition. He portrayed the nation, and indeed the political organisation of society, as a family.16 In this he differed sharply from some of his more radical contemporaries such as Yun Ch’iho, who countered that this long-standing family-state metaphor had harmed the family because rather than the state becoming like a family, the family had itself become a political organisation, and rather than society being organised according to a pattern of the family, the family had become organised according to a society politically conceived and controlled. The family thus failed to develop and nourish the individual, wholly distorted its ethical focus, and precluded any active form of altruism flowing from family into society. One stream of the enlightenment activists, which we may term an irredentist movement, sought materials and examples in Korea’s ancient past on which to construct a history of the Korean people that countered both Japanese and Western ideas of the roots of civilisation. This stream, led by the prodigy Sin Ch’aeho (1880–1936), who as a leading editorial writer for the TaeHan maeil sinbo (Korea Daily News) during the Japanese Protectorate wrote scathing repudiations of Japanese versions of early Korea-Japan relations, reached back to the figure of Tan’gun rather than Kija as the founding exemplar of Korean civilisation, and in their histories claimed the territories north of the peninsula into Manchuria and at times down to the Liaodong Peninsula were historically and rightfully the domain of the Korean minjok (race or people of a nation). In this connection, Paektu Mountain (on the present border between North Korea and China) was made the seat of Tan’gun and thereby “a symbol of a sacred national territory . . . bestowed by Tan’gun to countless generations.”17 The enlightenment movement survived the creation of a Japanese Protectorate over Korea following its victory over Russia in September 1905, but 16  Pak Ŭnsik, “Nonsŏl (Editorial)”, TaeHan chaganghoe wŏlbo (Monthly Journal of the Korean Self-Strengthening Society), no. 1 (July 1906): 56–58. 17  Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 222.

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its days were numbered. Between 1906 and 1908, a number of nationalist societies were founded, such as the TaeHan Chaganghoe (Korean Self- Strengthening Society), the Sinminhoe (New Citizens’ Society) and the Ch’ŏngnyŏn hakuhoe (Youth Student Fraternity). Most of these societies published journals, which carried articles on education, industry, economic management and administrative reform, and campaigned for human rights at individual and national levels. Under the increasingly intrusive eye of the Japanese, however, such organizations were subjected to censorship and reprimand, and a number discontinued or went underground after 1908. Alongside the consciously nationalist organisations there were a number of ‘learned societies’ based in the different regions. These societies also published journals devoted to disseminating the ‘new learning’ as a necessary basis for a strong nation-state, but engaged in activities that were less openly hostile to the Japanese presence. A good example of these learned societies is the Honam hakhoe (Honam Learned Society), which was founded on 6 July 1907 at a meeting of 112 scholars residing in Honam, the south-western region of the peninsula. The first issue of its journal in June 1908 carried an article titled ‘The Education Debate,’ in which it was argued that the traditional system and content was no longer able to meet the demands of the state, for which only ‘new learning’ was appropriate. High tribute was paid to the eminent Chinese reformer Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and much was made of his observation that Korea’s future depended on reform of its education system. As it happens, Liang in 1907 sighed pessimistically over Korea’s future, in the light of its inept leadership; and a decade earlier the Korean reformer Yun Ch’iho shook his head with similar misgivings over China’s prospects, citing its corruption and inertia. And in 1911, the centuries-old Chinese monarchical tradition came crashing down before the onslaught of Sun Yat-sen’s republican march; while in Korea, one year earlier, in August 1910, the old dynastic order fell before the expanding Japanese empire. In neither country did the monarchical system revive.

Chapter 6

The Nation in Question Hyŏng-sik looked at Kye-hyang as she walked beside him. He thought of the distance between Kye-hyang and the old man. That distance was infinite. Yi Kwangsu, The Heartless (1917), trans. Ann Sung-Hi Lee

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of manifold, deep and rapid changes on the peninsula. On the political level, the country fell under Japanese rule and was organised largely in accordance with the objectives of the expanding Japanese empire. Occupation by a foreign nation added great urgency to the debate already begun in the latter half of the previous century over the definition of the Korean nation-state in the ‘modern age.’ A variety of nationalist movements arose, finding their most unified expression in the famed March First uprising of 1919. At the same time, tremendous change occurred in the social, economic and cultural life of the Korean people, change which was associated with industrial developments, the rise of new religions, the introduction of ‘modern’ ideas and practices, challenges to traditions on gender, expansion of education and the breakdown of the traditional institutions centred on the yangban aristocracy. Besides the question of nationalism, therefore, this period was also a time of accelerating changes that affected more and more Koreans in more and more detail. It is evident that these changes prompted Koreans to think about their culture and national make-up as much as the fact of Japanese colonial rule itself. For by the onset of the twentieth century, it was no longer possible to understand the world principally in terms of the Five Basic Relationships, to explain what was good or bad or proper or wrong in accordance with standard prescriptions for human interaction, or to restore harmony by reasserting names whose meanings were inextricably associated with a vertical conception of status, power and privilege. Imperialism, the challenge of a whole civilisation full of energy and achievements that partook of a different view of the world, the concept of independent, sovereign, formally equal nation-states, an economic order in which the peasants were not secure as the majority and in which the middle-men were pivotal—all these were of a level and scope beyond the traditional compass of relations and largely insensible to a rectification of names in the established, time-worn sense. Now, names had to be rectified in accordance with the rise of mass society, a kind of rectification © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004300057_008

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not provided for in the traditions of Korea or any other civilisation around the world, and one for which it is hazardous to claim that any place or culture was adequately prepared. Explanations of a changing domestic and international order were required, for which new frameworks were sought. One major framework was knowledge: Korean scholars were very learned in the classical traditions but were, with a few notable exceptions, dismissive and therefore not well informed about the leaps made over the past century by Europe and North America in technological invention and know-how and the scientific endeavour that underpinned these advances. Alongside this development of technical expertise had grown a number of critical changes in the concept, organisation and practice of society and economics that befitted the development of mass society in western cultures. Taking their lead from the nineteenth-century revivers of the eighteenth-century sirhak or practical learning school, and spurred by Yu Kiljun’s revelations of western knowledge and socio-political ideals and institutions, a significant, vocal minority of Korea’s highly educated men called for a whole new education system. Another major framework was religion. Christianity, which had become associated with a new foundation for civilisation through the historical confluence of the arrival of its missions and the introduction of new knowledge, sought to provide a more comprehensive explanation of a world in which Korea was becoming a casualty: one in which ignorance was a sin and attainment of spiritual power would provide for all other species of positive power. Buddhism, which had long been demoralised, made a limited comeback and proposed a framework of suffering and its relief. Both religions claimed that only an understanding of the negative (sin, suffering, karma) could provide an understanding comprehensive enough to explain Korea’s position and responsibilities and lay the groundwork for a positive road ahead. They were joined and at times led by C’hŏndogyo, the Religion of the Heavenly Way, a remodelled Tonghak movement, which by the early 1900s pursued its national aims through schooling, the media, and predominantly rural-based institutions and programmes. Another explanation related to structure. The idea of social relationships was not to be drawn from analogies to relationships between members of a family but from study of the broader structures of society: economic, political and institutional. Everyone and every group in every nation, and every nation itself, the self-proclaimed progressives argued, related to a structure, from status, to class to imperialism. What part of the overall structure one belonged to and how one related to the other parts depended, again, on acquisition and implementation of relevant knowledge, which for many reformers included knowledge of the spiritual origins, nature and destiny of humankind but for

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the rising socialists rested on an understanding of the class struggle that provided the driving force of history.

Japan’s Annexation of Korea

The search for new frameworks was given added urgency by changes in the international order of East Asia that eventuated in Japan’s rise to virtually unassailable dominance in the region. There was some substance to the spectre of looming Western supremacy in northeast Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but fear lest it become a full reality nourished Meiji Japan’s ambition to offset Western power in the west Pacific and act as ‘guardian’ of the region’s integrity. Accordingly, Japan became an imperial power whose chief colonial energies between 1890 and 1942 were directed to Formosa (Taiwan), Korea and Manchuria. This larger and grander mission aside, a militarily restive and economically energetic Japan envisaged definite strategic and commercial benefits in so enlarging its political territory. These intended benefits largely determined the nature of Japan’s colonial policies in Korea between 1905 and 1945. As in Japan’s earlier war against Ch’ing China in 1894–1895, so in its war against Russia in 1904–1905 the Korean peninsula became a theatre of war, and once again the Japanese maintained that strong influence over the peninsula was vital to its own security and other national interests. On 8 February 1904, Japan used Korea’s Inch’ŏn and Yŏsu harbours to launch the attacks that stunned the Western world by laying waste to the Russian fleet. Two days later, Japanese troops began massing in Korea, which on 23 January had declared its neutrality in the conflict. Japan continued to rout the Russian forces and by September 1905 began taking the spoils. These spoils included the establishment on 17 November of a Protectorate over Korea headed by a ResidentGeneral, whereupon one of the most enlightened and effective of the royal consort Min clan, Min Yŏngwhan (1861–1905), committed suicide, prompting the same supreme expression of dissent by a dozen more high officials. The Protectorate also alienated most of the ‘progressives’ who had earlier considered Japan’s Meiji Restoration a possible model for Korea to follow. Yun Ch’iho, who was offered the post of Foreign Minister, countered that no self-respecting Korean could join the new cabinet, withdrew from official politics and bent his energies to promoting education, industry and Christianity in the country. On the other hand, the Japanese were quick to elevate reasonably sympathetic officials, such as Yi Wanyong (1858–1926), to leading positions in the new cabinet and to encourage pro-Japanese elements among the remnants of the Tonghak movement, known as the Ilchinhoe.

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Determined armed resistance by Koreans took the form of revitalising the Righteous Armies. The Righteous Armies in this incarnation were not pushing the former wijŏng ch’ŏksa ideology but more specifically the recovery and maintenance of national sovereignty. Their campaigns entailed considerable cost to villagers in their areas of operation; battles were gruesome; little quarter was given and little taken; and medical facilities were scarce. In March 1906, a Righteous Army of over one thousand men under Min Chŏngsik (1848–?) seized a large region in Ch’ungch’ŏng Province to the south of Seoul, which they controlled till the end of May. On learning of this offensive, the revered leader of the isolationist, neo-Confucian Old Guard, Ch’oe Ikyŏn, injected his band of literati and former wijŏng ch’ŏksa activists into the fray. Matters took a more serious turn in 1907, when King Kojong sent secret emissaries to the conference convened in The Hague, at the suggestion of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, to seek peaceful means of resolving the question of colonial territories. Kojong’s object was to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the Protectorate was not the will of the Korean monarchy, but his emissaries were rejected on the grounds that Korea had no legal diplomatic representation! Thereupon one of the emissaries, Yi Sangsŏl, committed suicide, and his tomb and a memorial in his honour can be visited to this day in The Hague. The reporting of the royal envoy and its fate on 3 July 1907 in the TaeHan maeil sinbo, the independent Korean newspaper associated with the historian Sin Ch’aeho, prompted a series of measures that further consolidated Japan’s hold over the peninsula. The Japanese Resident-General, Prince Itō Hirobumi, ordered Yi Wanyong to force Kojong to abdicate, which he duly achieved on 17 July. The Self-Strengthening Society, of which Yun Ch’iho and a number of other progressives were leaders, organised a protest the next day, which developed into a violent demonstration that gave Itō an excuse to ban its activities. On 20 July, Prince Pak Yŏnghyo vainly attempted to mobilise the demoralised Korean troops but was arrested before he could proceed. The new monarch, Kojong’s son Sunjong, was ordered to endorse a Japanese Imperial Edict disbanding all Korean army units. Sunjong complied perforce on 31 July, sparking a bloody but short-lived rebellion in the army. The forlorn realisation by the Righteous Army leadership that a proud, civilised order was sinking into a maze of dark and crooked paths was immortalised in a poem written by Chŏng Hwanjik (1854–1907) on the eve of his execution: Though death lie in wait, can I betray my soul? Righteousness seems heavy and death rather light, But to whom can I trust affairs when I am gone? So thinking in silence, dawn approaches already.

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But the Righteous Army resistance continued. In August, an astute commander named Min Kŭngho achieved an alliance of professional but now disbanded soldiers, disaffected literati and remnants of Tonghak and took over large areas in central and southern Korea, as well as the military stronghold of Kanghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River and regions in Hwanghae Province north of Seoul. As plans to capture Seoul were drawn up, a force of some 10,000 amassed in Yangju, Kyŏnggi Province. In January 1908, they fought a fierce battle around the East Gate of Seoul but failed to take the city. Fighting continued, with 1,452 engagements involving 69,832 soldiers recorded in 1908 and 898 engagements with 25,763 soldiers in 1909.1 But as guerrilla warfare became increasingly hazardous, resistance fighters looked to the now more commonplace resort of sabotage and assassination, culminating in the famous assassination of Prince Itō Hirobumi at the Harbin Railway station in Manchuria by the patriot An Chunggŭn (1879–1910), an act that hastened the by now inevitable annexation of the kingdom into the new Japanese empire. The formal annexation of Korea on 22 August 1910 was almost universally hailed in Japan as a great achievement, and despite treaty clauses which Koreans believed obligated Britain and the United States of America to come to its assistance, no Western power expressed any opposition to the move. On the contrary, the secret Taft-Katsura Agreement of July 1905 provided for cross-recognition of United States power over the Philippines and Japanese control of Korea, while the more open Second Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed one month later recognised Japan’s right to ‘guide’ the peninsula. The Japanese armed forces were thus given a free hand in crushing the remaining guerrilla resistance of the Korean Righteous Armies and in implementing colonial rule through the Government-General of Chōsen. To the majority of Koreans, however, the annexation was a humiliation and it is often referred to as the ‘national shame’ (kukch’i). The ensuing thirty-six years up to liberation from Japan in August 1945 were fraught with tension between Japanese colonial policy of assimilation and Korean nationalist and nationalist/socialist aspirations for autonomy. Quite apart from the guerrilla campaigns and other forms of opposition to the annexation, Japan’s objectives on the Korean peninsula thereafter were greatly frustrated by the adoption of an assimilation policy, the assumptions on which the policy was based, and the inconsistent nature of its application. In summing up the official rationale of the assimilation policy, General Terauchi Masatake, the first Governor-General, disingenuously stated that it was 1  Government-General of Chōsen: Chōsen no hogo narabi ni heigō, Chapter 1, Section 8, in Chōsen tōchi shiryō (Tokyo: Kankoku shiryō kenkyūsho, 1970), vol. 4.

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“a natural and inevitable course of things that two peoples whose . . . interests are identical, and who are bound together with brotherly feelings, should amalgamate and form one body.”2 Dissenting voices among a few Japanese scholars and politicians over this egregious assumption were ignored, and despite the magnitude of the March First Uprising in 1919, which created a short period of diplomatic embarrassment and administrative panic, assimilation remained the official policy throughout Japan’s rule of Korea.3 Logically, the assimilative principle ought to have involved the absorption of Korea into Japanese political structures and rights. This inconvenience had been circumvented in 1910 by recourse to the argument that the Meiji Constitution did not anticipate the annexation of Korea. In the wake of the March First demonstrations, Premier Hara Kei in 1920 conceded that “Korea and Japan proper forming equally integral parts of the same empire, no distinction in principle should be made between them, and it is the ultimate purpose of the Japanese government in due course to treat Korea as in all respects on the same footing with Japan proper.”4 But at no point did this principle ever threaten the actual distinction that was embodied in the separation of the Japanese Diet from the Government-General of Chōsen and the independent, almost unlimited power of the latter in Korea. Having discarded political participation, the Government-General adopted education as the means of Koreans’ cultural and social assimilation. According to Article 2 of General Terauchi’s Education Ordinance of August 1911, “the essential principle of education in Chosen shall be the making of loyal and good subjects [of Japan].” For this purpose, primary education became the main focus of government schooling. In attempting to implement its educational policies, however, the Government-General was confronted with two major existing systems that were entirely different from each other. On the one hand there was Confucian education, the principle seat of which was the Sŏnggyun’gwan or Confucian Academy in Seoul, proud heir to a long tradition of Korean scholarship. Perhaps too proud a reminder of this tradition, the Sŏnggyun’gwan was replaced in 1911 by the Kyŏnghagwŏn, and overall the

2  Quoted in Dong Won-Mo, “Japanese Colonial Policy and Practice in Korea, 1905–1945: A Study in Assimilation,” PhD diss. (Georgetown University, 1965), 25. 3  A thorough analysis of Japan’s policy and practice of assimilation in Korea can be found in Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009) 4  Quoted in Henry Chung, The Case of Korea (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1921), 168.

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administration experienced few difficulties in bending Confucian schooling to its own objectives. On the other hand there was a new but expanding, predominantly Christian-based school system that proved less amenable and was frequently embroiled in tussles with the Japanese regime over curricular content. In 1915 the Government-General attempted to curtail the expansion and influence of this private system through ordinances that required teachers to be proficient in Japanese and prohibited religious instruction. As a result, many elementary schools closed down and but for the relaxation of these regulations following the 1919 March First uprising, the existence of all non-government, especially religion-based schooling would have remained precarious. Education was not during this period a universal obligation, and the failure of the Japanese colonial education system to mould any significant number of Koreans into loyal citizens of the empire (perhaps 18% of Koreans were fluent in Japanese by 1945) was attended by a correspondingly heavy reliance on the arms of the law. The judiciary was not independent of the GovernmentGeneral. There was no jury system for Koreans unlike for Japanese, and the supreme and all higher courts were presided over by Japanese judges throughout the period. The implementation of the law was not generally a great deal harsher than had been the case before 1910—flogging was abolished as a form of punishment in 1920—but the military and civilian police were plentiful, intrusive and feared. It has been observed that colonial Korea was one of the most highly policed countries in the world, with one police officer, military or civil, for every 400 Koreans.5 It was the discriminatory nature of the law that caused most discontent. For the Japanese, one criminal code applied, for the Koreans another, and the greater severity of the latter confirmed in minds of Koreans conscious of legal systems elsewhere their belief that Japan was impeding Korea’s social advancement. The rule of the Government-General was thus characterised by efficiency on the one hand and a damaging discrimination on the other. As GovernorsGeneral Saitō Makoto (1919–1931) and Ugaki Kazushige (1931–1936) discovered to their distress, the economic and social interests of the Japanese settlers in Korea and the ambitions of the armed forces were inimical to efforts to effect any cultural assimilation of the Korean populace, if indeed any such intention

5  Marius B. Jansen, Japan and China: From War to Peace, 1894–1972 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1975), 463.

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existed.6 From the mid-1930s, Japan tightened its hold over the nation even more, a hold it only relinquished when forced to do so by its defeat at the close of World War II.

Economic Developments

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the further development of a Korean capitalist class and its middle-class retainers that had their origins in the previous century. The actual burgeoning of these new classes, and with them an industrial labour-force, became more obvious in the 1930s but was visible already by 1910. Those who had been in their teens during the ‘enlightenment’ period of the 1890s and 1900s were now in their twenties or thirties. The earlier call for commercial activity and capital formation was by 1910 becoming more of a reality. The economic ‘modernisation’ this implies was certainly under way and would no doubt have continued its momentum in any case. But while it is important to acknowledge that capitalism was not simply an imposition on Korea by Japan, it is also necessary to recognise that it was under colonial conditions that capitalism grew in Korea, something which certainly affected the nature of capital formation and to some degree social change. Land Management The land acquired by the Oriental Development Company on behalf of Japan from 1908 on was predominately former crown land and reclaimed or idle land. The small proportion of other land that fell into the company’s hands through the new registration laws came principally from poor peasant holdings, not from large estates. The original expectation that Japanese would migrate to Korea to buy up or otherwise acquire and settle on Korean farmland never materialised. Consequently, land use during the colonial period proved the exception to the general practice of Japanese directly owning or managing the economy. The status of traditional landholding was reinforced by the new registration laws, so that the period was a relatively good time for Korea’s landowning class, so long as they made good their opportunities and did not embark on 6  The evidence mined by scholars on this point strongly suggests that the true intent of the “cultural policy” introduced for hardly one decade after the 1919 uprising was to keep tabs on Korean cultural movements in order to control and direct them, not to support Korean endeavours to develop according to their own cultural proclivities. See Michael Edson Robinson, Cultural Movements in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989) and Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies.

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open opposition to the colonial regime. Small-scale holdings declined, however, and with this decline the rate of tenancy over the colonial period climbed from less than 40% to nearly 60% of the farming population. At the same time, the numbers of Koreans emigrating to Manchuria in search of arable land rose significantly, amounting to some 238,000 immigrants by 1912.7 Industry, Trade, and Commerce Agriculture remained the most important industry in Korea throughout the period, although a structural shift towards secondary and heavy industries began in the mid-1930s. The proportion of the population engaged in agriculture in 1920 was around 80%; by the late 1930s this had dropped to just over 75%. The structural shift is more apparent, however, if one compares the figures for non-agricultural production, which increased from 11% of total output value at the beginning of the colonial period to 38% at the end. Although some genuine development of Korea’s economic and even social infrastructure did occur, the guiding principle for industrial policy was the demands of the empire as a whole and of Japan in particular. The chief agricultural interest of the Japanese was rice production. The removal in 1913 of the foreign rice import tariff from rice grown in Korea indicated the Japanese intention of integrating Korean rice production into the home economy. In the 1920s, a number of plans were pursued to increase the rice output of Korean farms in order to achieve imperial self-sufficiency in rice and provide a cheap supply of rice to Japan’s growing urban workforce, which had rioted in 1918 and 1920 over the shortage of rice exacerbated by World War I. As a result, net imports of rice from Korea by Japan increased by more than seven times over the period 1915 to 1935. This was made possible largely through land-reclamation and incremental improvement of seed and farming technology. During the same period, however, per capita Korean consumption of rice fell and their diet was supplemented by maize and millet. Japan’s military involvement in China from 1937 especially ensured that the empire’s pressure on Korea’s rice continued through to 1945. The strengthening of the landownership system and a plentiful supply of agricultural labour gave landlords a relatively free hand in keeping land rent and taxes as high as the market permitted. This situation is reflected in the very high number of farmers’ strikes and protests through the 1920s and 1930s. No longer busy seeking political posts, some landlords invested their proceeds in non-agricultural industries such as textile manufacture or in banking 7  Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 235.

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establishments. But the landowners’ traditional exclusive access to wealth was challenged by initiatives taken by mostly non-élites in the commercial arena. For instance, Cho Mansik (1882–19?) from the small owner-cultivator class joined up with Yi Sŭnghun (1864–1930) in small-scale wholesaling and retailing ventures to the point where they were able to establish a school, a local library, and similar public ventures. The tenant farmer Pak Hŭngsik is well known for his rise to the position of founding president of the Hwashin Department Store. It was these new opportunities that lay behind the ‘selfhelp’ rationale of Cho Mansik’s Chosŏn Mulsan Changnyŏhoe (Korean Products Promotion Society). Koreans also took advantage of the abolition of the official monopoly of trade from the end of the nineteenth century, which gave rise to a new breed of merchant, the kaekchu. These middlemen took advantage also of opportunities afforded by the colonial use of Korea as a source of Japan’s rice, which they traded in return for goods manufactured by the Japanese zaibatsu firms. A cluster of enterprises formed around their activities: construction of large warehouses, building and running of inns for commercial travellers, supply of packaging and transport of goods and banking institutions which held funds in safe-keeping for their merchant clients. Since the bulk of Korea’s trade was with Japan—around 95% of exports and 80% of imports in 1931—the Japanese relied heavily on the services of the kaekchu, who formed their own cooperative societies and rose from poverty to reasonable wealth. Another development during the colonial period was the joint-venture system involving Japanese and Korean enterprises: most of the corporate capital of consequence in which Korean businessmen were involved was held in joint Korean-Japanese companies. Some Korean businessmen succeeded in operating independent companies. The most well-known of these are the Koch’ang Kim brothers, Kim Yŏnsu and Kim Sŏngsu (1891–1955), who took advantage of their fertile landholdings, the rice export market and the more relaxed company laws after 1920 to develop an independent textile industry, the Seoul Spinning and Weaving Company, into a prototype of the modern Korean family-centred chaebŏl conglomerates. But such were exceptional at the time and depended on judicious give and take with the colonial authorities.8 From 1931, in conjunction with Japan’s creation of Manchukuo and its subsequent designs on North China, the Government-General pursued rapid industrialisation of northern Korea and greater exploitation of the area’s 8  For in-depth studies of business culture during the colonial period, see Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876– 1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), and Dennis L. MacNamara, The Colonial Origins of Korean Enterprise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

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mineral resources. A notable feature of this industrialisation was the incorporation into the urban labour force of large numbers of young women, who were paid a pittance and suffered difficult working and living conditions. Male labourers were better off, but despite the change to more skilled production the proportion of Korean engineers and technical personnel to Japanese remained low—never more than 20%—and Korean workers in these new industries were paid roughly 40% less than Japanese workers in Korea. An attempt by Governor-General Ugaki to redress this discrimination in 1933 was abandoned in the face of strong Japanese opposition. The industrialisation policy caused internal migration from farm to factory and, as mentioned earlier, effected the first noticeable shift from an agricultural towards a secondary industrial economy.

Independence Movements

Early in 1919, Kim Kyusik (1881–1950), a lone, self-exiled Korean nationalist, travelled a devious route from Shanghai to Versailles on a hopeless mission. His task was to petition the Paris Peace Conference for his country’s independence from Japan on the basis of the principle of national self-determination espoused by the President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson. An American journalist in Shanghai, Thomas Millard, saw “slight chance” of success, although “in principle the case of Korea is as much entitled to consideration as the case of Yugoslavia, Poland and Czech-Slovia.”9 In the course of his campaign at Versailles, Kim Kyusik was referred to the assistant to the American delegate Colonel House, Stephen Bonsal, who sympathized with his “fully justified complaints of the arrogant Japanese supremacy under which [the Koreans] suffer.” Yet but a few days later, Bonsal confided to his diary: Yesterday it was my unpleasant duty to tell Kim, as instructed, that the Korean problem did not come within the purview of the Conference. . . . My Colonel is sympathetic with my point of view, but he says we must be practical. . . . One word of comfort he offered and gave permission to pass on to Kim. If we deal out justice in Europe and punish the criminals here it may prove a leaven of righteousness in other fields. Perhaps later the League will be able to curb Japan when it has less pressing matters near at hand to deal with. . . . He took it very well. 9  Thomas F. Millard, Democracy and the Far Eastern Question (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1919), 40.

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Kim Kyusik himself departed, sighing, “What a strange world it is. . . . How can anyone in his senses imagine that these swashbucklers will help make the world safer for democracy?”10 Little more than a dozen years hence the League of Nations failed to “curb” Japan, this time in Manchuria: in 1932 Japan simply withdrew from the League. This small incident was not to be confined to the memory of two men. The same year, on March First, there erupted in Korea a nation-wide independence movement organised in the main to support Kim Kyusik’s efforts by demonstrating to the world that, contrary to the statements of Japanese politicians, the nearly twenty million Korean people were by no means satisfied and thriving under Japanese rule. In its protest against Japan’s Asian policies and its involvement of students, the March First Movement shared features of, and provided inspiration for, the Chinese May Fourth Movement shortly afterwards. The March First Movement In this, the greatest and most united concrete expression of the will for national independence, around one and a half million Koreans participated over a period of some three months. An initially peaceful national uprising, it was conceived and organised chiefly by two religious traditions that had taken hold in Korea at much the same moment and had been competing with each other for the religious allegiance of the people: Ch’ŏndogyo, or the Religion of the Heavenly Way, and Protestant Christianity. If their cooperation was thus conspiratorial, it was also a symbol of the unprecedented unity of the movement that cut also across boundaries of age, sex, education and social status. The March First Movement grew out of a rising determination among Koreans during the first decade of harsh military rule, a decade referred to as the Dark Ages (amhŭk sidae), to make a stand for their country’s political and cultural independence. This determination had been reinforced among the Protestants by hostile actions against their membership by the GovernmentGeneral that began with the 1911 Conspiracy Case, in which Yun Ch’iho and large numbers of leading Protestants were arrested and tried on trumped up charges of plotting to assassinate Governor-General Terauchi Masatake (1910–1916), and continued with close police surveillance of their churches and attempts to force closure of their schools. The indigenous Ch’ŏndogyo church, formed under Son Pyŏnghŭi (1861–1921) in 1904, was the religious successor to the late nineteenth-century Tonghak movement that had already fought against Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. 10  Stephen Bonsal, Suitors and Suppliants: The Little Nations at Versailles (New York: Prentice Hall, 1946), 220–226.

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According to the court testimony of its leaders, the March First Movement was organised in order to seize the opportunity for Korea’s independence they discerned in the principle of national self-determination that the United States’ president, Woodrow Wilson, had lain down as the basis for peace after the conclusion of World War I. The March movement was preceded, in fact, by the Tokyo February Eighth Movement, which was organised by Korean students in Tokyo under the leadership of Yi Kwangsu (1892–?), then a philosophy student and soon to become the foremost modern Korean novelist of the twentieth century. These students composed a Declaration of Independence that directly appealed to the national self-determination principle and which became the forerunner of the March First Declaration of Independence written some weeks later in Korea by Ch’oe Namsŏn (1890–1957) and signed by thirtythree Koreans, of whom sixteen were Protestants, fifteen were Ch’ŏndogyo members and two were Buddhists. The date chosen for the movement was the day on which the Korean people from all over the nation had been permitted to travel to Seoul to pay their last respects to their recently deceased Korean Emperor Kojong. The March First Movement itself commenced with a reading of the Declaration of Independence by the thirty-three signatories in the Myŏngwŏl restaurant in Seoul, followed by an unplanned but crucial reading by a Korean schoolteacher before the large crowd that had gathered in Pagoda Palace (Tŏksu kung) nearby. The crowd broke into chants of ‘Long live Korean independence!’ and poured out onto the streets for the beginning of one of the largest mass-movements of the twentieth century anywhere in the world. The movement was both planned and spontaneous. Readings of the Declaration had been scheduled for the same day in other provincial cities and the Protestant and Ch’ŏndogyo networks had been used to good effect. But the response of the public exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine patriot. Within days the movement had spread to the entire country and was sustained for a full three months despite a brutal response by the colonial regime. After the demonstrations were finally quelled, the movement continued to inspire the creation of myriad independence organisations: the Japanese police reported up to 3000 such organisations in 1921. Although it failed to achieve independence, either immediately or in the long run, the March First Movement thus remains the high point in the Korean nationalist tradition. The Movement Abroad The helplessness of the Koreans in the face of Japan’s military and political might in spite of the proportions of the March First Movement impelled Koreans abroad to engage in comprehensive preparations for independent statehood, although nationalist activities began well before the 1919 movement.

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Korean émigré communities were centred in Shanghai, in North and West Chientao and other parts of Manchuria, and in California and Hawaii, besides Japan itself. The populations of these communities expanded from the early 1910s for a number of reasons, including economic exigency and nationalist ambitions, and the largest, peaking in 1929 at just under 600,000, was the group of Korean settlements across the northern border in Manchuria. In the main, nationalist leaders in North China and Manchuria trained Koreans for military offensives against Japan, those in Japan turned to educational and ideological preparations, while those in North America and to some extent Shanghai concentrated on diplomatic efforts and supported ‘enlightenment’ movements, meaning training in the economic, educational and political foundations of independent nationhood. In all the diaspora communities, Christianity acted as a source of identity and hope and a means of communications.11 The Korean émigré communities in North America were led by men who had earned their nationalist stripes in service of the Independence Club and later enlightenment movements. An Ch’angho (1878–1938), a former member of the Pyongyang branch of the Independence Club, had gone to San Francisco to study education at university level in the early 1900s, but in 1909 bent his energies on a campaign amongst Korean residents in San Francisco. An Ch’angho established there his Hŭngsadan, an association for training Koreans for independence, a branch of which was organised inside Korea as the Tonguhoe by Yi Kwangsu in 1923. At the same time a Korean national newspaper began publication in San Francisco, initially named the Kongnip Sinbo (1907–1909), later the SinHan Minbo (New Korea People’s Daily). This newspaper carried on the traditions of the Independence Club newspaper, calling for patriotism and reform of lifestyle, thought, ethics, and belief, and in some ways served as An’s mouthpiece. Another major Korean organisation in North America was the Korean National Association, which was led by another former Independence Club activist, Rhee Syngman (Yi Sŭngman: 1875–1965), who had fled to America in 1912. Rhee’s efforts were exerted at a ‘higher’ level, aiming to secure support for Korea’s independence from politicians and governments in North America and Europe and from the League of Nations. Rhee himself studied at Princeton University, where he became the first Korean to earn a PhD. A Korean National Association was formed inside Korea, and Rhee’s influence was further 11  Material on the movement abroad is drawn from Kenneth M. Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, 1896–1937 (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1990), Chapters 3 and 4, and Kenneth Wells, “Background to the March First Movement: Koreans in Japan, 1905–1919,” Korean Studies (June 1989), 5–21.

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extended by his election to the presidency of the Provisional Government of Korea in Shanghai in 1919. But apart from one brief visit to Shanghai in 1921, Rhee chose to remain in the United States till 1945. North China, Manchuria and Siberia were also popular sites of Korean nationalist activity. As an international trading port endowed with a number of areas reserved for European diplomatic and trading headquarters known as the ‘Foreign Concessions,’ Shanghai was from early on a haven for proindependence Koreans, who benefited from both its advantages for communications and the shelter from Japanese police afforded by the concessions. The Confucian reformer and patriot Pak Ŭnsik based himself in Shanghai from the 1910s, and there wrote his history of Korea, a counter to Japanese propaganda, and later his account of the March First Movement. After this movement, the Korean Provisional Government was established in Shanghai, and for some time the city became a focal point of independence activity for Koreans at home and abroad and a point of intersection for a number of the more important groups that arose or reorganised in its aftermath. Leadership of the New Korea Youth Party (SinHan ch’ŏngnyŏn tang), founded by Chang Tŏksu before the March First Movement, was taken over by Kim Kyusik, the Korean delegate to the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War II, after Chang returned to Korea to found the nationalist Tonga ilbo and spearhead the culturalist movement. Upon election to the Provisional Government, An Ch’angho moved from San Francisco to Shanghai where he attempted to apply his Hŭngsadan principles as a cabinet minister. An was joined by the composer of the February Eighth Declaration of Independence in Tokyo, Yi Kwangsu, who subsequently returned to Korea to further the Hŭngsadan’s work on the peninsula itself. Yi Tonghwi (1873–1935), a guerrilla leader and early socialist-communist who had been active in Manchuria, moved his headquarters to Shanghai for a time upon being elected Premier of the Provisional Government in 1919. Kim Ku (1876–1949), a radical nationalist, Premier of the Provisional Government in 1926 and founder of the Hanin aegukdan (Korean Patriotic Corps) in 1931, based his many undertakings in Shanghai throughout almost the entire colonial period. Finally, Shanghai was the venue for the Kungmin taep’yohoe (Korean Delegates’ Conference) organised by An Ch’angho in concert with such major nationalist figures as Sin Ch’aeho (1880–1936), Yŏ Unhyŏng (1885–1947) and Kim Kyusik (1881–1950). Because of its proximity to the northern Korean border and the large number of rural Koreans who migrated there in search of land and a living, Manchuria, and particularly North and West Chientao, naturally lent itself to guerrilla activities. But it was not until after 1919 that attempts were made to coordinate the various guerrilla forces for large offensives against the Japanese, and even

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then the enterprise was fraught with difficulties in sustaining communications, supply systems, and unity among the diverse bands scattered over rugged terrain. But the Japanese responded to a couple of coordinated raids that cost significant casualties in 1920 with fierce reprisals and a ‘mopping-up’ operation late in 1920 known as the Hunch’un Incident. The Provisional Government claimed that some 3,500 Koreans were killed and over 3,000 homes, thirty-six schools and fourteen Christian churches laid waste during this operation, but no corroborative or reliable records exist. The Hunch’un Incident also marked the onset of Chinese-Japanese cooperation against Korean guerrillas. The Mitsuya Agreement signed by Chang Tso-lin for China in June 1925 severely restricted the freedom of Korean groups in West Chientao, who for geographical reasons had escaped the brunt of the Japanese counter-offensive. As Japan established itself in Manchuria from 1929, some Korean guerrilla leaders capitulated to the lure of Japan’s Kyōwakai (Harmony Society), while émigré villagers took advantage of cross-border trading opportunities or became major figures in the opium trade. Sabotage and assassination activities by Kim Ku’s Korean Patriotic Corps in the early 1930s reinvigorated the guerrilla movement for a time and even attracted financial support from Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (National Party) in 1934. However, increasing communist influence split the movement and worried the Chinese nationalists, and in 1935 the Ho-Umetsu Agreement was signed to terminate Kuomintang support of Korean revolutionaries. Upon the outbreak of war between Japan and China in July 1937, Korean guerrilla forces linked themselves more positively to Chinese nationalist and communist forces and the Soviet Far Eastern forces based in Siberia. Tokyo, too, from the last decades of the nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth, attracted nationalist and reformist leaders from around Asia and particularly from China and Korea. As such it served as a meeting ground for young activists from the East Asian nations and a source of ‘progressive’ ideas. Korean students who sailed to Japan from the 1880s to 1920s were mostly from the cream of Korean society and intelligentsia, but at least from 1908 included members of newly rising groups, such as Cho Mansik and Chang Tŏksu (1895–1947), who had gained access to ‘new’ education through the Protestant mission schools. In October 1912, the first Korean Haguhoe, or student fraternity, was founded in Tokyo; by 1916 there were seven branches, five in Tokyo and two in the Osaka-Kyoto region. Enjoying relative freedom of speech in Japan, Koreans debated the issue of Korea’s independence quite openly, and the venue for the debates was usually the Korean YMCA building in each locality. The latter 1910s and the 1920s were the period of ‘Taishō democracy’ in Japan, and Korean students drew theoretical and moral support from a number of

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influential Japanese intellectuals during this time. But the chief inspiration for the young Koreans in Japan up to 1919 came from the pen of the brilliant Yi Kwangsu (1892-?), who campaigned for a thorough revitalisation of Korean culture. It was mainly through the efforts of Yi and his colleagues that a line of communication was set up between Korean activists in North America, Japan, Korea, and Shanghai at the end of World War I to plan and coordinate a response to Woodrow Wilson’s principle of national self-determination. Yi himself travelled extensively between Japan, North China, Manchuria, and Korea before and after the February Eighth Tokyo and March First Declarations of Independence. From 1922, many Koreans in Japan turned to socialist and communist ideologies, which they disseminated in Korea on their return from their studies. Among the left-wing organisations operated by Koreans in Japan were the North Wind Society and the January Society. As the number of Koreans migrating to Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Nagoya and elsewhere in Japan to work for Japanese enterprises as cheap labourers exceeded 300,000 by the early 1930s, left-wing activities among Koreans increased. The impact on Korea of the Korean communist movement in Japan during the colonial period was at least as great as that of its counterparts in the USSR, Manchuria and North China, and in terms of ideological content, possibly greater.

Prescriptions for a New Korea

Culturalist Movements At one level, both the military movements across the northern border and the culturalist movements inside Korea viewed their chosen activities as complementary means to the same end of Korean independence. Some of the leaders of the two streams, such as Chang Tŏksu in Seoul (after 1919) and Yi Tonghwi (1873–1935) in Shanghai and Manchuria, maintained cordial relations. To some degree the difference in their methods was a matter of practicality, that is, a matter of what was feasible or productive inside Korea and what was possible abroad. But at a deeper level, the difference related to the much broader conception of their purpose by the culturalists, who saw their object as revitalisation of Korean culture in a manner that fit the changed times. They aimed to make full use of all opportunities afforded Koreans under the colonial order to take charge of their own national culture and future. The limited reforms introduced by the Government-General in response to the March First Movement offered greater freedoms in press and schooling and to some extent in economic ventures as well. Many of the culturalist movements were initiated by the ‘Thirty-Three’—the signatories to the March First Declaration of

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Independence—and other leaders of the 1919 movement on their release from prison in 1921–22. A central tenet of the culturalist movement was that under the circumstances then prevailing, overt political opposition to the Government-General would be counter-productive, and therefore the most effective action Koreans could take at that point was to equip themselves with the qualities and skills necessary for independence, so that when a genuine opportunity presented itself they could both gain freedom and retain it securely thereafter. The movement’s protagonists applied themselves with great energy, initiating and managing rural and urban education programs, launching economic programs and a number of cooperative associations, supporting newspapers and journals and organising medical work, the YMCA, and the promotion of Korean language and linguistics. A notable feature of this movement was the prominence and energy of women led by Kim Hwallan, Esther Hwang, Im Yŏngsin, Pak Indŏk and others, who strove to improve women’s education, health, and economic and social status. There were five main organs of the culturalist movement in Korea. The first was the Tonga ilbo newspaper edited by Chang Tŏksu from 1920, which published works of Korean literature, articles informing the people of new economic methods, and news of cultural, economic and even political activities in Korea and abroad. The second was the Movement to Establish a People’s University, which proved unsuccessful and was in any case pre-empted by the establishment of Keijō Imperial University by the Government-General in 1927. The third was the aforementioned Korean Products Promotion Society established by Cho Mansik in 1922, and the fourth was the Tonguhoe, the Korean branch of An Ch’angho’s Hŭngsadan that Yi Kwangsu founded in Seoul in 1923. Finally, there was the Hŭngŏp Kurakbu, or Society for Industrial Development, led by Yun Ch’iho and his associates with links to Rhee Syngman in the United States of America. If considered as a stream of nationalism designed to achieve independent statehood, these culturalist ventures were no more effective than any other and were liable at times to be co-opted by the Japanese authorities, who in spite of proclaiming a ‘cultural policy’ following the March First Movement, gave no leeway to any autonomous cultural developments that might weaken their hold or thwart their ultimate goal of assimilation.12 But as cultural 12  The evidence mined by scholars on this point strongly suggests that the true intent of the “cultural policy” introduced for hardly one decade after the 1919 uprising was to keep tabs on Korean cultural movements in order to control and direct them, not to support Korean

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movements they certainly contributed to the level of literacy and knowledge among Koreans, increased their experience in practical economics and administration and promoted development and awareness of Korea’s literary and other cultural heritages. A Japanese Home Ministry report noted in 1930 that the social activities which predicated national health on intensive education and training—known as the ‘cultivation of real strength’ line—had elicited considerable support from the general populace and was lent great vitality by the youthful energy of its protagonists.13 Indeed, the regime in Korea did not consider their activities to be entirely innocuous, constantly hampering them, and by 1938 forcefully suppressed them. Socialist and Communist Movements Various forms of left-wing ideology, from democratic and ethical socialism to Marxist-Leninism, swept into the Korean peninsula in the early 1920s. Interest in socialism owed partly to the failure of the ‘democratic’ nations and the League of Nations to consider Korea’s case at the Paris Peace Conference and the later Washington and Pacific conferences. Whereas the culturalists talked of preparing for an opportunity, the socialists and communists talked of creating the opportunity and thus favoured direct political methods. But whatever particular form of leftist thought was adhered to, Korean socialists and communists were motivated primarily by the nationalistic objective of ridding Korea of Japanese rule. The first left-wing organisation, the Korean Socialist Party, was founded by Yi Tonghwi in Khabarovsk in June 1918. In April 1919 he moved its headquarters to Vladivostok and reorganised it as the Koryŏ Communist Party. By May the Party was based in Shanghai, at which point Yŏ Unhyŏng completed his translation into Korean of the Communist Manifesto. But in September 1919 the Korean section of the Irkutsk Communist Party was promoted by Moscow as the All-Russia Korean Communist Party, causing a division in the Korean movement between ‘Russified’ and ‘Korean nationalist’ communists. This division came to a head in June 1921 in a horrific armed clash known as the ‘Free City Incident’ (since it took place near Svobodnyi), which claimed the lives of

endeavours to develop according to their own cultural proclivities. See Michael Robinson, Cultural Movements in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989) and Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies. 13  Naimushō keihōkyoku (tokukeisatsu), Gempei: Shōwa gonen ni okeru shakai undō no jōkyō. 2. Minzokushugi undō no jōkyō.

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some 600 Koreans. When a third Korean communist group surfaced in Chita, the Russians in February 1923 impatiently but vainly ordered all factions to dissolve and form a united body.14 These different factions maintained links with counterparts inside Korea, but by the late 1930s merged into the Chinese and Russian communist parties and armies, thus forming what later were termed the Yenan and Soviet factions. Meanwhile in Japan, Koreans formed the North Star, North Wind and January societies and the Tokyo Korean Proletarian Youth League between 1922 and 1925. Whereas the focus of the groups to the north of Korea was on guerrilla warfare, the organisations in Japan were directed by students who devoted more energy to the study of socialism and to organising and educating labourers. Many of these students, such as Chu Chonggŏn and Paek Namun, author of a sophisticated two-volume economic history of Korea’s economic history in line with Marx’s idea of an Oriental variant on the dialectical materialist stages of history, returned to Korea and formed clandestine reading societies where Marxist thought was studied and revolutionary action was planned. The Korean and Japanese communists merged as early as 1929, and by 1930 the combined movement included over 4000 Korean members. The first communist group inside Korea was the Seoul Youth League, formed in 1921 with connections to Yi Tonghwi, from which later split the M-L (Marxist-Leninist) faction. By 1924 three more groups had established offices in Seoul: the North Wind Society from Japan, the Tuesday Society sponsored by the Irkutsk faction and the Yŏsŏng Tonguhoe (Women’s League) affiliated with the Seoul Youth League. From 1922, Lenin intimated that Korean communists would not be recognised fully by the Comintern unless a Korean Communist Party were established inside Korea. The first such party was established on 17 April 1925 by the Tuesday and North Wind societies, and this was succeeded by three more parties in February 1926, February 1927, and March 1928. Troubled by factional struggles and Japanese suppression, none of these parties survived longer than nine months. They did, however, keep debate alive and directly or indirectly promoted worker consciousness, development of rural cooperatives, and concern among nationalists and others for the economic conditions of the mass of the people. The party members formed the core of the ‘Domestic’ faction by 1945.

14  For details on these communist groups, see Suh Dae-sook, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).

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The United Front Movement Cognizant of the need to combine all Korean groups who were committed to the creation of a new Korea independent of Japan, whatever their respective ideological positions, Yi Tonghwi had attempted to form a united front between left-wing and centre activists during his term as Prime Minister of the Shanghai Provisional Government from August 1919 to January 1921. His efforts were seconded by a number of leaders at different times, but it was not until February 1927 that a united front movement was effectively organised, with its headquarters in Seoul. Called the Sin’ganhoe, this united front established branches throughout the peninsula and achieved a membership of some 30,000 by 1930. The Sin’ganhoe published a manifesto and a policy platform which proffered three main objectives: opposition to colonial policies harmful to the people; amelioration of the economic conditions of the people and promotion of cooperative societies; and continued efforts to increase the general level of education. Leadership of the united front was shared between national figures from the left and centre, but initially with lesser representation from the culturalist stream. On 3 November 1929, an altercation between Korean and Japanese students in the city of Kwangju in South Chŏlla Province led to a street demonstration against the colonial education system by close to four hundred students. A number of leftist reading groups had been formed among the students in Kwangju and elsewhere by Koreans returning from studies in Japan, and the tinder was dry for such a spark: before long the demonstrations spread to 194 schools. Seizing their opportunity, the Sin’ganhoe leadership organised rallies in Seoul and sponsored the Kwangju demonstrations into a nationwide movement that reportedly involved thirty thousand people by March 1930. Yet no repeat of the March First Movement eventuated as the Japanese police moved quickly to arrest the Sin’ganhoe personnel around the nation. In the end, 582 students were expelled, and of the 335 sentenced to imprisonment, 232 were students and fourteen were teachers. In addition to the arrests of many of their own leaders, the left-wing membership of the Sin’ganhoe was troubled by the extent to which the noncommunist leaders were able to influence the course of the Kwangju uprising. Moscow also sent directives to the Korean communists to take control of the united front movement. Thereupon the communists mounted a campaign for the dissolution of the Sin’ganhoe with the intention of reconstituting it under a leftist charter, and in May 1931 the united front was dissolved. But at this point the Japanese Government-General stepped in to prevent any reorganisation, and thereafter the left and right wings of the nationalist movement for the most part went their separate ways.

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Cultural Developments

Education The single most important cultural development during the colonial period was the adoption of a ‘modern’ education system and curriculum and the spread of this education among the general population. Whereas the policy of the Government-General emphasised elementary education and made little provision for any more advanced or professional schooling, the religious bodies and a number of concerned Korean individuals poured great energy into opening access to private schools at higher and professional levels, the latter known as chŏnmun hakkyo or Special Schools, and into providing an alternative framework of knowledge to the official object of creating good and loyal citizens of the Japanese empire. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1919 March First Movement prompted more leniency by the authorities towards private education that Koreans were able to make meaningful headway in pursuit of their educational ambitions. In what might be called an accident of history, construction of the new, modernised education system in Korea, unlike in Japan, fell largely into the hands of Protestant missionaries and their Korean converts. Apart from some notable exceptions, such as the businessman Kim Sŏngsu’s Seoul Central School and Hyŏn Sangyun (1893–?), who headed the Posŏng Special School and presided over its elevation into Koryŏ University after liberation, almost the entire private endeavour in higher education beyond elementary schooling was initiated and run by Christian missions and independent Protestant educators. Yŏnhŭi Special School and Ewha Women’s Special School, Presbyterian and Methodist respectively, were the major higher institutions during the colonial period and shortly after liberation became Yonsei and Ewha Women’s universities. This private educational endeavour comprised a good half of all postelementary schooling even by the late 1930s, and as such was a thorn in the side of the colonial regime. Indeed, insofar as the colonial assimilation project was a failure, it was nowhere more so than in education, the very avenue chosen by the Japanese to assimilate the Koreans. In an important sense, ideas and frameworks for understanding the changes of what they called modern times were not colonially mediated; they were mediated by Koreans to themselves. The Protestants especially mediated a different set of norms and aspirations than that intended by the colonial education authorities. Accompanying and indeed reliant on this educational endeavour was an energetic debate over how best to adapt Korea to the modern world of which it was a part. This debate was stimulated both by the exposure to non-Korean

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cultures that the new education entailed and by the attempts by the Government-General to disseminate Japanese language and culture among the Korean people. The debate was expressed through literature, literacy and other cultural movements, journals and newspapers, and various organisations committed to specific objectives, such as women’s rights. It took place within the context of substantial changes in material culture, such as the development of rail and road transport, the expansion of postal, telegraph and broadcasting systems, and the introduction into mainly urban centres of electrical, water and other utilities. Publications The first decade of colonial rule was also a cultural Dark Ages. Upon annexation in 1910, even the pro-Japanese TaeHan News was closed down, leaving the Japanese Maeil Sinbo (Daily News) as the only newspaper operating. Between 1910 and 1918, some thirty-four journals were authorised, eighteen of which were religious journals. The Ch’ŏndogyo journal carried articles on ‘enlightenment,’ hygiene, Korean geography, physics, economics, and some short stories. Christians published principally on doctrinal and church matters, although the YMCA ran articles similar to the Ch’ŏndogyo journal. Buddhist publications were almost entirely confined to matters of Buddhist piety, while those of the Confucian literati who were prepared to publish produced material that was either supportive of the Japanese presence (for example the Sich’ŏn’gyo journal) or otherwise largely innocuous. The chief outlet for writing that was designed to keep a sense of Korean culture alive among the Koreans during this decade was Sonyŏn (Boys’ Journal), of which Ch’oe Namsŏn (1890–1957), an enlightenment figure, managed to publish twenty-two issues over four years by May 1911. In October 1914, Ch’oe was permitted to publish a new journal, Ch’ŏngch’un (Springtide), which began in earnest the theme of ‘culturalism,’ the notion that Korea’s future rested on a complete revitalisation of Korean culture. For this, the primary means was to be education, and the journal contents ranged from biology, physics and mathematics, to sociology, geography, history, Chinese and Korean literature, and Western civilisation. After the 1919 March First Movement, a number of new newspapers and journals sprang to life. In the 1920s these were rather poorly financed and often ran at a loss, but by the 1930s were paying for themselves through advertising fees and by aligning themselves more with general consumers’ interests. The most influential newspapers were the Tonga ilbo and the Chosŏn ilbo. The former, edited by Chang Tŏksu, dedicated itself to cultural education and debate, and became the chosen vehicle for serialising novels by leading writers such as

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Yi Kwangsu and Kang Kyŏngae (1907–1943). By the 1940s, specifically Korean newspapers were again closed down under war-time policies, but by this stage a good standard of journalism had been attained. The journals which during the 1920s and 1930s became focal points for cultural debate and activity included Kaebyŏk (Creation), Tonggwang (Eastern light), Samch’ŏlli (Three thousand ri), Sin yŏsŏng (New woman), Hyesŏng (Comet), Pyŏlgŏn’gon (The Meridian) and the literary journal Chosŏn Mundan. These journals not only acted as sources of information on cultural developments but promoted specific changes in attitude and lifestyle. The whole gamut of life at the time was reflected in their pages, from clothing, nutrition, marriage and divorce to democracy, socialism and the purpose of literature. Literacy and Literature Literacy was regarded as an essential element in cultural renewal, and the work initiated on literacy and on the Korean lexicon and linguistic structure by Chu Sigyŏng (1876–1914) and Ch’oe Hyŏnbae (1894–1970) continued throughout the colonial era chiefly through the Korean Language Research Society (Chosŏn’ŏ yŏn’guhoe). Actual teaching of Korean reading skills, however, was undertaken by the rapidly increasing number of schools, whose students at all levels included a range of ages. Night-schools for labourers, farmers and women were established by cultural organisations such as the Tonguhoe and various women’s patriotic societies (aeguk puinhoe), and by Christian and other religious bodies. Eradication of illiteracy was also an important policy issue for socialist and communist groups from the 1920s. This attention to literacy was accompanied by intense literary experimentation that prepared the ground for new forms of novel, short story, and poetry. A new narrative style in novels that entailed a move towards use of the Korean language as it was spoken in settings drawn from real life was pioneered by Yi Injik (1862–1916), whose writings spanned the periods before and following the annexation. He also introduced into literature the themes that were debated in the journals and organisations of the period: the importance of enlightening the common people; attacks on yangban corruption, social hierarchy, child-marriage, concubinage and oppression of daughters-in-law; treatment of the cultural generation-gap; and the development of a genuinely Korean way of life. Yi Injik’s stylistic and thematic lead was followed up enthusiastically during the 1920s and 1930s by a number of talented writers such as Yŏm Sangsŏp (1897–1963), Yi Sang (1910–1937) and Ch’ae Mansik (1904–1950). Women also stepped onto the literary stage in this period, and in her novel In’gan munje (The Human Predicament), serialised in the Tonga ilbo in the early 1930s, Kang Kyŏngae (1907–1943) for instance dealt with one of the most difficult issues of

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the time: how, in the midst of so many changes, to distinguish the old from the new at the deepest levels and how to understand the meaning of the changes. But by far the most prolific and influential of the new novelists was Yi Kwangsu, whose novels, such as Mujŏng (The Heartless) and Hŭk (Earth) serialised in 1917 and 1932, were not only stylistically innovative but also introduced psychological plots reminiscent of Tolstoy’s works, besides engaging with all the social and cultural issues of the time. In poetry, the principal features of the time were the transitions from SinoKorean to pure vernacular poetry and from didactic to more ‘naturalistic’ content. Three men vie for the honour of being the first to introduce this new form of vernacular verse—Ch’oe Namsŏn, Chu Yohan (1900–1979) and Han Yongun (1879–1944)—but all three were essential to its development. Among the most famous poetic works of the colonial era is the cycle of poems by Han Yongun titled Nimŭi chimmok (The Silence of my Beloved), which has been variously interpreted as purely love poetry, an expression of nationalism and a vehicle of Buddhist thought. Long a preferred form of literary art, the importance of poetry was reaffirmed in the colonial period and the genre was brought much closer to the bulk of the Korean people through its vernacular development. Literature in the colonial period understandably became a vehicle for politics and ideology, as has been generally true of Korean literature throughout the centuries. In many instances issues of style were overshadowed by debates over the purpose of literary production. These debates concerned whether literature should serve nationalist ends, the proletariat, or art for its own sake. Ch’oe Namsŏn and Yi Kwangsu, who formed the core of an informal literary group called Ch’angjo (Creation), promoted the use of literature for enlightenment of the people and inculcation of national consciousness. Although Yi and Ch’oe themselves became less nationalistic in their writings towards the end of the period, this motive remained strong, especially in allegorical short-stories such as Chŏng Pisŏk’s Sŏngwhangdang (Shrine: c. 1937), which suggested a struggle between the native essence of Korea and the modernising but militaristic Japan. Leftist and proletarian literature was represented supremely by members of an organisation called KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio), through which they vigorously pursued socialist aims not only through literature but also through literary debates in which they characterised Yi Kwangsu’s group as bourgeois writers. The public intellectual and novelist Yi Kiyŏng (1895–1984) was a leading light of this group, known especially for his 1933 novel Kohyang (Hometown) and editorship of the journal Chosŏn chi kwang (Light of Chosŏn) from 1926. In the course of this polarisation between KAPF writers and Yi Kwangsu’s group, the art for art’s sake writers experienced difficulty in gaining a hearing.

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Gender Movements and the ‘New Women’

As we have seen, the neo-Confucian social system was hierarchical. This hierarchical order was strictly codified according to inherited social status, age, and gender. According to the principles of Yin and Yang which neoConfucianism incorporated, the Yin (female) principle is weak and passive and the Yang (male) principle is strong and active. The social and political codes of neo-Confucianism accordingly limited Korean women, especially in the higher classes, to the domestic sphere, and within the domestic sphere afforded them an inferior status to that of the men. The fervour of the leaders of the women’s movements in the early twentieth century, the principles they enunciated, the content of their publications and the sternness of the opposition mounted against them by both men and women are in concert reliable indicators of the extent to which the official gender ideology of the Chosŏn state had permeated both the mindsets and the practices of the Korean people. Challenges to these traditional attitudes towards women emerged in association with the enlightenment activists’ criticisms of neo‑Confucianism as a ‘hierarchy of oppression’ in Independence Club debates and its newspaper, the Tongnip sinmun, beginning in 1896. The chief means the proponents of enlightenment advocated for correcting the prejudices and inequalities legitimized by Korea’s neo-Confucian social doctrines was equal education for males and females. Accordingly, the first girls’ school was established in September 1898 by the Ch’anyanghoe, a society of over one hundred wives of aristocratic intellectuals.15 It was these women who first applied the labels ‘old’ and ‘new’ to Korean women and their customs. Becoming ‘new’ signified to them release from what had held them back and given them an inferior status to men, the chief villain of which was the traditional maxim, namjon yŏbi (men are high, women are low), encapsulating the belief in the innate superiority of men to women. Their venture proved short-lived, however, and for the next two decades both the term ‘new women’ and the aspiration to throw off the old gender ideology passed into the orbit of Protestant movements. The dominance of Protestantism over women’s education during its formative stages had far-reaching consequences that are still active in contemporary South Korean society. Not only the revolutionary integration of females into an education structure at all levels, but also the fact that female missionaries, 15  Some sources claim the total membership was over 400 women, including foreign women. See Kim Yung-chung, “Women’s Movement in Modern Korea,” in Challenges for Women: Women’s Studies in Korea, ed. Chung Sei-wha (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 1986), 83.

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often unmarried, established and managed schools in the same non-domestic social space as males, apparently with equal rights, proved an enormous inspiration to girls and young women. For quite some time the association between Christianity, the new education and new aspirations for women was very close. To be sure, the missionaries and many of their converts were happy enough with traditional expectations that wives would treat their husbands respectfully and take close care of children, and were not averse to the principle of ‘good wife, wise mother’ that the Japanese colonial regime (and a good many Korean men and women) promoted. But they had very different reasons. Their principles on marriage and family were grounded in expectations of mutually responsible and respectful behaviour between spouses and over their children. Men had equally to be good husbands and wise fathers. Their position had little if anything to do with Yin and Yang, nor with the wealth of nations or the expansion of empires. The most well-known Protestant activist for women’s education and participation in public life was Kim Hwallan (Helen Kim: 1899–1970). As with a large number of cases, Protestant Christianity took hold of Kim’s family through women: introduced to her mother by an itinerant ‘Bible woman,’ or colporteur, in 1905, the religion was then adopted by Kim Hwallan and her siblings, and last of all her father. This conversion to Christianity effected a unification of the family’s religious activities, hitherto divided along gender lines, where the males had attended to ancestral rites and the mother placated the household spirits alone. It also turned the parents in favour of sending their daughters out of the home for an education. Kim Hwallan became one of the first graduates of the Methodist Ewha School for girls, later principle of Ewha Women’s Special School, which upon liberation she upgraded to Ewha Women’s University and served as its founding president. Gender divisions were further weakened at community level, since males and females attended the same church services, although initially they sat in pews on different sides of the building. Then the emphasis of the Protestant churches of the time on Biblical study and catechism training spurred the spread of female literacy programs within the churches in the 1910s, which had several broader and often unintended consequences for gender relations as women thereby gained access to sources of information far greater than ever before. Once they entered the new schools, it was only a natural development for Christian women to join forces and organise public women’s associations and events independent of both family and church. Shortly after Korea became a Japanese colony in August 1910, a Christian organization named the Songjukhoe (Pine and Bamboo Society) was formed among teachers and pupils of girls’ schools in Seoul and Pyongyang, and a

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national network was organised with secret monthly meetings for the inculcation in women of the ‘spirit of independence.’ Immediately before the outbreak of the 1919 March First Movement, Kim Hwallan joined a group of females who had studied in Tokyo, including Kim Maria (Kim Jinsang: 1891–1944) and Na Hyesŏk (1896–1946), to arrange for female students to distribute pamphlets calling for female participation in the movement. Subsequently, 471 women and girls were arrested, of whom 68 were teachers and 154 were students. The movement produced a few outstanding female heroes, such as the martyred Yu Kwansun (1902–1920), who were hailed for their dedication to the national movement. In April, Kim Maria founded the TaeHan Aeguk Puinhoe (Great Korea Women’s Patriotic Society), forging links with the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai. By 1920 the association had attracted 2000 members and its platform of national self‑determination and rights was identical to that of male organisations of the time. The TaeHan Aeguk Puinhoe was representative of women’s movements of the time, which, however, were few in number. Its Christian membership and inspiration, leadership by newly educated women, reliance on schools and conformity to male organisations’ goals typify this phase. Their participation in the national cause did raise male estimation of Korean women, just as the war efforts of the suffragettes engendered greater respect for women in Britain. Thereafter, women became active in a wide range of public spheres; their activities and from time to time their opinions were featured in publications. Liberal Feminists The government‑general press and assembly reforms after the March First Movement opened up new opportunities for women to express their views. By 1920 the term ‘new women,’ which had taken a back seat during the independence movement and aftermath, was reinstated and ideas of female liberation from a liberal feminist viewpoint were printed. The initial impetus came through a new journal that was founded, managed and edited by a highly talented writer named Kim Wŏnju (1896–1971). Her journal, Sin Yŏja (New Woman), was supported by a range of public figures and even some missionaries, and became the vehicle for the radical feminist thought of Na Hyesŏk, who for a time also had articles printed in another journal, Yŏja Kye (Women’s World), which was printed in Japan. The mission of the journal, Kim Wŏnju wrote in its first issue in April 1920, was “to rid ourselves of traditional, conventional, conservative and reactionary old ideologies.” Whereas the world had been shocked over recent years by an atrocious war, she wrote in the May issue, “the cry of us women, who have been locked up in dark rooms for thousands of years, is ‘Liberation!’ . . . How long has this inhumanity lasted and how long

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is it going to exert its power? The time has come. The time to straighten out all things has come.” The acumen of Kim and Na and other highly educated women and their revolutionary views piqued male interest, and already in 1920 a debate on gender burgeoned among all leading nationalist and cultural publications. The liberal feminists’ position was in some respects similar to that of the Blue Stocking movement in Japan and in like manner drew upon the writings concerning women’s freedoms and rights in marriage, divorce, motherhood and work of the Swedish feminist and politician Ellen Key. The figure of Nora, the hero of Ibsen’s play The Doll’s House, who slams the door on leaving the house of her suppression as a woman, was also admired. At the same time, the relationship between liberation and economic dependence was understood, so that education leading to employment was retained as a necessary path to female emancipation. Despite their drive and prodigious talents, these early liberal feminists became casualties in the struggle to effect the social change they desired. Social change always entails a great deal of hard work, and in a society constructed so tightly in line with a gender ideology the task was especially formidable. In addition, their campaign was largely conducted through images and publications; it was in essence a print-feminism that brought in tow considerable dilemmas. These dilemmas included the difficulties of women getting their voices heard in the media and journals and the problem of their becoming cut off from the majority of women they aimed to reach by the very ideas they introduced—that is, the acuity and sophistication of their ideas and the high level of talent with which they expressed and propagated them produced a large gap between themselves and the experiences and understandings of most Korean women at the time. The idea that these feminists were unnatural, even deviant, became common among women as well as men, and they and their followers were ostracised, ridiculed, even accused of gross immorality. Because they concurred with and attempted to live in accordance with the early English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft’s principle that “the whole nature of women is not to be confused with biology,” they were targeted as sexually suspect women. Kim Wŏnju soon sought peace and refuge in a Buddhist nunnery while Na Hyesŏk, like Wollstonecraft, was pushed to attempt suicide. Ideological Divisions As with men so with women interest in socialist-communist ideas sprang up in the early 1920s, but unlike their male counterparts, ideological division within the women’s movements was characterised from the outset by Christians and non-socialist nationalists who identified with the YWCA (founded in 1922),

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church social programmes and the various women’s patriotic societies on one side, and socialists and communists who identified with the women’s league, the Chosŏn Yŏsŏng Tonguhoe (founded in 1924), and the organizations of their husbands on the other side. Christian and non-socialist activists were numerically far stronger than those in left‑wing women’s groups. They continued to value education supremely as a means of raising the economic and social status of women and improving their life in the family. Through the YWCA and local church networks, these women conducted widespread activities among rural women. The object of their education was health and hygiene, kitchen management and dietary reform, home economics and reform of child‑rearing practices. After a tour of Europe and Scandinavia in 1928, Kim Hwallan and the YWCA leader Pak Indŏk (1896–1980) returned to Korea to set in motion an energetic campaign to reach rural women through an educational system modelled on the Danish Folk Schools. But their faith in education and seemingly non-political approach brought them into conflict with the growing number of socialist women for whom education signified raising women’s political consciousness and whose object was not reform so much as revolution. The Chosŏn Yŏsŏng Tonguhoe, or Women’s Socialist League, was founded in May 1924 by thirty women under the watchful eyes of fifty males and ten police agents. When the relation between female and class liberations was raised, it was agreed that feminism was a logical corollary of socialism and that female liberation therefore depended on class liberation. As Marxist-Leninist theories of imperialism took hold in the socialist movement, especially after the Comintern instructed Korea’s communists in 1926 to form the united front, all Koreans bar collaborators were deemed a class under the Japanese, with the consequence that women’s liberation was made secondary also to national liberation. This subordination was perhaps more a matter of theory than practice, for under the able leadership of Hŏ Chŏngsuk (1908–1991) the socialist women formed independent bodies and maintained a focus on what they called the double oppression of women under the still active currents of feudalism coupled with the new oppressions of female bodies under capitalism.16 A reasonably effective and genuine cooperation among the various women’s movements was achieved when the leaders of left and centre formed a sister body to the Sin’ganhoe united front organisation named the Kŭnuhoe. This body, which may be translated as Friends of the Rose of Sharon, was 16  Kenneth M. Wells, “The Price of Legitimacy: Women and the Kŭnuhoe, 1927–1931,” in Colonial Modernity in Korea 1910–1945, ed. Gi-Wook Shin and Michael Robinson (Cambridge MA: East Asia Council Publications, Harvard University, 1999), 201.

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founded in June 1929 with its own manifesto and platform to promote the national, social and economic interests of women. By 1929 the Kŭnuhoe membership amounted to 2970 women, including 260 residing abroad, mostly in Tokyo. Although its leadership swung between Christian liberals such as Kim Hwallan and Marxists such as Hŏ Chŏngsuk, the Kŭnuhoe did succeed, unlike the Sin’ganhoe, in publishing a journal, called Kŭnu. It also organised education for women, undertook surveys of factory conditions for female labourers and campaigned for minimum standards of employment for women, including provision of maternity leave. When the Sin’ganhoe dissolved in May 1931, the Kŭnuhoe did likewise and the cooperation ended, but the debate over aims and methods continued.17 In the literary field, in her novel In’gan Munje (The Human Predicament), which was serialised in the early 1930s in the Tonga ilbo, Kang Kyŏngae depicted the highly educated young women as willing accomplices in the degrading abuse of lower-class women by landowners and industrial capitalists, and the young rural women herded into the new factories as the real ‘new women’ of Korea.

Religious Movements

It is a peculiar fact which defies easy explanation that a clear majority of Korea’s leaders and public figures during the first decade of Japanese rule were drawn from religious groups, predominantly Ch’ŏndogyo and Christianity and to a lesser degree Buddhism; and religions remained throughout the colonial period forces for change and important sources of cultural definition. Some religions, such as Ch’ŏndogyo, the reformed Tonghak movement, and the so-called ‘new religions’ like Chŭngsan’gyo and Taejonggyo, arose in response to the decline of the traditional monarchical order associated with neoConfucianism, and so were related rather clearly to the task of regenerating the nation and its culture. Other religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, were less explicitly related to Korean national or political affairs, but nevertheless became involved in a wide range of movements that contributed substantially to the cultural development of the nation. There were of course influential people of no particular religious affiliation active during the first decade, such as Ch’oe Namsŏn. But even Ch’oe’s most notable achievements included anthropological research dedicated to rehabilitating Korea’s classical folk religious traditions. Ch’oe’s work in this regard, aided by the equally committed and astute scholarship of Yi Nŭnghwa, may be credited with a 17  Wells, “The Price of Legitimacy,” passim.

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restoration of respect for these religious traditions that was denied them during the long Chosŏn dynasty and by the late-nineteenth-century enlightenment movement. Buddhism Buddhism, which suffered low morale at the onset of colonial rule, was placed mainly under Japanese supervision throughout the period. Nominally, however, Buddhism remained by far the majority religion of the people throughout the period. Attempts were made by a group of monks led by the Sŏn (Zen) Buddhist Han Yongun to reform Korean Buddhism in such a way that it would be able to make a vital contribution to the redefinition of Korea as a modern nation. Having directly observed changes in Japanese Buddhism during his stay in Japan in the 1900s, Han espoused a thorough reform of institutions and outlook that would close the gap between the monks and the laity and between the temples and general society. Han’s group became embroiled in disputes with other Buddhists over whether priests should be permitted to marry and overall their reform proposals were not widely accepted. Han’s fame owes more perhaps to his decision to join the Thirty-Three signatories of the Declaration of Independence in March 1919 and to his poetry than to his record as a Buddhist reformer. A new Buddhist school named Wŏn Buddhism was founded in 1916 by the monk Sŏt’aesan (Pak Chungbin: 1891–1943). In a sense, Wŏn Buddhism was an attempt to adapt Buddhism to the modern demands of ‘scientific’ education and changes in social structure brought about by economic developments. Its principal message was that the people must turn away from simple material conceptions of society to a ‘clear framework’ in which the spiritual fundaments of society were illuminated. It also called for ethical regeneration and preached four social morals that resonated with a people under colonial rule: self-reliance, universal wisdom, universal education and dedication to the public good. Like Han Yongun’s and other Sŏn Buddhists’ ideas, however, Sŏt’aesan’s teachings held appeal mainly for intellectuals and failed to gain a significant following. The majority of the establishment in this period adhered to textual schools of Buddhism, while the lay people continued to seek meaning and solace in Pure Land Buddhism. Ch’ŏndogyo Ch’ŏndogyo, the religion of the Heavenly Way, whose leaders had organised the March First Movement together with Protestant leaders, was a predominantly rural-based religion that combined folk religious sensibilities with elements of Confucianism, Buddhism and even Catholicism. Its central doctrine of

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in nae ch’ŏn (heaven and humanity are one) was expressed religiously as a kind of pantheism and politically and socially as a principle of egalitarianism. In September 1923 it formed a political party named the Chŏngudang, much of whose activities centred on farmers. It is estimated that the religion’s membership reached several hundred thousand by the 1930s. Possibly because its membership was 90% rural, the social programmes of Ch’ŏndogyo tended to be conservative and emphasised traditional mores and family structure. However, its contribution to cultural debate and activity was considerable, if sometimes indirect, through its publication of the preeminent cultural and national journal of the colonial era, Kaebyŏk (Creation), in addition to (from the late 1920s) Sin Yŏsŏng (New Woman). Always political in its objectives, the religion split towards the end of the 1920s into Old and New factions over the issue of national independence and became further weakened in the mid-1930s by mass arrests of its leadership. Son Pyŏnghŭi’s death in 1921 precipitated a leadership dispute over whether instead of one top leader there should be a Council of Leaders. In October 1925, Kwŏn Tongjin (1861–1947) and many prominent members withdrew to form the Old Faction. Then in December 1928, the leader of the New Faction, Ch’oe Rin (1878–?), became the new head and moved the organisation in favour of a Home Rule movement that was branded a ‘compromise’ movement by much of the nationalist leadership. On 2 September 1919, Ch’ŏndogyo leaders set up the Youth Department for the Study of Doctrine, ostensibly for cultural activities but more for the purpose of politicising the people, cultivating nationalist zeal and recruiting members of the political wing, the Chŏngudang. The Chŏngudang claimed to run on the principle of ‘democratic centralisation’ and was an elaborate organization with several layers of authority and a wide spectrum of social, economic and political activities directed by departments. An important element was its work among labourers in cities and farmers in the countryside. There developed several hundred branches of the nongminsa, or farmers’ associations, served by two journals, Nongmin (Farmer) and Nongmin sesang (Farmer’s World).18 In 1928, two secret organisations were founded, the one with headquarters in Seoul, the other in Pyongyang. The latter enjoyed not inconsiderable success in setting up rural cooperatives in the northern provinces. But in April 1931, the Government-General conducted mass arrests of leaders of these underground bodies, having got wind of preparations for a major nationalist drive planned 18  Benjamin B. Weems, Reform, Rebellion and the Heavenly Way (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1964), 82–85.

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to peak in 1935–36, when the Ch’ŏndogyo leadership correctly anticipated a political crisis would erupt in Japan. The police in Japan had been keeping the Ch’ŏndogyo student movement in Tokyo under close surveillance from 1930, alarmed at the hostile and subversive materials that they were distributing. By 1934, hundreds were jailed and the movement came to a virtual standstill. Christianity It was during the colonial period that Protestant Christianity gained a reputation and influence among the Korean people far in excess of its numbers and laid the groundwork for its spectacular growth in South Korea after the liberation. Its contribution to the new education system was vital, matched only by the early 1930s by the Government-General’s public education structure, alongside which it provided a popular alternative source of knowledge and understanding until it was largely crushed in the early 1940s during the Pacific War. Christianity was associated also with the introduction of modern medical facilities and methods, social services in city and countryside, democratic thought and even, in the first three decades of the twentieth century at least, with new commercial ventures. One of its most important social or cultural contributions was its support for women’s education and their increased familial and social status. Many of Korea’s female leaders of the colonial era, such as Kim Hwallan, Kim Maria, Pak Indŏk, Yu Kwansun and Im Yŏngsin (Yim Louise: 1899–1971) were Protestants while others, including the liberalfeminist Kim Wŏnju and socialist Hŏ Chŏngsuk, were raised in Protestant families. Another key contribution was the popularisation of the vernacular han’gŭl script through translations of the Christian Bible and other literature. Protestant Christianity, which took root in Korea in the 1880s, continued to grow fairly rapidly throughout the colonial period, although its official, baptised membership reached little more than three and one half per cent of the total population by the 1930s. Part of the reason for the unusual public influence of the Protestants may lie in the early decision by the Presbyterian mission boards to hand over the governance of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, the largest Protestant denomination, to the Koreans in 1907 (although they were still subject to the Presbyteries in North America, Scotland and Australia). The Presbyterian example proved infectious and consequential, so much so that after a tour of Korea undertaken at Itō Hirobumi’s behest in 1907, the Japanese ultra-nationalist leader Uchida Ryōhei reported that everything in the country was run by Christians.19 19  Wells, New God, New Nation, 65–66.

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But self-governance was only part of the reason, for the educated Korean Protestants had assumed a leading role in the quest for a new sense of nation and culture already towards the end of the nineteenth century. From the outset, they argued that the embrace of Christian faith and application of its spiritual and ethical principles by individual Koreans would in time create a national entity of which they could justly be proud. The idea that a nation must be founded on a coherent set of ideals was proclaimed vigorously through newspapers, public assemblies and political activities by a close-knit circle of Protestant intellectuals, most notably through the Independence Club and the Tongnip sinmun printed in the vernacular han’gŭl script. Among the ideas debated by Korean intellectuals and public figures since the turn of the century was the social-Darwinist ‘law’ of the survival of the fittest, according to which it was believed that Korea needed to strengthen itself in a comprehensive, modern way in order to guard (later recover), political and economic independence. Protestants of course could not embrace this social-Darwinism in its Spencerian form, since they believed in God’s providential ordering of history, but they came up with their own version of it by way of the Christian doctrine of stewardship: it was God’s will that believers take diligent responsibility for everything under their care and to utilise fully every opportunity to do so that came their way. The method the Protestant leadership employed to strengthen the nation was in a negative sense a repudiation of the Confucian method of ritual and in a positive sense adoption of a life of disciplined responsibility, as the foundation of social reform. Faced in 1905 with a Japanese Protectorate that took charge of Korea’s foreign affairs and economy and the increasing likelihood of a total takeover, the Protestant nationalist leaders Yun Ch’iho, An Ch’angho, Yi Sŭnghun and Cho Mansik made an important decision. Given that efforts to preserve national independence had now failed, a new strategy was called for, but one that maintained continuity with the fundamental principles that they had promoted before statehood was lost. Although it was not now possible to relate these principles directly to a Korean state administration or actively to the Japanese regime, they could be practised in planned communities that would embody the virtues of Christian citizens and serve as model communities for the nation. Yun Ch’iho and An Ch’angho sought to form pilot communities around educational compounds. Yun established his school community, the Hanyŏng Sŏwŏn for boys, in Songdo (modern Kaesŏng between Seoul and Pyongyang) in October 1906, and later the Houston College for girls, using funds from the Southern Methodist Mission of America and proceeds from his family estate. Also in 1906–1907, An Ch’angho and Yi Sŭnghun established Taesŏng College for boys in Pyongyang and the famed Osan Boys’ College in Chŏngju, North

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P’yŏngan Province, over which Cho Mansik presided for a time as principle on his return from studies in Japan in 1913. The annexation by Japan in 1910, however, complicated matters. A number of prominent Christian leaders and the foremost nationalists in the land, including An Ch’angho, Rhee Syngman (Yi Sŭngman), Yi Tonghwi and Kim Ku, fled the country to work in exile on the eve of or shortly following the annexation. Yun Ch’iho, who had refused the offer of a post as Foreign Minister in November 1905 on the grounds that under a Japanese Protectorate (consequent on Japan’s military victory over Russia) the government of the day could not represent the interests of Koreans, resolved in 1910 to remain in Korea and devote his energies to education and social reform programmes through the YMCA, Methodist Church and social organisations. When An fled into exile in 1909, Yun took over responsibility also for Taesŏng College before he himself was imprisoned in 1911 on false charges of plotting the assassination of Governor-General Terauchi Masatake. On his release from prison in 1915, Yun resumed development of the Songdo compound into a community boasting a dairy farm, orchards and vineyards, and carpentry and textile industries. The influence of these school compounds on other schools and religious communities throughout the country soon caught the eye of the Japanese authorities. Contemporary Japanese reports indicate that the schools and their related communities were fostering a strong sense of national responsibility and mission among the populace. Hanyŏng Sŏwŏn was judged in 1916 to be overflowing with seditious thought, a disease the police claimed was also infecting Taesŏng and Osan colleges and many schools in several provinces. In response to this mounting problem, the Government-General began in 1915 introducing measures that would have forced Christian-based education to cease within a few years had not the nation-wide March First Movement of 1919 prompted the regime to adopt a more conciliatory education policy. But by the 1920s, the idea of nurturing a strong, modern basis for revitalising Korean culture and society that informed the pilot communities had gained a wide currency far beyond the borders of the Christian schools and the doctrines of their leaders. Thus the Korean Protestants’ insistence on the indispensable role of a new, ultimately universal education in creating the basis of a new national society, a trend that first surfaced in the 1890s, was only strengthened by the slide of the nation towards colonial rule. The assumption that training in the new educational system adapted from the Western model would infuse high Christian ethics in students was perfectly in accord with the Confucian axiom that humans were morally educable. The Korean Protestant innovation was to

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extend education to males and females of all social classes, to assert the moral perfectibility through education of the lowliest person, and to aver that in a truly civilised state, moral influence did not flow to the nation from an élite centre but welled up from an informed, educated populace. The most fervent and influential early Protestant exponent of the civilising mission of Christian citizens was the Methodist convert Yun Ch’iho. Yun’s preoccupation with the idea of a Christian civilisation certainly derived in large part from his neo-Confucian training, which predisposed him to the view that a civilization must be founded on an ideal, and the best civilisation on the truest ideal. Again, Confucian training inclined him to the view that knowledge and wisdom are mutually necessary and supportive and that the fate of a nation depended on the wisdom and character of its people. His unflagging emphasis on the inward-outward movement of change and of the inner moral bedrock of outer forms of civilisation was consistent with the traditional thinking on the sources of civilisation throughout East Asia. The main threads of Yun Ch’iho’s thoughts were developed and passed on to large numbers of Koreans by An Ch’angho, who through his writings, speeches and organisational activities became the most influential and coherent activist calling for the development of a strong national culture. Born in 1878 as the third son of an owner-cultivator near Pyongyang, An Ch’angho’s early education was in classical learning in a sŏdang, a traditional school. But at the age of seventeen he moved to Seoul, where he entered a Christian college. Almost immediately, he became involved in the Independence Club, was drawn to the principles of Yun Ch’iho, and became convinced that Korea had to escape its thraldom to what he called the empty formalism of the Chu Hsi school of Korea’s neo-Confucian orthodoxy. An Ch’angho’s life motto could be summed up as ‘I act, therefore I am,’ and he is well known for coining the phrase musil yŏkhaeng. This phrase perhaps first appeared in print in the lyrics of the song written by Ch’oe Namsŏn for the Student Youth Fraternity, the Ch’ŏngnyŏn haguhoe, founded by Yun and An in 1908. There have been a number of versions given of the purport of this phrase, but An supplied his own in very simple everyday terms: work hard to find what is correct and true and strive to act accordingly. Personal integrity from small matters to momentous was his watch-cry. Sincerity, or seeking to know the truth, he contrasted to empty vanity; taking responsibility for one’s knowledge of the truth, that is, acting accordingly, he contrasted to empty dogma, vain speculation and idle fancies, which he claimed were the characteristics of the Chosŏn dynasty’s speculative neo-Confucian philosophical tradition. Indeed, the meaning of the phrase must be considered in relation to the Wang

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Yang-ming school’s rebuttal of the Chu Hsi school that dominated the Korean mind, encapsulated in the four-character phrase, chihaeng ilch’i, or knowing and acting are one. An also grounded the phrase musil yŏkhaeng in his newly acquired Protes­ tant ideas of responsible citizenship and the idea held in common by the Protestant reformers that the nation-state system was an outcome of Christian principles applied to national and international spheres. What he called the ‘spirit of truth’ was to form the basic mentality of citizens, whereby they would develop sound, useful and effective characters; and musil yŏkhaeng was to serve as the ethical foundation of education in the new knowledge. The new knowledge certainly contained learning associated with the West—natural and social sciences, economics and so on—but for An it was much more than knowing things: knowing how, or better, how to know, was vital. Because An was so committed to wedding knowledge and action, he is often not properly recognised as an intellectual of the first rank. One of the greatest Korean orators of the century, An held audiences spell-bound for up to three hours at a time, which is perhaps a little ironic given his emphasis on action. He deftly cited the classics and employed classical allusions, for both ironic and exemplary purposes, and either synthesised elements of tradition with Protestant and other ‘Western’ doctrines or replaced them altogether in a rigorous, analytical and unusually consistent manner. Knowledge meant understanding how the world was and how to change it. The central idea was that no line of thought, dictum or maxim was valid that did not find practical expression and did not effect concrete change in the personal and social order. As in Yun Ch’iho’s thought, change was a dynamic inward to outward movement; genuine outward change stemmed from inner, moral and mental transformation. On 13 May 1913, An Ch’angho in exile in the USA established the Hŭngsadan, a name borrowed from an earlier organisation founded by Yu Kiljun, the late-19th-century radical reformer. This was to be the pilot community in exile and its guiding principle was the development among its members of sound character in sound bodies through the three educations, moral, physical and mental, a task that was to be shared by male and female equally. Induction as members into this community followed passage of a catechism test, which was modelled after the Presbyterian catechism for church members. The Hŭngsadan catechism emphasised positive attributes of responsible citizens and was also quite iconoclastic towards Korea’s Confucian past, as is evident in the following three examples. The answer to the question how to generate new industries and enhance Korea’s trading capacity was musil yŏkhaeng. To the question concerning the importance of yŏkhaeng, strength in action, the

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answer was that it was vitally important because however well one claims to know what is right, if it is not acted upon, there is no difference from not knowing it at all. Thirdly, there is an exchange in which the Chosŏn dynasty is characterised as one that lived in a vacuum: it laid claim to profound knowledge, of which the most profound element was a complete absence of acting upon it. An Ch’angho’s ideas were not developed in isolation and were part of the currency of reform-minded Koreans of the ‘culturalist’ persuasion. Similar points characterized many of the speeches of Korean students in Japan, delivered at their YMCA gatherings in Tokyo and in meetings of the Korean Student Fraternities—and duly recorded and passed on to the police by plants in the audiences. Inside Korea, the principle publication dedicated to the programme of individual spiritual and mental renewal as the means of attaining national cultural and material strength was the journal Tonggwang (Light of the East). This journal was the organ of the Tonguhoe, the counterpart inside Korea of the Hŭngsadan. Throughout the pages of the Tonggwang, An’s writings from abroad were relayed to Koreans on the peninsula, albeit in censored form. Although An Ch’angho, and the new Protestant intellectuals generally, were careful to recognise continuities between their new beliefs and the traditional framework in which they had been schooled in their youth, they were equally insistent on what they believed were crucial differences. A society where in fact, rather than as a forever postponed potentiality, acquisition and utilisation of knowledge is offered to all, represented for them a departure from and not simply an extension of the traditional conception of society, of how it fits together and how it should be ordered. Music, said Confucius, was a means for the educated, civilised men to change the habits and customs of the masses. An orchestra in which all members play their own parts skilfully, said An Ch’angho, is how society should be conceived. This hardly solved the relation of free individuals to a society, but the changes of which An Ch’angho was in part an agent were perhaps more deep-seated and intimately related to the spread of mass society in a comprehensive sense than he could have foreseen, and formed much of the bedrock of the realities of the later twentieth century. Christianity and Socialism In striking contrast to the destructive hostility that emerged in the northern half of the peninsula following liberation in 1945 and the anti-communist position pursued by mainstream Protestants thereafter in the south, socialist and communist movements were introduced to the Koreans in the early 1920s mainly by Protestant leaders. There was some interest among national figures before 1919, and there were Korean Christian writers in the Korean newspapers in California who praised the Russian revolution for a short period in 1917–1918.

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But it was left to Yi Tonghwi, an associate of An Ch’angho and a Protestant evangelist who fled to Manchuria in 1911 during the Conspiracy Case, to organise the first Korean socialist and communist parties, which he did so in Vladivostok and Shanghai. His colleague, Yŏ Unhyŏng (1885–1947), the translator of the Communist Manifesto into Korean, was a Protestant school-teacher. The first organised communist group inside Korea was the Seoul Youth League, formed in 1921 with connections to Yi Tonghwi and the Seoul YMCA. The same year, Pak Hŭido (1889–1951), a YMCA leader who had been one of the Protestant signatories to the March First Declaration of Independence, began publishing a socialist journal called Sin Saengwhal (New Lifestyle) on his release from prison. These Protestant socialist-communist leaders maintained contact, and at times working relations, with a variety of leaders and movements of different persuasions throughout the 1920s and 1930s. There was nothing surprising about the turn to socialism among the Protestants. The failure of the Western nations to show any support for Korea’s 1919 Declaration of Independence, which in part appealed to the principle of national self-determination put forward by the US President Woodrow Wilson in the lead up to the Paris Peace Conference at the end of WWI, raised serious questions in their minds about the value liberal democracies placed on issues of justice and liberty. Moreover, socialism not only appeared amenable to core Christian ethical principles but in its pre-Marxist form basically grew out of Christian monastic orders in Europe. Some Korean Protestants were favourably influenced by the idea of a ‘socialism of love,’ espoused by the Japanese Christian, Kagawa Toyohiko. The culturalist journal, Tonggwang, published an article in 1932 on how the social ethics of the early church prescribed that all members’ possessions and incomes were to be held as common property. Thus by the 1920s, capitalism was not viewed by all influential Protestant leaders in Korea as necessarily a positive or friendly system. We could say that many Protestant were ‘unfriendly’ towards capitalism in a way similar to their being ‘friendly’ with socialism, that is, they judged it on moral and spiritual grounds. From the mid-1920s, Christians with socialist leanings were actively engaged in rural affairs, especially under the umbrella of the Christian Agricultural Villages Study Group (Kidokkyo nongch’on yŏn’guhoe kŭrup). When founding the Korean Products Promotion Society in 1922, Cho Mansik had included in his rationale for the organisation a passage about how Japan’s capitalistic economic invasion had ravaged the very centre of Korea, and although he did not become a Marxist himself, in an interview published a decade later he named Marx as the world’s greatest thinker. The journal of the Products Promotion Society carried articles on the history of the cooperative movement

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in Europe and in support of the creation of farmers’ and workers’ cooperatives in Korea. Leading members of the Society included socialists such as Na Kyŏngsŏk, the Presbyterian Yi Kapsŏng, Kim Chŏ’lsu, who was a close associate of Yi Tonghwi and leader of the Seoul Youth League, Yi Sunt’ak, who was trained in Marxist economics by the renowned Japanese Marxist Kawakami Hajime, and Yi Kŭngno, who in 1948 became a founding member of the DPRK government. It was only natural that when An Ch’angho was released from jail in 1937, the two men who held talks on future movements with him were Yŏ Unhyŏng and Cho Mansik. Kim Il Sung, future leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was himself the son of a devout Christian farming couple. In writings attributed to him he described an occasion when, along with a large throng of others Koreans in northern China, he attended one of the famous public lectures by An Ch’angho on cultivating the capacity to secure the long-term independence of the Korean nation. While giving full marks to his legendary oratorical prowess and sincerity, Kim faulted An for his ‘disappointing and incorrect message,’ by which he meant An’s attribution of Korea’s position in part to serious failings in Koreans’ national character that must be rectified as a condition of Korea’s revival. Kim expressed very clearly the incompatibility between the culturalist and materialist antidotes to Korea’s subjection to Japan, based as they were on widely divergent diagnoses. But in this passage credited to him, one finds no hostility towards An’s persona nor towards his Christian beliefs as such. Tension specifically between the communists and Christians developed in serious form only some time after the dissolution of the Sin’ganhoe, which had brought the ideological left and centre together in a united front movement from February 1927 to May 1931. By the mid-1930s the Marxist-Leninist group resolved that all religious movements were anathema to true communism and must be opposed root and branch. By the same token many of the Protestants were coming under the influence of thoroughly anti-communist Christian compatriots abroad, such as Rhee Syngman in the USA and Kim Ku in Shanghai, and were in any case increasingly wary of the direction taken by the more hard-line communists in Korea. The Shintō Shrine Edict Although none of the religions as institutions took a political stand on the issue of Japanese rule, the opening of the Chōsen Shintō Shrine in Seoul in 1925 presaged a costly confrontation between Christianity and the GovernmentGeneral. The Protestant churches’ resistance to the Shintō shrine obeisance edict was not an act of political defiance motivated by national political objectives but rested on theological grounds, namely, that complying with

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the Government-General’s order that all schools and like institutions formally observe obeisances before Shintō shrines on designated ‘national’ days amounted to an egregious form of spiritual idolatry that required Christians to betray their faith. It was not until the mid-m1930s, after Japan’s seizure of Manchuria and the establishment of Manchukuo, that the GovernmentGeneral began to take measures to enforce the edict. Naturally, the same policy applied in Japan and drew resistance from some Christians and Buddhist leaders there, but the edict was policed with far greater urgency in Korea and Taiwan than in Japan proper. At this point, some key Protestant leaders saw in what they considered the persecution of their churches and schools a fulfilment of certain eschatological prophesies linked to pre-millennialism: the Second Coming of Christ, destruction of Japan and all worldly state power and construction of a new order founded on Christian principles under the direct rule of Christ and his people. The Reverend Kil Sŏnju (1869–1935), for example, had already in 1921, upon his release from prison for his involvement in the March First uprising, preached that the hope of Koreans lay in the coming apocalypse, whereby the Kingdom of God would be established on earth and all the faithful, including Korean believers, would enter an order of peace and joy. From 1930 till his death while holding a revival meeting in 1935, Kil was somewhat obsessed with this pre-millennial vision,20 which was adopted in full earnestness by the Elder Pak Kwanch’un, who visited Governor-General Ugaki several times to petition the withdrawal of the shrine edict, and most dramatically managed to gain access to the observation stands in the Japanese Diet, from which he threw down pamphlets warning Japan of fateful consequences if they did not mend their ways before Christ’s return. Elder Pak and others like him, such as the schoolteacher Esther Aesuk Ahn (Esther Ahn Kim), suffered imprisonment throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s. Many Christians moved to northern Manchuria to join Korean communities already established in the Chientao districts, called North and South Kando by Koreans, to escape the shrine edict and await the apocalypse. But most stayed put, and their objections to the edict were so insistent that the GovernmentGeneral authorities felt obliged to offer an official explanation of the meaning of the edict that would counter the claims that it was enforced idolatry. Bowing before the shrines, or the Emperor’s picture at the shrines, was not a religious rite, they asserted, but an expression of respect for the supreme leader of the nation and its dominions, a political observance in accord with the national 20   Chong Bum Kim, “Preaching the Apocalypse in Colonial Korea: The Protestant Millennialism of Kil Sŏn-ju,” in Christianity in Korea, ed. Robert E. Buswell Jr. & Timothy S. Lee (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 152–153.

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calendar. But portraying the shrine obeisances in this way was a very long stretch, for the shrines were, after all, Shintō shrines and Shintōism was considered a religion by practically everyone in Japan proper. Moreover, this was the time when State Shintō was in force in Japan, whereby the emperor was given far more status than a political leader and endowed with divine-like qualities as the descendent of Amaterasu-omikami, the founding divinity of the royal family, if not of the Japanese people as a whole. Thus to the majority of Korean Christians, the explanation did not hold water and they continued to resist. Christian schools and churches held out against the edict reasonably successfully till 1936, when the military more or less took over power in Japan proper, at which point refusal to engage in Shintō obeisances invited certain arrest, often imprisonment and, if one was a leader, torture and not infrequently death.21 At this point and progressively throughout the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars, the eschatological viewpoint provided a meaningful link between the kingdoms of God and of Caesar: it was imperial Japan’s politics that hastened the Second Coming. A certain Presbyterian minister named Son Yangwŏn formulated the Protestant position in a protocol, the gist of which was that in usurping God’s position, the Japanese Emperor was aligning himself with Satan and would thereby bring destruction on himself and his nation during the approaching War of Armageddon. Korea’s Christians, therefore, could hardly align themselves with the Japanese Emperor. By early 1938, eighteen Christian schools, including Pyongyang’s Union Christian College, were forced to close because of non-compliance with the edict. Finally, in September 1938, the Korean Presbyterian General Assembly was forcibly placed under Japanese supervision, and at a meeting held under police surveillance it was resolved that “obeisance at shrines is not a religious act and is not in conflict with Christian teaching. It should be performed as a matter of first importance, thus maintaining the patriotic zeal of the Imperial Subjects.”22 This resolution naturally divided the Presbyterian church. Some leaders agreed to comply for the sake of keeping church and schools operating, but several ministers and Christian laypersons organized the Anti-Shintō Shrine Worship Movement (Sinsa pulch’ambae undong), with the most active centres being in North and South P’yŏngan and South Kyŏngsang provinces, and northern Manchuria.

21  See Wi Jo Kang, “Church and State Relations in the Japanese Colonial Period,” in Christianity in Korea, ed. Buswell & Lee, 110–113. Some fifty pastors lost their lives after being arrested. 22  Ung Kyu Pak, Millennialism in the Korean Protestant Church (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 187.

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War and the End of Colonial Rule

On 7 July 1937, in engaging Chinese forces in a dispute over the famous Marco Polo Bridge in northern China, Japanese troops launched a war of invasion of China that ended only with Japan’s defeat in World War II. Japan’s aims, in addition to seizing control of China, were to contain the Soviet Union, achieve undisputed leadership of East Asia and secure Japan proper and its imperial dependencies against the United States Pacific fleet. Japan had originally wanted to draw China under its leadership in cooperation with Western powers, but in the wake of World War I the latter viewed the expansionist ambitions of their erstwhile ally with growing impatience. In response to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations commissioned an inquiry that issued a damning indictment of Japanese activities, known as the Lytton Report. Japan promptly withdrew from the League and militarist factions gained ascendancy. In August 1936, Japan’s militarist leadership drew up a list of ‘principles,’ which included increasing sea power, security on the continent and total mobilisation of economic and labour resources, including those of Korea. Following the outbreak of war with China, the Japanese Army in Korea was mobilised and conscription of Koreans commenced. When Japan attacked the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour in December 1941, drawing both nations into the Second World War, Korea was subjected to even more intense mobilisation of its economy, labour and young men for war. At this point the Allied Powers and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (National Party) took greater interest in Korea’s resistance to Japan, supporting the Korean Provisional Government in China and certain guerrilla bands operating north of the Korea-Manchukuo border. For their part, Korean leftist groups abroad merged with the Chinese, Russian and Japanese communist parties. Apart from the crime of war, in which the world at large was complicit, Japanese military leaders engaged also in crimes against women, dragooning close to 200,000 young Korean women on false pretences into sexual services for Japanese soldiers. These were the so-called ‘comfort women,’ whose case of sexual enslavement was never raised at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East held in Tokyo following Japan’s surrender in World War II, only recently gained a hearing and remains a festering sore in Korean-Japanese relations. Inside Korea, Japan’s war mobilisation policies embraced cultural activities also, forcing the closure of nationalist organisations of any ideological shade and subjecting any Korean of influence to intense pressure to campaign publicly on behalf of Japan’s war aims. Between August 1937 and March 1938,

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181 members of Yi Kwangsu’s Tonguhoe movement were arrested and charged with violation of Public Peace laws. In February 1938, the police moved against the Hŭngŏp Kurakbu, associated with Rhee Syngman in the USA and led by Yun Ch’iho and other YMCA members in Korea. At this point the Japanese authorities in Tokyo urged the Government-General in Korea to devise a ‘political solution’ to the problem of Korean nationalism, which took the form of presenting influential Koreans with the choice of signing a pledge to engage in officially approved activities, having their businesses and organisations closed down, or languishing in prison. Many leading figures, from left and right, signed the pledge and engaged in activities supportive of Japan’s war aims, for which they have been branded collaborators. Conclusion The period 1910–1945 witnessed some of the most momentous changes in Korea’s historical experience for some centuries. The 500-year-old Chosŏn dynasty ended and with it the monarchical system as a whole; the country lost its political and economic independence and became a Japanese colony, a development that has had an enduring cultural and psychological effect on the Korean people; debate and division over liberal democracy versus communism commenced; the economy began its move in earnest from an agrarian to a secondary industrial economy, accompanied by an increase in the demographic, political and cultural importance of the city over the countryside; education changed in form and content and began to spread more widely among the population, attended by a vigorous publishing industry; women participated in the public arena in education, politics and economic ventures; and new religious movements arose and participated in all the major issues of the times. This short period of 36 years is thus a pivotal one in the experience of Koreans in the modern era. Change was both rapid and dense. Although the fact of colonial rule rendered the legacies of this period ambiguous, there has been very little in the subsequent cultural and political histories of Korea, north and south, that does not relate to phenomena that were initiated or developed in the previous four decades.

CHAPTER 7

A Nation Divided, 1945–1990 The division of Korea into two states is one of the more serious legacies of the colonial period. It was, of course, the direct result of the manner in which the USSR and the USA chose to disarm and expel the Japanese from the peninsula, but the need to disarm the Japanese only arose in the first place because of Japan’s colonial possession of Korea. The manner of the division itself can be characterised as artificial and arbitrary, unrelated to the actual conditions on the peninsula. But we must be careful not to infer from this accurate observation that there was not a natural ideological division among the Korean people, no other basis for their participation in the Cold War and no active complicity in the division by Koreans. None of these common extrapolations is accurate. Nor was it the intention of either the USSR or the USA that the curtain fall on a divided Korea. Such a denouement was a tragedy, first and foremost for the people on the peninsula, and led to another tragedy, a highly destructive war that left an enduring legacy of hostility and bitterness. The conclusion of World War II in favour of the allied forces created a new political framework for the peninsula that both opened the way for Koreans to form an independent nation-state and fatefully frustrated their attempts to do so. The drama that was played out over the next eight years up to the armistice that halted active military combat in the Korean War of 1951–1953 was not a one-way story of outside imposition of two hostile systems on the peninsula. For the new framework was not a finished order but one in whose shaping the Koreans took an active part; it was one in which the hopes and aspirations of no interested party were satisfied, but which nevertheless grew out of their attempts to fulfil them. Korean and foreign interests became intertwined and opportunities were seized wherever they presented themselves. Very quickly, the peninsula became something of a focal point in the developing post-worldwar international political order. Although the experience of war hardened the divided states in their pursuit of the ideological opposites that marked the Cold War era, they nevertheless competed for legitimacy on much the same terms. The three main pillars on which legitimacy in both states rested were economic development, military prowess and their respective official interpretations of history. Each state sought to gain both international recognition and the support of the Korean people on both sides of the divide by achieving superiority in these areas.

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In the north, although there were a number of political and military purges, reports of public executions and some accounts of political prison camps, there emerged no evidence of any organised political or economic dissent of any consequence. No Czeschlaw Milosz wrote a Captive Mind, nor did any samizdat or underground literature movement operate that we know of. South Korea, by contrast, was marked by dissenting views, movements and activities of real consequence in all areas: religion, education, literature, labour and industry, and direct political action. While the political target of South Korean dissent was for the most part the anti-communism, anti-democratic behaviour, and after 1961 the military composition of the regimes, culturally the dissent was directed against the thoroughgoing economic conception of society that drove the aspirations not only of the political and industrial leaders but also of the bulk of the populace itself. This chapter will confine itself to examining the road to permanent division, the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, the official political and economic forms of north and south and the question of the nature of communism and democracy in the respective states.

The Road to Permanent Division

During the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars from 1937 to 1945, Korean diaspora groups divided over whether to identify with communist or non-communist nations and groups. The Provisional Government under the right-wing nationalist Kim Ku moved from Shanghai to Chungking during this period and maintained close relations with the Chinese National Government, the Kuomintang. Rhee Syngman consolidated his position among compatriots in Europe and the USA as an indefatigable opponent of both the Japanese and the communists. An Ch’angho had succumbed to illness in a prison hospital in Seoul in 1937, bereaving Koreans of a highly principled and esteemed leader who together with Yŏ Unhyŏng might have exercised a firm but moderating influence on the factional manoeuvring. Many Korean exile groups in Manchuria and northern China forged alliances with communist groups. Thus developed the Russian Faction, the Yenan Faction under Kim Tubong, and the Domestic Faction under Pak Hŏnyŏng and Kim Il Sung. The problems for communist groups operating inside Japan were immense during the war, and so no faction with ties to Japan as such emerged in 1945. Members of these factions and of the Provisional Government returned to Korea after August 1945 and strove to gain control over the ideological rivalry

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already operating inside Korea. In August-September 1945 the centre-left socialist Yŏ Unhyŏng formed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (CPKI), which was, as the name implies, regarded as an interim body. Initially wide-ranging and rather loosely organised, the CPKI became more centralised and top-down by December 1945, when Moscow agreed to the trusteeship principle and ordered communist groups in Korea to drop demands for immediate autonomy. The accession by the communists to this demand brought rivalry between communist and non-communist Koreans to a head. A confrontation had nevertheless been brewing for a long time. The ideological conflict that had surfaced in the early 1920s, intensified in the early 1930s after the united front movement disbanded. Relations between the ideological rivals deteriorated during the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars to the point where any national liberation could only entail some kind of showdown between them. Initially, attempts were made to contain this showdown. On 6 September 1945, several hundred gathered at Seoul Kyŏnggi Girls’ High School under the auspices of the CPKI and declared the establishment of the Korean People’s Republic (KPR). The object was national unity, and in an attempt to bring together the leading figures of all political shades a cabinet was appointed that included the rightists Kim Ku and Rhee Syngman, the leftists Kim Il Sung and Hŏ Hŏn and the moderate Kim Kyusik. Policy objectives included the elimination of feudalism and imperialism, land reform, nationalisation of major industries, and voting rights for all over the age of eighteen years. But hardly two days later, Pak Hŏnyŏng formed his Korean Communist Party independently of the KPR and Koreans drifted into mutually exclusive ideological camps. The returning members of the Provisional Government in Chungking, for their part, founded the Korea Independence Party under Kim Ku, vigorously opposed to any trusteeship. Shortly afterwards, Rhee himself gathered conservative nationalists and others into the Korea Democratic Party (KDP). In short, none of the nationalist movements across the left-right political or ideological spectrum had gained ascendancy throughout the peninsula by 1945. There were pockets of supremacy here and there, but all awaited the showdown that the Japanese presence had forestalled. Cho Mansik was initially without serious competitor in the northern region, whereas the south was far more fractured, with Kim Ku and Yŏ Unhyŏng being the main contenders before the arrival of Rhee Syngman. There was a variety of streams aspiring to form the main current, and attempts at confluences were hampered by opportunistic jockeying and outright power play, including assassinations. Thus although US policy in the

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south might be faulted for not recognising Korean leadership, it has to be said that such leadership was by no means clear. In the north, where it was a little clearer, the USSR handed matters over to Cho Mansik, as had the Japanese, in effect, when they withdrew. But disagreement over whether the peninsula should be placed under a UN Trusteeship and widespread politicking among various competitors for leadership soon moved the USSR to switch its backing firmly behind Kim Il Sung, while in the south the USA eventually gave the nod to Rhee Syngman. In both north and south, the leader that took control was not one who had been operating on the peninsula. Both came in from long years abroad and leaned on the interests of the rising superpowers to gain ascendancy. The interests of Russia in the Korean peninsula were reasonably long standing, because of the desire for ice-free ports in the east, access to trade and resources and influence on its border regions. The USA, on the contrary, had almost no interest in the peninsula at all. Although towards the end of 1943 some strategic analysts in the USA had expressed alarm over the possibility of a Soviet occupation of Korea, which they believed would create an entirely new strategic situation in northeast Asia, the Pentagon deemed Korea to be of no long-term strategic significance to the USA right up to the end of July 1945. Late in November 1943, Roosevelt from the USA, Churchill from the United Kingdom, and Chiang Kai-shek from China met at what is termed the Cairo Conference and agreed that in the event of an allied victory, Japan would be stripped of all its colonies. Then at the Tehran Conference in December 1943, at which Stalin agreed to attack Japan once the European war was concluded, the policy of placing Korea under a trusteeship was adopted in principle. But when, at the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Roosevelt suggested a twenty- to thirty-year trusteeship over Korea, Stalin countered that the shorter the trusteeship the better. Britain, France and The Netherlands, for their part, fumed over the possibility that trusteeships might by extension be applied to their own colonial possessions, so that the trusteeship agreement stood on very shaky ground until it was agreed that only those possessions held by Axis powers would be considered. There is here an ironic twist of fate, for the Korean Independence Declaration of 1919 failed largely because Japan at that time being a member of the Allied Powers, Wilson’s national selfdetermination principle was applied only to non-allied nations. Once the USA dropped its atomic bombs on Japan on 6 and 9 August, the Soviets began disarming the Japanese in Manchuria with the greatest of ease. Thereupon the US State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee decided for the first time that it was advisable to participate more actively in the occupation of Korea and again pressed for a trusteeship. Thus when the Moscow Conference

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was convened on 16 December, the United Kingdom, USSR and USA agreed on a four-power trusteeship over Korea for five years, and at the urging of the USSR they agreed also that a Korean government should be put in place before, not after, the trusteeship period ended. As it happened, growing mistrust between the USA and USSR in the final stages of the Pacific War prevented either this or any other ‘agreement’ from being carried out. In the south, the US Army was instructed to set up a government that was in harmony with US interests, but no clear guidelines were given as to what that might mean. General John Hodge was uninclined to consider a process that respected Korean patriotic pride, although this had been agreed upon at the Moscow Conference, and found it simpler to employ the Japanese, especially as he became more anti-Soviet. After facing sustained pressure from the angered Koreans, he shipped the Japanese back to Japan: 70,000 bureaucrats and 600,000 soldiers and civilians over a period of four months. But he then added insult to injury by employing so-called Korean collaborators. Although the oft-repeated claim that the damage thus incurred was irreparable belongs to the myths of the times, it was a monumental blunder. Hodge’s lack of heed also to the 16 December trusteeship agreement possibly formed the background of the assassination of a national leader in the south, Song Chinu, immediately after he held talks on Korea’s future with Hodge on 29 December. The military governor, Major-General Arnold, appointed an eleven-member Korean Advisory Committee but it included only one leftist, Yŏ Unhyŏng, who resigned in protest at its first meeting. The centre nationalist Cho Mansik, to whom had been entrusted leadership of the northern half, refused an invitation to join since in his eyes it smacked of the former advisory council to the Japanese Government-General. At the same time, General Hodge all but declared open warfare on the left wing, especially those in the Korean People’s Republic, and on 10 November shut down its newspaper in Seoul. The US military administration did attempt land reform, which proved a popular move, but it was repealed after rice-market reforms resulted in uncontrolled inflation, land speculation and rampant corruption. Cognizant that no coherent plan existed, Hodge in a fit of impatience suggested to President Truman in December that they might simply get out of Korea and leave Koreans to sort themselves out, or as he put it, ‘purify’ themselves. He at least had some inkling of a looming showdown. The December 1945 Moscow Conference agreement that Korea be placed under a four-power trusteeship for five years threw the southern region into political turmoil. The rightists were adamantly opposed to it, as was Hodge himself, and by late January the USA revoked its agreement to the trusteeship proposal—on grounds that it favoured USSR expansionism. General Hodge

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used the widespread Korean antipathy to the trusteeship resolution to portray the communists as anti-national and favoured the new Korea Democratic Party (KDP) led by Rhee Syngman, even though the outspoken Rhee by this stage was persona non grata in the US State Department. And so was born the Representative Democratic Council in February 1946, comprising Hodge and Rhee and a coalition of twenty-eight leaders, twenty-four of whom were firmly on the right. On 12 December 1946 a provisional legislature was appointed in the south, which the following year metamorphosed into the South Korean Interim Government (SKiG). In July 1947, Yŏ Unhyŏng was assassinated and the future of left-wing persons and organisations in the south became problematic, with increasing numbers suffering arrest. In September 1947, the USA referred Korea’s future to the UN over Soviet objections, pushing for UN supervision of national elections, to be followed by Korea’s formal independence and the withdrawal of all foreign forces. The USSR refused to attend the first meeting of the UN Temporary Commission on Korea on 12 January 1948, whereupon Rhee called for immediate elections only in the south. Every opposition party was opposed to this proposal, since it might doom Korea to a permanent division. Australian and Canadian members of the Temporary Commission tended to oppose the idea also, on much the same grounds. Nevertheless the UN accepted the proposal and elections went ahead early in May. Rhee’s party won the election and on 15 August he was proclaimed the first president of the Republic of Korea (ROK). In June 1949, Kim Ku, Rhee’s strongest electoral opponent, was assassinated. (Another strong contender, the political director of the KDP, Chang Tŏksu, veteran of the 1919 independence movements and a leading nationalist journalist throughout the 1920s and 1930s, had been assassinated already back in December 1947.) In the north, the Soviet and Chinese Communist parties instructed Korean communist leaders to stay north of the thirty-eighth parallel; a number of communist leaders in the south moved north to join them. The different factions jostled for positions of advantage. The leader of the Domestic Faction, Hyŏn Chunhyŏk was assassinated almost immediately. Much of the Soviet Army departed from the north peacefully, and Provisional People’s Committees were established throughout the northern regions, on the understanding that they would be centralised as a ‘Democratic National Front’ under the leadership of Yŏ Unhyŏng and Pak Hŏnyŏng in November 1946. But the real power-holders in the north remained the Soviet military officers, Major-General N. G. Lebedev, Major-General Andrei A. Romanenko and Colonel-General Terentii F. Shtykov, who was held in high esteem in Moscow and was the real politician among them. These men directed affairs through

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what was called the Soviet Civil Administration, despite its membership being almost entirely military personnel. Their policy was not to install an immediate, fully-fledged communist regime but to support a ‘people’s democracy’ that resembled a united front of the different political persuasions and leaders at the time.1 After all, communism in the north was at this point rather weak. In this context, Cho Mansik’s obdurate opposition to the trusteeship agreement might have been principled and even popular but it was politically inept, and faced with his uncooperative and at times strangely unresponsive manner, the Soviet authorities tired of him and turned their attention to the communist leader Kim Il Sung. With their support, the Interim People’s Committee was established under Kim Il Sung on 14 February 1947, and later became the People’s Assembly of North Korea. On 9 September 1948, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was inaugurated under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, who presided over a 572-member Supreme People’s Assembly. The process was far from consensual. The Democratic National Front was opposed to the establishment of the Interim People’s Committee under Kim Il Sung’s leadership. The non-communist nationalist bodies, which were numerically stronger than the communists, resisted orders to submit to the trusteeship arrangement, and Cho Mansik’s Chosŏn Democratic Party doggedly refused to budge on the issue. Throughout 1946 and 1947, Cho and a considerable number of opposition people were imprisoned and later executed, while around 1000 Koreans were delivered into the USSR prison camps, of whom few survived and fewer returned. Once the DPRK was established in September 1948, the government moved quickly to consolidate the earlier agricultural and industrial reforms of 1946 that were highly popular. Nevertheless, the political landscape was even then far from settled. Pak Hŏnyŏng, leader of the Namno or South Korean Workers Party and first Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Kim Tubong, head of the Yenan Faction and Chairman of the Korean Workers’ Party, were purged, and Hŏ Kaŭi, able leader of the Soviet Faction, was assassinated. A series of purges continued up to and beyond the Korean War, and again against those who wished North Korea to join the spirit of the anti-Stalinist turn in the USSR under Khrushchev in the 1960s. Thus the idea that there was a genuine grass-roots revolution in the north is at best a half-truth. There was major influence from the Russian group of Korean returnees, far from inconsiderable influence from the Chinese group and smaller influence from the Manchurian guerrilla group. As a guerrilla 1  Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945–1960 (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2002), 2–3 & 15–17.

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leader, Kim Il Sung was one of many, possibly first among equals, but there was no natural domestic ground for the rise of an enormously powerful and ruthless communist government: the close supervision of an armed Soviet presence was decisive. If anything, the struggle for pre-eminence against the background of Soviet power resulted in the alienation of large numbers of highly motivated people who might otherwise have made valuable contributions to the new state. There was in fact considerable support for some kind of worker’s paradise among the centre nationalists. The Reverend Han Kyŏngjik (1902–2000), for example, who even after his later defection to the south preached that “God is always on the side of the worker,”2 founded a Social-Democratic Party in the city of Sinŭiju in North P’yŏngan Province upon liberation in 1945. But when it became apparent that religion was to be excised from the nation as an enemy of the people, he and large numbers of the Christian population—by some accounts up to 80% of them—fled south, harbouring deep bitterness towards the species of communism that prevailed in the north.

The Korean War

It can be said that whereas war in general is inevitable, no war in particular is so. Yet if there has ever been a particular war that might be considered to have been inevitable, it is the Korean War that officially broke out on 25 June 1950 and lasted till, absent a peace treaty, an armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. Events, moods, political rhetoric and military preparations appear to have been on course for a war in Korea. The left-right ideological hostility that had been building up steadily among Korean nationalists since the mid-1920s awaited a showdown that the tight grip of Japanese colonial rule had prevented. The liberation, particularly the manner of the liberation, opened the way for this showdown. The Cold War confrontation between the overlords of north and south Koreas raised the stakes terribly high, heating the already bitter enough antagonisms among the Koreans to exploding point. Quite apart from the ideological division, the question of national legitimacy was paramount. Neither side was prepared to allow two separate Koreas to emerge: there had to be established a line of legitimacy through the colonial period.

2  Sermon titled “Kidokkyowa kongsanjuŭi” (Christianity and Communism), delivered at Seoul Bethany Church some time in 1947 (day and month unrecorded): Han Kyŏngjik moksa sŏlgyo chŏnjip (Collected Sermons of Reverend Han Kyŏngjik), 10 vols (Seoul: Taehan kidokkyo sŏhoe, 1971), Vol. 1, 137–149.

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On what basis could a new nation-state called Korea be constructed? The monarchy was long gone, removed by the Japanese in 1910, though effectively in 1905. The Japanese government-general had been no Korean polity. Thus between the fall of the Korean monarchy in 1910 and the liberation in 1945 there was an interregnum that offered no acceptable political model. Whence, then, legitimacy? Turning to ideological claims had its grounds and was in any case strongly encouraged by the liberating powers on either side of the thirtyeighth parallel, but there had never been any actual embodiment in Korean precedent of either liberal democracy or Soviet communism. Thus although both leaders made reunification under their own ideological model the principle objective, neither could easily acquire legitimacy. For Rhee Syngman, the line of legitimacy extended back to his vigorous involvement in the Independence Club in the late 1890s, his exile for antiJapanese resistance in 1912, his election as first president of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai in 1919 and his tireless diplomatic campaigning around Europe and North America. For Kim Il Sung, the source of legitimacy was his leadership of anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance in Manchuria since the 1930s, his supposed unification of the Korean communist forces and his recognition by the USSR. Nationalism on both sides of the divide was thereby wedded to ideologically driven claims to lines of political legitimacy; already by 1949 histories in support of the respective lines were being written. But since the establishment of separate governments the previous year had fatally weakened the force of historical argument, they resorted instead to the argument of military force. The Korean War officially began on 25 June 1950, when North Korea launched a major offensive across the thirty-eighth parallel, after which the UN Security Council, in the absence of the USSR, adopted a resolution ordering North Korea to withdraw. When on 8 August North Korean troops crossed the Naktong River near Pusan, they had taken virtually the whole peninsula. But the famed amphibious landing at Inch’ŏn on 15 September by General Douglas MacArthur soon cut off and encircled the North Korean forces, and on 1 October, South Korean troops advanced northwards cross the thirty-eighth parallel. When the Us army followed on 7 October, Mao Tse-tung mobilised his troops with spectacular effect, pushing the South Korean and combined UN forces back over the parallel on Christmas Day. UN forces crossed into the north once again on 3 April 1952, and on 10 July negotiations for a ceasefire began, but with no result. Fighting continued for more than twelve months but ended in a stalemate: the armistice was signed only on 27 July 1953. The war was significant in several ways. It was a savage conflict, entailing devastation of major cities and a huge cost in lives: 1,520,000 North Korean

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dead and wounded; 1,313,836 South Koreans, with another million dead or missing; 159,000 in the combined UN forces; and a frightful 900,000 among the Chinese. As the first armed action of the United Nations it was an international war. It was, further, a major eruption of Cold War hostility, and the US Army remains stationed on South Korean soil to this day. It severely deepened the conflict between the USA and PRC. It also seriously clouded relations between the communist allies, the USSR and the PRC, whose leaders, Stalin and Mao, inherited the imperial worldviews of their pre-communist forebears and whose differences over the status of Mongolia and Xinjiang, Manchuria and Vietnam were exacerbated by mistrust over their respective positions during the Korean conflict. But the Korean War was first and foremost a civil war for the reunification of the peninsula that left deep psychological scars, intense hostility and millions of family members divided with no means of communication between them. Although anti-communism had been the southern regime’s position from the outset, the tragedy that touched every life and the visible reminders of the destructive character of this internecine calamity enabled Rhee to portray the war as a final proof that communism was wrongheaded, brutal and illegitimate. The southern army had grown in size fourfold to 600,000 men between June 1950 and July 1953; the police force greatly expanded after the war; and the National Security Law reinforced the doctrine that nationalism was anti-communism. The armed forces in the north, where the population was barely half that of the south, became larger even than the southern forces, although in his displeasure at the failure of the war to reunify the land under his leadership, Kim Il Sung claimed the lives of more of his military top brass than had perished during the war. The leading role of the United States Army in the war enabled Kim to portray the southern regime as an American puppet government, manifestly illegitimate, and to define true Korean nationalism in terms of the ideology of self-reliance, or chuch’e (commonly romanised as Juche), that was developed in earnest from the mid-1950s.

Orthodoxy in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Chuch’e Ideology The chuch’e theory or ideology is credited in North Korea exclusively to Kim Il Sung. Suh Dae-sook, former Director of the Center for Korean Studies in Hawaii, concluded that chuch’e was a contrivance created in the 1970s to deal with the fact that the USSR was offering less aid and other nations were refusing new loans. This needs some modification. Necessity here was not so much

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n me Tu R.

N. Hamgyŏng Hyesan Yanggang Chagang

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Sinŭiju N. P’yŏngan

Ch’ŏng jin S. Hamgyŏng Hamhŭng

S. P’yŏngan P’yŏngyang Wŏnsan

Demilitarised Zone

N. Hwanghae S. Hwanghae Kaesŏng Seoul

Yellow Sea

Eastern Sea

Kangwŏn

Kangnŭng

Kyŏnggi N. Ch’ungchŏng Kong ju N. Kyŏngsang S. Ch’ungchŏng Chŏnju Taegu N. Chŏlla Kwangju S. Kyŏngsang Pusan S. Chŏlla Tsushima

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Modern Korea after 1953

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the mother of invention as of adoption of an already existing idea. The idea of self-mastery, of governance of the nation by the Korean people according to their own needs and condition, was part of the anti-toadyist movement of the 1890s. The ringing challenge by An Ch’angho to Koreans to become masters (chuin) of their lives and country sounded out at least as early as 1919, while self-sufficiency and self-direction of the national economy (chajak chagŭp) was the slogan of Cho Mansik’s Korean Products Promotion Society in the 20s and 30s—one active member of which, Yi Kŭngno, became a founding member of the DPRK government. More importantly, the term was bandied about in the debates of the Sin’ganhoe, the Korean united front movement of 1927–1931, at which point the concept of the proletariat’s chuch’esŏng— consciousness of their ownership of Korean history and society—was beginning to flourish. The idea was there: what Kim Il Sung invented was his own peculiar tradition, which consisted in creating a lineage of ideology and revolutionary activity which began with himself, or at least his family. The trick was to make this the official and only version of chuch’e, to make the people accomplices in the legitimation and maintenance of this version. The essence of this version of chuch’e is that the people are the masters of history: they direct it, determine their own fate, and lead the revolution towards a perfect socialist society. Though its roots are in Marx and Lenin, their ideas did not fully account for Korea’s historical position under colonial rule. The question whether Korea could move directly to socialism or had first to go through a nationalist or bourgeois revolution inevitably split the socialist movement under colonialism into competing factions, with the result that the people, the masses, were left out. Kim Il Sung perceived that this factionalism was caused by reliance on others. So while he acknowledged the objective truth of dialectical materialism, he found it necessary to emphasise the subjects, or agents, of the revolution: the people. This required teaching the people consciousness of their role as masters of the revolution, of society, and of nature. The people fulfilled this role through exercising human attributes, namely consciousness, self-reliance, and creativity. Consciousness was defined as awareness of being in control, regulating social relations. This was the basis of self-reliance as a collectivist ethic. From this followed the scheme of historical progress: a movement towards a world where collective self-reliance and creativity were given maximum opportunity. The degree of control humans exercise over nature and society determined their degree of chuch’esŏng (mastery). If the principle of progress was freeing up the people to exercise selfreliance, the source of progress clearly had to be the people. The people had

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to preside over (or pass through) a three-stage revolution of thought, culture and technology. Thought determined action; therefore priority had to be given to thought reform. Thought was determined not so much by class but by what one read, whom one learned from, whom one met, and so forth; therefore having control over what thoughts circulate in one’s society was also exercising mastery: it was not an imposition from above but a responsible collective action. Hence every means at their disposal was employed by the authorities to disseminate this thought, through radio, television, press and public address systems, and through a system of language and symbols that created the space within which the people lived, thought and interpreted. The Public Security network under the Ministry of Public Security headed the organs of unity since 1962. This network had very wide-ranging powers, including maintenance of ‘cultural security,’ which means control of the press, visual and non-visual arts, drama, sports and so on. Membership of this network was often the same as the local Party organisation membership.3 Chuch’e thought was thus not only a theory of power but also a practice of power, shaping the North Korean order. Internally, it was an extremely self-referring, self-containing phenomenon. Within this whole socio-political and cultural scheme religion had, to all appearances, been prevented from finding any autonomous position by dint of the anti-pluralistic terms of the discourse. The claim that all political, social, economic and cultural effects can be controlled since all causes are known (something familiar in J.S. Mill but linked with a very different anthropology), impelled the rulers to control human activity to as minute a degree as available technology allowed. In the DPRK, the term used for this control of society was ‘democratic centralism.’ Party cells were situated in all communes or collectives, and in apartment blocks and other urban and rural neighbourhoods. All citizens belonged to a tanwi, or unit, which was the smallest administrative part of the structure and was under the direction of the Party organisation in each collective. In actual life, the citizens were entirely dependent on the unit for employment, housing, rice and other rations, work clothes, health care, child care and travel permits. It was also the administrative unit responsible for maintaining the single ideology, and all instruction and directives from the Party descended to the individual through the unit.

3  Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea, Part II: Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 818–824.

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Modern P’yŏngyang, largely rebuilt after the 1950–53 Korean War. In the background is the May Day Stadium, nicknamed by residents as the Parachute (Nak’asan) Stadium. Photo by author.

figure 10 A massive bronze statue of Kim Il Sung, founder of the DPRK, in front of the Revolutionary Museum in P’yŏngyang. Photo by author.

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figure 11 A carved monument in honour of Kim Il Sung, in front of the Revolutionary Museum in P’yŏngyang. Photo by author.

figure 12 The Juch’e Tower, P’yŏngyang, in honour of Kim Il Sung’s self-reliance ideology. Photo by author.

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figure 13 A visiting group of school-children, from the North Korean residents’ association in Japan, gathered beneath the Juch’e Tower in P’yŏngyang. Photo by author.

figure 14 Looking across the Taedong River at the Grand People’s Study House. Photo by author.

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figure 15 The Great Hall in which are displayed the manifold gifts of the nations to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. This building of several hundred rooms overlooks the Koryŏ period Buddhist Pohyŏnsa Temple in the Myohyang Mountains. Photo by author.

figure 16 The Namp’o Barrage, the lock that regulates the flow and water level of the Taedong River, which flows though P’yŏngyang, a feat of engineering that marks the North Koreans’ mastery not only over their own society and history but over nature as well. Photo by author.

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figure 17 Part of the vast complex near P’yŏngyang in which the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung is located, outshining the mausoleum of Tan’gun, mythical founder of the Korean people. Photo by author.

Economic Policy There is general agreement that North Korea’s economy got off to a reasonably fine start and up to the 1960s at least was ahead of both China and South Korea in terms of production and standard of living. The foundations of the early success of the north’s economy were a series of popular land and industrial reforms, the efficient organisation of labour into collectives and the initial willingness of the general populace to pour their energies into the work at hand, inspired by the ideal and promise of a socialist workers’ paradise. As early as 5 March 1946 a Land Reform Act was promulgated with the object of dispossessing landlords and redistributing land to rural workers, who were the absolute majority of the population at the time. The act provided for the outright confiscation of land formerly held by Japanese, land owned by absentee landlords and Christian and Buddhist establishments, land not being used for productive purposes, and holdings over a certain size. In short order, land totalling 1.3 million hectares or approximately 3.2 million acres was confiscated, ‘holdings over a certain size’ comprising by far the largest share at 86%.4 4  Kim Sungjin, Uri nara nongch’on munje haegyŏrŭi ryŏksajŏk kyŏnghŏm (Historical experience of solving the problems of our country’s farming villages) (Pyongyang: Social Science Press, 1988).

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This land was distributed to those tilling ground at no cost, on condition that it be neither leased nor sold. The official report on the reform states that thereby one-third of rural households’ holdings were reduced whereas two-thirds were increased.5 Although it entailed a major socio-economic levelling, apart from some minor scuffles, little difficulty was met in fulfilling the reform, which was immensely popular and ensured the regime strong support. At this stage, land remained effectually private, if not disposable. The collectivisation of agriculture, a more challenging and not quite so eagerly enjoined task, was spurred on by the human losses and social upheavals of the Korean War. Under the name of a farmers’ cooperative movement, one-third of farms were included in collectives by the end of 1954. Thereafter, farms were combined as ‘amalgamations,’ and by August 1958 incorporation of all farms into collectives was completed. By this stage, the average farming household economic living standard in North Korea was about half that of the USSR and around twice that of China.6 Not far from Pyongyang in South P’yŏngan Province, lies the Ch’ŏngsanri Model Farm, at which the progress of mechanization, development and refinement of seeds and enhancement of produce and yields are displayed in a museum located in the midst of a functioning farm collective. The reorganization of secondary industries along communist lines commenced some five months after agriculture with the Nationalisation of Industry laws of August 1946, which paved the way for two, three, five and eventually seven-year plans designed to rationalize the thousands of household industries that had sprung up during the colonial era and increased during the uncertainties of the post-liberation and war years. As with agriculture, the industrial reforms implemented collective organization and management, but also propelled a move away from consumer to heavier industrial production. Collectivisation of secondary industry was also mostly completed by the late 1950s, and to mark the achievement the Party launched the Ch’ŏllima or Flying Horse Movement in 1959. This movement was similar to the USSR’s ‘shock brigades,’ the teams of workers who strove to fulfil or ideally over-fulfil their production quotas. The authorities claimed that by 1962 there were almost 63,000 Ch’ŏllima work teams comprising more than one million labourers. By the end of the decade, however, exhaustion set in and the movement suffered a diminishing rate of returns.7 Nevertheless, secondary industry was made

5  Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, Part II, 1018. 6  Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, Part II, 1111ff. 7  Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, Part II, 1222.

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pre-eminent over agriculture from the late 1950s and remained so through to the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994. The factory management structure consisted of political (Party Committee), administrative and technical divisions headed by the Party secretary, the manager and chief engineer. At the Taean Factory, the model industrial collective, there was in 1990 a staff of approximately 1000 people, of whom ninety per cent were labourers and the remainder management, technical and party personnel. Fifty per cent of the Party Committee in the collective were claimed to be labourers.8 Technical training took place at the highest levels in the People’s Economic Institute in Pyongyang. Students there were older than in other tertiary institutions because they were chosen from work places where they had demonstrated that they were good material for foremen and other positions of oversight. In the late 1980s, particularly in relation to the hosting by Pyongyang of the 1989 International Youth Festival, a rudimentary hospitality industry with training facilities was added to the repertoire. Wages were on average 90 wŏn per month in 1990, when one wŏn was set at US$0.50. In the same year, an academic at the People’s Economic Institute earned 250 wŏn per month, that is, two and one half times the average wage. Unskilled labourers, it may be inferred, received probably around 50 wŏn per month in urban centres. The cost of living, however, was extremely low and incomes were not subject to taxation. Almost all housing was state housing, assigned to families through the collective system. Utilities amounted to 9 wŏn per month on average. Rice was subsidised and cost around 8 chŏn per kilogram, although it was rationed at 20kg per person per month. Following Chinese precedent, North Korea operated a dual currency, one for domestic use and another given in exchange for foreign currency to visitors and to residents who received money from abroad. The two currencies were represented by two different sets of banknotes, one labelled ‘Notes exchanged for foreign currency.’ This not only separated the domestic economy from that exchanged for foreign currencies, but also distinguished between people who had access to foreign currencies and those who did not. This distinction was made concrete in its effects by dividing shops into those at which people used domestic currency and those at which one could only buy goods with notes exchanged for foreign currencies: stores at which imported items, especially and most prestigiously Japanese goods, were sold. This is where the North Korean residents in Japan came into the picture in a very important way with 8  The author obtained the information in this and the following two paragraphs during a visit to the People’s Economic Institute in May 1990.

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regard to the economy and to social standing. Under the direction of the North Korean Residents’ Society in Japan, known in Korean as the Choch’ongryŏn and in abbreviated form in Japanese as the Sōren, funds were garnered from enterprises run by North Korean residents and channelled into North Korea. The most well known of these is the pachinko or slot-machine gambling business, but individuals with relatives in the DPRK also contributed generous sums. Altogether, funds from North Korean residents in Japan provided considerable input to the North Korean cash economy each year. The two currencies that involved differences in access to goods were one aspect of an economic division in North Korean society. The upper socioeconomic stratum was fairly well hidden. There were by 1990 some five disco clubs in Pyongyang. One a little under a kilometre from the Koryŏ Hotel was named Minjok siktang (with the English translation—National Restaurant— written alongside) and occupied a basement room down a winding stairway, dimly lit, with people at small tables, dining and drinking wine and spirits which cost up to three times the average monthly income per drink—plus a sales tax. Among its patrons one could find members of national sports teams and actors in the local film industry. It is evident that the limits of the economic policies and management system were reached by the early 1980s, when North Korean progress came close to a standstill. If we set aside the international factors, such as increasing demands by communist-bloc trading partners for cash payments for food and technical imports in a timely manner, there were possibly other domestic reasons for this decline, which was not confined to economic performance. The process of eliminating people that began before 1948 and intensified after the Korean War became a kind of habit until Kim Il Sung used it almost as a first resort and brooked no opposition in any form, particularly after he rejected the anti-Stalinisation movement that gathered sway in the USSR in the mid1950s. The effects of this habit on creativity can be detected in many areas, in politics, economy, education and literature. In literature, for example, goodquality writings became rare between 1960 and the late 1990s, characterised by apparently obligatory repetition of themes extolling the great achievements and person of Kim Il Sung and his immediate forbears and descendants. One could explain all this as the politics of one power-hungry man, but that would not explain what lay behind his success in adopting the means he did. The background to this development is the frustrations experienced across the board during the colonial period at the seeming incapacity of Koreans to unite effectively or even at all against the common enemy, Japan. By claiming to have been the only leader able to unite Koreans during his guerrilla activities in Manchuria, Kim Il Sung appealed to a deeply held emotional and practical

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need. The strength of the appeal eased the adoption of a certain type of solution to social division, an extreme collectivist solution that was premised on the complete elimination of the endemic conflict that was blamed for the failures in Korea’s recent past. The North Korean leaders presented conflict as a disease of the social body, and so every difference that could possibly give rise to friction had to be removed, from differences of opinion to differences of lifestyle. A collective uniformity had to be imposed from above, around the centrepiece of one, single, uniform ideology. In reality, despite a very impressive beginning, economic divisions later developed among the people, relating in large degree to the status allotted to one’s immediate ancestry and to one’s location, but which were rhetorically explained away or, where possible, blamed on the USA. In 1983 North Korea recorded its first negative GNP and 1984 proved a critical year when the second seven-year plan ended in disarray. The third seven-year plan, 1987–1993, fared even worse. Various minor reforms were undertaken in the mid-1980s. On 3 August 1984, couched in rhetoric on self-reliance and mass support, a People’s Consumer Goods Production Movement was announced, which involved two new departures: the authorisation of unofficial market places named ‘direct sales stores,’ and provision for procurement of materials and supplies independently for production outside the central plan. On 8 September the same year, a Joint Venture Law was passed that required North Korean control of a minimum of 51% of the investment. Since joint ventures were restricted initially to members of the Choch’ŏngnyŏn (Sōren) in Japan, who were already contributing to the northern economy, this law was largely insignificant in terms of its scope and impact on the economy. Among the first ventures were the aforementioned four or five restaurants in Pyongyang that functioned as low-key disco bars for the sports, film and political élites, where traditional folk songs were played on Yamaha guitars and keyboards, some modest karaoke sessions took place, and spirits were sold at prices only a small minority of residents could afford. Joint ventures did move into more productive areas, but with meagre results, and levelled off already in 1989. In April 1991, the first joint-venture exhibition was held in Pyongyang, sporting electronic, agricultural and fishery industries. The joint ventures ran with reasonable autonomy on limited market principles, but it was the wider informal economy recognised in the People’s Consumer Goods Production Movement that was of much greater moment to the economy. By the late 1980s, estimates were that the informal economy provided 10% of the distribution system. Because this change issued from private initiatives, often run by middle-aged women, the substance of the change had to be concealed, and so early in August 1988 an article in the

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national newspaper, Rodong sinmun (Labour Newspaper), attributed it to the genius of Kim Jong Il and presented it as an innovation taking the principles of self-reliance even further, to self-direction. In January 1990, however, it was officially acknowledged that the production of these new market goods took place outside central planning, and the activity was recognised as a constituent part of the economy alongside the central light industries and the local industrial output determined according to set quotas. It had nevertheless been pointed out in the Rodong sinmun on 24 October the previous year that the production movement was part of a move to bring about a “decisive turn in the production of consumer goods in response to the decisions of the Sixteenth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee” of 1984, which called for “full-capacity operation” of consumer factories to attain a 250% increase in production over a few years. The idea of mass participation was appealed to in order both to spur and legitimise initiatives from the rank and file of the nation. But the fundamental question mark over all this ‘reform’ was not so easy to conceal, namely, why in spite of decades of claimed self-reliance the North Korean regime had failed, through its own vaunted methods, to deliver the goods. In the early 1990s, reports surfaced in China of violent demonstrations in several North Korean cities, against which armed troops were called in. These protests were possibly over currency reform, which devalued the wŏn by up to 70%, but more likely resulted from chronic food shortages, in response to which the regime was signalling its intention to move several hundred thousand Pyongyang residents out to the farms to alleviate food shortages in the capital. The gathering strains on the economy were apparent in foreign trade. In 1989, nearly 80% of trade was with the USSR, China, and Japan, of which over half was with the USSR. Thus in the wake of the break-up of the USSR from that year it was imperative to recognise the new Russian Republics. There had been trade deficits throughout the 1980s, most notably a deficit a little over US$1 million in 1988 that prompted North Korea to broach talks with Japan and the USA. But trade balances continued to deteriorate; in 1990 alone there was a 90% reduction of cross-border trucking between North Korea and China. In view of South Korea’s burgeoning trade with China, the Russian Republics and even Vietnam, North Korea also sought trading relations with the South, a considerable change in policy. In July 1992 the Deputy Prime Ministers of both Koreas met in Seoul and agreed upon the desirability of immediate economic ties and cooperation, although somewhat predictably they disagreed over concrete measures, which included intractable items such as reduction of US Army forces in the south and verifiable discontinuation of any nuclear activities in the north.

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Nevertheless, trade did take place between the two Koreas in the late 1980s, and even some capital investment in the north by southern businesses, although it was largely concealed from the North Korean populace. By early 1989, ten or more South Korean corporations had concluded trade deals worth up to US$40 million. This trade included shipments of rice from the south in return for coal and cement. Another area was tourism, where the north perceived an opportunity to make the Joint Venture Law more meaningful and certainly more profitable by allowing South Korean citizens to visit the famed Diamond Mountains in the southeast region of North Korea in return for capital investment and technological support for upgrading the infrastructure of the region, in addition to hugely inflated entry and guiding fees for visitors. The northern regime concluded this tourism joint venture with Chŏng Juyong (Chŏng Chuyong), the renowned founder and head of the Hyundae conglomerate, whose family hailed from North P’yŏngan Province in the DPRK.

Orthodoxy in the Republic of Korea

Self-reliance and Unity As in the DPRK, the roots of the ROK’s official politico-economic policy were grounded in the principle of self-reliance. Instead of the north’s term chuch’e, that adopted in the south was chaju tongnip, another expression that gained currency during the colonial period, or indeed a decade or more before, meaning self-reliant independence. Like chuch’e, the word chaju connotes being one’s own master. This had been the central theme in the thought of the nationalist An Ch’angho, who had died in 1937 of illness contracted while incarcerated in a prison in Seoul. However, the Hŭngsadan, or Tonguhoe, he had founded was suppressed by Syngman Rhee and with it his message of responsibility to society. The route to mastery and independence chosen instead was capitalist industrialisation. This was not laissez-faire capitalism, but one directed from the top by heavy government management and incentives, from the presidency of Rhee in 1948 to that of Chun Doo-Hwan (Chŏn Tuhwan: b. 1931) ending in 1988. Successful business people became the new model of patriotic citizens and were expected to identify with government policies and espouse anti-communism. Chŏng Juyong (1915–2001) served as the south’s answer to the north’s idea of lower-class emancipation: a man rising from low social rank and poverty to create one of the largest construction industries in the world. At the official level, chaju tongnip entailed an even more economic conception of society than chuch’e in North Korea. Consumption defined

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the new human as much as production, wealth became the primary basis for claims of social status and national influence, and industrial development and a flourishing bourgeoisie were promoted as the road towards gaining Korea a proud place in world civilisation. Up to the end of the 1980s, unity was not sought through democratic processes but through monopolistic inculcation in the public mind of the government’s perception of Korea’s principle needs. The great threats were North Korea and any sign of leftist thought or activity within the south. Since the position of most of the southern regimes up to at least 1988 was that those not for them must be for the north, it was a fairly straightforward matter to label any anti-government movement or position as ‘communist.’ As in the north so in the south Koreans were actively encouraged to regard conflict only in negative terms, a position that may be responsible for a tendency even after the struggle for democratic politics was rewarded to adopt absolutist positions and regard compromise as tantamount to surrender. During his presidency from 1948 to 1960, Rhee ensured that the colonial anti-Japanese resistance movement to which he belonged was also given pride of place in historical narratives, public monuments and the education curriculum. President Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), an army general whose relation to the Japanese colonisers was somewhat ambiguous given his service in the Japanese Imperial Army against Korean guerillas, chose different emphases. He in fact normalised relations with Japan in 1965 in return for very sizable reparations to compensate for colonial rule and endeavoured with reasonable success to blend a popular sense of Korea’s uniqueness expressed in the notion of uri nara, our country, into his official line of Han’guksik, or the Korean way of doing things. In this he was aided by certain intellectuals of considerable aptitude, such as Hahm Pyong-choon (Ham Pyŏngch’un: 1932–1983), an accomplished legal scholar and cultural commentator who interpreted claimed cultural norms and traditions of the Korean people in ways that pointed to their congruity with Park’s policies. Son of Ham T’aeyŏng (1873–1964), Korea’s first modern lawyer and a leading organiser of the 1919 March First Movement, Hahm wrote cogent articles and gave numerous lectures on the question of what kind of soil was required to cultivate liberal democracy. Korea’s soil, he argued, was that of animism/shamanism, which was not suited to Western-style ideas of individual and society but to interdependent communities. Loyalties were highly personalised, not given to structures and abstract ideas of separation of powers and the like. The time might come when social and cultural attitudes changed, and when they did, Korea’s political system would make the necessary changes; but until they did, it was counter-productive to try to impose

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unfamiliar ideas of political and social life. The greatest threat was not that democracy might not take hold but that the northern regime’s agents might fool the people into thinking that communism was their natural culture, in which case democracy would become a far-off dream for the whole peninsula. South Korea could not for now enjoy the luxuries of free, united nations. At the same time, the Park regime proved adept at selectively sponsoring traditional and contemporary popular culture. The stated objective was not so much a new human in a uniform society as a set of new villages that wedded brave new economic methods to Korean customary understandings of the social order. Throughout the period 1948 to 1990, however, anti-communism remained the centrepiece of a centralised education curriculum. Civic studies, or moral education, was explicitly anti-communist and infused the whole edu­ cational enterprise. Outside the classroom, the government directed a number of ‘ethical’ activities for children, including anti-communist speech, art and essay competitions. This element of the educational endeavour became so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that these competitions ceased only in 1998 when the new president, Kim Dae Jung, replaced them with competitions on the associated theme of reunification.9 Economic Policy The ideas and frameworks that determined the economic shape of the country after 1948 were mainly artifactual and performative. There was a massive importation of know-how, technology, hardware and policy from the USA, with education geared to learning and implementation. Koreans went abroad for higher education in swelling numbers. Visa rules made it mandatory for graduates to return to Korea for at least two years before heading back to the USA. But by the mid-1970s, the ROK was fast becoming able to steer the economy according to its own design and on its own resources. The once strongly held view that under Syngman Rhee’s autocratic rule the South Korean economy stagnated or was even a crashing disaster and that real economic growth only began under General Park Chung-Hee’s military dictatorship has been put to rest reasonably firmly by more recent studies that indicate that the South Korean economy grew by 4.5% per annum after the Korean War.10 Certainly, Rhee did not cooperate with the USA’s policy of 9  Siobhán Thomas, “Same-Same but Different: Images of Koreans in South Korean Education Textbooks,” Honours Thesis (Australian National University, 2003), 12. 10  Jung-en Woo, Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

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making Japan the economic centrepiece of northeast Asia and pursued an import-substitution policy in deliberate opposition to the expectation of his American funding bodies to organise the economy along the lines of a client of Japan’s industrial exports. But the American scheme was hardly consistent with the objectives of the self-reliance dogma, and Rhee’s staunch antiJapanese stance was not only his principle claim to national legitimacy but also reasonably popular. Moreover, the pattern of political capitalism associated more strongly with the Park regime’s strong state-building policies had already taken shape during Rhee’s tenure, under which the south witnessed the rise of the business conglomerates known as chaebŏl: Samyang, Tusan, Samsung, and Lucky Goldstar. In actuality, the chaebŏl had their beginnings in the colonial era and the word itself is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese characters that in Japanese are pronounced zaibatsu. Even so, economic planning and foresight were not Rhee’s strengths, corrupt business and financial practices were not unknown and it was perhaps fortunate for him that the bulk of the population was unaware that their counterparts in the north enjoyed a better quality of material life. Park Chung Hee was no more inclined than Rhee to be the submissive handmaiden of United States economic interests and was himself a nationalist of sorts. His response to the Nixon doctrine of the early 1970s, whereby countries such as South Korea were expected to take on a greater burden of the cost of their role as containers of communism in East Asia, was to launch a homegrown heavy and chemical industrial movement that not only ensured a stable defense structure but lifted the economy beyond self-sufficiency to one of the top dozen exporting nations in the world. The slogans clearly emblazoned on large white banners attached to the overhead pedestrian passes on the main streets of Seoul—‘Our expertise, our capital, our workers’—pithily summed up the self-reliance, self-sufficiency doctrine. The South Korean counterpart to the north’s Flying Horse Movement was the New Village Movement, known in Korean as Saemaŭl undong. Introduced in the late 1960s, this movement was designed to address the economic and social gap that rapid urbanisation and industrialisation had widened between city and countryside by disseminating central directives on the economy to the towns and mobilising the populace behind policies for rural regeneration. Policy directives were passed down through a system of neighbourhood councils called tonghoe, which existed also in the cities and functioned in a similar fashion to the tanwi in North Korea but without the north’s supply of employment, education, housing and other services. The movement largely succeeded in mobilising rural residents to work hard and regularly in village projects, such as upgrading housing, roading, farming

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methods and mechanisation, and diversifying occupations and items of production so that all could remain profitably employed during the long, hard winter months. For the first decade of the movement, New Village songs were taught and broadcast through loud speakers mounted on vans, together with slogans and early morning summonses to the people to rise and begin the new day by sweeping the streets clean in front of their homes. The overriding message was one of a cooperative work ethic flowing from the united, communitarian spirit that lay at the heart of native Korean culture. But vital to the success of the operation was the care taken to work through the natural leadership in each village, allowing them to contribute their own ideas to the regeneration projects and awarding them certificates of honour and merit to mark their contributions. To this day, many local leaders of the New Village Movement recall their partnership in the enterprise with great pride.11

figure 18 As consumerism and the attendant urban drift accelerated in the early 1970s in South Korea, negotiating one’s way along a Seoul street took some energy. Photo by author.

11  Pak Chindo and Han Tohyŏn, “Saemaŭl undonggwa yusin ch’eje: Pak Chŏnghŭi chŏnggwŏnŭi nongch’on saemaŭl undongŭl chungsimŭro (New Village Movement and the Yusin System: Centring on the New Village Movement of the Park Chung-Hee regime in farming villages), Yŏksa pip’yŏng no. 47 (Summer 1999), 37–80.

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figure 19 This city scene, taken near the City Hall, is typical of the sophistication and modernity of Seoul in the late 1980s. Photo by author.

All in all, Park and his advisors were certainly far more able economic captains than their predecessors. Under military rule, they formed a nexus between government power and policy, the legal framework, the banking system and big businesses, in which the latter were induced to support the regime’s policies and budgets. In return, the chaebŏl were given favoured access to finances and other competitive advantages. South Korea certainly developed. The Park era was one during which the people endured, for the sake of later very lucky generations, the equivalent of Europe’s industrial revolution in a matter of two decades. Thus the ‘miracle on the Han,’ and of course, thus the hardship, which included for a time during the 1970s and early 1980s the highest industrial accident and death rate in the world. South Korea’s rapid economic development was accompanied by social change of considerable magnitude, also over a short period, from the end of the Korean War to the late 1980s. During this period the population more than doubled to 43 million, making the south one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. Accompanying this was a major population shift to cities from the countryside, so that the rural population more than halved from 61% to approximately 25%. Naturally, such a shift entailed changes in occupation: whereas agricultural workers declined by much more than half, employment in secondary industries grew 500%, while the number of workers who

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moved into office jobs and the number in service jobs both increased five-fold. By 1990, the huge increase in industrial labour during the mid-1960s to mid1980s was giving way to the growth of a middle class of white-collar workers. Higher education also strode forward, illustrated by a rise in number of tertiary students from 90,000 to over one million. The change in occupational structures and high speed of urbanisation brought with it some degree of social dislocation. There evolved an underclass of rural and urban labourers, female workers and the aged, and an élite of high officials in government and the military, business leaders, and those educated abroad. Although General Park Chung Hee was far less corrupt and a much more able director of economic growth than his counterparts in the military regimes of South America at the time, these social divisions were part and parcel of his policies, based as they were on assuring highly competitive prices for goods in an export-led system, unmitigated by welfare provisions. The success of the New Village Movement notwithstanding, upwards social mobility and political participation were almost entirely blocked by the political, economic and military power-holders up to the late 1980s. The New Yangban In terms of the social changes in the south, one of the most striking features of the official policies of independent economic growth led by strong government in a strategic alliance with big business has been the emergence of what we might reasonably term the new yangban (aristocracy). Although the formerly critical yangban qualification of lineage had been weakened if not wholly removed during the colonial period, the idea of family connections remained important. Once a high status had been achieved under the new order of the ROK, it was if a new yangban lineage were created, whereby family connections and descent became of concrete importance to the operation of business and politics. As of old, higher education was a prime route to status, if now in mostly American and some European universities and in the fields of economics, business and engineering. But now, added to the educational qualification, was economic achievement. From the outset, the chaebŏl were family-owned and through the family both laterally and vertically they maintained monopolistic (or oligopolistic) control over product lines in industry. The military regime reinforced family ownership by providing them low-interest loans to retain majority ownership and shielding business inheritance from taxation.12 Unlike the Japanese

12  Eun Mee Kim, Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Devel­ opment, 1960–1990 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 65.

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zaibatsu, the chaebŏl did not guaranteed life-time employment to workers, at least not until the 1990s and only then among the larger conglomerates. Nor did they have any banking institution at their core. Instead, the state mediated the flow of domestic and foreign capital to the chaebŏl and supervised their operations from a designated bank. In concert with deciding on production it considered useful and setting export quotas, state policy was designed in this way to retain leverage over the strong conglomerates, much as the Chosŏn rulers’ prerogatives over local government appointments were intended to maintain central control over revenue collection and keep restless local lineages in check. The continuity of chaebŏl lineage that entailed collusion between government and big business was a continuation of vying for dominion over trade and commerce between central administration and local élites that goes back centuries. The southern part of the peninsula was divided up, both literally and metaphorically, as it used to be, by local élites who were now the family owners of chaebŏl. They identified themselves, and the populace identified them, with their family regions of origin, whether or not they lived there. They bought up real estate and established prominent branches in these home bases. Indeed, marriages were celebrated that join two chaebŏl families in strategic alliances against other chaebŏl in the region. It would be going a little too far to claim that intermarriage among chaebŏl families created modern regionalism but it certainly accompanied and perpetuated regional politics. The chaebŏl families became a prime source of funds for politicians. Genuinely private, mostly small to medium non-familial businesses existed, but laws did not favour them until the late 1990s. Up till 1990, the ROK governments held the advantage, but as the military and authoritarian state structures were dismantled thereafter, the profound social power and status of the chaebŏl lineages were revealed more clearly.

Confucian Categories and Mass Society

Confucius said the people were the backbone of the state. This did not mean, however, that the people were the source of moral culture or ideas on social organisation and state policy but that they furnished the material basis of the state and society. As we have seen, in Chosŏn Korea state administration and social order were anchored on lineage-based hierarchical and patriarchal laws and customs. This great tradition of social and political mores was passed down by the literate minority over a long period and by the nineteenth century even the remote rural villages subscribed to them. Cracks appeared in the

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social-moral edifice throughout the troubled nineteenth century as an attendant feature of the slow unravelling of the centuries-long power balance between the central monarchical bureaucracy and the hereditary lineages with their regional bases and also of the disagreements later in the century over how to respond to encroachments of Western ideas, technologies and power. Yet in terms of their relation to this tradition, it was the rise in commoners’ aspirations to participate in their formative environment that was the critical innovation that paved the way for the conception of mass society. Although Yi Ik and Chŏng Yagyong among other Chosŏn dynasty reformers had advocated a land and tax system whereby the commoners were each allotted land of equal reproductive value, this was to be implemented by the scholar-official élites for the benefit of the masses rather than by or even with the participation of the masses. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the term minjung appeared, referring to the masses as a social category. The term itself was not initially ideological and was employed by Koreans of all stripes, including figures as different as Sin Ch’aeho and Yun Ch’iho. But by the midtwentieth century it had become more ideologically laden as the wellspring of popular values and the proper agency for change. This kind of bottom-up direction from mass society was not the traditional conception of Confucian social mores in Korea, especially during the neoConfucian Chosŏn era. The gulf Yi Kwangsu had perceived back in the 1920s between the elderly and the rising generation of youth, if not infinite, was certainly a yawning gulf. Nevertheless, while culturally the notion of mass society affected significant change among Koreans during the colonial period, it was not until after liberation that it became possible to relate it to the exercise of power by Koreans over Koreans.

Dynastic Politics and the Cause of Communism in the North

North Korea has almost from its inception presented observers with a puzzle. The idea that the north’s system is an impure version of communism has been widespread among both socialist and non-socialist camps. The former were disappointed by Kim Il Sung’s intransigent opposition to de-Stalinisation within the communist bloc, disturbed by the erection of a hereditary, monarchist leadership system and repelled by the excesses of the personality cult in which Kim revelled. Although they did not suggest the DPRK was not a communist state, they charged that the chuch’e ideology was not scientific but excessively voluntaristic, and far from being a creative application to Korean realities of Marx-Leninism was an unhealthy form of nationalism: in Bruce

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Cumings’ view, it was ‘national solipsism.’13 Non-socialist critiques of North Korea consist chiefly of negative evaluations of its economic performance and political structure. Chuch’e ideology is also judged a species of nationalism more than of communism, but the actual perversity of the system from their point of view lay in its extreme inflexibility. In the DPRK, there occurred a vast and closely monitored social experiment based on the belief that since all social causes were known, the entire shape of society and all its details could be determined. Life was minutely regulated from the age of six months. A coded number was issued to every worker that showed which slot one fit into, what role one was to perform. The focus of this endeavour, the legitimation of the coding and the power behind the regulation was the person of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, father of the people and progenitor of the Kim dynasty. It was the operation of what to all appearances is a hereditary monarchy with strong patriarchal overtones that raised the question whether the chuch’e system owed more to a traditional Confucian heritage than it did to Marxist social analysis and political precepts. Since chuch’e ideology made much of the mastery of the masses, questions also rose over the kind of mass society that existed in the north. If we turn back in Korean history to the mid-nineteenth century, what bothered Yi Hangno, Ch’oe Ikhyŏn and the old guard was that moral values were being taken out of play, replaced by values that did not belong to any recognisable or worthwhile category of civilised ethics. They rejected what appeared to them to be a fundamental tenet of mass society, namely, the idea that wisdom, prescriptions for human organisation and meaning, could issue from ‘numbers’ instead of names. One could rectify names since they contain meaning, but how could one rectify numbers? Numbers as arbiter of wisdom, morality, policy and objectives was a nonsense, for the universal was not a matter of one number or another. Marxism, capitalism and materialist ideologies in general rejected the idea of an overarching moral universe that contained and explained the material order, grounding their systems on a supposedly scientific investigation of the way history and society worked. Human behaviour thus could be judged in terms of what actions favoured desired outcomes rather than whether they were morally good or bad. Yet Marx in particular retained the possibility of contradiction, the idea that some actions could be considered ‘wrong’ in world-historical terms, that is, either unwittingly or deliberately pursuing the wrong side of the historical-material dialectic and thereby slowing down the 13  Bruce Cumings, The Two Koreas: On the Road to Unification? (New York: Headline Series of the Foreign Policy Association 294, 1991), 58.

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optimum outcome. The notion that some actions could be regarded as contrary to the direction that was gathering force led to the determinist versus voluntarist debate over whether such actions were taken up simply as one necessary component of the dialectic or as wilfully chosen strategies to retain power among those whose former dominance was threatened. The actual use of terms such as liberation, oppression and justice, however, unavoidably injected a high moral tone into the ideology. The chuch’e system basically followed the voluntarist line, and its intellectual advocates, such as a former professor of philosophy in the Pyongyang Academy of Social Sciences, Ri Sŏngjun, argued that besides class origins people’s thoughts were influenced also by non-material factors, including the books they read, ideas that came in from abroad and the company they kept. Most of all, the people needed a leader. For this reason, protecting the people by informing them of the true understanding of the leader’s thought and sealing the borders against wrongs ideas was the only responsible course.14 The voluntarist position was wedded to an organic conception of the social order as one large family, so that making the wrong choice could be a capital offence if it struck at the very life of the national household. On the other side, respect for the father of the national family was expressed in warm terms of endearment suggesting affection, nurture and protection. And however much their position has generated friction with feminist movements, pro-DPRK student activists in the south have been content with the image of Kim Il Sung as the great father of the nation. Is this monarchical patriarchy an adaptation of Confucianism? Naturally there must be elements of what was for centuries the dominant source of social and state ideology. Although Kim came from a tenant-farming family and a great deal was done to recreate his parents and ancestors in the same vein, the fact that this family was emphasised and had such importance emotionally and politically, and the extreme paternalism inherent in the mode of its use, suggest traditional continuities. The idea also of how Kim’s virtue permeated the state in and of itself as well as through his kindly on-the-spot guidance in key enterprises around the nation finds ready support in Confucian thought, as do the ideal of unity and the attitude towards dissent. But there are profound differences. Confucianism is not an ideology of total control. To be sure, the degree to which the DPRK regime could disseminate its ideology and regiment its people might well owe a significant debt to technological advances enabling a measure of control beyond the dreams of former monarchs. Yet it is a huge jump to claim that the North Korean rulers simply 14  Author’s interview with Ri Sŏngjun, Koryŏ Hotel, Pyongyang, May 1990.

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achieved what the Chosŏn monarchs would like to have been able to achieve. There is a difference not only in degree but also in kind. If we borrow from the categories of Immanuel Kant, we may distinguish between a system predicated on unity, which works to ensure a diverse population lives together in harmony, and one predicated on singularity, or a single centre, which requires total conformity throughout society to the centre. As North Korean power became increasingly absolute, the ideology became increasingly dogmatic and sacred. Both appeared unassailable by the late 1950s: a single leader, a single truth, a single Party implementing that truth and a single interpretation by intelligentsia of that truth. The policy of applying a single method to the totality of human life was already unbalanced and led of itself to excesses. The DPRK’s conception of the role and significance of the ‘masses’ also differed in kind from the traditional viewpoint. Certainly, thought-control existed under neo-Confucianism but it was directed at those who could influence the pattern of society in general. Hence the campaign to discredit Buddhism during the Chosŏn dynasty. But once Buddhism’s power over the social and political landscape was effectively removed, it was left more or less alone. There was not relentless eradication; Buddhists with merits valued by the administration could and did at times occupy high office. The bloody purges of Catholics in the nineteenth century arose only when they became implicated in political factionalism or threats to public matters and security: shrines, ancestor worship, the basis of monarchical authority, foreign relations, and so forth. The Chosŏn ruling stratum and educated élites were certainly interested also in maintaining control over social mores and organisation. The Village Rosters and Compacts existed to maintain the proper moral code and conduct. Its members were interested in the purity of doctrine almost to obsession at times and seldom hesitated to appeal to their purity when competing for power. But there was no call for mass-participation or organisation of public expressions of loyalty by the masses. That, after all, was a matter of numbers, not of principle or correct conduct. There is also a wide divergence in social and cultural ideals. Whereas the Korean Confucianists located their Golden Age back in the ancient kingdom of Chou in China and favoured strict social differentiation, the DPRK had a millennial vision looking forward, favouring social levelling or uniformity. The kind of mass society that developed in the north was one of mobilisation of the masses, who were required to support and participate in the political process. Economically, North Korea became a genuinely collectivised, or commune-ised state. If we must search for a precedent in Korean history, the United Silla Kingdom of the third to seventh centuries possibly provides a more apt comparison than

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the Chosŏn dynasty. United Silla was a highly stratified society, especially in terms of power. Its hereditary bone-rank system resonates with the revolutionary family-rank system in North Korea, where it was not distance from the means of production that determined one’s position or status in society but one’s distance from the heroic ancestors. Likewise, Kim Il Sung’s family was deemed sacred, and was Hallowed Bone. Those related by blood or through a group honoured by him, were True Bone. Material and social privileges flowed from such links very early in life. In favoured primary schools, for instance, special, bright-coloured armbands marked out pupils whose recent forebears had earned some heroic status or other. Distance from such connections could mean vulnerability, exclusion from residence in Pyongyang, less advantageous work, and so on. Although it is evident that the North Korean polity was one of highly concentrated power enforcing uniform subscription to an official ideology, its history does not in any way suggest that such an outcome is a logical corollary of its adoption of socialism. As Kim Dae Jung argued in the mid-1990s, shortly before he was elected to the presidency of the ROK, it is not socialism that is incompatible with democracy but dictatorship. Whether the power structure in North Korea indicates that serious attempts to create absolute uniformity led to attempts at absolute control or is more simply a product of the selfserving political interests of ambitious leaders grasping the opportunities at hand during the post-liberation period, might never be known with any certainty. Nonetheless, the curious notion that whereas in capitalist societies there is a need for constant negotiation over freedom and equality such is unnecessary in socialist societies belongs to utopian thought. The chuch’e solution to conflict could produce only an appearance of total conformity: it did not remove conflict, it applied overwhelming coercion to prevent it from being expressed.

Autocracy, Military Rule and Democracy in the South

Some, most notably Park Chung-Hee’s advisor Hahm Pyong-choon, believed it would have been better had Rhee Syngman died in office and been remembered as the father of South Korea. For Rhee had been a very popular leader throughout the colonial period and was always named as the top person in any political proposal made by Koreans in 1945, whether from left or right. In 1945 he was extraordinarily active for his age of seventy years, still a charismatic speaker and a very effective organiser. When on 6 September 1945, several

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hundred delegates gathered in Seoul to form the Korean People’s Republic at Yŏ Unhyŏng’s bidding, Rhee was elected its chairman, despite the fact that much of the organising of this KPR was undertaken by left-leaning Koreans. Thus Rhee was a popular choice for leader, not someone imposed on the south by the United States army. But by 1947 he had begun to make himself exceedingly unpopular with left-wing elements, and just as Kim Il Sung in the north moved to eliminate competition through assassinations, arrests and purges, so Rhee or at least his supporters had no compunction in removing his competition in similar fashion in the south. But unlike his northern counterpart, Rhee also had to face violent opposition from pro-communist elements in the form of armed uprisings that took place in Yŏsu, South Chŏlla Province and on Cheju Island in 1948. Here, indeed, he relied on the assistance of the United States armed forces and their readiness to imprison thousands of leftwing Koreans. It was against this background that one of the first moves Rhee made on being sworn into office as the founding president of the ROK was to enact the National Security Law of November 1948. This law became the bedrock of anti-communism and also served as a convenient means of reigning in any opposition to the successive regimes. Nevertheless, Rhee did introduce the structures of democracy. His government put in place the core features of democratic politics: the separation of powers, universal adult suffrage, checks and balances in the two houses and regular national and regional elections. On paper, the system left little to be desired, and Rhee, the author while in prison from 1899 to 1904 of Korea’s ‘political Bible,’ titled The Spirit of Independence, clearly had a good grasp of democracy. What he did not have, however, were two important things. First, there was lacking a democratic culture to support the democratic structures. Bureaucrats at all levels showed no scruples in bypassing democratic processes, in refusing to act as public servants and in abusing power for personal gain. Secondly, Rhee lacked patience. He himself was of an autocratic bent, impatient with the relatively slow speed of decision-making and implementation of policies in a democracy. He also considered himself born to the purple, as if he had some special entitlement to unchallenged leadership, and whether or not he personally directed the assassinations of Song Chinu, Chang Tŏksu, Kim Ku and Yŏ Unhyŏng, he certainly made little or no effort to identify and prosecute the assassins. Given the democratic structure he had put in place, his undemocratic practices simply became impossible to hide. He had precipitated a major political crisis in 1952, in the middle of the Korean War, by changing the constitution in a way that favoured his re-election and allowed him to retain office indefinitely.

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His undemocratic purpose was so clear to the UN forces who were supposedly fighting on behalf of Korea’s democracy, that the Australians and Canadians pushed for Rhee to be removed from office. He was not, and he won more elections, but his habit of rigging them finally broke the camel’s back and a major civil rebellion forced his resignation in April 1960. Rhee’s resignation was followed by the democratic election of the erstwhile opposition figures Yun Posŏn (1897–1990) as President and Chang Myŏn (1899– 1966) as Prime Minister. Because the government had been changed from the presidential to a prime ministerial system, Chang became the actual head of government and proceeded to enact a series of reforms designed to prevent further abuses of power and support democratic processes. His reforms proved too half-hearted for many and failed to bring political offenders to trial. If anything, the economy was becoming shambolic, and together with unease over some of the more radical movements for reunification, popular disillusionment grew. Thus when General Park Chung Hee seized power in 1961, his coup d’état elicited surprisingly little criticism from the bulk of the population. It was naturally advantageous to Park Chung Hee that he took power when the public were becoming disenchanted with the Chang Myŏn government’s performance. Further, Park had a simple policy of purchasing acquiescence of people and sectors that he thought mattered, not through personal corruption but with economic progress and efficient administration. He was able to come up with very effective popular slogans, the centrepiece being the promise to “rescue the people from the brink of starvation.” He proved to be perceptive of the people’s wants and needs, personally honest, something of a man of the common people, and an intelligent operator.15 Yet Park was to discover that even the thin veneer of democratic respectability with which he tried to cover himself was a liability. The opposition, first under Yun Posŏn during the 1960s and then under the New Democratic Party led by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam in the early 1970s, drew more of the popular vote than Park and so he had to rely on the appointment system to retain power and on secret sessions of the National Assembly to pass his laws. One of these was, no less, a constitutional amendment in 1969 that allowed him to serve more than the two terms allowed hitherto. By 1971, Park had evidently decided to abandon even a show of democracy, and was by now determined to remain in power to the end of his useful life. His announcement of yet another constitution in November 1972, known as the Yusin or Revitalisation Constitution, formalised the state of 15  See Hyung-A Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee: Rapid industrialisation, 1961–79 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).

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emergency and martial law Park had declared a month earlier, along with the dissolution of the National Assembly and all political parties. The international situation at this point to some extent weakened the degree dissidents could appeal to the public for support. The conciliatory moves towards the People’s Republic of China and USSR by the then United States President, Richard Nixon, his withdrawal of quite a number of troops from South Korea and imposition of import tariffs and restrictions on Korea’s major export industry—textiles—meant that South Korea was being hit at both ends: it now had to take far more responsibility for the cost of its military defense while having to accept less favourable conditions for export earnings. In Park’s view, this meant that he had to have unimpeded power to make dramatic decisions. The public was encouraged to let him away with this because of a number of worrying events in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including North Korean terrorist attacks and military actions against US forces, and the retreat from Vietnam by the US armed forces. It should be noted here that the ROK’s own heavy involvement in the war in Vietnam had richly benefited the economy. Under the Yusin Constitution, Park could rely even more on naked power: the KCIA, the army and the police, including the military police force. The law had to be brought entirely under his thumb also, to which end he decreed Emergency Measure Number 9 in May 1975, whereby any criticism of the president became a serious criminal offence. It was in this context that Park proclaimed and his advisors propagated the idea of Korean-style democracy. It might be thought that in the end he did not get away with his hardening obstruction of democracy, since he was assassinated in October 1979. Yet since he was assassinated not by a dissident but by the head of the KCIA, the issue is far from clear. Upon Park’s assassination the civilian Vice-President Ch’oe Kyuha took charge and promised free elections, in which it was expected the dissident figure Kim Dae Jung (Kim Taejung) would prevail. But Ch’oe’s tenure proved to be no more than a short interlude in military rule when General Chun Doo-Hwan (Chŏn Tuhwan) elevated himself into the presidency in June 1980 after a number of military manoeuvres beginning in December the previous year. In an attempt to secure legitimacy and cooperation he announced the ‘Restoration of the Fatherland’ and an injection of moral purpose into administration and business practices. In practice, he systematically brought the media, public and private education at all levels and to some extent religious bodies under even greater central control than hitherto and operated what he termed moral re-education centres that were little other than concentration camps for ‘correction’ of those deemed to be dissidents.

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The Struggle for Democracy in South Korea

Student Movements Student activism in South Korea is characterised by unusual tenacity over an unusually long period. While the origins of the South Korean student movement might be found in the same kinds of twentieth-century social transformations that are associated with student movements in Europe, the USA, Japan, China and elsewhere, the climate in which it flourished was quite specific to the experience accumulated by Koreans first under colonial subjugation and then in a post-colonial, bitterly divided nation. The expansion of education among the masses from the early twentieth century together with a new content of education deepened what had always been held, namely, the belief that it was the responsibility of the educated to keep watch on and alter, if advisable, the shape of society. A strong sense of mission among Korea’s students can be traced from their decisive involvement in the 1919 March First Movement through their nationalist and communist organisations of the 1920s and 1930s to the 1960 April Nineteen Movement in South Korea that toppled President Rhee Syngman. By 1955, Rhee Syngman, aged 80, was losing much of his charisma and his proverbial mental alertness. He was no longer able to rule autocratically through democratic structures by virtue of his personality. His rule was characterised increasingly by political authoritarianism. In a sense one might describe the period 1953–1960 as one of rule by force. But the most immediate cause of the April uprising was the practice of election-rigging. Because in 1956 Chang Myŏn was elected Vice-President against Rhee’s own choice (there being no automatic berth for the vice-president as, for example, in United States), Rhee in 1960 determined that both he and his own choice would be elected. Big business was coerced into donating large sums to Rhee’s party and campaign. Youth were organised into anti-communist leagues, and used as a terrorist arm of government. The Ministry of the Interior was given increased powers. His underlings bribed police officers, including the 8,108 who guarded ballot boxes. There was, in addition, a ‘secret police’ organisation to guard the guarders. Student demonstrations against electoral rigging began first in schools in Taegu in February. Large numbers were arrested. When in March, demonstrations began in Masan High School, the general public joined in. Police responded with firearms; many were killed, beaten, tortured and charged with being communists. By April, the demonstrations had developed into a civil rebellion. The critical point was a demonstration at Korea University in Seoul on April 18 that began as a relatively peaceful march through the streets. But

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anti-communist league ruffians were set on them and severe injuries were sustained. Then on April 19, some 100,000 citizens gathered before the National Assembly buildings. There was thirty seconds of sustained shooting, and later machine-guns were set on them. A colonel tried with some effect to halt the carnage. Similar events occurred in other cities. All told, 186 were killed, 6,026 wounded. The tragic turn was followed by mass civilian rallies, and on 26 April Rhee resigned. The students were in some ways unprepared for their triumph and found working against a common enemy easier than achieving a consensus on fundamental matters such as reunification of the peninsula. There was reasonable unity on the objectives of their ‘New Life Movement:’ a cleaner, transparent process of government and a clearer national way of life. There was also widespread agreement on the urgency of solving the national division. On means, and on ideological colouring, agreement was harder to find. When the National Unification Student League based at Seoul National University proposed holding conferences with counterparts in North Korea as the only sure route to unification, there was not only dissension among the students but also accusations of naivety were levelled at them from the general populace. When North Korea immediately seconded this proposal, politicians and the armed forces construed the League’s position as a fundamental attack on South Korea’s anticommunist philosophy. The students themselves were frustrated by their own factional power struggles. At this point students enjoyed virtually the same social status, so that there was no clear authority structure. Questions were raised about the students’ own sincerity in asking for democracy and once General Park Chung Hee seized power, cooperation between students and the populace developed no further. Brief though the experiment with parliamentary democracy was, the effects on student culture and indeed on dissident culture was long-lasting. The April Nineteenth Movement is the focal point of the student movement, a source both of inspiration and strategic thinking for almost all student activism thereafter. In this movement were concentrated all the features of the subsequent movements: a series of limited street demonstrations leading up to one concerted push; casualties at the hands of police and soldiers; attempts (successful or otherwise) to form a coalition with labourers and elicit active support from the general public; calls for democratic reforms and freedom to express diverse political views, including communism; demands for concrete steps towards national reunification; and a strong sense of mission on behalf of ‘righteousness.’ Indeed, the movement was named the sa-il-gu ŭigŏ, meaning the April Nineteen Call to Righteousness.

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But there were numbers who saw the April Nineteen Movement from a different perspective, just as had been the case with the mixed reactions to the failure of the March First Movement of 1919. Some were thoroughly radicalised by the events of 1960–1961, and their influence gained ground. By the time the students regrouped to protest the Park regime’s military rule in 1971, their movement was, in the words of Han Sungjoo (Han Sŭngju), later Foreign Minister for the ROK, “a better-organised and ideologically more radical affair which brought about the most drastic countermeasures by the government— the forcible closure of the university campuses, their occupation by military troops, and the arrest of hundreds of student activists.”16 The 22 March 1971 Student Declaration accused the government of fascism, of negating democratic ideals and justice domestically and leading the nation into political and economic subjugation to foreign powers. It attacked the revision of the constitution allowing a three-term presidency, the corruption of the election process, the harnessing of financial institutions to government politics, and the proposed subjection of all university students to compulsory military training, which they claimed was an obvious attempt to rein in the ‘pure and righteous student forces,’ which were committed to denouncing the militarisation of society and the oppression of workers in the name of modernisation.17 But whereas the 1960 movement elicited active sympathy from the public, the 1971 movement was met with apathy or fear of its consequences and was crushed by a now firmly pro-government military establishment. Differ­ ences between 1960 and 1971 include generational change, from those with memories of the Korean War and the dangers of expressing pro-leftist views to those who had no such memories and who had come to believe that liberal democracy was too weak to take the country forward. The public was not inspired by their radicalism for various reasons ranging from cynicism to self-interest to distrust of their ideological position.18 It was not until the Kwangju uprising in May 1980 that a broad-based movement for democracy was regained, one which set in motion developments that seven years later brought military rule to an end and installed genuine democratic processes.

16  Soongju Han, The Failure of Democracy in Korea, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 148. 17  Han, The Failure of Democracy in Korea, 148. 18  Han, The Failure of Democracy in Korea, 155.

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The Kwangju Uprising, May 1980 The period immediately following the assassination of Park Chung Hee in October 1979 by the Head of the KCIA, when Ch’oe Kyuha took over the caretaker government, elections were promised, parties formed and free assembly and speech were permitted, was a time of euphoria. For the first time in most people’s memory, people could express their opinions on national politics without fear and looked forward to a democratic, civilian government. On 6 December, Ch’oe rescinded Park’s infamous Emergency Measure Number 9 and freed a large number of political prisoners, including the leading dissident, Kim Dae Jung. But in December also, General Chun Doo Hwan made his first move, a coup d’état of sorts, when he overpowered rival generals in a bloody battle at the Army General HQ in Seoul. By March 1980, Chun and his new army command, who were all natives of South Kyŏngsang Province, were showing signs of restiveness over the growing stature of Kim Dae Jung, who hailed from South Chŏlla Province, a region they despised. Then in April, Chun appointed himself head of the KCIA, thereby giving himself control over almost the entire military, security, police and intelligence organs of the country. When Ch’oe Kyuha’s movements were restricted, fears grew that the promise of democracy would be pre-empted by the army and the public euphoria was virtually extinguished as people once again feared to speak their minds. By May it had become reasonably clear that if elections were held, they would favour Kim Dae Jung. But still no moves were being made for democratic elections, so the students gave an ultimatum to the political and military leaders that if no steps were taken for elections within fourteen days they would take the cause out onto the streets. But still the military showed no signs of budging and on 13 May, the students poured out onto the streets. For two days there were pitched battles with riot police, who were careful not to repeat the mistakes of Rhee Syngman and relied mostly on tear-gas: no live bullets, some rubber bullets and a few percussion grenades. On the third and final day, in a combined effort by all universities, a march of some 75,000 students proceeded down the streets of Sinmunro and Chongno and thence towards the Capitol Buildings. The march lasted from around 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm, but the general public failed to join and the big push made no ground. On 17 May Chun Doo-Hwan closed universities, stationed troops on their grounds, declared martial law (Martial Law Decree Number 10) and ordered the arrest of political leaders and dissolution of their parties. The arrest of the opposition’s then presidential candidate, Kim Dae Jung, on trumped-up charges of conspiring with North Korea for a communist takeover

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of the south, precipitated a showdown with the military establishment on 18 May 1980 in Kwangju City, the capital of South Chŏlla Province. The general citizenry, including students and workers, peacefully took control of the city, its police and armoury, and declared itself against the military. General Chun sent in his special services paratroopers, the Black Berets, the equivalent of highly-trained marine corps fighters, who slew hundreds and possibly close to 1000 people in brutal fashion on the streets. By 27 May the citizens had lost this showdown, but the blood-letting of General Chun’s military response deepened bitterness and hardened determination. For his part, Chun had by this stage taken over the media, which for a time was simply shut down, and in August proclaimed himself president. The jury is still out on the place that the May 1980 events in Kwangju hold in Korea’s recent history and it is not yet settled what name should be given to them. For the ‘history’ of Kwangju consists of conflicting memories: those of participants and their families and associates; of observers, sympathetic and otherwise; of widely separated generations; of journalists, public intellectuals, and academics and students; wage labourers and shopkeepers, religious figures, poets and novelists; and, inevitably, of aspirants for high political office. The inhabitants of Kwangju city themselves did not see eye to eye, and even the dead, the casualties of the uprising, for some time could not rest in peace in their graves while disagreements continued over the proper name for and even location of their gravesite. But it was certainly a pivotal event and without the Kwangju experience of May 1980, it is doubtful that the June 1987 declaration of the end of military rule by General Chun Doo Hwan would have occurred. One of the reasons why the Kwangju Uprising became such a turning point in recent South Korean history and continues to attract earnest debate among various interpretations and claimants on its memory, is that it was the kind of event in a drama where all the actors are on the stage together and all the important threads are intertwined. The actors were the workers, students, political figures, religious leaders, the military, the American presence, and the relatives of the activists; the threads included minjung populism, the expansion of higher education, national division and the emergence of divergent positions on reunification, growth in democratic pressures, US-ROK relations, regionalism, and the burgeoning middle class. After seven years of harsh suppression, in June 1987 a nation-wide uprising involving labour strikes, boycotts, demonstrations by a coalition of students and the so-called middle class, and concerted action among dissident journalists and public intellectuals precipitated another showdown which this time General

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Chun lost. He was obliged to promise new, civilian elections, but as a result of the failure by opposition forces to field only one candidate, he was succeeded by General Roh Tae-Woo (No T’aeu) in 1998. Roh began to dismantle the military machinery of government and economy, and from 1993 to 2008 the country was ruled by presidents from the ranks of former dissidents and their sympathisers.

CHAPTER 8

Civilisation, North and South, 1945–1990s The Korean tradition strongly subscribes to the idea that culture should constitute the mainstay of the state. The cultural revolution of the twentieth century evolves from this tradition, but with important departures from it because of new complications arising from modern conditions. Kim Uch’ang, 19931

The northern and southern regimes and their subjects, in different measures and with differing emphases, actively advanced key developments of the colonial period that might be summed up as the rise of mass society: the expansion of education and technology, urbanisation, and popular participation (whether voluntary or mobilised) in social and political movements. The cultural divide between the north and the south is more than an effect of different political and economic systems. Each has followed a different idea of the world and the way it works and is committed to a different ideal for society and to different methods of attaining that ideal. These different views and ideals have themselves produced much of the difference in political, economic and social structure that distinguishes the material form of the northern and southern states. Underlying the alternative forms in each state are competing views of the history, values and present and future character of Korean civilisation. These views are reflected in family adjustments to rapid urbanisation and the expansion of education, reform of gender relations, literary movements and religious life. In South Korea, much of the cultural development has taken place outside of and at times in opposition to official positions and programmes. There are relatively few reliable sources of concrete information on North Korean culture, particularly culture not directed by the government, although North Korea is perhaps an area to which the saying, attributed to Donald R. Gannon, applies acutely: where facts are few, experts are many. This chapter endeavours to open a small window on the interaction between official and unofficial cultural practice in the north chiefly by taking up the intriguing question of the north’s religious policy against a background of Pyongyang and the northern 1  Uchang Kim, “The Agony of Cultural Construction: Politics and Culture in Modern Korea,” in State and Society in Contemporary Korea, ed. Hagen Koo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 163.

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regions having been the stronghold of religious thought and activism during the colonial period. In his long book, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (1994), Eric Hobsbawm forwards a huge proposition concerning what he believes to be one of the most important changes in the basis and organization of human life for many thousands of years. He refers to a change so obvious that we often tend to overlook it: the transition on a global scale from an agricultural foundation of economics and society to a non-agricultural, secondary industrial foundation. On our side of this transformation, where we have moved into widespread service, information and communications industries, we tend to take for granted its far-reaching ramifications, not only for socio-economic and political structures, but also for the patterns of our everyday lives, the ways in which we view our relationship to our communities, prepare and train ourselves for work and form expectations. According to Hobsbawm, this change amounted to a profound social revolution, which led to, or was part and parcel of, a considerable cultural revolution. There are two prominent characteristics of this change: its universality and its speed. For most of the globe, he claims, “the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the 1950s. . . . The most dramatic and far-reaching social change of the second half of [the twentieth century] and the one which cuts us off forever from the world of the past, is the death of the peasantry.”2 We could perhaps put it another way: what happened, not then and seemingly still not fully grasped, was that through technological advances humanity solved the problem of production, or at least the problem as it had been defined hitherto, where over 90% of the population was doomed to spend their entire lives working with meagre reward to produce the basic necessities of life. The other side of the death of the peasantry is the rise of the city. This does not mean that people engulfed in this transformation were cognizant of its significance: they made choices, such as moving to towns or cities, for practical reasons; and it was in areas they could not see were especially related, such as family support and relationships, that change was felt, feared or welcomed. But in the second half of the twentieth century, all one needed was a pair of open eyes to witness the extraordinary speed of transformation in countries one might visit a decade or two later. The changes between 1950 and 1990 for most of the world are staggering. It is as if one were driving at high speed through the rain, whereby an only moderately heavy shower turns into a veritable deluge.

2  Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), 289.

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Education In North Korea, steps were taken immediately after the establishment of the DPRK in 1948 to eliminate all private education. By 1949, all former Japaneserun schools, religious schools and other private schools had been placed under one centralised authority, and no independent role in education has been possible since.3 As already noted, life became minutely regulated from as early as six months through the education system. Collectives provided and ran childcare centres and preschools and the entire education system thereafter. Educational sessions were also run through the collectives and the residential units or tanwi, at which attendance after work was compulsory. The Jesuit claim that if one gave them a child to educate that child would remain true to the faith till death was the kind of logic followed in the north and the grounds for a university philosophy professor at the Academy of Social Sciences in Pyongyang to have averred in 1990 that there did not exist a single person who deviated from the dogma of the chuch’e ideology.4 The influence of the USSR in the formative period of the North Korean education system was considerable. For example, in literary studies, Soviet literature in translation outnumbered North Korean writings up to at least the mid-1950s. Yi Kiyŏng, a leading North Korean novelist well known also in the south, claimed that eight million copies of Russian Soviet writings were printed from 1945 to 1954.5 The favourite Russian author was Gorky, although his novel, Mother, which had in any case been known among Koreans since the 1930s, appears to have been the only one available from the late 1950s. In most respects the Soviet model was avidly followed in the early years. Kim Il Sung repeatedly emphasised the value of learning from Russian Soviet methods and unabashedly adopted Soviet models in literature and historiography and in education generally. The USSR gave active support to this enterprise and offered free tuition and board to up to six hundred North Korean students per year at tertiary institutions in the Soviet Union. This happy relationship changed when de-Stalinisation was promoted in the USSR under Nikita Khrushchev from the mid-1950s. In a thoroughgoing rejection of this move, the DPRK implemented a degree of political control over schooling 3  Yang, K.P., and C.B. Chee, “The North Korean educational system: 1945 to present”, in North Korea Today, ed. Robert Scalapino (New York: Praeger, 1963), 125–40. 4  Author’s interview of Ri Sŏngjun, Pyongyang, May 1990. 5  On Yi Kiyŏng’s pre-eminent place in North Korean literature and culture, see Tatiana Gabroussenko, Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), chapter 3.

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and literary and historical writings unequalled even during the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union. Kim Il Sung, now warning against the dangers of Russianising the education system and thereby diluting the Korean people’s patriotism, embarked upon an education policy that aimed to maintain national pride and fervour and which encouraged a high degree of regimentation of the education system overall. Unavoidably, this reaction had a negative impact on creativity in most areas of education and cultural activity up to the end of the century. The pride of the school system is the Man’gyŏngdae Schoolchildren’s Palace on the outskirts of Pyongyang, founded in 1989, at which talented children in families with the right connections have been given additional, specialized, education in their areas of ability, from music and the visual arts to electronics and computer science. This facility is a more lavish version of the Pyongyang Students and Children’s Palace that was built in central Pyongyang in 1963. One magnificent building built in traditional style next to the Taedong River that runs through the capital, directly across the river from the Chuch’e Tower, is the Grand People’s Study House, at which the general public can listen to tapes of favoured lecturers and read the rather limited number of books approved by the regime. There are a number of tertiary colleges that specialise in one main area, such as the College of Economics, and some research academies, such as the Academy of Social Sciences. By 1990 there was still only one comprehensive university, Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang. In South Korea, the expansion of education into a universal system under both public and private direction lies behind many of the important cultural developments in the country since the 1950s. Schools had been closed on Japan’s surrender, and one of the priorities of USAMGiK (US Army Government in Korea: replaced by the South Korean Interim Government, or SKiG, in August 1947) was to reopen them. A Korean Committee on Education was formed on 16 September 1945 and included ‘eminent Koreans.’ The Military Government’s General Order No. 4 called for reopening all public primary schools by 24 September, followed by private schools on permission from USAMGiK. The language of instruction was to be Korean and curricular content to be inoffensive to Korean sensibilities. Although initially they maintained the Japanese system and retained Japanese administrators for practical reasons, the ultimate goal was an education system fully staffed by Koreans and run along the lines of American education system. This policy worked reasonably smoothly in elementary to secondary levels, but was not as successful in modelling the education system at higher levels as the Soviets were in North Korea. Keijō Imperial University, established in 1927 by the Japanese Government-General and the only university in the country

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on liberation, was reorganised into Seoul National University in 1947, but was rife with ideological infighting and strikes and demonstrations. By August 1946, two private universities opened their doors: Ewha Women’s University, a private Methodist institution headed by Kim Hwallan, famed campaigner for women’s education during the colonial period; and the Presbyterian Yonsei University and Severance Medical College under the presidency of George Lak-Geoon Paik (Paek Nakjun), former associate of Cho Mansik and a native of Pyongyang. Several other private universities that today are numbered in the top rank of Korean universities opened over the following decade or so: Tan’guk in 1947, the Confucian Sunggyungwan and Buddhist Tongguk in 1953, Hanyang in 1959 and the Catholic Sogang in 1960. All these universities bar Sogang had their origins in secondary and special schools, some reaching back to the 1880s, and despite the financial support for some of the Christian universities from abroad, none were inclined to follow very far the cultures and practices of North American universities. Before the Korean War only one hundred Koreans were studying in the US on government scholarships, compared to the six hundred North Koreans supported in the USSR. A Fulbright Office that had opened in Seoul in April 1950 was interrupted by the war, and it was not until the late 1950s that American involvement in tertiary education in South Korea reached a level comparable to that of the USSR in the north. By that point, higher education as a status marker and means of going up in the world, affording good work and marriage prospects, had caught on in earnest. By the 1970s, graduate degrees at overseas universities in North America and Europe were highly sought after, a trend that only increased with time, so that by 2005 Seoul National University supplied the second largest number of students to masters and doctoral programmes in US universities, surpassed only by Berkeley. In the early 1970s, there arose a need for concerted efforts to improve and expand the training of workers with skills necessary for the rapid take-off of an industrial economy under Heavy and Chemical Industrial scheme. Thereupon the Park regime launched its most comprehensive effort to coordinate education with economic planning. The Yusin Constitution provided the authoritarian power to implement far-reaching educational reform in technical skills. The vocational education budget doubled between 1970–79, with its biggest increases in 1973–76. The Industrial Education Promotion Law of 1973 included provisions for a national examination system for vocational skills and night-classes for workers, but its centrepiece was institutionalising on-the-job educational programmes. Tech­nical high schools were developed to teach machinery, elec­tronics, mechanical engineering, and other skills. A cooperative system

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between vocational education and industries was required of all major industries and conglomerates from 1974 with the aim of setting up systematic training programs, backed up by a National Technical Qualification Exam in 1978.6 The response of businesses was mixed, not very cooperative overall, with businesses opting to pay fines rather than establish on-site training programs. This was partly because of widespread resistance to the idea of purely technical and vocational training schools among Koreans, who retained a very high view of education as a whole-of-person project. Another reason was that skills and other needs changed so quickly that the effectiveness of vocational schools was not evident, whereas ‘real’ education was valued for nurturing lateral thinking that would endow people with the ability to develop other skills as required. Hence the focus of higher-level technical training returned to the more comprehensive tertiary institutions such as KIST (Korea Institute of Science and Technology) and KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), founded in 1966 and 1971. POSTECH, Pohang University of Science and Technology, founded in 1986 with funding from the steel company POSCO, concentrated heavily on engineering and was in some years judged the best such institution in Asia. The best possible and highest level of education has been pursued by families and individuals throughout the nation so obsessively and at such cost to the household budget, higher by far than even in Japan, that Michael J. Seth titled his book on the subject, Education Fever. Between 1988 and 1992, local governments allotted the highest proportion of their budget, nearly 30%, to education, exceeding that expended on health, welfare and social services, on business and on administration. Education’s share of the central budget was some 16%, exceeded only by defense, health, welfare and social services, and economic development.7 By the mid-1980s the national literacy rate of 98% ranked among the top in the world, while the level of general knowledge and of disciplines such as mathematics was very high among high-school graduates. The pursuit of education was equally strong among females, with consequences that will be dealt with below. During the two decades 1980 to 2000, whereas the proportion of males going to universities increased from 37% to 45%, that of the female population increased from 17% to 58%.

6  Michael J. Seth, Education Fever (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 117–113. 7  See Seth, Education Fever, chapter 6.

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The Meaning of the Family

Family change is one of the most important indicators of social and cultural transformation of modern societies. Family change has been a far-reaching and complex issue, and despite the universality of the change, one of great diversity in its local manifestations. Such social transformation is accompanied by a reworking of central elements in an individual’s and a family’s relation to society. Hobsbawm’s picture is one in which economic life is central, so that his ‘death of the peasantry’ is an economic change that radiates out through all spheres of society and culture. Others might question this notion of the primacy of economic change, and among the Koreans who experienced it some held that the economic change was a surface consequence of an intellectual-cultural change at a very deep level. But whatever the viewpoint, the transitions in meaning of family, marriage, gender, youth and old age have been huge and indeed revolutionary, as they have in the field of education. The family is such an important institution that any change in it precipitates intense cultural debate and struggle. Families have been regarded as social building blocks, family relations as social cement. In many traditions, and most certainly in East Asia, the family has been viewed as the pattern and rationale for social organization and national polity. Alterations in family structure and conceptions, related as they are to urbanisation, expansion of education to the wider populace and in particular to women, to women’s employment outside the home, population control policies and the like, are commonly perceived to be threats to the fabric of society and provoke strong resistance and a deep sense of cultural unease. The so-called Asian values idea centres often on the idea of a citizen’s sense of community responsibility linked to a prescriptive view of the family. But the issue is truly global. It is reflected strongly in the twentieth-century moral rearmament movement in Europe, while a cultural struggle continues in the USA over family values, considered by many to be essential to the health of the nation. There has not arisen a broadly accepted alternative concept to the family as building block of society and nation, and hence the term ‘broken homes.’ Family is the most tense, troubled legal section in many countries. The reason why the issues of homosexual marriage and single or lesbian women having access to IVF are such fraught legal issues, matters of national moment and subjects for politicians to pronounce upon, is because the question arises whether this is something one can build a nation around. And so in Korea, where the family is regarded as a social welfare organisation and a place of nurture of its citizens, there surfaced fears from the late 1970s that families

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were breaking down psychologically from the inside and thus putting the health of society in danger. It is against this background that soon after his election as ROK president in 1998, Kim Dae Jung introduced his concept of ‘national filial piety’ to ensure care for the aged and the infirm would continue. South Korea The changing Korean family dynamics in South Korea during the second half of the twentieth century need to be put in the global context of the times. The rise in cohabitation before marriage, divorce and remarriage and singleperson households has been a worldwide pattern. In the United Kingdom, for instance, twenty times as many couples cohabited before marriage in 1980 than three decades earlier; and if the rise in the divorce rate in South Korea to one divorce for every eleven marriages by the late 1980s shocked the country, it pales besides the rise in the UK from one divorce in 58 marriages in 1958 to one in 2.2 marriages by 1980.8 South Korean families during this period underwent significant structural changes. The average family size declined from 5.6 members in 1960 to less than four in 1990. From 1961, the government promoted family planning energetically and with great effect, offering incentives and disincentives. The birth rate was lowered from 4.7 in 1967 to 2.6 in 1979 and 1.8 in 1985. Moreover, urbanisation often broke up the extended family structure, so that whereas 27% of families were living together as extended families in 1960, by 1980 only 16.7% did so.9 Yet although extended families were thus physically separated, extended family culture remained reasonably strong in the sense that family authority, decisions about marriage, the naming and number of children, mutual support in times of difficulty, inheritance agreements, funeral arrangements and commemoration of ancestors continued to follow extended family practices. As we have seen, the extended family structure continued to operate in the business world of the chaebŏl. By the 1990s, however, as family laws concerning inheritance and the rights of wives and mothers underwent some alteration and some practices became impractical, the extended family became of lower priority. The average marriage age has risen from the early twenties for men and late teens for women in 1950 to 29 for men and 26 for women by the mid-1990s. For men, the higher age related to their compulsory military training of around 8  Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, 321–323. 9  Lee Dong-won, “The Changes in Korean Family and Women,” in Challenges for Women: Women’s Studies in Korea, ed. Chung Sei-wha (Seoul, Ewha Women’s University Press, 1986), 236–237.

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two and a half years, longer years of education and the need to secure a job, while for women education and the desire to work before marriage were the main factors. The shorter childbearing period this entails is nowhere as important to family size as the aggressive family planning policies of the Park regime and the rise in female education and employment. Also related to the later marriage age was a move from arranged marriages to self-selection of one’s partner. In 1958, 62% of marriages were arranged by parents; in 1980, only 18%.10 Nevertheless, the grounds for choosing one’s partner did not change greatly. Dating culture developed fairly slowly, despite a transformation of the message by the (mostly foreign) media. Introductions were frequently made by parents or their agents, and the traditional regional, occupational, financial and educational criteria of the arranged marriages remained decisive in most cases. The traditional concept of the woman as homemaker and the man as breadwinner remained strong at least up to the late 1990s and framed all patterns of family-state, family-work and family-culture interactions. But the advent of mass education across gender lines set up numerous contradictions. Women became educated for all kinds of employment but were excluded from higherlevel jobs, and whereas the number of working women dramatically increased, practices that assumed women did not work remained in place and any provisions for the fact that women did work outside the house were even actively opposed. Childcare is a prime example of this contradiction. It was barely tolerated, and only as a temporary measure; men refused to have anything to do with it. The state, which supported women’s low-wage employment, hardly raised a finger to help: in 1989 there were about one hundred non-profit, community childcare centres across the entire nation, and almost none in rural areas. Furthermore, education for multitudes of female university graduates functioned predominantly as a passport to a better marriage. It became one of the qualifications that a matchmaker, or perhaps a bachelor, looked upon as one of a number of ticks to place beside a prospective bride: ‘marriage material’ was the term used. This worked both ways, but for a male, it didn’t stop there but rather indicated a masculine notion of public prestige and so on. Female students canvassed at Ewha Women’s University in 1990 said that although they disliked the role played by their own mothers, they really had no other role model before them. Many mothers did not want their daughters to look for work after finishing university, and if they did, for only a year or two and certainly not after marriage. Now to be sure, there is another angle from which one might consider this situation, and that is that part of the general 10  Lee Dong-won, “Changes in Korean Family and Women,” 239.

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aspiration of families during the industrialization period was to attain a position where wives would not have to work, for this added to a family’s standing in the community. Nevertheless, this hardly alters the fact and if anything strengthens it, that female higher education was a means to a marital end. In 1990 a full 70% of female student respondents to a questionnaire confirmed that a good marriage was basically the supreme and perhaps only form of happiness that a woman could look forward to. By the same token, however, even if higher education was a passport to a good marriage, having been so educated, a woman held a view of marriage and her relationship with her husband that certainly differed from tradition. For instance, in 1958, 27% of women considered concubinage was acceptable in cases where the wife bore a daughter but not a son. By 1980, this tolerance had declined to less than 2%.11 Despite changes in education, employment and the law, the preference for male children remained very strong to the end of the century. The absolute majority of mothers in the 1970s wanted their sons to go to the best university and succeed in a career in order to go up in the world and thereby raise the family’s status. Women would sacrifice themselves to an extraordinary degree to support a son’s ch’ulse, or rise in status, and rural girls were sent to city factories to earn money for their brothers’ release from farm and other work in order to get educated, a development that provided the theme for several literary works in the late 1970s to 1980s. North Korea In North Korea, in spite of the obviously patriarchal tone of the establishment, women have figured among the heroes of the revolution, even if more fictitiously than historically. Kim Il Sung’s mother was portrayed as a fervent, revolutionary patriot in the story of her handing her husband’s pistol to her son as he leaves for Manchuria, adjuring him to use it to honour cause and country. The classic children’s novel, Kkot p’anŭn ch’ŏnyŏ (The Girl who Sold Flowers), celebrates a girl who defied the imperialist Japanese occupiers. Her image adorned one of the domestic currency banknotes. Aided and abetted by the personality cult of the Great Leader who had to be revered as the caring father of the people, the family remained an important institution. In 1990, those North Koreans who were able to cross freely between the north and the PRC, such as students in Chinese universities and small goods traders, considered one of the main cultural differences between the two countries to be the far greater warmth and cohesion of the family unit in North Korea. But there are clear differences from tradition. Education of their children was taken out of the parents’ hands by the state system from 11  Lee Dong-won, “Changes in Korean Family and Women,” 243.

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very early on. On the one hand this meant that unlike in the south, families in the north did not have to break the bank to have their children educated; but on the other hand a family’s status or distance from the revolutionary centre largely determined the educational, occupational and marriage opportunities of the children, whose actual abilities altered their circumstances very little.

Women and Society

Among the official and oft-repeated documentaries aired on national television in North Korea was one devoted to the Ch’ŏllima, or Flying Horse Movement of the 1960s, in which women featured in the work brigades, toiling energetically at their labour of reconstruction of the nation after the devastation of the Korean War. Apart from labouring work in farms, factories and construction projects, women served as guides in museums, traffic directors, waitresses and desk-front personnel. Almost all women in North Korea worked full-time outside the home. Well-positioned women in the north were not backward in making a similar complaint to that heard around much of the world that whereas it was true that women worked and enjoyed remuneration and conditions comparable to their menfolk, nothing had changed in the home, where the cooking, cleaning and supplies of the household and the care of the children were left to the wives. But officially, there was no ‘woman question’ in the DPRK. According to Mun Myŏngu, a literary scholar in the Academy of Social Sciences and son of the famed writer and cultural historian Mun Ilp’yŏng (1888–1939), women’s issues were class issues and once class issues were solved the woman question disappeared.12 In South Korea the story was very different. Family law revision, women’s education, ‘progressive’ student movements and work pressures spurred resurrection of the feminist activities that had been stifled after liberation or incorporated into official policies. In the early 1980s, a number of women’s groups formed, including farmers, urban workers, intellectuals and housewives, but it was not until 1987 that thirty-three of these launched a national coalition, the KWAU (Korea Women’s Associations United: Han’guk yŏsŏng tanch’e yŏnhap). As in the colonial period, so in the 1980s, women activists tended to view their aims and principles in relation to so-called wider issues of national importance, such as anti-military struggles, pro-reunification movements and the question of class.13 12  Interview of Professor Mun Myŏngu by the author, Pyongyang, May 1990. 13  The debate over whether women factory labour is a class issue more than gender issue is treated in Kim Sung-Kyung, Class Struggle or Family Struggle: the lives of women

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Changes in attitudes about gender relations and functions have been very slow throughout the world. In South Korea, the prevailing view up to the 1990s was that there is something essential about gender: the belief that there is an inherently natural way of a woman and way of a man which determines the character, functions and purposes of women and men in society. In Confucian terms, this is a matter of names corresponding to functions. If a woman attempts to follow a man’s way or vice-versa, society from family to workplace to state administration will necessarily break down. As we have seen, the traditional basis for the belief in an essential masculinity and femininity was the Yin-Yang formula of the two basic cosmological principles that form the whole cosmos and which by complementing each other with their opposite characteristics maintain cosmic harmony and balance. The union of the two produces and reproduces the world, and in human life this is expressed in the sexual union, understood as complementary activity of the different genders. The important point is that both sex and gender are considered to be entirely natural and essential, and that the opposite characteristics of male and female are indispensable for the creation and maintenance of the real world. In this scheme, all reality is correlated: dominance by the male principle leads not only to terrorised children in the family but to harsh government—and, according to the traditions, earthquakes. Dominance of the female principle leads not only to unmotivated children and weakwilled husbands but also to ineffective government—and floods. Indeed, such a position remained unchallenged in school curricula throughout the 1950s to 1980s. Mottos for boys and girls related to the attributes of femininity and masculinity associated with the Yin/Yang formulation: girls excelled in nurture, helpfulness, compassion, support and cooperation; boys showed initiative, leadership, strong views and competitive ways.14 Understanding this helps us grasp why, in the midst of the unprecedented speed and depth of change in South Korea and elsewhere in the twentieth century, gender relations became such central but knotty issues. For changes in the activities women perform, the social roles they carry out, the economic positions they occupy, and the knowledge they gain and practise, undermine patriarchy: its central claims are refuted in concrete form. But all social change of any moment requires persistent struggle, and in a society such as Korea’s, factory workers in South Korea (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Ruth Barraclough, Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence, and Representation in Industrialis­ ing Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 14  Chung Sei-wha, “Socialization and Women in Korea from the Perspective of the Family, School and Social Education,” in Challenges for Women, ed. Chung Sei-wha, 180.

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which like many others had been structured for so many centuries according to an ideology of gender, change in gender ideas and practices required sustained struggle and has in the views of many Korean women moved only at glacial speed to the present. Indeed, it can with considerable warrant be claimed that the most revolutionary changes had taken place in the colonial era and that some of these had been set back under the military order of the 1960s to 1980s. Women’s Employment in South Korea From the 1950s to 1990s, South Korea’s industry moved through several stages, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled; and from small to medium to heavy industry. The effect on women was that they were required to take up the slack left as men departed from less to more skilled, lower to higher paid work. Women took up the places men vacated. For example, in the automanufacturing industry, women took up the work of finishing car interiors. Statistics in the official Year Books and reports of the Economic Planning Board from 1960 to 1989 indicate that women’s work centred on less-skilled, less-developed, less prestigious industrial sectors. Women’s participation in economic activities increased from 1970 through 1989, but the ratio of those participating in agriculture was much higher than those participating in nonagricultural sectors. Whereas in 1970 women comprised nearly 30% of workers in non-agricultural industries and over 48% in agriculture, by 1989 the proportion in agriculture rose to 61% of the workforce but to only 43.5% in nonagricultural industries. It is, further, likely that numbers of self-employed women in the rural sector were not included in these statistics. The development of larger and more skilled industries clearly worked to women’s disadvantage in the non-labouring areas also. Official records state that women occupied 17.7% of administrative and managerial positions in 1960, only 3.5% in 1970 and a mere 1.5% in 1980.15 It is on account of such developments that we may apply the term ‘industrial patriarchy’ to this period in Korea. As almost everywhere, women did not receive equal pay for equal work, and before the early 1990s there was no provision for maternity leave. Although during the heavy and chemical industrial push of the 1970s to mid-1980s the government relied heavily on female factory labourers in work that adversely affected their health, there was no notion of a woman’s right to work: her 15  Figures for 1999 indicate the percentage of women in administration and management had begun to rise, standing at 4.2%. Cf. the figures provided in Roh Mihye, “Women Workers in a Changing Korean Society,” in Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity & Change, ed. Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Pally (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 240–256.

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employment was rather an off-shoot of demand and was terminated as readily as engaged. Nevertheless, women in the 1970s and 1980s organised their own unions and figured visibly in various strikes and union activities.16 Male workers at this stage supported women workers’ rights, and one of the tragic milestones in the South Korean labour movement was the self-immolation of a male worker protesting against the refusal of management in a textile industry to grant improved wages and conditions to female factory workers. This sacrifice spurred a vigorous union-led movement that in the end achieved considerable results for workers, male and female. Most of the female workers’ activities were not aiming for any kind of socialist revolution—if anything they wanted a capitalist system through which they received a high remunerative reward for their high production and by dint of which they would gain enhanced social status. They wanted fairness, recognition of full citizenship, beginning with their own workplace. From the 1980s, a more radical movement developed, in which universityeducated women falsified their records (as did male students) in order to gain employment in the factories, where they strove to raise the consciousness of female workers, establish unions and mobilise the workers behind strikes and calls for radical changes.17 Such women caught the headlines but more often than not were prosecuted for falsifying their identities. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s, a number of reforms relating to female employment were tabled in the General Assembly and by the early 1990s a momentum had gathered for positive change. Women could no longer legally be dismissed upon getting married or pregnant and wage differentials between men and women were reduced. Even so, the gap between the law and attitudes was large, and employers sought ways to get around the changes, but with diminishing success. The 1997–98 economic crisis that hit South Korea and much of East and Southeast Asia brought into sharp relief the unequal position of female workers, not only in relation to management but vis-à-vis their male counterparts. The International Monetary Fund offered South Korea US$57 billion in loans, but this was of course conditional, and one of the strings attached was a downsizing of the workforce. Naturally this translated into laying off workers. In response, the male-led unions came out in force to protest what 16  Seung-kyung Kim, “Women Workers and the Labor Movement in South Korea,” in Anthropology and the Global Factory: Studies in the New Industrialization in the Late Twentieth Century, ed. Frances Abrahamer Rothstein and Michael L. Blim (New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1992), 220–237. 17  Namhee Lee, “Representing the Worker: The Worker-Intellectual Alliance of the 1980s in South Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 4 (November, 2005), 920–921.

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they claimed was violation of a contractual requirement that workers be given lifelong employment. This idea applied only to the more successful companies at best, and there was certainly no such understanding attached to female employment. The strikes were therefore somewhat irrelevant to women, who as a result were laid off in huge numbers and disproportionately.18 Despite the fact that female workers had persevered with union organisation and activities during the 1970s and 1980s when men were less able to do so, no male labour union came to the aid of these women. On the contrary, it was taken for granted among male workers that if layoffs took place, they must begin with the female workers. Men had to take demotions, reversing the pattern hitherto, but for women that meant falling off the bottom end. According to the official Year Book for 1999, women were “the main target for massive layoffs,” married women and women married to a male co-worker were laid off first, while 95.5% of female bank workers were “either forced or encouraged to quit.” And in a cruel irony, very recent reforms of family law that had recognised single mothers as legal household heads, but had not required businesses to pay them severance pay or ensured their eligibility for unemployment benefits, exposed women to a double disadvantage when laid off, creating in effect what some might term the feminisation of poverty, one measure of which was the increase in prostitution related to factory work.19 Under military rule, the civil service was headed by males with military connections, predominantly from the Kyŏngsang provinces. Very few women worked in the public service. From the mid-1980s positive change began slowly till in 1996, 11% of civil servants at national level were female and at local level, 22%. At the professional level, women were employed mainly in education and medicine. Where women were employed in universities as professors, there was initially a close connection with Christianity, partly because Christian women gained access to higher education earlier than others but also because of the willingness of Christian husbands to support their wives in academic careers.20 Recent developments, such as women holding high 18  Sasha Hampson, “Rhetoric or reality?: contesting definitions of women in Korea,” in Women in Asia: Tradition, modernity and globalisation, ed. Louise Edwards and Mina Roces (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000), 178–179. 19  On the phenomenon of “feminisation of poverty,” see Laurence Fontaine and Jürgen Schlumbohm, “Household Strategies for Survival: An Introduction,” in Laurence Fontaine and Jürgen Schlumbohm, eds, International Review of Social History, Supplement 8: Household Strategies for Survival, 1600–2000: Fission, Faction and Cooperation (2000), 13–14. 20  See Lee Hie Sung, “A Case Study on Achievement Motivation of Women Professors in a Women’s University in Korea,” in Challenges for Women, ed. Chung Sei-wha, 192–229.

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diplomatic posts and offices in government departments, date from after Kim Dae Jung assumed the presidency in 1998. Lee Inho, for example, a PhD in Eastern European and Russian history, was posted to the Russian Federation as ROK ambassador in 1998 and on her return two years later became President of the Korea Foundation, a unit under the foreign ministry dedicated to advancing research and teaching on Korea at universities abroad. Women and Politics in South Korea One of the most interesting and perhaps enigmatic persons in South Korean political life from the late 1960s to late 1980s is Kim Oksŏn (b. 1934), a woman who dressed in a male suit and tie, with a short-back-and-sides haircut, and was in appearance indistinguishable from a man.21 At the age of thirty-three, Kim Oksŏn became in 1967 the first unmarried Korean woman to be elected a legislator in the Korean National Assembly, a considerable achievement under General Park Chung-Hee’s military regime. She served as an MP from 1973–1979 and again from 1985–1988. In one of several such photographs, she is portrayed shaking hands with certain venerable elderly men, members of a conservative Confucian Council in Andong, a township famed for its traditional ways and ethos. In the normal sense of the term, Kim Oksŏn was not a cross-dresser. She was, in fact, a committed, conservative Christian. Her adoption of a male persona stemmed from her filial piety. Her mother had two daughters and then was widowed. Kim Oksŏn, the elder daughter, resolved from her childhood that she would take on the role of a first son, and so serve her mother and younger sister the best she could. It was thus in the persona of a dutiful son in the traditional, and let it be added, to a large degree the contemporary sense, that Ms Kim successfully carried herself into the almost exclusively male world of South Korean politics. The case of Kim Oksŏn thus reflected the continuing strength of the patriarchal order of Korean political society and much else besides. Aside from interference with democratic processes when the military deemed it expedient, the Korean National Assembly has basically been elected. Initially, elections were the way to get into the national legislature, but in 1961 a new system was introduced that combined elections of individuals to specific seats with a number of appointed seats that were determined proportionally in accord with the 21  For details on Kim Oksŏn and several other women in South Korean political life, see Chung-Hee Soh, The Chosen Women in Korean Politics: An Anthropological Study (New York: Preager, 1991). See also Rose J. Lee and Cal Clark, eds, Democracy and the Status of Women in East Asia (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000).

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party votes. The appointed seats were at the discretion of the parties to which they were assigned. On average, one third of the members were appointed. In the first election of 1948, one woman was elected out of 200 members. She was Im Yŏngsin, or Yim Louise (1899–1977), one of the founders of Chungang University, an activist for women’s education and rights and one of Rhee Syngman’s followers during the colonial period. The period 1973 to 1985 was the most favourable for women under the military regime, when the number of women in the legislature averaged 3.5%. However, the number of elected female members was only 0.5%, precisely what it was in 1948. Expectations that matters would improve after the military regime was ousted in 1987 were not fulfilled. In the first post-military election, held in 1988, no women were elected, and in 1996, the combined total of elected and appointed women was 3%.22 In the mid-1990s, South Korea ranked ninety-fourth out of 119 states in terms of the ratio of female legislators. In 1998, three women were elected and seven appointed out of 299 members, which represents just over 3% in total. Even this was a poorer result than during the military period. (During the 1990s, no more than 2% of national government members in the United States were women. However, all of them were elected.) There is only a weak consensus on the reason given for this anomaly of fewer women having been elected to office after the achievement of civilian democracy. Whereas there is general agreement that it must relate to a continued patriarchal mentality, it has not been agreed where this mentality is most active. On the one hand, it has been argued that whereas the former military rulers considered it advantageous to include some token representation by women, democratisation legitimised male domination of party politics and decisions by virtue of the way the electorate voted.23 The free and open elections revealed the strong patriarchal predilections of both the voters and the parties that had existed all along. From the first National Assembly of 1948 till the fourteenth in 1992, only eight women were elected, four of whom served as Cabinet Ministers. For the same period, thirty-five women were appointed to seats, and one of these was made a Cabinet Minister, but appointed women were generally regarded as token females in government. Much the same was the case in local government. It has been argued, further, that the patriarchal system of politics and society more generally made it very difficult for women to form the kind of connections on which political careers depend. Yim Louise, the woman who 22  Rose J. Lee, “Electoral Reform and Women’s Empowerment: Taiwan and South Korea,” in Democracy and the Status of Women, ed. Rose J. Lee and Cal Clark, 50–51. 23  Rose J. Lee, “Electoral Reform,” 57.

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was elected in 1948 and held a cabinet post, noted that she could not mingle with male colleagues informally or with males in business and other socially important positions largely because in Korea it was not considered appropriate for women to move into these male circles. Although there was some improvement in voter attitudes by 1990, it was insufficient to be of consequence. Female politicians who decided to play golf, attend cocktail parties and the like faced a backlash against ‘improper’ feminine behaviour. Another severe problem was that party discipline made it virtually impossible for female politicians to support legislation introduced on behalf of women’s interests if their own party policy was against it. For example, during the Eleventh Assembly of 1981–85, all the appointed women legislators in the ruling party voted against the Family Law revision along party lines, though all of them personally supported it. Even where male lawmakers supported meaningful gender reform, such as the Family Law reform bill presented in 1987 which would have allowed women to be household heads, retain children when divorced and secure better childcare facilities, it failed to pass because of threats by Confucian elders to mobilise voters against any who supported it.24 From the early 1990s, pro-women legislature succeeded, but more because it became ruling party policy than because of women’s pressure within the legislature. On the other hand, it has been argued that voter attitudes were not to blame, but two other factors, namely, discrimination against female party members by the political élites and the conflict female politicians experienced between their roles in their families and the demands of life as a politician.25 For whereas responses by voters to surveys soliciting their positions on support for female political candidates indicate significant change in favour of women in office by 1992, the male leaders in the political parties clearly and deliberately nominated very low numbers of female candidates and placed them in electorates where the party had little chance of succeeding. Female party members consistently charged the party élites of discriminating against them in all party business. At the same time, they consistently complained of role-conflicts and expressed fear of social disapproval were they perceived to be neglecting their children.26 These findings, however, support the consensus that the general social environment remained patriarchal. 24  Marian Lief Palley, “Feminism in a Confucian Society: The Women’s Movement in Korea,” in Women of Japan and Korea, ed. Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, 285–286. 25  Kyung-Ae Park, “Political Representation and South Korean Women,” The Journal of Asian Studies 58, no. 2 (May 1999): 432–448. 26  Kyung-Ae Park, “Political Representation and South Korean Women,” 437–438.

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Apart from Yim Louise, who succeeded because, in addition to her personal acumen and reputation as a nationalist, she was supported actively by Rhee Syngman, the principle factors behind successful women, that is, those who were not appointed but voted into parliament, appear to have been marital status (unmarried), education or religion, or a combination of these. Three of the eight elected women by 1992 were unmarried at the time, two never married and one was divorced. The more successful and longer-term ones were the unmarried, most notably Kim Oksŏn. Seven of the eight were Christian and one a Buddhist. Kim Oksŏn, for example, built eight churches and was a Presbyterian elder.27 Two were well-known nationalist activists of the colonial period, and several had been educated at tertiary level overseas, mainly in the USA. There is perhaps here a nexus of religion, education, nationalism and, to some extent, non-marriage or non-traditional marriage.

Literary Reflections in South Korea

As the Korean literary scholar Kim Uch’ang has pointed out, the ideal order in the Korean tradition of the civilising function of arts and culture was “from internal to external forms, that is, from aesthetic culture to society to the state.”28 But events during the twentieth century reversed that ideal order as they unfolded. Certainly, as the Korean War, the hardships and moral degradation it brought, and subsequent industrialisation transformed traditional life in Korea, an order of harmonious human relations soon vanished both as an ideal and a reality, and art and literature concerned itself in the main with the ‘discontents of civilisation.’ So literary activity in South Korea, whether of left or right, concentrated on the rectification of ills of state and society. The 1950s were dominated by writings on the war and its aftermath. The most moving of these were short stories by Hwang Sunwŏn (1915–2000) and O Yŏngsu (1914–1979) that depicted the interactions of subjects who tried to find their way through the dislocations of the war and its aftermath. O Yŏngsu’s Meari (Mountain Pass: 1959) delineates the character development of a young couple who strive to make ends meet by breaking in new farmland in the Chiri mountains, haunted by the history of the ‘Red Partisan’ battles waged there. Although Hwang’s San (Mountains: 1956) is more explicitly related to war themes, his Sonagi (Rainstorm: 1959) must surely be a leading contender for 27  Chung-Hee Soh, The Chosen Women in Korean Politics, 51. 28  Uchang Kim, “The Agony of Cultural Construction: Politics and Culture in Modern Korea,” 166.

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the most perfectly crafted short story ever written. It is a beautiful depiction of an exquisite friendship between a shy, nine-year-old country lad and a girl of similar age and some refinement, who has been sent to the countryside by her economically ruined father, and the sequence that led to her death and his heartbreak. Towards the end of the 1960s, there occurred major debates in the intel­ lectual journals, particularly Sasanggye (Compass of Thought), between those who propounded ‘literature of engagement’ and those who espoused ‘pure literature.’ Those who sided with literature of engagement took issue with military rule, industrial capitalism and subservience to foreign cultures and demands, and purported to speak as or on behalf of the people, the minjung, the putative representatives of authentic Korean culture, and according to some protagonists, the values of socialism. This position was given more prominence in the 1970s by the journals of two schools of literary criticism: Changjakkwa pip’yŏng (Creation and Criticism) and Munhakkwa chisŏng (Literature and Intellect). Younger literary critics of the 1980s became more highly politicised in the wake of the brutal suppression of the Kwangju movement for democracy in May 1980. Under the strict censorship and control by the regime of General Chun Doo-Hwan over the whole public sphere, literature and art took the lead in countering the official line on public matters. A school of literature called nodong haebang munhak, or ‘literature of the liberation of labour’ emerged among intellectuals and labourers, a composition of minjung literature in a more radical key. During this period a number of novels of multiple volumes appeared with the object of recreating history through a romanticised historical imagination focusing on long-suffering people capable of great heights and depths of feeling and of ‘heroic violence.’ These multi-volume novels include Cho Chŏngnae’s seven-volume T’aebaek Sanmaek (T’aebaek Mountains) published in 1986, and Yi T’ae’s Nambugun (Southern Partisans) published in two volumes in 1988. The claim that literature should reflect historical ‘truth,’ and more, be an integral part of historical development, an active dynamic of the historical process, was a hallmark of the Council of Writers for the Practice of Freedom (Chayu silch’on munin hyŏbŭihoe), reorganised in 1987 as the Korean National Writers’ Union (Minjok munhak chakka hoeŭi). It also appeared in the literary criticism of Kim Uch’ang of Korea University, Paik Nak-chung (Paek Nakch’ŏng) of Seoul National University, Lee Seon-Young (Yi Sŏnyŏng) of Yonsei University, and the chief editor of Creation and Criticism, Ch’oe Wŏnsik. In short, this movement aimed to undermine one pillar of the regime’s legitimacy, the official view of Korea’s past, and replace it with an ‘authentic’ minjung version.

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Literature of Engagement Claude Lévi-Strauss once observed that people become unhappy creatures “when history comes too close to them.” This in many ways sums up the perspective of the writers of engagement in South Korea from the 1950s to 1980s. The poet Kim Suyŏng is one of the earliest in the militarist period who strove for a historically participatory role through his writing and provoked discussion on this and related issues among literary critics. Kim Suyŏng lived only 40 years, from 1928 to 1968. He has been called a minjung poet and an activist poet, but most of all he is remembered as the poet of freedom. The 1960 April Nineteen movement and ensuing military takeover had a great impact on him. Critics find three developments linked to his theme of freedom: 1946–1960, where freedom is expressed paradoxically through experiences that produce emotions of sorrow and tragedy; 1960–61, as love and revolution; and 1961–1968 as hatred of the enemy that thwarts attainment of freedom and lamentations over his having to submit to that reality. ‘That reality’ is also a prominent theme in Kim’s poetry, and it is this more than anything else that brings him too close to history.29 Kim’s later poetry is a reflection of the mood of the early period of Park Chung-Hee’s rule, of the effect on concerned Koreans of the dousing of the April Nineteen spirit by the military coup and the deferment of hopes for freedom: literature had to serve as the ‘parliament of the people.’ The writings and proposals published in Sasangye and the voice of public intellectuals such as Ham Sŏkhŏn and Pak Chonghŏn show that Kim was representative of many concerned intellectuals and that as such he is one source among many we may call upon to understand the sense of history among dissidents of the early Park era. Nevertheless, the actual producers of ‘national’ literature in Korea under the Park and Chun regimes took a more modest line than the literary critics on the historical truth expressed in their works. They tended to see themselves more as participants in the struggles of the time, whose particular contribution to the unfolding of events was related to the service literature could provide and the kind of influence it could exert. They were no less committed to a vision and to struggle on behalf of that vision, however, and they chose their subject matter in order to expose the nature and consequences of the military regimes and to present convincing situations of resistance and movements that presage change in the political, social and economic orders.

29  Kim Yongjik, ed., Han’guk hyŏndae sisa yŏn’gu (Studies on Korean Contemporary Issues), (Seoul: Ilchisa, 1983), 252–254.

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Kim Suyŏng was followed by a more forceful literary activist, the poet and playwright Kim Chiha (b. 1941), whose relation to history became uncomfortably close and robbed him of physical freedom and nearly his life. His name was on several occasions forwarded to the Nobel Prize in Literature committee. Upon charging Park’s regime with torture and wilful violation of citizens’ rights, he was sentenced to death in 1974 under the National Security Law for ‘inciting rebellion.’ Following an international outcry, the sentence was commuted to life in jail and in December 1979 he was released by Ch’oe Kyuha, then interim president after Park Chung-Hee’s assassination. His renown as a public intellectual owes much to his ‘Declaration of Conscience,’ smuggled out of prison. (Or so it was claimed at the time: in a newspaper article written after the end of military rule, Kim Chiha confessed that it was written by one of his friends, a lawyer.) As a literary figure, he is most famous for his ballad, Ojŏk (The Five Bandits: 1970), in which he pilloried various leaders and the misshapen and criminal value-systems he believed they represented. It was largely because of this ballad, written to be performed as a traditional p’ansori drama, that the regime sought opportunity to put him away. A Catholic, Kim wrote imaginative scenes of Christ entrusting the most despised groups among Koreans, such as lepers, with the task of liberating not only the rest of the people but also Christ himself, through costly service of the poor and downtrodden. In this regard, Kim Chiha, like Kim Suyŏng before him, is numbered among the minjung writers. The Minjung Movement in Literature The minjung movement was a species of populist nationalism, as opposed to the official nationalism propagated by the South Korean military regime. The populist minjung position was that the South Korean military machine was alien to the people’s values, aspirations and best traditions. It served foreign interests and in important ways was a legacy of Japan’s harsh colonial rule. The minjung, then, were the opposite: they were the repository of authentic Korean values. Hence they were not defined primarily by class position: it was not a class movement, but a nationalist movement. Hence one belonged by virtue of the values one held or could claim to represent. Authentic Korean values were assumed to be held in purer form among the poor and the rural and urban labourers than by others who had been influenced by imported ideas and values through higher education, or had succeeded in business enterprises modelled on foreign, capitalist ideas and values. One major defining characteristic of the minjung that permeated minjung literature was that they were people who suffered as they came up against

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hostile but aberrant flows of history. Their maltreatment by the perpetrators of such flows worked to refine the qualities of the minjung and to underline the stark difference between their values and those of their oppressors. Through this suffering, which can be traced back in history through the national division and Japanese occupation to the Tonghak Peasants’ War of 1894–95, the minjung had become the true repository of authentic Korean culture, the possessors of the true dynamic of Korean history and the basis for reunification of the nation. As a political movement, minjung populism gathered force and determination after the events of May 1980 in Kwangju. Many Koreans attribute the final victory over the military and the institution of civilian rule and democracy largely to the minjung movement. Whether or not this is so, it would be very difficult not to acknowledge that the successful nationwide movement of June 1987 that forced General Chun Doo-Hwan to accede to demands to step down was a more or less direct result of the May 1980 uprising.30 Alongside Kim Suyŏng, the poet Sin Tongyŏp (1930–1969) was an early exponent of minjung literature. He not only made the first explicit reference to socialist principles since the Korean War, but also drew heavily on the native tradition of collective cooperation, good will, and festive enjoyment of life he believed to exist among the farmers. His poems on the Tonghak movement inspired the student hyanghwal or ‘to-the-countryside’ movement, whereby students would go out to work gratis on farms in order to form solidarity with rural communities and re-learn the indigenous communal and human values they had lost. After 1980, Ko Ŭn (b. 1933), a native of Kwangju, became the most illustrious of the minjung writers, and like Kim Chiha has frequently joined the list of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The publication by Hwang Sŏgyŏng (b. 1943) of Kaekchi (Far From Home) in 1974 helped bring the idea of workers into literary consciousness. Hwang, who was imprisoned for long periods for his worker-related activism, finally released only after Kim Dae Jung took power in 1998, took labour conditions and struggle as the theme. The whole atmosphere is army-like, and the treat­ ment meted out to the workers is inhuman—their individuality and dignity are not recognised. Hwang created situations that show the effect this had on the workers, the distrust alongside camaraderie, replication of the conduct of the oppressors, determination to do something but few material or mental 30  The many dimensions of the minjung movement are analysed by the contributors to Kenneth M. Wells, ed., South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995).

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resources to follow up the action that finally was taken. The denouement is one of pathos, as the hero Tonghyŏk mused on the meaning of it all as the solid­arity of the strike dissipated and he found himself hard up against Kim Suyŏng’s ‘reality.’ It is possible to read the last scene as a prose form of Kim Suyŏng’s 1965 poem Chŏlmang (Despair). However that may be, Hwang presents scenes and dialogues that readers can feel might really have taken place, and most important, he makes connections, the sort of connections across society that are the stuff of history. Pure Literature Official suppression of the literary left encouraged many writers to adopt more neutral themes of family and human values. This was not simply a politically directed move, however, since there was a traditional impulse to return to and recover the aesthetic from its over-politicisation. Indeed, a division between advocates of ‘pure literature’ and the ‘literature of engagement’ dates back to the early post-liberation years in which a writer’s ideological partisanship came to entail concrete consequences against the backdrop of the national division. Writers who favoured ‘pure’ literature in the northern provinces of Korea ended up coming south, while many of the leftist writers and their sympathisers went north. In the south, the division between pure and engagement literature at times deepened under the military regimes and intensive industrialisation into positions that afforded not even minimal respect for one another: it would be hard to imagine writers more dismissive of each other than Lee Sung-Il (Yi Sŏngil b. 1943) and Ko Ŭn (b. 1933).31 The pure literature advocates in the south tended to identify with PEN International (Poets, Essayists and Novelists), a body founded in 1921 with the object of upholding free expression in one’s country or community. PEN members subscribe to the notion that literary production is the most fundamental and healthiest source of civilisation and should not be drawn into the service of political camps or ideologies. In South Korea, this return to a more traditional understanding, inspired by Kim Tongni (1913–1995) and the poet Sŏ Chŏngju (1915–2000), certainly achieved results and gained a reasonable hearing among critics and a wide public readership. Further, 31  Lee Sung-Il is a well-known Shakespeare and Renaissance literature scholar and Ko Ŭn a famed minjung poet who features in the final chapter of this book. One can detect their fundamentally different approaches to Korean literature in the following two works: Sung-Il Lee, trans., The Wind and the Waves: Four Modern Korean Poets (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989), and Clare You and Richard Silberg, trans., The Three way Tavern: Selected Poems of Ko Un (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

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PEN International was among the strongest voices calling for the release from prison of Hwang Sŏgyŏng. Even after liberalisation of the press and lifting of censorship, the bestsellers were novels whose subjects were about family and human relationships, particularly generational issues, and struggles over status, including education. Significantly, even in 1998 during the worst of the damaging economic crisis that struck Asia, none of South Korea’s top-ten best selling works in either fiction or non-fiction related to economic life or issues.32 Moreover, the ‘agrarian nostalgia’ of the 1970s and 1980s was not the sole preserve of Sin Tongyŏp and the student activists but was shared by conservative writers who saw in it grounds for their rejection of communism as alien to Korea. One can find much the same dynamic elsewhere, as for example in the agrarian nostalgia of two English writers as far apart in their social philosophy as G.K. Chesterton and William Morris. Literary Reflections of Gender Against the backdrop of the primacy given to ideological conflicts in South Korean literature since the Korean War, what might be called ‘women’s literature’ has provided a perspective that goes beyond this politicisation of life’s meaning and portrays lives of great complexity caught up in the conflicts and changes of the times. The pre-eminent writer in this vein is Pak Wansŏ (1931–2011), who up to her death in 2011 at the age of seventy-nine was counted among the top novelists of her country. Pak began her major writing in 1970 with the publication of her novel Namok (The Naked Tree), a story set in the Korean War but seen through the memories of an adolescent girl living with her mother. Pak set several more stories in the Korean War, including Kyŏul nadŭri (Winter Outing: 1975) and the second of her trilogy of short-stories titled Ŏmmaŭi malttuk (A Mother’s Stake: 1982), which situate women in the irrational internecine violence of men in towns outside the theatre of war and recounts their grief at the loss of their husbands, sons and brothers. Similar themes are found in the novels and short stories of Pak’s younger contemporary, O Chŏnghŭi (b. 1947). Pak Wansŏ also defies classification according to the customary divide between pure and engaged literature. Although she was definitely a humaniser rather than politiciser, Pak was one of many writers and cultural figures who, far from celebrating the economic miracle, deplored the attendant deteriora­ tion of the cultural and moral quality of life. Pak considered the economic 32  The Economist Review (February 15, 1997), 18.

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conception of society dehumanising. If family and other relationships were imploding in the 1970s, it was not because of the changing status of women and marriage but the practice of making material gain the measure of all things. Materialism as a goal, as something that is given priority over genuine, solid relationships was the antithesis of a civilised society. In her writings, Pak seems to suggest that this economic drive has forced large numbers of individuals to choose between debilitating drudgery and emigration.33 From the 1970s, when some male writers like Hwang Sŏgyŏng turned to the subject of the intensive industrialisation initiated under Park Chung-Hee from the viewpoint of the labourers who worked long hours for small wages in the factories and construction sites, a number of women authors took up the case of female labourers. Among these is Yi Hyesuk (b. 1947), a novelist and short-story writer who rose to prominence in the 1980s. Two of her works in particular present situations of women workers in terms of the social, political and economic pressures of the time. The first of these, Maeun param punŭn nal (The Day the Spicy Wind Blew), published in 1987, is set in Namdaemun market in Seoul, and provides a view of anti-government student demonstrations from the perspective of the relatively poor and uneducated marketeers, predominantly females, whose businesses are affected by the confrontations. The market community includes women from the provinces, from Chŏlla in particular, and their aspirations for the education of their sons, on whose behalf they have come to Seoul to work. As the story unfolds, the ‘world’ presses in on this community with its conflicts and violence, until in the final, moving scene where the ‘woman from Chŏlla’ lies seriously wounded, a naïve, much younger market vendor who grew up in Seoul is enlightened concerning the injured woman’s connection with the ‘world’ and suddenly understands her sacrifices and now desperate situation. There is no “resolution” in this story, nor does the final scene provide any rallying cry, but it does reveal another perspective on life under the military system. Beyond that, it showed its effect on ‘ordinary’ women and in so doing broke the pattern of much of the activist literature of the time by presenting history as not just one story with one logic. Women’s experiences had meanings that were not independent of the struggle but were nevertheless distinct from it and could not be subsumed under the story of males’ battles over power. The second work, the novella Songnyŏn chanch’i (Year-end Feast), strikes a different note. The central character, Sunok, is a young rural woman who 33  I am indebted to Choi Kyeong-Hee of the University of Chicago, for these insights into the work of Pak Wansŏ.

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becomes a maid in a Seoul businessman’s house and is shamelessly deceived and sexually ravished as part of a business deal. Blamed for an attempt shortly afterwards by the businessman’s son to rape her, Sunok leaves the house to join the anonymous crowd of young women that serve the production lines of the factories that are the economic engine of the state. The story cuts a wide swath, and touches on the themes of sexual exploitation of women, the decadence of the rich, the crass hypocrisy of the industrial exploiters and economic neo-colonialism—one worker’s father’s farm was ruined by the government caving in to United States demands for free access for American beef, and her elder sister died as a result. Yi’s Sunok is not so much an innocent contrast, but a woman with real weaknesses and blind spots who has to be led, rather unwillingly, to consciousness by her fellow-workers. The story builds up to a well-planned act of defiance against the factory boss that unmasks his exploitation and the hypocrisy of his paternalism, when some of the women enact a mini-drama based on a traditional outdoor drama genre called madangguk, in which they employ shamanist themes. Sunok and the other women are filled with a sense of restored dignity and finally savour the power of concerted action. Unlike many of the literary works on factory labour, the ending is positive and shows a way forward despite the sense of danger that accompanies it. In this regard, the work was an attempt both to reveal the nature of the situation and to influence action that might transform the situation. As ‘fictional’ as the novella’s denouement may be, the narrative is surprisingly close to scholarly findings on women and work at the time, and in particular on the effective initiatives taken by women workers.34 It has a clear intention to instruct, to raise consciousness, and to inspire women especially to throw off passivity and make a difference by recourse to folk beliefs and traditions combined with workers’ solidarity. The work provides information that the statistical sources, economic performance indicators, and even journalism of the time do not provide: glimpses of life for women in the factories and a sense of how some women understood that world, how paternalistic repetitions of their being the bosses’ daughters could make them docile, how the practice of docking three days’ wages for one day off sick affected morale, and why it is that the intolerable was, at least for a time, tolerated.

34  Year-end Feast could be read profitably alongside Kim Seung-kyung’s, “Women Workers and the Labor Movement in South Korea.”

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Religion and Society in North Korea

One thing the North Korean people in 1990 could do in public was dance. Soldiers danced in groups, and women could be seen dancing in open areas in the early evenings. The dancing was set dancing, similar to square dancing: a set pattern of steps followed by rotation to a new partner. The reason dance was so popular may have something to do with the guerrilla tradition: in the forests and mountain hideouts in Manchuria, the anti-Japanese guerrillas would sometimes dance to dissipate tension and to foster camaraderie. It is in any case not a traditional form of dance. There may be some Russian influence—and the fact that the most popular instrument in North Korea up to then was the piano accordion supports this idea. But even the accordion is connected with the guerrilla tradition, since it was the instrument that could be carried about from base to base. Whether in fact there were many accordions carried around among the guerrillas, it was made into a sacred tradition. There were only a limited number of songs, and these were played over and over. Every morning from seven o’clock, speakers mounted on buildings erupted with these songs, which were interspersed with exhortations to the people as they made their way to work, various slogans concerning the ‘third stage of the revolution,’ that is, the cultural stage, and messages from the Great Leader. All but one, a love-song, were revolutionary songs or songs with other political content. The most sentimental, hymn-like songs were devoted to the Beloved Leader Kim Jong Il. The realm of the sacred was confined almost entirely to such revolutionary traditions. North Korean sources contain very little information on the religious policy of the DPRK. When religious issues do make their occasional appearance on North Korea’s cultural and political maps, the markings are too faint to support firm conclusions on their geographical status. In the original constitution of 1948 it was stated in Chapter I, Article 2 that “The DPRK relies on the politicalideological unity of the entire people”; and in Chapter IV, Article 54: “Citizens have freedom of faith and freedom of anti-religious propaganda.” The revised constitution of 1974 affords even less space to religion but is more politically charged: Chapter V, Article 68 states that “Citizens have freedom of religious beliefs. This right is granted by approving the construction of religious buildings and the holding of religious ceremonies. No one may use religion as a pretext for drawing in foreign forces or for harming the State and social order.”35 There are minimal references to religion in Kim Il Sung’s collected works, of which the following is a succinct example: 35  Translations taken from The Pyongyang Times, 30 December 1972.

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Religion is a kind of superstition. Whether one believes in Jesus or in Buddhism, in essence one is believing in a superstition. Historically, religion fell into the clutches of the ruling class and was used as a tool to deceive the people in order to exploit and oppress them, while in recent times it has been used by the imperialists as an ideological tool to invade the peoples of undeveloped states.36 When visitors inquired about religious matters, the official response used invariably to be the boast that NK needed neither churches nor prisons. While this coupling of religious with penal establishments suggests that religion was regarded as a social disease, it also reflected the official line that the ‘problem’ of religion had already been solved by its alleged absence from Korean society. Officially, there was no religious question. In many important respects, North Korea’s leaders took note of policies in the former Soviet Union, the erstwhile Eastern Bloc and, of course, China. In the Soviet Union, the Party newspaper Pravda carried detailed attacks on religion from the 1920s, a League of Militant Atheists culled religious people from educational institutions, and anti-religious publications rose from twelve million printed pages in 1927 to 800 million in 1930.37 In December 1967, Pravda proclaimed that “the struggle against religion is . . . an inseparable component part of the entire ideological activity of Party organisations, an essential link and necessary element in the complex of communist education.”38 In China, Mao taught that Chinese people had been oppressed by three authorities—political, clan and religious—and authorised a concerted educational campaign against Buddhism, Chinese metaphysics, Christianity and Hegelian philosophy for their denial of dialectical materialism. Education again was the key, and although religious freedom was guaranteed by the letter of the law, in 1954 it was firmly stated in public that “safeguarding freedom of religious belief is quite a different matter from safeguarding freedom of counter-revolutionary activities.”39 After the Red Guards closed down all public religious activity in 1966, there was, for a period of fifteen years, 36  Kim Ilsŏng chojak sŏnjip (Selected Works of Kim Il Sung) (P’yŏngyang: Chosŏn rodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, 1967), 173. 37  Philip Walters, “A survey of Soviet Religious policy,” in Religious Policy in the Soviet Union, ed. Sabrina Petra Ramet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14. 38  Walters, “A survey of Soviet Religious policy,” 25. 39  Liu Shao-ch’i, “Report on the Draft Constitution of the People’s Republic of China,” (1954), cited in Donald E. MacInnis, Religious Policy and Practice in Communist China: A Documentary History (New York: Macmillan Company, 1972), 23–24.

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practically no official mention of religious policy or practice. North Korean religious policy basically followed that of the Red Guards until the late 1980s. At the same time, it emphasised education and pursued an educational campaign far more total than those in either the former Soviet Union or China. The key difference in terms of content is that it chose hardly to mention religion in that total campaign. In the course of the establishment of the DPRK between 1945 and 1948, the political, economic and cultural bases of religious bodies were progressively removed. There were two political parties that were originally founded by the Ch’ŏndogyo and Protestant groups: the Ch’ŏndogyo Chŏngudang, and the Chosŏn Democratic Party (CDP) founded by the Protestant leader Cho Mansik in November 1945.40 Cho Mansik was arrested in January 1946 and presumably executed by the outbreak of the Korean War; by April his party’s headquarters was moved to Seoul. In the August 1948 inaugural elections of the DPRK, each of these parties was allotted 35 seats out of the 572 total in the Supreme People’s Assembly. By this stage, however, the CDP had no remaining connection with its origins, and the Chŏngudang was placed under communist leadership. In the August 1957 elections the representatives of each were reduced by over two-thirds to 11 members; and by November 1967 the CDP was all but defunct in name as well as reality, with one single representative.41 Under the provisions contained in the land reforms of 1946, land of more than one hectare owned by religious establishments was designated ‘land not being used for productive purposes’ and confiscated.42 Moreover, a significant amount of the land left behind by refugees to the south had been owned by Christians, easing the way for the new communist leadership after Cho Mansik’s demise to insinuate into the people’s minds the idea that Christians had been largely exploitative landowners. The nationalisation of industry laws of August 1946 were used to relieve Christian businesses and churches of control of all their remaining land.43

40  Kim Joungwon, Divided Korea: The Politics of Development, 1945–72 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 93–4. 41  Kim Joungwon, Divided Korea, 167 & 194. 42  Kim Sungjin, Uri nara nongch’on munje haegyŏrŭi ryŏksajŏk kyŏnghŏm (Historical experience of solving the problems of our country’s farming villages) (P’yŏngyang: Social Science Press, 1988). 43  Area Handbook for North Korea (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969), 187.

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The cultural foundations of the religious groups were removed through the state education and media. Since the North Korean information and propaganda system maintained virtually absolute control over which topics were raised, overall silence on religion was a very effective strategy. When reference was occasionally made to religion in publications, it was said to belong to pre-socialist stages of history: the primitive, the feudal and the bourgeois stages.44 By definition, it had no place in a socialist era and was permitted no active role. Religion was further veiled in silence in less obvious but quite crucial ways, even where it was acknowledged, and the message of the official ideology was ubiquitously transmitted. Through its treatment of Buddhist practices and structures and control of the physical environment, the regime strove to undermine Buddhism. It reinterpreted folk culture to meet the needs of ideology; and engaged in a complex struggle with Christianity, in particular with the Protestant church. Buddhism A Buddhist League was established in 1945. Buddhist architecture and related technologies such as printing were preserved as historical relics and examples of the accomplishments of the Korean people in past eras, but not as a national heritage in the sense of a tradition continuing into the present. Buddhism was not given the dignity of a coherent system or cosmology but rather was lumped under the category of superstition belonging to the primitive and feudal phases of Korean history. Unlike in South Korea, where its anti-materialistic critique of the assumptions and objectives of the regimes in both Koreas attracted more than one million adherents by the mid-1990s, Wŏn Buddhism gained no known following in the north. Some temples, for instance the Kwanŭmsa near Kaesŏng, of the Chogye order, allowed a Buddhist priest in residence, but it is uncertain how much active training of acolytes was provided for. Again, at the beautiful Pohyŏnsa compound in the Myohyang Mountains in North P’yŏngan Province, the buildings were freshly painted and the grounds carefully maintained. On public holidays, busloads of citizens poured into the area, but few came in order to enjoy it. What they were transported to visit was an imposing granite and wooden building built on an elevated promontory across the valley from the temple. Four huge bronze doors guarded its entry, each weighing several tons. A deep red carpet led into an enormous room in which all was dwarfed by a massive white statue of a seated Kim Il Sung, as if in some grandiose 44  Chosŏnŭi minsok (Chosŏn folklore) (P’yŏngyang: Social Science Press, 1966).

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one-upmanship on Abraham Lincoln’s statue in Washington DC. The remaining eight hundred large rooms were purported to be filled with gifts from the nations to the Great Leader. The message of the architecture, of the positioning of the buildings and its contents was clear enough. Not only was the era of religion past, but a greater era had succeeded it; and however commendable the productions of the Korean people in bygone times, they were times of comparative ignorance and reliance on unscientific beliefs. Folk Religion Folk religion was officially regarded as superstition born of ignorance, although the ignorance of the poor under an exploitative feudal ruling class could be winked at and even excused. Commenting on the traditional background of a farmers’ festival, a North Korean publication states: “Of course, this festival was based on unscientific and superstitious concepts, but this reflects the naïve emotions and customs of the people of the time.” It is further pointed out that “during the feudal era, folk festivals were related to agricultural production, religion, or superstition,” but that they were mostly agricultural events.45 Accordingly, the subsequent discussion of Korean folk festivals wholly omits religious matters and portrays folklore as a function of agricultural economics. The traditional calendar of folk festivals was replaced with a new cultural calendar, in which the months were dedicated to festivals of loyalty and of heroes and nationalist drama; celebrations of birthdays of the Kim family and struggles against Japan and the USA; and in spring and autumn, campaigns to redouble production.46 The effect of tying folklore almost exclusively to production in North Korea was its relocation within the agricultural collective, which redefined its purpose and form. In the process of redefinition, the raiment of the former folk festivals all but disappeared. A monograph on folklore published in Pyongyang in 1959 explicitly linked folklore with the development of the collective system of rural administration, which “gave rise to vast changes in the culture, customs, and ideological consciousness of farmers who organised cooperatives.”47 While this change in ‘ideological consciousness’ signifies an intensive reeducation administered through the basic administrative units (tanwi) under the direction of the Party organisation in each collective, it is unlikely that

45  Cited in Vantage Point 9, No. 6 (June 1986). 46  Vantage Point 9, No. 6 (June 1986). 47  Minsokhak yŏn’gu (Folklore Studies), vol. 2 (Pyongyang: Institute of Archeology and Folklore, Sahoe Kwahag’wŏn, 1959), 152.

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there was a conscious policy of suppressing folklore out of fear it might challenge political ideology. The real concern was to replace ‘superstition’ with ‘science’, and the suppression of folklore as an independent heritage was probably incidental. There is some evidence that people in remoter areas continued animist spirit worship, tolerated possibly because it had no institutional form and was unlikely to be used for any political or social action. No doubt suppression would have been more politically inspired had folk mask-dancing and open-air drama assumed the kind of political colouring they had in South Korea, but there is no evidence even of a tendency in this direction. In any case, the collective now provided the context and set the agenda for North Korean folklore, such as it was. Folk culture not directly linked with production (excluding games and the like) took the form of dancing to piano accordions in re-enactment of the anti-Japanese guerrilla bands of the 1930s and 1940s, veneration of tree trunks bearing slogans in praise of Kim Il Sung, and other aspects of the mythology surrounding Kim and his family, and, more recently, revitalisation of the traditions of the Korean ancestor Tan’gun, with specific adaptations on behalf of the Kim family’s legitimacy. Christianity The terms and symbols employed to elevate the official dogma of chuch’e and manner in which the family of Kim Il Sung was endowed with its sacred status suggest a systematic displacement of the religious modes of operating of Protestant Christianity in particular. There are several reasons for this. First, Kim Il Sung himself came from a Protestant family, and the devout piety of his mother was since the early 1990s acknowledged freely enough to foreign visitors, if not to the North Korean people. Secondly, Christianity was strongest in the northern provinces during the colonial period, particularly in the P’yŏngan and Hwanghae provinces and in the cities of Pyongyang, Sŏnch’ŏn, Kaesŏng, and Chŏngju. Thirdly, Korean Protestantism had a good pedigree of resistance to colonial rule and boasted a number of revered martyrs and popular leaders. On the eve of liberation from Japan, in the northern provinces, Protestants were the most actively involved religious group in politics, commerce and industry, and education. As we have seen, by 1945 over 2000 Christians were in jail, and fifty pastors had died in prison. Lastly, from the mid-1930s a bitter hostility emerged between Protestants and Marxist-Leninists over political means and ends, which awaited a showdown in the post-liberation era. The communist leadership, consequently, regarded Protestants as a force especially to be neutralised if not entirely eliminated, and there emerges a reasonably clear pattern of the regime ‘displacing’ Christianity by adopting and employing Christian idiom and symbols in the propagation of its own state policies.

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As Kim Il Sung came into power, conflict with Christians turned lethal. The situation became complicated by the strong opposition of the nationalist camp to the agreement at the December 1945 Moscow Conference to impose a United Nations Trusteeship over the peninsula. Two prominent Protestants from Kim’s own home village of Man’gyŏngdae on the outskirts of Pyongyang were arrested for acting as intermediaries between Cho Mansik and Kim Ku in the south. According to the record of indictment, they were accused of “conscious and deliberate opposition to the people’s power in North Chosŏn, and to the decisions made at the Moscow Conference . . . and of spearheading the anti-trusteeship movement in cahoots with the anti-people stance of Kim Ku for the purpose of perpetuating a political and economic form of government, state power, that differed not one jot from that of the Japanese imperial order.” One in particular was charged with “abusing his position among the Christians, as a member of the reconstruction committee of the Youth Society for the Advancement of Christianity and as a Presbyterian Elder in Pyongyang, to try and destroy the North Korean people’s power.”48 Pleas made to Kim Il Sung through his Christian mother were unavailing. Kim was possibly not a free agent at this stage, but he himself had been the target of violent attacks by an underground organisation of Protestants intent on overthrowing the rising communist power. As more arrests followed, especially of any who had links with Cho Mansik, it became obvious to Protestants that continued existence in North Korea would be problematic, and from mid-1946 an exodus of up to 80% of the Protestant population took place southwards across the thirty-eighth parallel. Consequently, when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was founded in 1948, the strength and membership of the Christian religion in the north was only a fraction of what it had been. During the Korean War (1950–53), there was active suppression of Pro­ testants; afterwards some former Protestant leaders were encouraged to assist in reconstruction efforts, but were not permitted to rebuild churches. The much repeated explanation for this was that since God allowed the Americans to bomb all the churches, the people realised that either he had betrayed them or he did not exist after all. From the 1970s, the DPRK discovered the possibilities in capitalising on Christian resistance in the south to the Park regime by sending delegates to the World Council of Churches to press claims of human rights abuses in the south. Accordingly, the North Korean authorities divided Protestants into ‘America-worshippers,’ which referred mainly to those in the south who supported anti-communism but could be used as an accusation against any in the north if expedient, and ‘pure Korean-style Christians,’ 48  Translation by author of a copy of the court record in his possession.

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which referred to approved Christians in the north and to those involved in labour and human-rights movements in the south.49 No uncontrolled communication between North Korean believers and foreign congregations was at all possible. When talks between the north and the south opened in 1972 on reunification matters under the sponsorship of the Red Cross, the opportunity arose for interviews with the North Korean premier, Kang Ryanguk, who had been a Protestant minister before the division. Kang confirmed that no churches or Christian meetings had operated since the Korean War.50 Nineteen years later, in 1991, two Protestant churches and one Catholic church were known to be holding services in Pyongyang. According to information contained in brochures from the Protestant Pongsu Church, there were 10,000 Protestants in the country in 1990, and although there were then only two church buildings, it was estimated that around five hundred ‘house churches’ operated nationwide. The Christian Federation, which originated in 1946 but only on paper until 1989, was divided into four departments under a Party director: organisation, propaganda, international relations, and management. Its charter was “to educate Christians in national independence consciousness and patriotism and to promote socialist construction and national reunification.”51 It is thus of considerable interest and surprise that a Billy Graham crusade took place in Pyongyang in the early 1990s, shortly before Kim Il Sung’s death. What significance this might have had is as yet unknown. In conclusion, the language and symbols and methods of propagation of the North Korean official ideology suggest a silent policy of systematic displacement of religion, both by substitution of ideological terms and symbols for former religious ones and by direct appropriation of religious forms themselves. This practice might be insufficient to claim that the DPRK polity was a political religion—though the more recent developments in relation to the mythical Tan’gun make this claim more plausible—because this would imply a degree of self-awareness among the majority of the population that might not have existed.52 The displacement was an unstated policy. Unstated, because the 49  See Ken M. Wells, “Protestantism in North Korea: An Exploration,” Religion in Communist Lands (Summer, 1982). 50  Rev. Samuel Moffett, The Korean Way (Princeton Theological Seminary: Moffett Korean Collection), 78–79. 51  “The Korean Christians Federation,” Brochure of The Central Committee of the Korean Christians Federation, Pyongyang DPRK, dated 1990. 52  Eun Hee Shin believes that by 1990 at least, North Korea’s official ideology warrants being treated as a national religion. See Eun Hee Shin, “The Sociopolitical Organism: The

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suppression of religion was to a large degree an incidental consequence of the overall objective of creating a highly regimented society under a virtually totalistic theory of history and leadership, but also because of the official view that religion was a non-issue in socialist North Korea.

Religion and Society in South Korea

South Korea today is religiously pluralistic, but this does not mean that a separation of church and state was always respected between 1948 and the 1990s. It is true that the relation between the state and the religious groups differed during this period from that under much of the Chosŏn dynasty. Shamans were not banned from the capital or denounced by ministers of culture; Buddhist establishments were permitted to operate in the middle of the cities and to run universities and publish their materials for popular consumption; a variety of new religions and offshoots from major religions, such as the Reverend Moon’s Unification of World Christianity, were not hindered from recruiting members and soliciting funds. Nevertheless, religions in South Korea were under watch, and from 1948 to 1987 the governments drew a clear line in the sand when it came to the core policies of anti-communism and industrial capital. Christianity Christianity thrived in the south to an unusual degree. Its adherents in 1945 before the influx from the north accounted for some 3.5% of the population. The decade 1950–1960 experienced a growth rate of 24.6% among Protestants, while in the year 1970 alone, membership grew by a remarkable 412.4%. By 1977 the rate had fallen to a still extraordinary 56.7%. It was not until the mid1990s that growth returned to more normal levels of around 9%, by which point Christians, Catholic and Protestant, accounted for over 27% of the total population. But church attendance is another story: in 1995 also, 85% of South Koreans said that they had been to a church and prayed and sung hymns at some stage. It is unclear whether this figure reflects the proselytising zeal of the church, or public curiosity, or quick dissatisfaction among interested inquirers. In any case, by the 1990s there were more than 30,000 Christian churches in South Korea, which was also the world’s fourth-largest country in terms of Catholic saints. It also boasted the largest churches. The Yoido Full Gospel Church numbered around 700,000 members, and many others in the tens of Religious Dimensions of Juche Philosophy,” in Religions of Korea in Practice, ed. Robert E. Buswell, Jr. (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 519–520.

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thousands. Not surprisingly, the members and their leaders subscribed to a doctrine of special providence for their country. In 1983, a Methodist Seminary President, Hong Hyŏnsŏl, wrote: “[W]e strongly believe that we are now the chosen people of God and that we are under the special providence of God. This strong faith has actually made the Korean Church the most rapidly growing church in the world.”53 A decade later, Korea had a very large missionary force, second only to the United States and increasingly transcultural in nature. Christianity had by the 1990s become so entrenched in South Korea that its adherents participated in almost every conceivable part of social and national life and represented and helped shape the full spectrum of political, social and religious opinion. On one level, four of the ROK’s nine presidents by the end of the 1990s were Christians, while at another level Christian churches and organisations together comprised the largest charity and social welfare support system in the country. The levelling off in growth in membership in the mid-1990s might have marked its arrival at a natural plateau, but it raised important questions among adherents whether the churches might not have lost their earlier distinctive message and become simply a matter of established Korean society going to church. There were understandings reached and even semi-official partnerships in some cases between governments and Christian leaders in relation to state objectives. The mainstream Protestant leadership gained through such understandings. At the outbreak of the Korean War, when Seoul was about to be taken by the north, President Rhee Syngman called on the Presbyterian minister Han Kyŏngjik to appeal to the people for calm over public radio. After the war, Rhee adopted the American practice of placing Christian chaplains in the army. The Park regime’s agreement to continue this practice and to require the attendance of trainees and regulars at the chaplains’ services was related to the understanding that mainstream Protestant churches were bastions of anti-communism. Indeed, an anti-communist alliance was formed by leading Protestant churches in 1966.54 There is a history behind this understanding. Han Kyŏngjik, founder of Young Nak Church in Seoul, the largest Presbyterian church and for some time the largest church of all, was a refugee from the north in 1946. As already 53  Donald N. Clark, “History and Religion in Modern Korea: The Case of Protestant Christianity,” in Religion and Society in Contemporary Korea, ed. Lewis R. Lancaster and Richard K. Payne (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1997) 184. 54  Yi Mahn-yol, “Korean Protestants and the Reunification Movement,” trans. Timothy S. Lee, in Religions of Korea in Practice, ed. Robert E. Buswell, Jr., 240.

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noted, Han had in 1945 some sympathy with socialism and rued the association in Koreans’ minds of socialism with an anti-religious Soviet communism, but personally observed and experienced the official and increasingly violent hostility towards Christianity by the new communist rulers. In the company of large numbers of the Christians who fled south, Rev. Han established the backbone of the south’s Protestant community and its opposition to communism on the peninsula. Christians who fled south from the persecution in the north that was designed to undercut the influence of Cho Mansik and his party might be compared with Christians who chose self-exile from Korea in 1911 amidst Japanese persecution designed to undercut Christianity’s influence on the public mind. In concert, the experiences and sheer numbers of Protestant refugees from the north, the longstanding and continuing institutional and educational connections with North America and Western Europe and the fact that Rhee Syngman was a Methodist favoured a firm adherence by the mainstream churches to the doctrine of the separation of church and state. The particular spin they put on this core Protestant doctrine was that communism in the north was a system that totally violated the principle and must by all means be guarded against. Insofar as the southern regimes respected the freedom of believers to practice their faith, opposition to it was either not a priority or a counterproductive course to take in the context of the threat of their communist neighbours. The mainstream church, however, shared the general hopes for reunification of their divided nation, holding to a belief that it would be effected by a resurgence of Christian faith among the northern population. This mainstream position was reinforced by the new wave of Pentecostalism that was in large part responsible for the rapid growth of Christian membership in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. The mass-cultural phenomenon of Seoul’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, which claimed 700,000 members by the 1990s, captured headlines around the world. Led by highly visible and charismatic pastors, beginning with its founder, Cho Yonggi, the church emphasised signs and wonders, healing and exorcisms and propagated a doctrine of material prosperity and health as God’s blessings. Cho became such a national figure that there were at one time rumblings about his possibly standing for election as the nation’s president. It should be noted that this charismatic appeal and aspirations to health and wealth were not confined to the Pentecostal movement but were staple features of most Protestant denominations on the peninsula from early on. The Yoido Full Gospel Church and its branches simply gave the most explicit expression to these features. The Full Gospel Church line was partly a movement to keep religion and politics hermetically sealed off from each other. Against advocates of the so-called ‘social gospel,’ they asserted that Christianity was a faith of personal

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redemption and that the only call to be made on politics was that it allow pastors to preach the Gospel and believers to congregate for worship. When governments persecute, Christians must suffer and pray for their persecutors, not organise political resistance movements. Christianity offered redemption from personal sin, not any particular form of government; no one could be saved by government policy or action. Nevertheless, Pastor Cho Yonggi included communism as a principal evil that redeemed Christian lives would overcome, and whatever else they might do, the South Korean military was standing on the right side in this case. It allowed, even favoured evangelical work, and so was not an area for Christian activism. On the other side of the coin, in the wake of the establishment of a military regime in the 1960s and especially the rise in social and human costs of the heavy and chemical industrial programme of the 1970s, significant numbers of Christians, Protestant and Catholic, began to mount criticisms of government policies and its employment of the National Security Law to suppress efforts by workers or their advocates to ensure better conditions and wages. Among Protestants, serious disagreements over whether the church should as an institution make pronouncements on political matters or support political movements led to a breakaway movement within the largest denomination, the Presbyterians. Called Kijang, standing for Kidokkyo changnohoe, or Christian Presbyterian Assembly, this breakaway movement was supported by the Han’guk Theological Seminary, a liberal institution in Suwŏn, 100 km south of Seoul, which aligned itself with the positions of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. While it called for social justice, Kijang also appealed to the doctrine of the separation of church and state, arguing that it was the state that was violating this principle, and demanding full autonomy for the church. Engagement by Protestants in movements on behalf of workers came at considerable cost. A distinctive feature of labour union movements up to the late 1980s was their very close association with religion, especially Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Through links with international organisations, Christian organisations managed to operate among factories and on wharfs with some limited protection from imprisonment and death penalties. From the late 1960s, they pursued their aims through the Urban Industrial Mission, which was supported by some American missionaries of social gospel persuasion, participating in the discreet organisation of unofficial unions and cell-groups that informed workers of labour rights, laws and so on. In 1974 the government resolved to take action in what is known as the People’s Revolutionary Party incident. Pastor Pak Hyŏnggyu of Cheil Presbyterian Church and leaders within the Yŏngdŭngp’o Church, located in a workingclass district of Seoul, were singled out as perpetrators of anti-state activity, along with members of the Protestant Urban Industrial Mission. Together with

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many workers and their supporters, including the Catholic writer Kim Chiha, they were arrested on charges of treason. Eight Korean Protestant leaders were executed and two American missionaries were deported.55 Meanwhile, the Catholic rural mission was inaugurated with the object of increasing awareness among the rural poor of their human rights through Christian doctrines on the sacred nature of human life and labour. On a strictly political level, the Catholic church became identified with criticism of the military regime’s failure to restore genuine democratic processes, and it was in this context that Kim Dae Jung, a staunch Catholic, rose to prominence by 1971 as the leading opposition politician, alongside Kim Young Sam, a Protestant. Kim Chiha, whose satirical writings brought him fame or notoriety, was also a well-known Catholic. Cardinal Stephen Kim in the late 1970s to 1980s openly spoke against secret police activities and his position encouraged dissidents to seek refuge and protection inside the Catholic Cathedral in Myŏngdong, downtown Seoul. Following what is called Vatican II, which urged support for the poor and oppressed around the world, and the kidnapping and near murder of Kim Dae Jung by KCIA operatives in 1973, Catholics and Protestants combined for the first time on social justice and political freedom. This led to a CatholicProtestant rally at Myŏndong Catholic Cathedral in the centre of Seoul on March 1, 1976, at which they proclaimed and distributed a manifesto on human rights, appealing to the 1919 March First spirit and denouncing Park’s regime for besmirching that spirit with a dictatorship. Signatories included Kim Dae Jung, former president Yun Posŏn and the famous Quaker leader, Ham Sŏkhŏn. The government’s response, under the Yusin Constitution, was to mete out long prison terms; Yun was continuously harassed by the KCIA for years afterwards even at the age of 90. As had been the case during the colonial era, leading public intellectuals and opposition politicians under the Park and Chun regimes included numerous Christians. Yun Posŏn, Chang Myŏn, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung were Christians, as were the literary figures Kim Chiha and Pak Wansŏ. One of the most forthright and persistent critics of the established ethos was the Quaker, Ham Sŏkhŏn (1901–1989), who spent many years in prison or under house arrest, first under the Soviet occupation force in the north in 1947 and 55  Donald N. Clark, “Protestant Christianity and the State,” in Korean Society: Civil society, democracy and the state, ed. Charles K. Armstrong (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 197–198. See also Paul Yunsik Chang, “Carrying the Torch in the Darkest Hours: The Sociopolitical Origins of Minjung Protestant Movements,” in Religions of Korea in Practice, ed. Robert E. Buswell Jr., 212ff.

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later under presidents Rhee and Park in the south. Ham had been one of the founders and a tireless advocate of the Non-church Movement alongside Kim Kyosin during the final two decades of colonial rule. Trained as a historian, he was a prolific writer whose collected works comprise twenty packed volumes. Even before the ROK and DPRK were established, Ham penned a passage that typifies his sense of the moral-spiritual basis of a civilised society and the tone of his critiques thereafter. What can one expect when our political institutions and our educational institutions are entrusted to animals who know not the principles of life, who have no notion even of what a principle might mean? This is the reason we say that our country has gone mad and that our times are rotten. (. . .) There has to be a truly new philosophy of life; there has to be a clear and penetrating view of history; and we have to hold to a lofty human religious faith.56 Ham was highly articulate, and continued to anger the authorities by writing scathing exposures of the ruling mindset and corruption through the pages of Sasanggye and other journals. Like the poet Kim Suyŏng, he had entertained high hopes for Korea’s future when the students and the public rallied to throw off the Rhee dictatorship in April 1960. When these hopes were dashed, he redirected his former providential view of history, wherein Korea’s history was built on suffering, along more nationalist lines. He did so by reworking his earlier major work, Korea’s History Seen from the Standpoint of the Bible (Sŏnggyŏngjŏk ipchangesŏ pon Han’guk yŏksa), first published back in 1934 and again in 1950, into Korea’s History Seen from the Standpoint of Spirit (Ttŭsŭro pon Han’guk yŏksa), written in 1965. In this new version, the culture and spirit of the Korean minjung took precedence over revealed scripture as the central dynamic force of Korean history. But suffering remained central, and it is not so surprising that a school of theology named minjung theology made some ground among Christians in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite its resonances with Latin American liberation theology, it was mostly a Protestant movement and drew almost no inspiration from its South American counterparts, at least not until the early 2000s when

56  Reprinted in Kim Kyosin chŏnjip (Collected Works of Kim Kyosin), vol. 1 (Sŏngnamsi: Cheil ch’ulp’ansa, 1991), 5. Ham Sŏkhŏn first wrote this Preface in October 1947, and revised it for publication in July 1964, before inclusion in this edition of 1991.

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the actual minjung movement was effectively over.57 Immediately following the bloody repression of the Kwangju movement in May 1980, however, General Chun severely suppressed all religious organisations. He shut down major Christian publication houses, their broadcasting network was heavily censored, certain pastors were forbidden to preach, and spies were placed in church services. Buddhism Buddhism had been pressured very strongly by the Japanese during the colonial period to merge with Japanese Buddhist institutions. This precedent prompted a ‘purification’ movement after 1945. The boundaries were so blurred between alleged Japanese influences and the modernising processes of the twentieth century everywhere, that Buddhism has been hampered compared to Christianity, which became associated with democratisation, education and socio-economic progress. Buddhism had been denied social, economic and political connections with the Korean people during the Chosŏn dynasty by neo-Confucians, and tended to congregate in remote mountain haunts, enjoying few patterns of contact with ordinary Koreans, except in fishing villages along the eastern seaboard. The purification movement was also a post-liberation endeavour to undermine those who had called for the relocation of monasteries to cities, marriage of the clergy and their participation in social life. The dispute descended into struggles, often violent, over monastic property, accusations of communist sympathies, bitter legal cases and calls on politicians to take sides. Rhee Syngman supported the purifiers, which rendered them uncomfortably subordinate to the regime: they discovered they had to adopt anti-communism and ‘protect-the-nation Buddhism’. Their support for the subsequent military regimes led in turn led to formation of Minjung Buddhists, mostly younger, university-educated men, and their successful siege and takeover of the Chogye Order’s headquarters in 1992. As with Christianity, although not to such a remarkable degree, Buddhism experienced a resurgence in membership and social influence following the liberation in 1945. Official records indicate that during the two decades from 1943 to 1962 the number of the temples doubled and the number of clergy increased more than seven times, while adherents increased by only a little 57  See Wonil Kim, “Minjung Theology’s Biblical Hermeneutics: An Examination of Minjung Theology’s Appropriation of the Exodus Account,” in Religions of Korea in Practice, ed. Robert E. Buswell Jr., 221–237. Cf. Donald N. Clark, “History and Religion in Modern Korea,” 190.

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more than 15%. Over the following two decades, however, the number of believers increased more than eight times while the priesthood doubled in size and the temples experienced more than three-fold growth. Buddhism continued to grow and began to catch up with Christianity by the mid-1990s, when its adherents numbered 23.5% of the population. Yet it took a great deal of effort over considerable time to restore morale and achieve a positive reputation for Buddhism in the people’s mind. Independent polls revealed that the great majority of Buddhists, especially in middle and high schools, were ashamed to admit to being Buddhists. On 5 September 1969, a revivalist organisation was formed in order to rectify the situation. Named the Purilhoe after the esteemed Buddhist monk and reformer of the Koryŏ dynasty, Chinul, it was a lay society that was in some ways modelled on those elements in the Christian churches that were believed to appeal to the people: church fellowships, mid-week meetings in private homes and singing hymns to organ music. In 1988 it claimed a membership of approximately 10,000, of whom 70% were women. Among its activities were publishing, fund-raising and evangelism.58 The Chogye Order, with its roots in Koryŏ, remained the mainstream Buddhist school in Korea, with some ten million adherents in 1990. It was also the most organised and ran Tongguk University and Medical College. Pure Land Buddhism, however, remained popular among the common people, particularly in the remoter villages, such as the coastal townships on the eastern and southern seaboard. In these traditional fishing areas, some villages considered themselves entirely Buddhist, and the village headmen were often Buddhist. The focus of the order is on the rest and paradise at the other end of one’s worldly sufferings that awaits those who call on the name of Amitābha. For this reason it was popular with poorer rural villages and elicited support from Park Chung-Hee. A school of Buddhism that captured the imagination of some of South Korea’s intellectuals and activists is Wŏn Buddhism, the order that was founded in 1916 in Korea by the monk Sŏt’aesan (Pak Chungbin: 1891–1943). Its call to go beyond the material to spiritual conceptions of society struck deep chords with those opposed to industrial capitalism and the social dislocation and alienation that the practice of making economic progress the benchmark of a civilisation brought upon Korean society. Although its proponents claimed over one million followers, official statistics suggest that by 1995 its adherents 58  Robert E. Buswell, Jr., “Monastery Lay Associations in Contemporary Korean Buddhism: A Study of the Puril Hoe,” in Contemporary Korean Religion, ed. Lewis R. Lancaster (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1999), 101–126.

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made up only 0.2% of South Koreans. It was still at that point mainly a creed of the intellectuals and perhaps a Buddhism for an affluent but unequal society: the poor desire but cannot get what they desire and feel hard done by; the rich have what they desire but find it empty, because material possessions cannot differentiate right from wrong, wise from foolish, or helpful action from unhelpful action, and their acquisition is not morally neutral. The Wŏn Buddhist position was that if Buddhism simply promised the same worldly benefits as the industrial complex, it would lose its soul. Buddhists of all orders in South Korea continued their traditional charitable work, but in a way that fit the modern context of industrial labour and highdensity apartment living. They also maintained their age-old presence in education and medicine, especially at tertiary level through six universities, pre-eminent among which is Tongguk University in Seoul. Although Park Chung-Hee was nominally a Buddhist, he was naturally at odds with the Wŏn school and encouraged Pure Land only insofar as it provided a convenient safety-valve for the social alienation and resentment over the widening gap between workers and business executives incurred by his rapid industrialisa­ tion policies. Some Minjung Buddhists in the 1980s tried to synthesize Marxism and Buddhism of the more philosophical Hinayana school so that social involve­ ment could be authorised rather than be considered a secular sell-out. They also argued that environmental issues should be a focus of Buddhism as fuel for their campaign against the prevailing culture of production and consumption. General Chun Doo-Hwan’s policy towards Buddhism, however, was to coerce it to submit to centralised control, as he did with education and the media, a policy that remained in force to the end of military rule. Confucianism Inclusion of Confucianism in South Korea under religion is open to question, but is included here as a system of thought that is closely connected with ritual and is regarded by some of its practitioners as a religion. According to government statistics, by the mid-1980s those who adhered to Confucian teachings and rituals in a formal sense through institutional membership numbered less than 800,000. Claims by Confucian leaders that around seven million Koreans were avowed Confucians possibly reflected the number who claimed allegiance to Confucian family and social principles. Confucianism as a social doctrine retained a strong presence in terms of family structures and social hierarchies. Throughout the nation, perhaps more so in rural districts, the father’s authority was strong, filial piety was observed and ancestors were revered and honoured with family gatherings and meals

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at their gravesites. Each year the Confucian Sŏnggyun’gwan University hosted an elaborate ritual to mark Confucius’ birthday, at which celebrants were arraigned in pure white or deep red robes and accompanied in the rites by an orchestra playing traditional instruments.59 The university also acted as a watchdog on regulations concerning the family, especially marriage. Beyond the family, human interactions at work, school and university, and in politics and religion remained hierarchical, with little relaxation even after 1990. The Korean language retained its subscription to hierarchical structures both lexically and grammatically. The modern business world caused some contradiction in the hierarchical system between respect shown to elders and to those with higher rank, since it became not so uncommon for foremen in factories and holders of high positions in businesses to be younger than others over whom they exercised authority. The so-called national obsession with education had much to do with the former neo-Confucian emphasis on education both as a mark of status and as a route to high office and economic security. Indeed, four of the five blessings of Confucianism fit in well with the economic conception of society: wisdom, prosperity, good reputation and long life. The fifth blessing of having many sons might seem to be the only misfit in an age of birth-control age and an official policy of two children being the maximum. But on the contrary, it was clearly evident in the strong preference for sons and the persistent opposition of politicians to moves for family law reform. In 1987 some modifications of family law were passed, but it was not until the late 1990s that marriage between couples who shared the same surname belonging to the same clan origin were permitted to marry, excluding first cousins. At the same time, women were finally given recognition before the law as heads of households under certain conditions. Senior professors at Sŏnggyun’gwan University, which had held out successfully against earlier moves to overthrow the law against such practices, decried this breaking of the final threads that held together the fabric of Korean civilisation, already torn by numerous betrayals of tradition. The obvious casualty in the Confucian order, however, was the original ethic of wisdom and the moral basis of reputation that had been replaced by education in the mechanics of things only and the acquisition of status through wealth of and by itself. But even here, it can hardly be maintained that the traditional Confucian ethos was inactive. Moral indiscretions in business transactions by close relatives of the erstwhile dissidents Kim Yong Sam and 59  For a description of these Confucian rituals see Spencer J. Palmer, Confucian Rituals in Korea (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press and Seoul: Po Chin Chai Ltd, 1984), chapter 5.

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Kim Dae Jung undermined public trust in their presidencies. Moreover, the top business leaders continually had to justify their exalted position to the people in moral terms,60 and however mercilessly their protestations were parodied in some literary works, this defense of one’s wealth is unfortunately not required in most industrialised nations. Moreover, the chaebŏl presidents were after all the new yangban, restoring that singular characteristic of Korean Confucian tradition, the power of lineage. Shamanism Although it exists within and draws copiously on Korea’s classical animist traditions, shamanism refers to the office and functions of shamans, priests who are predominantly women. Shamans remained active throughout the twentieth century and defied expectations that the introduction of universal education, the development of a highly modern urban culture and the implementation of modern medicine in South Korea would see them off the stage.61 As the anthropologist Laurel Kendall has pointed out, Korean shamanism experienced little

figure 20 A blend of old and new in central Seoul, late 1990s. Photo by author. 60  See Roger Janelli with Dawnhee Yim, Making Capitalism: The Social and Cultural Con­ strution of a South Korean Conglomerate (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993). 61  Kim Chongho, Korean Shamanism: The cultural paradox (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003), 6–7.

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figure 21 In South Korea, Confucius’ birthday is celebrated in full ritual solemnity. Photo by author.

figure 22 Honouring the sages: Confucius’ birthday rituals in Seoul. Photo by author.

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figure 23 This table laid out in readiness for a South Korean Buddhist family’s ancestral service in 1972 illustrates the persistence of the age-old blend of traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism. Photo by author.

if any difficulty in adapting to the hustle and bustle of modern cities driven by high-powered business interests run by highly educated people.62 The market, like all else, is animated: thus its capricious nature. Shamanism is not an institutional religion; it has neither churches nor administrations. Functions, rituals, territorial rules and agreements, costumes and other paraphernalia and modes of interaction with clients are handed down from shaman to shaman, that is, from established shaman to shaman apprentices. The chief function of Korean shamans right through to the end of the century was to respond to calls on their services when things went wrong in the lives of individuals, families or communities by calling on the appropriate spirit, often a departed relative of the supplicant, to show how the problem should be rectified. In return, they were given payments in cash or in kind, along with gifts. The most common reasons people approached shamans is 62  Laurel Kendall, “Korean Shamans and the Spirits of Capitalism,” American Anthropologist 98, no. 3 (1996), 512–527.

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chronic physical or psychological illness, troubled family relationships, problems with children, such as their educational performance, failed business, and discord within communities. There are two broad categories of shaman.63 The most well known, partly because it has been located in Seoul, Kyŏnggi Province and adjacent central provinces and partly because it more easily captured media attention, is charismatic shamanism. In the mudang type of charismatic shamanism, shamans are possessed during trances by spirits who speak directly to clients about the reason for their trials and hardships and instruct them on steps to take to overcome them. On occasion the shaman danced on the blades of meat cleavers during the trance. In the myŏngdu type, a person related to the spirit of a deceased child, usually under the age of seven, could call on the departed spirit for divination and fortune-telling. Anyone could become a charismatic shaman, but needed to find an established shaman to accept and train her. Then there are hereditary shamans, who do not become possessed by spirits but instead serve as mediators between spirits and clients. In its tan’gol form, shamans resided in central and southern regions and followed a more liturgical style of interaction with spirits and clients. Each operated within her own territory as a kind of parish, and dealt with community affairs more than the charismatic shamans around Seoul. As the name suggests, a hereditary shaman passed her expertise on to her own daughter if possible; if not, she adopted an apprentice as her daughter. The training was more formal than that of charismatic shamans. In its simbang form, which is strong on Cheju Island, spiritual forces were considered very important and its shamans were even more involved in community affairs than tan’gol shamans. In those villages on Cheju Island where shamanism ordained social life, men and women share in the life of the village to a large degree. Public occasions and rituals were for women as much as men, and child-care and home management were partially the domain of men as well. On the mainland, however, shamanism replicated the social boundaries between male and female that were commonly believed to be a Confucian contribution to Korean society. There were ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ shamanist ceremonies and exorcisms, whereby the former were usually for familial purposes and the latter tended to be concerned with rituals for departed spirits. But inner and outer referred also to social domain—public and domestic—and male shamans, if available, tended to oversee outside performances. 63  The information following is drawn from Kim Inhoe, ed., Han’guk musok ŭi chonghapchŏk koch’al (Comprehensive examination of Korean folk religion) (Seoul, Koryŏ taehakkyo ch’ulp’anbu, 1982).

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But there were also boundaries within the house that entailed gender distinctions, which tied in with shamanism if any kut, or séance was performed. Since these boundaries appear to have derived from animistic spirit categories, it is likely that rather than Confucianism introducing male/female divisions or functions into shamanism the two traditions have blended and reinforced the distinctions. The most revered spirit is the Sŏngju Shin, a ‘male’ spirit that guards against fire and other destructive forces. It is an especially holy and pure spirit that resides directly above the maru, of which the main lounge is the modern equivalent. Traditionally the maru is the place where males gather for meetings. Sŏngju Shin dislikes anything vulgar, common, or worldly, and hates impurity. This impurity is anything biologically ‘unclean:’ toiletry, obviously, but also begetting and giving birth to children. The female or grandmother spirit, called Samsin halmŏni, watches over the rooms where people sleep, children are conceived and babies nurtured. The kitchen, which is inferior to the maru and other rooms, has no spirit of its own. Food may of course be prepared but never eaten there. From this hierarchy of spirits, one can see the degree of importance given to rooms. From the use the rooms were put to, one can infer a hierarchy of values. The maru under the male spirit was the male domain, for purposes not related to bodily functions or to the life-cycle. Uncleanness, or biological life, was therefore associated with females. Of course, together they made one family and the house consisted of one building, but the non-biological element was considered to be on a higher plane. Intensive industrialisation and rapid urbanisation did not diminish the need among the people for the services of shamans. On the contrary, shamans operated a flourishing practice in Seoul in the 1980s and 1990s.64 Women labourers who suffered chronic ill health, or whose husbands had deserted them or left them destitute through alcoholism, or who suffered exhaustion over the double duty of menial work for low wages and running a household and caring for children, or who succumbed to psychological disorders under the pressures of modern times, not only sought out shamans but in some cases also saw in their chronic misfortune a sign that they should perhaps become shamans themselves. Although men were less apt than women to call upon shamans, they too would approach them, if often through their womenfolk, when they found they could make little or no headway in their business or other work. Taxi drivers called upon shamans to perform rituals over their cars to protect them from accidents, as did some men after having bought a car. On another level, 64  See Kendall, “Korean Shamans and the Spirits of Capitalism.”

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there was a widely held belief among Koreans that the reason for the popularity of Christianity and especially its more charismatic features in Korea related in no small part to its role in healing sickness, helping members through hard times and psychological distress, counselling those who suffered breakdowns in relationships and offering prayers for God’s blessings in education and business. In this respect, one might claim that instead of the priesthood of believers, Korean Protestantism was characterised by the shamanhood of all pastors. Certainly, the case of South Korea demonstrates that there was no inherent contradiction between the practices of shamans, Christian pastors and Buddhist priests and the creation of a modern, industrialised and now democratic state.

Chapter 9

Unfinished Business

The Democratic Transition in the South and the Question of Reunification In international affairs, very often different logics are at work in different countries and their populations divide along quite different axes. The democratic elections and their outcomes in South Korea since the early 1990s are a prime example of different logics at work. If an opposition politician shortly before national elections suddenly declared his decision to stand as presidential candidate for the governing party, against which he had waged a long, bitter and personally costly struggle, that would appear strange enough; but if after only minimal raising of eyebrows the electorate, including the majority of longstanding opponents of the governing party, were to vote the seeming turncoat into power, this would be exceedingly difficult to credit. Yet this, on the face of it, is precisely what happened in South Korea in 1992, leading to the election of the renowned dissident Kim Young Sam (Kim Yongsam: b. 1927) as president. The occurrence of this procession of events in South Korea underscores the pitfalls of transferring assumptions and expectations concerning public perceptions and behaviour from one country to another.

Legacies of the Kwangju and Minjung Movements

There were a bewildering number of turn-arounds in the fortunes of public figures and cultural and political leaders in South Korea since the end of the military regimes in the late 1980s. In January 1996, Ko Ŭn (b. 1933), one of South Korea’s most famous living poets and then a sixty-three-year-old gentleman, visited Australia for the launch of an English translation of his selected poems, titled Morning Dew, at the Australian Writers’ Festival in Sydney. Belatedly aware of his visit, the Korean Ambassador in Canberra invited Ko Ŭn to Canberra and hosted a dinner for him at his official residence. In this short visit, largely unremarked, were concentrated the most important public issues in contemporary South Korean society. The first and perhaps most striking issue on which this short visit impinged was the nature of the political establishment in the Republic of Korea. There was a major irony in the ambassadors’ insistent invitation to Ko Ŭn to join him at dinner. Ko Ŭn had long been regarded by successive South Korean regimes as a threat to national security, for which he was imprisoned in 1977, in

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1978–1979, and again in 1980–1982. Now, he became the honoured guest of the state’s official representative. In Korea, in the meantime, General Chun DooWhan (Chŏn Tuhwan: b. 1931), former President and jailor of Ko Ŭn in 1980, was under arrest along with his successor as president, General Roh Tae-Woo (No T’aeu: b. 1932), under possible charges of treason. This turn-around was, in historical terms, extremely sudden, and is one instance of the breathtaking developments and changes that took place in South Korean politics and culture generally from the late 1980s to the turn of the century. This change was essentially a transition from military to civil government, from despotic authoritarianism to relatively open democracy. It signified for some the overdue realisation in the political realm of the kind of remarkable advances that had already taken place in economics and education. Others saw its import lay more in the growth of a very large middle class. Still others interpreted it in the light of the considerable global changes of the times. The dramatic change in the fortunes of the poet Ko Ŭn entailed all of the above. Ko Ŭn was a poet of the minjung. As we have seen, the confrontation between the minjung movement and the military establishment was one of the bitterest cultural, economic and political hostilities in South Korean society. At the ambassador’s dinner, Ko Ŭn raised another public issue: the Koreans’ perception of the United States of America. It was not a time for anti-­Americanism he claimed, but to work together with them as friends. This claim entailed another irony. Politically, the military regimes’ rhetoric had been unequivocally pro-American, while the minjung movement was nothing if not highly critical of American foreign policy and hostile to its culture. Yet in reality, the military leaders had resented the United States whereas the minjung leadership took inspiration and sought moral support to some degree from certain values and practices associated with the West, which they were not averse to calling upon to embarrass or defy the military. Now, in 1996, Ko was openly regarding the United States as a friend. But he was perhaps a little too sanguine. How to view United States involvement in Korean, and indeed, global affairs was certainly not a closed question and remained an issue over which South Koreans were seriously divided. Part of the reason for ongoing dissatisfaction with United States policy stemmed from the continuing debate among South Koreans over the true nature and proper understanding of the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising. The uprising and subsequent massacre were on a scale which, when South Korea’s population of the time is compared to China’s, turns out to be some twenty times greater than the 1989 T’ienanmen Square massacre in Beijing. Likewise, proportionately, the number of people imprisoned for political reasons in South Korea even as late as June 1989 was forty times greater than those imprisoned

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in China the same month in the wake of T’ienanmen. Yet whereas the United States’ response to the Chinese democracy movement was one of euphoria, of applause for its objectives and ‘statue of liberty,’ the United States’ response to a committed movement for democratic aims in a nation supposed to be an ally was, on the contrary, dismissive and seemingly supportive of its brutal suppression. To add insult to injury, no sooner had General Chun elevated himself to the presidency after a coup d’état than he was invited by President Reagan as his first Head of State visitor in what seemed to the humiliated Korean people to be an investiture ceremony. Small wonder that rumours sprang up and took on the force of truth that the United States army stationed in Korea had given moral and logistical support to General Chun’s crushing of the Kwangju Uprising. It was not until a full seven years had passed before the United States Embassy in Seoul issued an official finding on the passage of events that cleared its government and armed forces of any material involvement or other support. Ko Ŭn might have been willing to view the USA in a favourable light by January 1996, but once the legal process was set in train to try General Chun later that year, the spectre of US complicity in the massacre arose once more. At the time, this atmosphere encouraged resentment towards Japan and the Western powers strong enough to vitiate even the most well-meaning trade reforms of the Kim Young Sam government. GATT, the Uruguay Round and the WTO did not endear themselves to Korean farmers or small and medium businesses. For fifteen years minjung activists had drummed out the theme of hard-working, innocent farmers being sucked into some agricultural scheme by the government only to face bankruptcy and social dissolution in the face of some concession to foreign trading pressures. In novel after novel, minjung writers had depicted the plight of labourers, particularly female labourers, who were paid minimal wages under terrible work conditions (and South Korea had one of the worst industrial death and accident rates in the world) to fulfil export quotas at prices that ensured high demand around the developed world.1 Their being banned from time to time only enhanced the popularity of such writings, including the poetry of such as Ko Ŭn. This set the stage for connecting any economic woes that beset the nation after the end of military rule to foreign interests. With the military out of the picture, foreign powers filled more of the accusatory canvass. A great deal of this was a matter of cultural definition in a still changing world, where national borders became ­increasingly porous and the determinative power of governments over the domestic policy of nation-states was truncated. 1  See, for example, Ruth Barraclough, Factory Girl Literature: Sexuality, Violence, and Representation in Industrialising Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), c­ hapter 3.

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Although the June 1987 movement ushered in political democracy and economic reforms, it left the cultural question in muddier waters than before. It was far from evident to many Koreans that events since 1987 amounted to a victory of minjung culture. Rather, the question asked was whether both the military and the minjung forces, which in a way fed off each other, had been left behind, superseded by a middle-class view of society and the world. This was highly unpalatable to minjung activists, particularly to the journalists, academics, students and writers who had staked so much of their lives in the minjung cause. It was only partly a case of the democratic and economic reforms taking the wind out of their sails. The unexpected election of Roh Moo-hyun (No Muhyŏn: 1946–2009) to the presidency in 2002 appeared to have rested on popular unease with the direction United States foreign policy had taken, coupled with Roh’s campaign platform of an autonomous national policy in regard to the region that was heedful of Korean interests and approaches. The basic issue was respect for Korea’s cultural make-up and autonomy: a Korea of and for Koreans. The importance of this issue had already been underscored in the popular mind by the so-called Asian economic crisis of 1997–98 and its aftermath. But there was on the other side a development of a ‘Park ChungHee syndrome,’ which questioned whether the rise of democratic culture had weakened the nation’s spine and lamented the loss of a somewhat mythical iron in the country’s soul. Possibly this nostalgia contributed to the victory in the presidential election of December 2012 by General Park’s daughter, Park Geun-Hye (Pak Kŭnhye: b. 1952), but had its beginnings in the country’s economic shock in the late 1990s.

The Economic Crisis of 1997–98

The extraordinary rise in labourers’ wages from the early 1990s and consequent decline in competitiveness, coupled with a downturn in prices for some of South Korea’s major exports such as electrical and chemical products and computer chips exacerbated the effects of the crisis when it struck in November 1997. The solution taken by Kim Young Sam was far from democratic in spirit: a secret, pre-dawn sitting of parliament with no non-government party members present to pass drastic laws stripping labourers of certain employment rights and conditions. Kim Young Sam took this gamble because of the sense of crisis enveloping the country and because he observed that when the students had last demonstrated back in 1996 they lacked public support, a far reach from the June 1987 situation. In some sense the gamble paid off, but there was miscalculation: internationally, the image of Korea as a democracy was placed

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under a cloud, and domestically, public reaction was stronger than anticipated. The East European democracy movements encouraged Korean demonstrators, who could once more call on a ‘righteous’ cause. Indeed, doubly so, since a good part of the uproar was caused by moves to reinvigorate, rather than temper or abolish, the National Security Law and the associated operations of the KCIA. In any case, it was left to Kim Dae Jung (Kim Taejung: 1925–2009) to resolve the problem of how best to respond to the economic crisis and mollify public opinion, since in December 1997 he had been elected the next president and took office in February 1998. On acceding to power Kim Dae Jung faced intractable problems. During the 1990s inflation ran at 5% per annum, but by 1996 Korea was the eleventh largest economy in the world and had joined the OECD.2 In hindsight, a number of weaknesses that left the economy vulnerable to the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98 have been identified. The wŏn may have been overvalued, and the banking loan system in support of government-targeted industry was not following economic logic so much as policy determinations. The rise in wages on average of 12.8% per year from 1992 to 1996 (in real terms, 7%–8%) did not ensue from increases in productivity but because of a shortage of labour and belated government recognition of labour union rights. The principle international culprit was foreign investors’ panic at some bankruptcies of major Korean enterprises that led them to withdraw large amounts of capital, which quickly led to the collapse of the Korean wŏn. There was a rapid movement of capital out of Korea, the wŏn dropped 11.4% in November, and a further astounding 44% in December 1997. Foreign exchange reserves therefore were reduced to a dangerously low level. Unemployment at the end of 1997 was a low 2.8%, normal for South Korea, but by mid-1998 it had risen to 7% and was menacing 10% by the end of the year. For the large middle class, the crisis translated into a lower standard of living, threatening unemployment and loss of national pride and confidence. The media was full of unwanted news: bankruptcy of thousands of small and medium businesses, wages slashed, austerity measures introduced, and tourism by Koreans discouraged by the government. Although this was reported far less readily by the media, it was, as we have seen, the female workers who bore the main brunt of the crisis. Having none of the entitlement to life-long employment that males in the bigger industries were claiming, female workers were the first to be laid off. Nor did the unions favour them with any support,

2  Heather Smith and Sandra Eccles, “Lessons from Korea’s Crisis,” in Looking Forward: Korea after the economic crisis, ed. Heather Smith (Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, 2000), 1.

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although they showed no hesitation in asking women to join demonstrations and picket lines in support of their husbands’ jobs. For its part, the middle class found itself facing a new type of competition. Korean society had been highly competitive, but not in terms of ­productivity-to-input efficiency so much as in terms of the establishment of connections, securing access, and ensuring patronage. Education was much the same: competition was waged over finding patronage not over actual achievement. Naturally this involved corruption, because the means were irrelevant to the ends. But what was formerly tolerated was now put under serious question or simply became unviable. Educating children overseas was an early casualty of the crisis, as large numbers had to return home because of the doubling of fees due to the exchange rate dive. There were sumptuary restrictions, legally and socially sanctioned, and foreign travel was frowned on severely. Almost immediately in general parlance, newspapers and television, the crisis was named the IMF crisis, with the clear innuendo that the International Monetary Fund and associated globalising capitalist, free-trade expansionists were the root cause of Korea’s financial woes. This perception precipitated a time-honoured campaign to buy Korean and boycott foreign goods, and active shaming of those sporting foreign-made clothing, bags and various household goods. A package of rhetoric accompanied the response: the spotlight was turned on international monetary policies; the macro-economics of everything was laid bare. This accusatory spotlight was trained on the IMF by commentators and scholars from both left and right. Yet if one examines the economic principles operated by Korean businesses, their practices with regard to offshore trading and manufacturing in other countries such as Southeast and Central Asia and even the UK and France, together with their unhesitating use of international trading and promotional opportunities, one discovers that the South Korean business world was actively engaged in the policies and the logic associated with the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. The IMF system, so to speak, was a thing Korean businesses avidly participated in—indeed helped to extend—and had done very well out of. It has even been claimed that they used the system to get it over the core initiators of the system, beating them at their own game.3 The chaebŏl claim to be victims of the IMF system was rejected by some economists and roundly criticised by former minjung activists, even where 3  Bruce Cumings, “From Japanese imperium to American hegemony: Korean-centrism and the transformation of the international system,” in Korea at the centre: Dynamics of regionalism in Northeast Asia, ed. Charles K. Armstrong, Gilbert Rozman, Samuela S. Kim and Stephen Kotkin (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 91.

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they agreed the IMF was the primary culprit. But there was deep ambivalence among the population. Certainly there was no natural love of the chaebŏl, normally associated as they were with activities not in the interests of the people or of Korean culture. But Park Chung-Hee had been an anti-American nationalist in one sense at least—the creation of Korean-centred big business—and there was widespread recognition that the term global capitalism was a cover for US-led businesses that worked first and finally for the interests of those at the top end of the American market. On a more popular level, the levelling of blame against external actors revealed an interesting change of heart. For not long before the crisis hit the nation, from the end of 1996 into the first months of 1997, a remarkable television series called Morae sigye (The Hourglass) captured attention. This series of thirteen hour-long episodes was the first time any TV station had launched a major drama that delved in detail into the hitherto strictly taboo thickets of rampant corruption, political intrigue, underworld violence, murder and officially sanctioned intimidation that accompanied the well-known collusion between big business, government, the armed forces, KCIA and gangsters. The series so gripped the public that when the final was broadcast, a special twohour episode, the Korean telephone exchange reported the lowest traffic on its lines since telephones became household items. The series was remarkable not only for its portrayal, based on historical and contemporary realities, of connections and consequences, but also for its emphases and messages about national life, ethical life, the irrationality of political and economic decision-making processes, and about what had to change. ‘The Hourglass’ was designed solely for domestic Korean viewing, and the difference between the presentation of social structures, mores, politics and business acumen to the non-Korean world once the economic crisis hit and this earlier presentation of the same themes to themselves could hardly be more marked. There was a great distance between the representation of cause and effect in ‘The Hourglass’ and that of the media regarding the ‘IMF Crisis.’ Where did Kim Dae Jung stand? He announced his intention of pursuing the Second Nation-building Project he had promised during his election campaign, of creating a participatory democracy, an economy healthily related to a market economy, with a cooperative labour-management structure, a national culture positively linked to globalising momenta, and education reform that eliminated the attraction of corruption in business and bureaucracy and implanted a new value system. He also pledged to provide basic livelihood to all unemployed. But President Kim was convinced that the protectionist trading reaction and anti-foreign mood were contrary to the imperative, in his view, that Korea become an active partner in the making of the global order.

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Accordingly, for all his past as a leading dissident during the period of industrialisation, he chose to comply with the IMF restructuring demands as a condition of their economic bailout. In relating to the domestic mood, Kim Dae Jung consciously echoed the analysis of big business presented in ‘The Hourglass.’ He then ordered the chaebŏl to restructure and rectify immediately their extraordinary debt-equity ratios, which in 1997 had averaged 400%. At the close of 1998, Kim declared the end of chaebŏl domination of the business and industrial infrastructure, but this was far from evident. By mid-1999, the average debt-equity ratio was down only to 300%. Hyundai’s debts had increased in consequence of having to take over Kia Motors. Daewoo was recalcitrant, delayed restructuring, and its debts snowballed: it recorded a mammoth debt-equity imbalance of 588%. In August 1999, Daewoo was stripped down to six auto-related industries, but still went bankrupt, and its automobile business was taken over by General Motors. Proclaiming that reform of the chaebŏl was a matter of life and death, President Kim Dae Jung in a number of meetings and through a series of reforms between mid-1998 and the end of 1999 pressured the heads of the top five conglomerates—Samsung, Daewoo, Hyundai, Daewoo, SK—and their creditor banks to sign agreements that would curtail the almost absolute power wielded over managerial matters by the tiny groups of founding family members, end the logic of growth through expansion of product volume and kind, reduce the extraordinarily high dependence on borrowed capital, and ensure transparency in financial management.4 Sweeping reforms were carried out on corporate governance, of the Commercial Code for example, to increase monitoring and accountability. Mergers were made more viable, some foreign re-investment was attracted, and ownership restrictions on foreign investors were eased. In Kim’s view, this entailed reform at the very roots of big business management and culture, and was necessary to preclude a repeat of the economic crisis. Far from blaming globalisation, Kim considered that holding out against globalisation by avoiding rational competition with industries around the world was the root cause of the crisis.5

4  Seong-Min Yoo, “Industrial Restructuring and Corporate Governance: Policy issues before, during and after the crisis,” in Looking Forward, ed. Heather Smith, 127–162 passim. 5  See ROK Ministry of Finance and Economy, DJnomics: A New Foundation for the Korean Economy (Seoul, Economic Development Institute, 1999).

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The Nature of Democracy

The economic crisis and its aftermath were related to lingering questions over the nature of democracy and the degree to which it had taken hold of Korean culture from state to individual. Here again Kim Dae-Jung’s position was clear and he took a strong stand on the benefits of democracy and the need to deepen its cultural hold on the peninsula. When in the early 1990s the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, advanced his thesis of ‘Asian values’ in order to defend his authoritarian rule, Kim Dae Jung had been quick to publish a careful, well-reasoned rebuttal of Lee’s contention that liberal democracy was alien to Asian cultures in an article published in the November/December 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs. Kim Dae Jung himself had struggled for democracy under despotic regimes for a considerable period. On four occasions he suffered attempts on his life, was injured, kidnapped, exiled, twice sentenced to death, accused of treason and branded a communist—the worst possible offence—over a period of five decades, and yet he was on no occasion involved in any violent action nor did he ever advocate or condone any recourse to violence by fellow dissidents. This is part of the reason he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, alongside his pursuit of the Sunshine Policy of reconciliation towards the bitter enemy, North Korea, a policy of open-mindedness, cordiality, and building of trust, that resulted in June that year in the first ever summit meeting between the two Koreas and the first officially organised reunion of family members who had been separated by the division for fifty-three years with never the slightest contact of any kind between them. An avowed internationalist, as president Kim actively engaged in spreading a ‘convergence’ theory when it came to democracy, which he declared on 18 March 1999 at a luncheon in the Blue House “will become universal in the 21st century,” when it will be “realised in every corner of the world.”6 On 15 August 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Korea, Kim talked of firmly establishing a ‘Government of the People,’ a key element in his second nation-building project. Whether wittingly or not, Kim echoed the words of the colonial-era patriot An Ch’angho by calling for ‘six major tasks’ to complete the new nation building. These tasks were as follows.

6  Kim Dae-jung, “A Modern Interpretation of the Idea of Loyalty and Filial Piety,” The Korea Herald (14 April 1999).

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5. 6.

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Participatory democracy, ending authoritarianism and regionalism. Elimination of government control of the economy, thus facilitating the flourishing of a market economy, in corporate, financial, labour and public sectors. Universalism and globalism to replace self-righteous nationalism, which was anachronistic. Institution of a knowledge- and information-based economy, shifting away from industrial focus. This required a ‘whole-person’ education system incorporating a “trilogy of wisdom, virtue and physical health” [again, the very words used by An Ch’angho] and creativity in lieu of cramming. A move from confrontational to constructive labour-management relationship, attached to stronger social-security provisions, sharing both burdens and wealth fairly. Improving relations with the north.7

Of particular importance was Kim’s notion of the growing irrelevance of nation-state borders and what this meant for a national economy. “The WTO system that has already been in operation is bound to eliminate economic national borders in a matter of years,” he claimed in the same speech. It was necessary both to compete and to cooperate with other countries in order to survive and prosper with them. Obsession with the idea of the nation was not to be encouraged: “If the nation becomes the object of loyalty, there is a possibility it can breed something like Hitler’s Nazism or Japan’s militarism. Today, the object of loyalty should be none other than the people: my wife, my husband, my neighbour. Otherwise, the idea of loyalty is meaningless.” In this connection, Kim Dae Jung backed up Kim Young Sam’s earlier concept of a communitarian ‘moral’ democracy with a call for what he termed ‘societal filial piety,’ an application of a central, traditional ethic to a new setting and a new order, to devise a democratic social contract that made sense in Korea. The idea of a democratic social contract related to questions of accountability of both the political process and the business leaders to the workforce and of the broader relationship between democracy and the economy. Even as late as the early 1990s, commentators described South Korea as an economically advanced but politically backward nation. In most cases, this perception of Korea as an anomaly was rooted in a theory that attainment of a healthy democratic culture generally passed through three stages of development: removal of non-democratic forces; instalment of democratic processes 7  Korean Newsreview (22 August 1998), 6–7.

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and institutions; and consolidation of a stable democratic system. According to this three-stage model, Kim Young Sam succeeded during his presidency from 1993–98 in moving the state into the second phase of democratisation by replacing authoritarian political structures with democratic ones; and Kim Dae-Jung was supposed to be moving into the third stage of consolidation. Yet the fact that Koreans were enjoying economic prosperity before democratisation began marked South Korea off from other new democracies where expectation of economic improvements fuelled commitment to reform. And so the economic crisis since 1997 posed both a formidable challenge to and a great opportunity for Korea’s democratic future. A challenge, because far from counting on economic benefits to flow from democracy, people began instead to doubt whether democracy was safe for the economy; and an opportunity, because it encouraged the view that full consolidation of Korea’s new democracy required application of the same rules to economic power as to political power and processes, and that the same moral framework must be employed to transform an economy in which an authoritarian mentality remained strongly entrenched. In short, the version of democratic consolidation sought by numbers of Koreans in the wake of the crisis would more accurately be termed ‘comprehensive democracy,’ one that extended not simply beyond the ballot box but beyond the political to the economic realm. As a consequence, there grew among South Koreans a strong tendency to measure the genuineness of their democracy according to the moral content as much as performance of its economy and a readiness to join large and tenacious street demonstrations against any decision they believed would have a deleterious affect on the economic welfare of the common people. The negotiations on free trade agreements in the first decade of the twenty-first century, for example, were criticised on the basis that they were favoured by and in favour of the interests of domestic and foreign parties for whom no one in the country had ever voted. These critics, contrary to the claims by leading members of the chaebŏl, argued that until the core principles of democracy were applied to the running of the economy, its democracy was not genuine. It was like a two-legged horse: half of what should move it was missing. For Kim Dae Jung’s precept of participatory democracy to become a reality, economic power, which was as real and consequential as political power, had to be subject to the same limits, vigilance and processes as political power. In effect, South Korea’s critics of the blind-spots they claimed to see in their country’s democracy regarded Milton Friedman’s assertion that economic freedom was a necessary condition of political freedom to be dangerously incomplete. For his notion of economic freedom appeared void of any moral component; at least there seemed to be no moral and few legal limits

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on the amount of capital one was free to accumulate, nor on the power one could exercise over society and politics thereby. Whereas in Western states it was only in the wake of the grave financial crisis beginning in 2008, that some public consciousness grew over the moral (or immoral) dimensions of economic power and behaviour, in Korea the chaebŏl leaders have for some time felt public pressure to defend their methods in accruing wealth in moral terms. This might be attributable not only to continuing Confucian moral sensibilities but also to the freshness of South Korea’s democracy and the unwillingness of the people to see the hard-won political gains subverted by concentrations of economic power. But there is also the historical context. As we have seen, Korea became a Japanese colony and was stripped of political power at the beginning of the 20th century, at the precise point when there was a growing interest in democracy among the people. Bereft of political power to shape their society, it was thought by numbers of Koreans, such as the members of Cho Mansik’s Korean Products Promotion Society, that through participation in the economic direction of their nation the people might lay the groundwork for gaining or at least circumventing political power. In the process, consciousness grew that economic and political power were very closely entwined and both were vital for a nation’s welfare. Indeed, the necessity of economic democracy in a materialistic age was in fact one of the central dogmas of Wŏn Buddhism from as early as 1918. This perception was reinforced after liberation, when the two Koreas competed with each other largely on the basis of their economic performance. In South Korea, the big business conglomerates for the most part gained power and prestige during the military period through privileged access to finance and markets guaranteed by a strong authoritarian state. Political and economic power-holders colluded to exclude the majority of the population from decisions over policies that shaped their lives and environment. The lesson once again was that both political and economic power must be subject to accountability by the general public. Thus by the late 1980s, when the political order opened up to democratic processes, there was an ingrained notion that a democratic revolution must involve real change also in the economic processes. However, from the mid1990s there arose in some quarters strong disappointment over the failure of the leaders of the new democratic political administration to apply democratic rules to the economic process. A kind of separation of politics and economy had occurred that had exempted the chaebŏl system and its power from democratic accountability. Kim Dae Jung’s measures in response to the 1997–98 economic crisis went some way towards rectifying this situation, but another

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perception which related to the Park Chung-Hee syndrome, that democracy was perhaps not as good a guarantor of economic growth as the former military system, caused a division of opinion among the populace that has continued into the twenty-first century.

The Sunshine Policy and North-South Relations

Kim Dae-Jung’s internationalist position on politics, economy and culture and his desiderata for democracy on the peninsula were a far cry from the politics and culture of the northern regime. Yet from early in his career Kim had called strongly for genuine rapprochement with the north. In the service of consistency, he must have included North Korea in his claim that democracy, in the sense he applied it to South Korea, would become universal in the twenty-first century. He needed to find some way to begin building a bridge between the two Korean states that had diverged so far along political, economic and cultural lines over the past fifty-five years. His concept of societal filial piety was a beginning, and he went a little further by contending that it was not socialism that was incompatible with democracy but dictatorship. But his sixth task, of improving relations with the north, proved intractable. For the division of Korea into two states, followed by a very costly war and intense competition on military, economic and diplomatic fronts, was itself a crisis of much longer standing than the economic crisis and continued to have a baleful impact on the domestic and international affairs of both Koreas. Yet the historical record of the search for reunification tells a doleful story of wearisome repetition. Here and there, something appears that looks new, such as the talks between the two Koreas in 1972. But although some proposals were in that year put forward that looked new, nothing eventuated from them; one cannot discern a progression of reunification ideas or formulas. The rock on which the reunification ship foundered again and again was the simple but fundamental problem of nationalist legitimacy. After the tragic attempt between 1950 and 1953 to settle this question of legitimacy by means of war, until very recently both sides were prepared to consider reunification solely in terms of a reunification under their own systems and with their own political power protected. It was hardly possible to take incremental steps towards reunification under such conditions. Each side was backed by a huge military force and diametrically opposed ideologies. One side had to be supreme, and then reunification could proceed, but not the other way round. By the early 1990s, South Korea had outclassed the north economically and had launched a successful diplomatic campaign for recognition by North

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Korea’s traditional allies. There were two major changes that affected the reunification question. One was the collapse of the USSR and Soviet Europe and the other was the overthrow of the military and the implementation of democracy in South Korea. As the north lost most of its material and ideological support from Russia and East and Central Europe and its economy sank into peril, hopes for reunification rose so high that many people in the south were talking of it taking only five years. The reason for this optimism was the view that the north was heading quickly towards collapse, while the south was unquestionably supreme. It was against this background that Kim Dae Jung prevailed on his northern counterparts to work on a new relationship, and so transpired in June 2000 the first ever Summit meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas. The Summit held in Pyongyang, followed by the first officially sanctioned reunions of divided families in fifty-three years, appeared to be a vindication of President Kim Dae Jung’s ‘Sunshine Policy’ and a fitting climax to a busy twelve months. The year 2000 was an eventful one. In January, the DPRK established diplomatic relations with Italy; in March, Kim Dae Jung announced his Berlin Declaration calling for an end to the Cold War on the peninsula, which was followed by a flurry of diplomatic activity between the DPRK and Australia, SE Asia, Canada, and several countries in Europe; the Summit was held in June; the north and south Korean Olympic teams marched in Sydney under one flag, the Peninsula Flag; a meeting took place between DPRK and ROK defence ministers on 24 September; the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang, and there was talk of a summit between the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏngil: 1941–2011) and the US president Bill Clinton. The term ‘sunshine policy’ refers to the old Korean saying that in cold, wet and windy weather people will fasten their garments tight around them whereas in warm sunshine they will remove their coats and relax. What Kim attempted to do by virtue of his sunshine policy was to convince the north that the south harboured no hostile intent against it, that rapprochement could only benefit the north, and that the south had genuinely independent motives, that is, the United States was not calling the tune. Kim’s approach was to open up avenues of economic and cultural exchanges and cooperation, while steering clear of the kinds of military and political issues that had thwarted any even minor breakthroughs in the past. Yet Kim Dae Jung’s sunshine policy accentuated a dilemma that the DPRK had been facing since the end of the 1980s. From the mid-1950s, as part of the campaign to promote the notion that Kim Il Sung’s chuch’e thought was the scientific principles leading the Korean people, if not the whole world, to communism, it was officially taught that the period beginning in 1958, when

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c­ ollectivisation of the north was to be completed, was one in which the peninsula was to witness the complete victory of the communist revolution. Historical developments since the late 1980s therefore not only constituted a serious teleological let-down for the regime but also required great care in explaining it to the people. In a speech before the Supreme Assembly in December 1988, Kim Il Sung announced that socialism elsewhere had failed, but that in North Korea its final victory was before their eyes, and this because chuch’e emphasised the role of the human conscious more than Marxist-Leninism. Later, on 30 June 1990, following the announcement by Roh Tae Woo, then President of the ROK, that he was meeting the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev in California, the North Korean Rodong sinmun dismissed the proposed meeting (which took place five days later) as an absurdity. The wheel of history then turned backwards in the most disturbing possible manner. Not only did the USSR recognised South Korea but worse, on 24 August 1991, South Korea and China established diplomatic ties. In response, the North Korean media blamed the changes on cunning trickery perpetrated by US infiltrators throughout the communist world and averred that no such backward turn could ever occur in North Korea’s ­historical wheel. The extraordinary success of the North Korean authorities in maintaining a uniform ideological voice for so long deepened their dilemma. The ubiquity of the doctrine was unarguable; but the doctrine was a control ideology, so that official announcements regarding its truth and influence were part of the doctrine itself. The question was how its truth or even simply its applicability or usefulness could ever be challenged without threatening it in its totality. It was of course possible to hide or disguise adaptations or changes in policy and to some extent in historical developments. But the economic woes that attended the break-up of the Soviet and East European blocs piled more difficulties on the North Korean authorities’ ability to explain matters persuasively. The actual starvation to death of large numbers of people in the mid-1990s and the condition that the World Food Program described as ‘slow starvation’ made disguise practically impossible. The repetitive media references to the economic superiority of their country to Congo and even Cuba lost effect, while blaming starvation on imperialist hostility begged the fateful question why the leaders of a self-reliant economy could no longer protect the trusting citizens. The most serious problem was whether the fact that in relation to South Korea the north’s economy was in an incomparably worse state could be kept hidden. This was the nub of the problem regarding North Korea’s response to the sunshine policy. For the survival of the North Korean leadership was obviously related to how detailed a political and informational control over the

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populace could be maintained during the implementation of economic novelties. Genuine moves toward reunification could only present great risks to the North Korean leaders. When it came to reunions of divided families, the North had to handpick people extremely carefully and monitor all the conversations as closely as possible; a random, computer-based selection was completely out of the question. However, the longer they persisted in this strategy, the more risky reunification or even limited reforms became. The principal achievement of the June 2000 Summit meeting between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il was the Summit itself: breaking over a half-century of mutual non-recognition. Kim Dae Jung was no naïve politician and harboured few illusions. He knew the Sunshine Policy required perseverance and a great deal of forbearance on both sides. After the summit he emphasised strengthening the groundwork of peaceful co-existence, continuing to pursue rapprochement between the two Koreas. His successor as president from 2003–2008, Roh Moo-hyun, continued the sunshine approach to détente with the north under his ‘balancer policy.’ Their policies amounted to a gradualist approach, but also relied on good progress in North Korea’s negotiations with the USA and Japan. They did put North Korea under a little pressure to emerge from the Cold War mode. But there was still the unfinished war, the armistice without a peace. Short of a collapse of the North Korean political structure, an ill wind that would blow no one any good, peace was possible only if the two Koreas agreed that the Cold War was now also domestically anachronistic. In the south, there were voices that claimed it was far from anachronistic and that the post-Summit developments such as the selection process for family reunions, the return of North Korean spies to the North without any reciprocation from the North and the development of nuclear weapons underlined a gaping chasm over human rights and almost everything else that was important. They accused the sunshine-balancer policy of imbalance. Those in favour of Kim Dae Jung’s innovations conceded that there was an imbalance, but claimed it was a different kind of imbalance, one between stronger and weaker parties, and maintained that it was in South Korea’s interests that North Korea be incorporated into the international order in a post-Cold War fashion. Such would enable North Korea to be linked with aid agencies, positive investment sources, and access to knowledge on agriculture and other industry. In mid-August 2001, Kim Dae Jung opined that progress in negotiations between south and north Koreas was inextricably related to DPRK-US relations. Strictly speaking, this statement flew in the face of the very first item of the June 2000 Basic Agreement, that the reunification of the peninsula was to be resolved independently of other powers. And from the mid-2000s only one country seriously insisted that the DPRK-US relation was the key, and this

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was the DPRK. (The US actually favoured a multilateral approach, albeit one in which Seoul shared the US position, acting thereby as a kind of proxy in the DPRK-US relationship.) One might suspect that in addition to its understandable fears of hostile action by the USA, North Korea’s insistence that its problems were matters only to be worked out through negotiations with the USA was a means of turning the focus of the north-south division and its solution away from both North Korean domestic dilemmas and the difficulties presented to North Korea by the sunshine-cum-balancer policy. Particularly since George W. Bush included the DPRK in his three ‘axis of evil’ nations, it had become easier for the North Korean rulers to present the division problem as one in which the USA was the principal obstacle than to negotiate reunification matters with South Korea. Kim Dae Jung’s hopes were that after the June 2000 Summit, North Korea would be encouraged to emerge from the Cold War mode. A key feature of Roh Moo-hyun’s presentation of South Korea’s balancing role before the National Assembly in February 2005 was the idea that it was time to make a decisive break with the Cold War pattern of negotiations with the north and approach to Northeast Asian security. This call for a decisive break, however, reflected the southern perception that they could negotiate the future of the peninsula and its position in Northeast Asia from a position of strength—that the south stood to lose nothing of importance but, on the contrary, stood to gain much of real substance, especially since the south hoped to determine the pace and extent of its involvement in economic restructuring in the north. This position was tantamount to saying that the struggle for legitimacy of systems had already in principle been resolved in the south’s favour. It was thus not so peculiar that suggestions such as that the south be given a caretaker role over the North Korean economy (and foreign policy) should have surfaced in South Korea. Hence the northern regime had reason to view the sunshine and balancer policies as ones potentially undermining its legitimacy. More to the point, the naming of North Korea as an axis of evil by President Bush and North Korea’s identification of the USA as the prime enemy only strengthened the Cold War mentality. Against this scenario and facing the prospect also of having to rely solely on its own means in matters of defense and economic security, the DPRK under Kim Jong Il proclaimed after the summit a sŏn’gun or ‘military first’ policy, whereby the role of the military was given pride of place in defending state power against external and domestic challenges. Possibly, the military first policy was designed to replace or at least relativise the sacred status of the chuch’e ideology, and if so it reflected real change in the nature of the DPRK. But it is clear that the policy was about the north’s survival, and given its economic cost

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at a time large numbers of the population were starving or suffering malnutrition, it was not a pretty policy. Resolution of the north-south division of Korea hung, as ever, in the balance. For the nuclear card was only the last in a long series of cards that had been played to no avail during negotiations over the division. That it might well have been also the last possible card for the northern side to play certainly made a peaceful resolution all the more critical, but it still entailed the same basic cluster of issues that had stalled progress continuously for six decades. At the heart of this cluster was not so much the DPRK-USA nuclear stand-off as the national division of Korea under two governments competing for national legitimacy through economic development, military capacity, international diplomacy, and their respective official representations of history. Thus in view of the fact that the nuclear issue shifted the focus away from inter-Korean dialogue, it made good sense for former presidents Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-hyun to assign priority to the ROK-DPRK relationship over the US-DPRK relationship. In sum, only two substantive changes occurred in the context of the reunification process since the Korean War, both of which issued from South Korea, namely, the peaceful transition from military to democratic rule and Kim DaeJung’s ‘Sunshine Policy’. In this light, Kim and Roh were at pains to persuade South Korea’s allies and others to recognise not only that the two Koreas were the states most closely, legitimately and fundamentally concerned in the process of reunification, but that the perspectives, principles and proposals of the ROK in particular had to be paid serious attention in the formulation of policies regarding the peninsula by countries in the region. For this to happen, South Korea needed to present negotiations between itself and the north as the key to resolution of all issues, including the nuclear. There were signs of progress in this regard in the twin areas of economic development and cultural exchanges. The former followed Kim Dae-Jung’s principles of separating economics from politics and of international collaboration on engagement with the north. The latter was more diverse in nature and included strong convictions among South Korea’s Christians, backed up by detailed programmes, that religious activity would triumph over the division. The manner in which rapprochement with the north was pursued under the sunshine-balancer policy drew divided responses from South Korea’s Christian community. The Christian Council of Korea, which represented the majority of Protestant churches in South Korea, was the main organisation that produced church policy on North Korean migrants and North Korean evangelisation. Such policy was formed against a specific background: the practice of the mainstream Protestant churches of linking Christian outreach to North

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Korea to their perceived and at times openly proclaimed role as a bastion of anti-Communism in the south. But an alternative role for Christianity was proposed by the ‘National Pastors’ Association for the Realisation of Peace and Justice,’ which announced in the Han’gyeore sinmun (One People newspaper) on 28 September 2005 a series of symposia designed to identify and repent of certain attitudes, policies and actions of South Korean Protestants in the past, including ‘anti-national’ sins of the colonial era and ‘anti-communist’ sins of the Park Chung-Hee era and beyond. On the face of it, the position of the National Pastors’ Association appeared the more amenable to the sunshine-balancer approach, insofar as it aimed to extract the Protestant churches from the Cold War mentality that pervaded its approach to North Korean outreach since at least the Korean War. Be that as it may, it was the mainstream and more conservative churches that responded most actively to the new developments on the peninsula, in particular to the increasing number of arrivals of Koreans from the north and their difficulties in adapting to the socio-economic realities of the south. The Free Citizens College (Chayu simin taehak) that was run by the Yoido Full Gospel Church, for instance, offered a lengthy, detailed and fairly comprehensive program to assist North Korean immigrants to settle into work and society in the south.8 The perception among the mainstream Protestants, namely, that their work among North Koreans constituted a kind of victory over the northern regime’s ideology, did not necessarily stand at such a distance from the sunshine-­ balancer policy as might first appear. Both approaches rested on a presumption of strength vis-à-vis the north and both viewed the end of the Cold War as a development in their favour. Neither could be expressed or implemented with confidence under any other conditions, although as in all matters of faith the South Korean Protestant mainstream, which had in any case from the outset held the view that the division would be overcome spiritually, could adhere tenaciously to its position in the face of serious outward obstacles. The principle divide between the Protestants and the positions of Kim and Roh was the strongly held view of the former that the government was pandering far too much to the North Korean politicians’ interests and caring far too little about the North Korean people’s situation. In the north, the death of Kim Jong Il in February 2011 and the uncertainty surrounding the succession by his son Kim Jong Un (Kim Chŏngŭn) have underlined the difficulties facing the state in maintaining its system of p ­ olitics, 8  See Jin-Heon Jung, “Pukhan ijumin chonggyo kigwan kyoyuk p’ŭrogŭraemŭi minjokchijŏk koch’al (Ethnographic Study on a Mega-Church Training Program for North Korean Migrants in South Korea),” Korean Journal of Religious Education 42 (2013), 143–161.

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economy and society. In the early 1990s, even before Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, a presentiment that the passing of the Great Leader would create a vacuum of meaning and loyalty that his son and heir would be hard put to fill prompted a campaign to connect the Kim family to something more ancient and eternal. And so was effected the Return of Tan’gun, the mythical founder of the Korean race and polity. The Return of Tan’gun was presaged by a proclamation of the discovery of the tomb of Tan’gun in the sacred precincts of the lower slopes of Mt Paektu, on the border with north China. In 1993, scholars claiming to have visited the tomb wrote papers that purported to follow academic methods, and great pains were taken to present this discovery to foreign audiences at academic conferences as scientifically founded. Such attempts met with indifferent success. At a conference of the Association of Korean Studies in Europe held in Prague in May 1995, for example, the evidence presented by a North Korean participant was dismantled piece by piece during question time.9 In North Korea, an array of monuments and statues, most notably of Tan’gun’s four mythical sons, were erected and a ‘reconstruction’ of the tomb as a magisterial mausoleum was undertaken. The North Korean media made a great fanfare of it for many years. This return and restoration of Tan’gun signifies many possible things. Establishing legitimacy, that is, legitimacy of the north over the south, was undeniably a crucial purpose, and the message was communicated repeatedly that the discovery of the tombs in the north demonstrated decisively the status of Pyongyang as the original seat of government for the peninsula. This claim was also a continuation of the competition between north and south over interpretations of the past. For the tomb established not simply that Pyongyang was the original site of administration, but that it was also a ‘sacred’ site of power. This was abetted by locating Tan’gun’s mausoleum near Mt Paektu, the most sacred mountain in Korea, where the Lord of Heaven descended, where his son wedded the bear-turned woman, and where Tan’gun was born of their union. The problem of a self-proclaimed revolutionary regime reasserting beliefs that had formerly been lumped under superstition belonging to the age of feudalism and condemned as tools of the ruling class,10 was met by scholars in the Academy of Social Sciences in Pyongyang by appeals to Marx’s observations on 9  The author was a participant at this conference and attended this paper on the Tan’gun tomb’s discovery. 10  John Jorgensen points out the problem also of the north’s contradictory uses of history that the return of Tan’gun reveals. John Jorgensen, “Tan’gun and the Legitimization of a Threatened Dynasty: North Korea’s Rediscovery of Tan’gun”, Korea Observer 27, no. 2 (Summer 1996), 277–279.

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Greek origin myths, namely, that since everything must be based on something material, myth too is a reflection of history. The resurrection of Tan’gun had its beginnings before the death of Kim Il Sung; yet the crescendo following his death suggests anticipation of a need that would arise among the people. The reverence all were brought up to feel for Kim Il Sung was supreme, and in disseminating the official dogma of the founding family Kim was more successful than Mao in displacing religious tradition, emotion and thought. But having been so much more successful and thorough, the NK leadership was left with a correspondingly more difficult task after Kim’s death. Turning from a politics of patriarchal authority to a politics of filial piety may have helped the transition of power to his son, Kim Jong Il, but something more enduring was required. Thus the ‘discovery’ of Tan’gun’s tomb-site stemmed from the need to provide another focus of loyalty, but in the same mode as before, the same mode of ensuring united subscription to the rightfulness of the regime, and of the north over the south, and Korea’s place in the world. It is no accident that Tan’gun was utilised—the most native of traditions and thus the most assimilable to the ideology of self-reliance, but also the most fatherly symbol available in a state where a family has been made sacred. It opened up a whole spectrum of quasi-religious symbolism, such as the announcement in the north’s media of apricot blossoms opening up miraculously in autumn on the occasion of Kim Jong Il’s visit to the tomb. But more importantly, the construction of a mausoleum for Kim Il Sung within a cluster of buildings of stupendous size and surrounded by gardens and moats covering many hectares, and to which an unending stream of buses transported visitors to make deep bows on three sides of the embalmed Great Leader under the supervision of armed guards, imparted the clear message that Kim and his heirs were not only true descendants of Tan’gun but had attained even greater glory than he. The utilisation of the foundation myth in this manner points to the nationalist properties of the chuch’e ideology. The inseparability of the ideology from the cult of Kim Il Sung as the source and guarantor of the whole Korean nation has entailed a reverential focus in the first place on the person of the leader, in the second place on his creed and in the third place on the concept of national destiny. When the first place, the leader, passed away, it was discerned that the second place, the creed, might only be protected by a strong push on the third place, national destiny—and this, it was decided, was best served by a national origin myth of religious proportions. In this respect, it might not be unwarranted to compare the return of Tan’gun with the claim made in the Silla Kingdom in the late sixth century that the Maitreya, or Buddha of the Future, was reincarnated as a member of the Silla Hwarang. In both cases, the religious

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claim buttressed legitimacy by asserting direct connection with the roots of the country’s civilisation. Since it has not been possible to carry out reliable anthropological studies in North Korea, it is not possible to know whether the return of Tan’gun reaped the desired effects. It is unclear how the North Korean citizens generally regard Kim Jong Un and the main focus of this second transition appears to be placed on the ‘military first’ doctrine that his father introduced rather than on either chuch’e or the Tan’gun tradition, which might have served its purpose and can be given a back seat. But the emphasis on the military first doctrine in the north and the adoption in the south of a less flexible stand on negotiations suggest that realisation of a basis on which the people on the peninsula can once again shape their civilisation together still lies some distance in the future.

Concluding Remarks

In South Korea, despite a considerable revision of the National Security Law on 31 May 1991, which abolished the anti-communism articles, the death penalty has remained in place for persons organising ‘anti-state groups’ or committing ‘anti-state acts’ (Chapter 2, Articles 3 and 4), and seven years in prison can still be imposed on persons who “praise, disseminate or cooperate with anti-state groups, members or those under their control,” and ten years for any who meet or make contact with the same (Chapter 2, Articles 7 and 8). Human rights groups in South Korea and abroad, such as Amnesty International, maintained that even in 1998 the law was being used to imprison people for views and activities deemed ‘pro-communist.’ It has been used, say critics in South Korea, such as Kim Chungsuk, head of the human rights group Min’gahyŏp, to stifle democratic expression and debate on reunification issues. And then under President Lee Myung-bak (Yi Myŏngbak: b. 1941), who served as president from 2008 to 2013, steps were taken to pressure the media once again to conform to the dictates of the government. Nevertheless, the Korean people’s commitment to democracy remains as tenacious as ever and in their search for a comprehensive form they may yet come up with a truly responsible, civilised model of democracy for the rest of the world. Regarding relations between the ROK and DPRK, the summit meeting in June 2000 between the supreme leaders of the two states marked an unprecedented movement towards rapprochement. But here also, the South Korean populace showed signs of deepening scepticism: was it not the same old story of mutually incompatible systems, mutually unacceptable unification proposals, and of power on both sides unwilling to surrender even a little sovereignty?

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It was far from clear whether the two Koreas were any closer to reunification or even peaceful co-existence. Nevertheless, in their search for a resolution, the Korean people resumed the debate over the optimum form of human social organisation that was cut short by the rise of the cold war superpowers. The Japanese annexation of Korea helped nationalism as a unifying force; the cold war made it more of a dividing force. The official nationalisms in north and south, tied as they have been to the legitimacy of each regime, are more important than any ideology or third-party state interest in keeping the peninsula divided. Yet as this short account of Korea’s civilisation shows, for most of its history the people on the peninsula have stood at the forefront of advances in the material and cultural bases of civilisation in their own region and beyond. The Korean people have become masters at handling crises and wresting from them achievements that surprise the rest of the world. They have risen high above numerous challenges in the past and there is good reason to expect much more in the future.

Bibliography

Notes on Sources

The earliest surviving written source on Korea’s history and civilization is the Samguk sagi (Annals of the Three Kingdoms) written by Kim Pusik in the twelfth century. There are a number of translations of the Annals or parts thereof, but because of their complicated status as historical sources, interested readers would do well to begin with Edward J. Shultz’s “Introduction to the Samguk Sagi” in Korean Studies, 28, 2004. I have used the translations, which ought to have been published, by my colleague at the Australian National University, Kenneth J. H. Gardiner. The Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), written in the thirteenth century by the Buddhist monk Iryŏn, is more a collection of tales and legends than a historical account, but it is a valuable guide to the cultural perspectives of early Korea. A number of libraries hold the English translation by Tae-Hung Ha and Grafton K. Mintz (Legends and History of the Three kingdoms of Ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1972), and it is now available on Kindle. The most convenient source on the early period, however, is Peter H. Lee and Wm Theodore de Bary, eds, Sources of Korean Tradition, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), which contains numerous English translations of original Korean sources. The section on Science and Technology in Chapter Three relies mostly on information found in Helaine Selin, ed., Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (Doordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 501–506; Joseph Needham et al., The Hall of Heavenly Records: Korean Astronomical Instruments and Clocks, 1380–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Carter J. Eckert et al., Korea Old and New, chapter 9; and Han’guk minjok munhwa taebaekkwa sajŏn (Encyclopaedia of Korean National Culture), 27 vols (Sŏngnam-si: Han’guk Chŏngsin Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn, 1991). Unless otherwise indicated, the information on shamanism in Chapter Four is based on excerpts from the Chosŏn dynastic records (Chosŏn wangjo sillok) contained in Kim Hongch’ŏl, Kim Sangil and Cho Hŭngyun, Han’guk chonggyo sasangsa (History of Korean Religious Thought), vol. 4 (Seoul: Yonsei taehakkyo ch’ulp’ansa, 1998), and from Yi Nŭnghwa’s Chosŏn musokko (Reflections on Chosŏn Folklore) in Han’guk ŭi minsok, chonggyo sasang (Korea’s folk, religious thought), no. 4 in the series, Han’guk sasang chŏnjip (Anthology of Korean Thought) (Seoul: Samsŏng ch’ulp’ansa, 1986). Much of the material in chapters Five and Six is based on my primary research, the results of some of which I have published in the works acknowledged in the footnotes. But my understanding of the general culture and mood of the times is drawn from wide research in the journals and newspapers of the time, such as TaeHan

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chaganghoe wŏlbo, Honam hakhoe and Tonga ilbo (Monthly Journal of the Korean Self-Strengthening Society, Journal of the Honam Learned Society and Tonga Daily), and from official records of the Resident-General and Government-General of Chōsen and the Japanese Ministry of the Interior (Naimushō), which are held in the National Library of Australia and the Menzies Library of the Australian National University.

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Index An Ch’angho 160, 177–178, 182, 183, 189, 199, 211, 292 Activities in California 156 Member of Korean Provisional Government 157 On musil yŏkhaeng 179–181 An Chunggŭn 147 An Hyang, 70 Ancestor worship 71, 93, 94, 98, 222, 240 Animism 8, 33, 46, 84, 107, 212, 278 See also classical religion; shamans/ shamanism April Nineteen Movement 227–229, 253 Bone-rank aristocracy 17–18, 20, 24, 25, 27, 223 Book of Changes 68, 87 Britain 6, 116, 118, 119, 121, 123, 137, 147, 170, 191, 240, 289 Buddhism 1, 2, 8, 20, 24, 32, 33, 35–44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 55–58, 59, 67, 70, 102, 106, 117, 118, 125, 184, 261 Ch’ŏnt’ae (T’ient’ai) 42–43 Chosŏn dynasty and 59, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 72, 79, 81, 84, 90–95, 97, 102, 105, 107, 122, 222, 274 Gautama (Sakyamuni) 36, 40 Hwaŏm (Hua-yen) 36–40, 42, 57, 72 Japanese rule and 144, 155, 165, 167, 171, 173–174, 274 Maitreya 20, 36, 39, 304 Minjung Buddhism 274, 276 North Korea and 261, 263 South Korea and 251, 263, 274–276, 280, 283 Pure Land (Chŏngt’o) 38, 39, 40, 42, 174, 275–276 Sŏn (Ch’an, Zen) 39, 42, 44, 57, 58, 72, 173 Wŏn Buddhism 174, 263, 275–276, 295 See also Chinul; Sŏt’aesan; Tripitaka Koreana; Ŭich’ŏn; Ŭisang; Wŏnhyo ‘Calamities of the scholars’ 61, 64, 84, 100–101

Capitalism in Korea 173, 182, 211ff, 220, 246, 254 Japanese rule and 150, 152 See also chaebŏl conglomerates Catholicism 83, 91, 97–99, 102, 119, 125, 174, 254, 267, 268, 271–272 Catholic rural mission 272 Execution of Catholics 98, 110, 119, 222 Sirhak and 107–108, 110, 112 Ch’ae Mansik 166 Chaebŏl conglomerates 152, 211, 214, 216–218, 240, 278, 289–291, 294, 295 Chang Myŏn 225, 227, 272 Chang Pogo 26–27 Chang Tŏksu 157–160, 165 Assassination of 193, 224 Chang Yŏngsil 79–80 Chiang Kai-shek 158, 186, 191 Chin See Jurchen Chin China 6, 11–16, 19, 26, 29, 32, 40, 42, 48, 53, 55, 59, 69–70, 79–81, 115, 118, 119, 120, 130, 133, 142, 206, 261–262, 285–286 Ch’ing dynasty 77–78, 83, 121–124, 126 Koreans in 156–159, 161–162, 183, 186, 189, 194, 210, 242 Ming dynasty 59, 61, 62, 63, 75–78, 83, 116 Role in Modern Korea 193, 196–197, 210, 298 Sung dynasty 29, 42, 58, 67, 69, 84, 116 T’ang dynasty 16–22, 26, 36, 47, 53, 56 Chinhŭng, King 36 Chinsŏng, Queen 27 Chinul 42–44, 57, 275 Cho Mansik 152, 158, 160, 177, 182–183, 190–192, 237, 266, 270, 295 Execution of 194, 262 Cho Yonggi 270–271 Ch’oe Cheu 125–126 Ch’oe Han’gi 67, 119 Ch’oe Hyŏnbae 166 Ch’oe Ikhyŏn 119, 146, 220 Ch’oe Kyuha 226, 230, 254 Ch’oe Namsŏn 155, 165, 167, 173 Ch’oe Rin 175 Ch’oe Sihyŏng 126

320 Ch’ŏllima (Flying Horse) Movement 206, 214, 243 Chŏn Pongjun 126–127 C’hŏndogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way) 144, 154–155, 165, 173–176, 262 Chŏngudang 175, 262 Chŏng Chungbu 29, 56 Chŏng Hwanjik 146 Chŏng Juyong (Chŏng Chuyong) 211 Chŏng Tojŏn 62–64, 90–91, 100 Chŏng Yagyong 108–110, 120, 219 Chŏngjo, King 109–110, 111–113 Chosŏn Democratic Party 194, 262 Chosŏn dynasty 2, 8, 30, 53, 54, 56, 59–84, 85–110, 111–142 passim, 168, 174, 179, 181, 187, 218, 219, 222 Chosŏn mulsan changnyŏhoe See Korean Products Promotion Society Chosŏn Yŏsŏng Tonguhoe (Women’s Socialist League) 162, 172 Christianity 118, 132, 144, 145, 156, 165, 173, 261 Education and 149, 164, 166, 168–170, 177–181, 237, 247, 270, 283 Industry and 176, 271–272, 283 Japanese rule and 176–181, 265 North Korea and 195, 205, 261–263, 265–267 Socialism/communism and 181–183, 195, 265, 266, 269–271 South Korea and 176, 248, 251, 254, 267, 268–275, 283, 301–302 See also Catholicism; minjung theology; Protestantism; Shintō shrine edict Chu Hsi 67–71, 73, 84, 179, 180 Chu Sigyŏng 133, 166 Chu Yohan 167 Chuch’e ideology 197–203, 211, 219–221, 223, 265, 297, 304 Chun Doo-Hwan (Chŏn Tuhwan) 211, 226, 230–232, 252, 255, 272, 274, 276, 285, 286 Chungjong, King 94, 97, 101 Chŭngsan’gyo 173 Classical religion (Folk religion) 32–35, 37, 50, 51, 93–97, 263, 264–265 See also animism; shamans/shamanism; Tan’gun Cold War 4, 188, 195, 197, 297, 299, 300, 302, 306 ‘Comfort women’ 186

Index Colonialism 4, 125, 143–187 passim, 199 Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence 190 Communism 157, 158, 197, 224 Anti-communism in South Korea 181, 189, 197, 211–213, 214, 224, 228, 257, 269, 274, 302, 305 Developments after 1945 190, 195–196 Japanese rule and 159, 161–162, 166, 182–183, 186, 187, 189, 196, 227 North Korean version of 219–220, 222, 297–298 See also chuch’e ideology; Free City incident; KAPF; Korean communist parties; Korean Proletarian Youth League; Lenin/Leninism; Mao Tse-tung; Marx/Marxism; socialism; Stalin; united front movement Confucian Academy (also Kukchagam, Sŏnggyun’gwan) 46, 49, 71, 73, 96, 148 Confucianism 1, 3, 8, 20, 24, 32, 34, 35, 45–51, 53, 56, 102, 109, 117, 125, 128, 131, 133, 139, 140, 177, 178 After 1945 218–222, 244, 250, 276–278, 280, 281, 295 Confucius 4, 45, 47, 50, 73, 88, 277, 280 Education and 46, 48, 49, 50, 63, 69, 73–74, 80, 100, 148–149, 179, 277 Japanese rule and 165, 174, 270 Literature and 99–107, 278 ‘Perfect man’ 85 See also Confucian Academy; NeoConfucianism; ‘rectification of names’ Crown Prince Sado 100 See also Imo incident Culturalist movement 157, 159–161, 165, 181 See also An Ch’angho; Chang Tŏksu; Cho Mansik; Yi Kwangsu Cumings, Bruce 219–220 Daoism 3–4, 32, 44, 67, 68, 69, 70, 91, 94, 95, 96, 100, 117, 125 Literature and 101–103, 107 ‘Death of the peasantry’ ix, 234 Democracy 124, 158, 176, 187, 196, 288 North Korea and 200, 223 South Korea and 189, 212–213, 224–225, 229, 230, 252, 254, 283, 285, 287, 290, 292–297, 301, 305

Index

321

See also April Nineteen Movement; Kwangju uprising; minjung movements Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) See North Korea

Geomancy 44–45, 47, 55, 61 Government-General of Chōsen 147–149, 152, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 170, 175, 176, 178, 183–184, 187, 192, 196, 236 Great Han Empire 138

Economic crisis, 1997–98 6, 246, 287–292, 294, 295 Education 1, 4, 8, 24, 29, 46, 48, 69, 80, 82, 86, 108, 128, 137, 138–139, 142, 143, 233 Japanese colonialism and 144, 148–149, 160–161, 164–165 North Korea and 207, 235–236, 237, 242–243, 264 ‘New education’ 133, 140, 142, 144, 164–165, 180–181 South Korea and 212, 213, 214, 217, 227, 231, 236–238, 241–243, 244, 254, 257, 276, 277, 281, 285, 289, 290 See also under Christianity; Confucianism Enlightenment Movement 138–142, 156, 168 Enlightenment Party (Kaehwa Tang) 120, 122, 123, 129, 130, 131 Ewha Women’s University 164, 169, 237, 241

Haeguk toji 118–120 Hahm Pyong-choon (Ham Pyŏngch’un) 212, 223 Ham Sŏkhŏn 253, 272–273 Han Kyŏngjik 195, 269–270 Han Sungjoo (Han Sŭngju) 229 Han Yongun 167, 174 Han’gŭl (vernacular script) 79, 80, 81, 91, 102, 104, 122, 132, 133, 135, 176 Harmony 1, 4, 45, 46, 48, 50, 69, 70, 71, 91, 92, 106, 143, 222, 251 Hŏ Ch’ohŭi (Nansŏrhŏn) 103 Hŏ Chŏngsuk 172–173, 176 Hŏ Hŏn 190 Hŏ Kaŭi 194 Hŏ Kyun 102–103 Ho-Umetsu Agreement 158 Hobsbawm, Eric 234, 239 Hodge John, General 192–193 Hong Kyŏngnae Rebellion 114 Hŭngŏp Kurakbu 160, 187 Hŭngsadan 156, 157, 160, 180, 181, 211 Hwang Chini 53, 86, 103 Hwang, Esther 160 Hwang Sayŏng 99 Hwang Sŏgyŏng 255–258 Hwang Sunwŏn 251–252 Hwarang 19, 20, 36, 46, 51, 52, 56, 304 Hyangan See Village Rosters Hyangyak See Village Compacts Hyegyŏng (Lady Hong) 112–113 Hyejong, King 28 Hyojong, King 65 Hyŏn Chunhyŏk, assassination of 193

Family 8, 50, 61, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94, 141, 169, 234 Family planning 239, 240, 241 North Korea and 199, 221, 223, 233, 242–243, 264–265, 292, 299 South Korea and 217–218, 233, 239–244, 247, 250, 256, 257, 258, 276–277, 280, 281, 291, 292, 299 See also chaebŏl; lineage laws and systems; royal consort families February Eighth Movement (Tokyo) 155, 157, 159 France 116, 118, 119, 121, 123, 131, 137, 191, 289 Free City Incident 161–162 Fukuzawa Yukichi 122, 128 Gender 1, 8, 52–53, 59, 60, 84, 85, 87–90, 105–106, 124, 143, 168–173, 233, 239–247, 257–259, 281–282 See also family; liberal feminism; lineage laws and systems; women; yin and yang

Ilchinhoe 145 Im Yŏngsin (Yim Louise) 160, 176, 249–251 Imo Incident, 1874 111–113 Independence Club 129–138, 140, 156, 168, 177, 196 Assembly of All Peoples 131, 136, 137 Dissolution of 137–138 Six Articles 137

322 Industrial development in Modern Korea 151, 153, 187, 206–207, 211–217, 237, 242, 245, 251, 252, 256, 258, 262, 271, 282 See also chaebŏl; chŏllima; saemaŭl undong Injo, King 77, 95 Injong, King 48, 50, 54, 55 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 6, 246, 289–291 Isolationists 117, 129, 131, 136, 139, 146 See also Ch’oe Ikhyŏn; righteous armies; wijŏng ch’ŏksa; Yi Hangno Itō Hirobumi 146–147, 176 Japan 6, 10, 11, 12, 20, 26, 32, 40, 42, 53, 70, 83, 115, 118, 119, 130, 137, 139, 210, 214, 264, 286, 299 Expulsion from Korea 188, 191 Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea 61, 72, 75–77, 82, 84, 86, 97, 99, 102 Koreans in 120, 123, 129, 158, 159, 162, 174, 181, 186, 189, 207–208, 212 Meiji Japan 120, 122, 124, 133, 145 Rule over Korea, 1905–1945 125, 143–187 passim, 196, 254, 255, 266, 295 See also Government-General of Chōsen Japanese Protectorate, 1905–1910 141, 145, 146, 177, 178 Juche See chuch’e Jurchen Chin 27, 55, 62, 69 Kabo Peasants’ War 124, 125, 130, 255 Kabo Reforms 65, 127–129, 130, 131 Kaebyŏk (Creation) 175 Kaehwa Tang See Enlightenment Party Kang Kyŏngae 165, 166, 173 Kang Wi 122 Kanghwa Treaty 121 KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio) 167 Kapsin Coup 120, 123, 130, 131, 133 Kasa poetry 100, 105 Kaya 16, 17, 19 Keinen, monk 76 Kendall, Laurel 278 Khitan Liao 21, 27, 44, 48 Kija 13, 47–48, 63, 70, 141 Kil Sŏnju 184 Kim Chiha 254, 255, 272

Index Kim Chŏnghŭi 119 Kim Chongjik 100 Kim Ch’unch’u 18, 20, 21 See also T’aejong Muyŏl Kim Dae Jung (Kim Taejung) 213, 225, 226, 230, 248, 272, 278 Asian values and 240, 292 President of ROK 255, 288, 290–296 See also sunshine policy Kim Hongjip 127, 128, 129 Kim Hwallan 160, 169, 172–173, 176, 237 Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng) 9, 183, 189, 190, 191, 195, 242, 260–261 Death of 206, 267, 303–304 Head of DPRK 194, 197, 199, 202, 204–205, 208, 219–221, 223, 224, 235–236, 265, 266, 297–298 Statue of 201, 263 Kim Il Sung University 236 Kim Jong Il (Kim Chŏngil) 204, 210, 260, 297, 299, 300, 302, 304 Kim Jong Un (Kim Chŏngŭn) 302, 305 Kim Ku 157–158, 178, 183, 189, 190, 193, 224, 266 Kim Kyusik 153–154, 157, 190 Kim Manjung 107 Kim Maria 170, 176 Kim Okkyun 122–123 Kim Oksŏn 248, 251 Kim Pusik 15, 37, 47, 48, 55–56 Kim Sŏngsu 152 Kim, Stephen (Cardinal) 272 Kim Suyŏng 253–256, 273 Kim Tongni 256 Kim Tubong 189, 194 Kim Uch’ang 2, 233, 251, 252 Kim Wŏnju 170–171, 176 Kim Young Sam (Kim Yŏngsam) 225, 272, 277, 284, 286, 287, 293–294 Kim Yusin 19, 49, 53 Kim Yunsik 120, 128, 132 Kisaeng 53–54, 86, 96, 105, 106 Ko Ŭn 255, 256, 284–286 Koguryŏ 13, 15, 16, 19–22, 24, 36, 38, 39, 46–48, 52, 56 Later Koguryŏ 27, 45 Kojong, King 95, 114, 119, 121, 122, 123, 129, 131, 136, 137, 138, 146, 155

Index Kojosŏn See Old Chosŏn Kongmin, King 30, 57, 59 Konishi Yukinaga 97 Korea Democratic Party 190, 193 Korea Independence Party 190 Korea University 227, 252 Korean communist parties 161–162, 190 All-Russia Korean Communist Party 161 Domestic faction 162, 189, 193 Irkutsk Communist Party 161 Koryŏ Communist Party 161 Soviet faction 162, 189, 194 Yenan faction 162, 189 Korean National Association 156–157 Korean National Writers’ Union (Minjok munhak chakka hoeŭi) 252 Korean People’s Republic 190, 224 Korean Products Promotion Society 152, 160, 182–183, 199, 295 Korean Proletarian Youth League (Tokyo) 162 Korean Provisional Government 157, 158, 163, 170, 186, 189, 190, 196 Korean Self-Strengthening Society 142, 146 Korean War, 1950–53 6, 188, 189, 194, 195–197, 206, 208, 213, 224, 229, 237, 251, 255, 257, 262, 266, 267, 269, 301, 302 Korean Women’s Associations United (Han’guk yŏsŏng tanch’e yŏnhap) 243 Koryŏ dynasty 2, 8, 21, 27–32, 40–45, 47, 48, 50–55, 59–60, 66, 69, 80, 81, 87, 88, 93, 96, 99, 275 Kŭnuhoe 172–173 Kwanggaet’o, King 36 Kwanggaet’o stele 16 Kwangjong, King 28, 42, 48 Kwangju student movement 163 Kwangju Uprising, 1980 229, 252, 255, 274, 284, 285–286 Kwangmu Reforms 138–139 Kwŏn Kŭn 100 Kwŏn Tongjin 175 Kyŏngdŏk, King 25–26 Land systems and reforms 24–28, 29, 31, 64–66, 74–75, 84, 109, 127, 130, 138, 219 After 1945 190, 192, 205–206, 214–215, 262

323 Japanese rule and 150–152 Kwallyojŏn 25 Nogŭp 24–27 Taedongbŏp (Uniform Land Tax law) 65 League of Nations 154, 156, 161, 186 Lee Myung-bak 305 Lenin/Leninism 162, 199, 219, 265, 298 Li Hung-chang 122, 123, 129 Liao See Khitan Liao Liberal feminism 170–171 Life of Ch’unhyang 105–106 Life of Simch’ŏng 105–106 Lineage laws and systems 17–18, 24, 26, 32, 49, 60–62, 73, 74, 78, 89, 92, 109, 112–113, 127, 217–219, 278 See also bone-rank aristocracy; family Literature Confucianism and 99–107, 278 Daoism and 101–103, 107 Japanese rule and 165–167 South Korea and 251–259, 272, 278, 286 See also Ch’ae Mansik; Ch’oe Namsŏn; Han Yongun; Hŏ Ch’ohŭi; Hŏ Kyun Hwang Sunwŏn; Hwang Sŏgyŏng; KAPF; kasa; Kim Chiha; Kim Manjung; Kim Suyŏng; Kim Tongni; kisaeng; Ko Ŭn; Korean National Writers’ Union; Life of Ch’unhyang; Life of Simch’ŏng; Nambugun; O Chŏnghŭi; O Yŏngsu; Ojŏk; Pak Wansŏ; Pak Yunmuk; p’ansori drama; sijo; Sin Tongyŏp; Sŏ Chŏngju; T’aebaek Sanmaek; Three T’ang Talents of Korea; Yi Hyesuk; Yi Injik; Yi Kiyŏng; Yi Kwangsu; Yi Sang; Yi Tal; Yŏm Sangsŏp Lo-lang (Nangnang) Commandery 15–16 MacArthur, Douglas 196 Manchukuo 152, 184, 186 Manchuria 14, 16, 21, 22, 55, 62, 121, 139, 141, 145, 147, 154, 186, 197 Koreans in 151, 156–159, 184–185, 189, 194, 196, 208, 242, 260 Man’gyŏngdae Schoolchildren’s Palace 236 Mao Tse-tung 196–197, 261, 304 March First Movement 143, 148, 149, 154–155, 157, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 170, 174, 178, 182, 184, 191, 211, 229, 272

324

Index

Marx/Marxism 162, 172, 182–183, 199, 219–221, 265, 276, 298, 303 Mass culture 4, 8, 136, 143, 210, 219, 220, 222, 241, 270 See also minjung movements Matteo Ricci 98 May Fourth Movement 154 Military affairs 28–29, 48, 59–60, 74, 75, 77 Ch’oe clan 29, 57 Military rule (Koryŏ) 54–58, 69 Military regimes in South Korea 189, 212–213, 216–218, 223, 225–226, 229–232, 247, 249, 252–254, 256, 258, 271, 272, 285, 286, 287, 295, 297, 301 June 1987 Declaration 231, 255 Military mutiny, 1882 121, 123 Min clan See Yŏhŭng Min clan Min Kŭngho 147 Min, Queen 115, 121, 123, 127 Murder of 128, 129 Min Yŏngwhan 145 Minjung movements 219, 231, 252, 253, 254–256, 284, 285, 286–287, 289 Minjung theology 273–274 Mongols in Korea 28–31, 44, 48, 58, 59, 69, 75, 78, 83, 115, 116 Movement to Establish a People’s University 160 Munjong, King 42, 66 Munmu, King 19, 22, 34, 40 Myoch’ŏng 45, 55

Movement; New Citizens’ Society; New Korea Youth Party; tonguhoe; united front movement Needham, Joseph, 69 Neo-Confucianism 2–3, 8, 29, 48, 53, 57, 58, 59–84 passim, 85–87, 90, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 106, 107, 108, 112, 118, 119, 125, 141, 168, 179, 219, 222, 274, 277 New Citizens’ Society (Sinminhoe) 142 New Korea Youth Party (SinHan ch’ŏngnyŏn tang) 157 New Village Movement See Saemaŭl undong North Korea (also DPRK) 4, 5, 183, 195, 197–211, 228, 231 dissidents in 189, 195 Economy 205–211, 222, 296–299, 300–301 ‘Military first’ policy 300, 305 Nuclear development 210, 301 Religious policy 260–268, 303–305 See also chuch’e ideology; Korean Communist Parties; reunification of Korea; sunshine policy North-South Korean trade 210–211

Na Hyesŏk 170–171 Naemul, King 16, 18 Nambugun (Southern Partisans) 252 Namgung Ŏk 132 National Code (Kyŏngguk taejŏn) 85 National Security Law 197, 224, 254, 271, 288, 305 Nationalism 4, 116, 124, 130, 139–142, 143, 147–148, 154–161, 167, 171, 175, 177, 186–187, 195, 196–197, 199, 214, 219–220, 227, 251, 254, 266, 273, 287, 304, 306 See also February Eighth Movement; hŭngŏp kurakbu; hŭngsadan; Korean National Association; Korean Provisional Government; March First

Paek Namun 162 Paekche 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 24, 36, 38–40, 46, 52, 56 Later Paekche 27 Paektu Mountain 10, 141, 303 Paik Nak-chung (Paek Nakch’ŏng) 252 Pak Chiwŏn 104, 109, 120 Pak Hŏnyŏng 189, 193, 194 Pak Hŭido 182 Pak Hyŏkŏse 18 Pak Indŏk 160, 172, 176 Pak Kyusu 120, 122 Pak Surhŭi 28 Pak Ŭnsik 132, 140–141, 157 Pak Wansŏ 257–258, 272 Pak Yŏnghyo 122–123, 129, 130, 146

O Chŏnghŭi 257 O Yŏngsu 251 Ojŏk (The Five Bandits) 254 Okchŏ 14, 15, 17 Old Chosŏn (also Kojosŏn) 12–14, 63 On Change 120, 122 Oriental Development Company 150

Index Pak Yunmuk 104–105 P’ansori drama 105–107, 254 Parhae (also P’o-hai) 21, 27 Paris Peace Conference 153–154, 157, 161, 182 Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏnghŭi) 3, 212–214, 217, 223, 225, 229, 237, 253, 258, 269, 272, 273, 275, 276, 290 Assassination of 226, 230, 254 ‘Park Chung Hee syndrome’ 287, 296 Park Geun-Hye 287 People’s Revolutionary Party 271–272 Piracy 26, 59 Pluralism 1, 55n10, 200, 268 P’o-hai (see Parhae) Policy for Korea 120 Prince Yŏnsan See Yŏnsan’gun Princess Pari 105–106 Print culture 80–81, 91, 102, 132 Japanese rule and 165–166, 170–171 Protestantism 131, 154–155, 164, 174, 176–181, 262, 263, 265–268, 271, 273, 283, 301–302 Women and 168–173, 176, 179 See also minjung theology; Urban Industrial Mission; YMCA; YWCA Puyŏ 14–17, 52 Puyŏ Yung 22 ‘Rectification of Names’ 3, 68, 87, 143, 220 Reform movements 219 Moderates 117, 118, 120, 131–132, 140–141 Radicals 117, 120, 122–123, 130, 131–132, 139–140 See also Enlightenment Party; enlightenment movements; Independence Club; Kabo reforms; Kapsin coup; Kwangmu reforms, sirhak movement; tonghak movement Republic of Korea (ROK) See South Korea Reunification of Korea 196, 197, 213, 228, 231, 243, 255, 270, 292, 305–306 Red Cross talks 267 Summit meeting 292, 297, 299, 300, 305 See also sunshine policy Revitalisation Constitution See Yusin constitution Rhee Syngman (Yi Sŭngman) 138, 156–157, 178, 183, 187, 189, 190, 191, 223, 249, 251

325 President of ROK 193, 196–197, 211–214, 224, 230, 269, 270, 273, 274 Resignation of 225, 227–228, 273 Righteous Armies (ŭibyŏng) 129, 130, 146–147 Roh Moo-hyun ( No Muhyŏn) 287, 299–302 See also sunshine policy Roh Tae-Woo (No T’aeu) 232, 285, 298 Royal consort families 110, 113–115 Russia (also Russian Federation, Soviet Russia, USSR) 5, 6, 120, 121, 123, 124, 129, 131, 133, 137, 139, 186, 206, 226, 261–262, 297 Koreans in 131, 157, 158, 159, 161–162, 186, 194, 196, 248 Role in Korea 188, 191–194, 197, 210, 235–237, 260, 298 Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 129, 141, 145, 178 Saemaŭl undong (New Village Movement) 214–215, 217 Science and technology Chosŏn and 65–66, 79–83, 84, 108, 109 Modern Korea and 144, 237–238 Sejo, King 64, 82, 91 Sejong, King 62, 64, 66, 79–82, 88, 91, 95 Seoul National University 228, 237 Seoul Youth League 162 Shamans/shamanism 1, 51, 52, 84, 133, 212 Chosŏn dynasty and 93–97, 106, 107 South Korea and 278–283 Shintō Shrine Edict 183–185 Shtykov, Terentii F. 193 sijo poetry 54, 71, 86, 101 Silla dynasty See United Silla Silla Kingdom 2, 15–18, 34, 36–40, 46, 47, 51–53, 56, 222, 304 See also hwarang Sim Saimdang 72 Sin Ch’aeho 141, 146, 157, 219 Sin Hŭm 97 Sin Ton 59, 70 Sin Tongyŏp 255, 257 Sin Yŏja (New Woman) 170 Sin’ganhoe See united front movement Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895 124, 126–128, 129, 145, 154

326 Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945 151, 158, 185, 186, 189, 190 Sirhak movement 82, 102, 104, 107–110, 112, 120, 122, 144 Slaves and slavery 17, 31, 38, 50, 53, 57, 60, 65, 89, 106, 108, 130 Abolition of government slaves 114 Abolition of private slaves 127, 128, 130 Sŏ Chaep’il 130, 131 Sŏ Chŏngju 256 Social-Darwinism 140–141, 177 Socialism 145, 159, 161–163, 165, 166, 181–183, 199, 219, 223, 246, 252, 255, 270, 296, 298 See also Communism; united front movement Son Pyŏnghŭi 154, 175 Sŏndŏk, King 26, 46 Sŏndŏk, Queen 47n4 Song Chinu 192, 224 Song Siyŏl 78 Song Sun 101 Sŏnggyun’gwan (See Confucian Academy) Sŏnggyun’gwan University 277 Sŏngjong, King 48, 49, 88, 95–97, 100 Songjukhoe (Pine and Bamboo Society) 169–170 Sŏnjo, King 70, 75 Sŏt’aesan (Pak Chungbin) 174, 275 South Korea (also ROK) 3, 4, 5, 121, 138, 181, 195 Dissidents in 189, 226, 232, 252–256, 271–272, 277–278, 284–286, 292, 305 Economy 211–218, 225, 257–258, 285, 286, 292–295, 296 Religious policy 268–283 Self-reliance policies 211–216 See also economic crisis; military regimes; reunification of Korea Soviet Civil Administration 194 Stalin 191, 194, 197, 208, 219, 235–236 Students 8, 162, 163, 181, 217, 241 Student activism 221, 227–232, 255, 257, 258, 273, 287 See also April Nineteen Movement; education; February Eighth Movement; Kwangju student movement Suh Dae-sook (Sŏ Taesuk) 197 Sukchong, King 47, 97 Sunjo, King 112, 113

Index Sunjong, King 146 Sunshine Policy 292, 296–302 Supreme Ultimate (tai-chi) 68–69, 71 T’aebaek Sanmaek (T’aebaek Mountains) 252 T’aejo, King of Koryŏ 28, 41 See also Wang Kŏn T’aejong, King of Chosŏn 64, 66 T’aejong Muyŏl, King 17, 18, 19 See also Kim Ch’unch’u Taejonggyo 173 TaeHan aeguk puinhoe (Great Korea Women’s Patriotic Society) 170 Taewŏn’gun (Yi Haŭng) 114–117, 119, 126 Kidnapped to China 121–122 Tan’gun 13, 33, 141, 205, 265, 267, 303–305 Taoism See Daoism Terauchi Masatake 147, 154, 178 Three T’ang Talents of Korea 101 T’oegye (Yi Hwang) 70–74, 86, 92–93, 95, 98, 101 Tolbi (shaman) 95–96 Tolstoy 1, 167 Tonga ilbo 157, 160, 165, 166, 173 Tonghak Movement 124–127, 130, 131, 139, 144, 147, 154, 173, 255 Women and 124, 127 See also Kabo peasants’ war Tongmyŏng 16, 47 Tongnip sinmun (Independence Newspaper) 132–134, 168, 177 Tonguhoe 156, 160, 166, 181, 187, 211 Trade Unions 246–247, 271–272, 288–289 Tripitaka Koreana (Koryŏ taejanggyŏng) 44 Trusteeship agreement (UN) 190–194, 266 Ugŏ, King 15 Ŭich’ŏn 42–43 Ŭisang 37 Ŭlchi Mundŏk 19 United front movement (Sin’ganhoe) 163, 172, 183, 199 United Silla dynasty 19–28, 31–35, 37, 39, 40, 47, 51, 52, 60, 81, 223 United States of America (also America, US) 6, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 130, 131, 137, 147, 186, 209, 231, 239, 264, 269 Koreans in 131, 156–157, 159, 160, 180, 181, 183, 189, 196

Index Role in Korea 188, 191–193, 210, 213, 224, 226, 236–237, 259, 266, 271–272, 285–287, 297, 299–301 Urban Industrial Mission 271–272 Urbanisation 4, 214, 215, 217, 233, 234, 240, 278, 282 Village Compacts (Hyangyak) 78, 93, 99, 222 Village Rosters (Hyangan) 78, 222 Wang Kŏn 27–28, 44, 45, 47 See also T’aejo, King of Koryŏ Wang Kyu 28 Wijŏng ch’ŏksa movement 139, 146 Wiman Chosŏn 13–15 Women 81, 85, 160, 166, 168–170, 187, 275 Education and 86, 160, 164–165, 166, 173, 179, 238, 239, 241–243, 246, 247, 249, 251 Literature and 104–106, 286 Nationalism and 130 Politics and 247–251 Remarriage of widows 89, 125, 128 Shamanism and 94–97, 281–283 Socialism/communism and 162, 171–173 Status of 51–54, 87–90 War and 257 Work and 153, 209, 217, 239, 241–243, 245–247, 258–259, 282, 286, 288–289 See also Chosŏn yŏsŏng tonguhoe; ‘comfort women’; Ewha Women’s University; family; gender; Hwang Chini; Hwang, Esther; Im Yŏngsin; Kang Kyŏngae; Kim Hwallan; Kim Maria; Kim Oksŏn; Kim Wŏnju; kisaeng; Korean Women’s Associations United; kŭnuhoe; liberal feminism; lineage laws and systems; Na Hyesŏk; Pak Indŏk; Pak Wansŏ; Princess Pari; Protestantism; songjukhoe; TaeHan aeguk puinhoe; Yu Kwansun; YWCA Wŏn’gwang’s Code of Five Principles 20 Wŏnhyo 38–39 Woodrow Wilson 155, 159, 182, 191 Yangban aristocracy 48, 55, 56, 59–61, 64, 65, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 84, 85, 88, 89, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 114, 115, 128, 131, 133, 139, 143, 166

327 Dissident yangban 124–127 The new yangban 217–218 Yi Hangno 111, 119, 220 Yi Haŭng See Taewŏn’gun Yi Hwang See T’oegye Yi Hyesuk 258–259 Yi I See Yulgok Yi Ik 98, 108–109, 219 Yi Injik 166 Yi Kiyŏng 167, 235 Yi Kwangsu 143, 155–157, 159, 165, 167, 187, 219 Yi Nŭnghwa 173 Yi Sang 166 Yi Sangjae 132 Yi Sangsŏl 146 Yi Sŏnggye 59, 60, 62–64, 70, 83, 95 Yi Sugwang 97 Yi Sŭnghun (1756–1801) 98 Yi Sŭnghun (1864–1930) 152, 177 Yi Sunsin 72, 76–77 Yi Tal 101–103 Yi Tonghwi 157, 159, 161, 163, 178, 182 Yi Wanyong 145, 146 Yim Louise See Im Yŏngsin Yin and Yang 44, 68, 72, 88, 168, 169, 244 YMCA 158, 160, 165, 178, 181, 182, 187 Yŏ Unhyŏng 157, 161, 182–183, 189, 190, 192, 193, 224 assassination of 193, 224 Yŏhŭng Min clan 115, 119, 121, 123, 126, 145 Yŏm Sangsŏp 166 Yŏngjo, King 65, 97, 100, 111–113 Yŏnsan’gun (Prince Yŏnsan) 95–96, 100 Youth Student Fraternity (Ch’ŏngnyŏn hakuhoe) 142 Yu Hyŏngwŏn 89, 108 Yu Kiljun 120, 128, 129, 140, 180 Observations on Travels in the West (Sŏyu Kyŏnmum) 128 Yu Kwansun 170, 176 Yüan Shih-k’ai 123, 129 Yulgok (Yi I) 70–73 Yun Ch’iho 130, 131, 136–138, 141, 142, 145, 146, 154, 160, 177–180, 187, 219 Yun Posŏn 225, 272 Yusin Constitution 3, 225–226, 237, 272 YWCA 171–172