Ch 7 - The Death of Koryo

New Philosophies

The Mongols put vast areas of the peninsula under the direct control of three military districts and through their divisive policy of forcing Koryo kings to marry Mongol princesses made Koryo literally a "son-in-law" nation. Neo-Confucianism, the Chinese synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, greatly encouraged Confucian studies in Koryo and led to the emergence of a new class of scholar-bureaucrats who caused profound changes in the political scene.

After forcefully uniting the Asian continent, the Mongols found themselves in the troublesome position of governing populations with whom they had virtually nothing in common. Representing a very small minority of the vast population and with no real aptitude for running a peace-time government, they consolidated their power locally by copying and adopting indigenous governing institutions. The Mongols not only had to associate with their subjects, but were obliged to employ the very people they had conquered. Mongols found it easy to accept the customs of the people, but they had little trust in the people themselves. Though they adopted many native Chinese institutions, the Mongols never completely lost their inherent distrust of former Chinese government officials.

Ideologically and culturally the Mongols resisted assimilation and legally tried to stay isolated from the Chinese. This deep-seated distrust prompted the Mongols to establish a three-tiered classification system for their subjects, not along strictly racial lines, but according to the date at which they were incorporated into the Yuan empire. The Mongols created and enforced a system of strict social barriers that defined everyone's status in Yuan society and forcibly ensured that people always remained in their place. Mongols occupied the first tier. The Chinese, or those who had adopted the Chinese culture came next. The various groups who were neither Mongol nor Chinese and who had not adopted Chinese culture occupied the third tier. This system provided the basis for administrative, judicial, and fiscal office appointments, and its application created numerous cases of discrimination within the Yuan Empire.

Only Mongols held key governing and command posts, offices they inherited on a hereditary basis. Although a few foreigners occupied governorships, most of the civil governors in administrative districts were Mongol. The Yuan administration entrusted its finances to competent mathematicians from the Islamic regions of central Asia and the Middle East. With the assistance of Mongol military detachments, these Moslem merchants nearly achieved a monopoly in the profitable pursuit of collecting taxes.

The Mongols seized power in China during a period of full economic expansion. While they were quick to exploit the wealth of conquered lands, they took particular care not to touch the large private estates of the landowners. In their attempt to win the sympathy, or at least the neutrality of the property-owning classes, the Mongols were very reluctant to alter the social order of a conquered region. Ironically, the greatest hatred and anger against the Mongols came from the very social order they were unwilling to change;  the heavily burdened and exploited peasants and lower classes.

Kublai Khan's two major Japanese offensives proved very costly financially and to pay for them, he made one of the most critical mistakes a government could make;  he over-taxed the people. The increased tax burden and widespread inflation generated by the government printing a great deal of paper currency caused a great deal of peasant suffering and hardship. The Mongols' inept management and the rampant inflation caused by widespread speculation only widened the gap between rich and poor in China and Koryo. Economic problems made Kublai Khan less tolerant and increasingly distrustful of merchants and in the late 1270's he began to issue legislation to keep them under tighter control. The Mongols' indigenous hatred of foreigners, harsh exploitation and clumsy authoritarian rule combined with the corruption of state and local officials and the privileges enjoyed by the wealthy to trigger rebellions in both China and Koryo from about 1300 onwards.

From its earliest years, the Koryo government displayed a great concern for the creation of libraries to house the collected works of great writers and historians. Two quite remarkable histories emerged from Koryo during King Chungnyol's reign:  Samguk-yusa, "Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms," written by the Buddhist monk Iryon, and Yi Sung-hyu's Che-wang un'gi, "Songs of the Emperors." They are unique because they both begin with the founding legend of Tan'gun. Koryo's suffering under the Mongols strengthened the people's sense of identity as a distinct race and bolstered the concept of their descent from a common ancestor.

Koryo's concern for the written word not only led to the acquisition and preservation of books, but to their reproduction. The spread of Buddhism and Confucianism, two philosophies that depended heavily on written records, stimulated the development of printing in Koryo. In 1234, artisans created and used a cast metal type, probably made of copper, in history's earliest known example of printing with movable metal type. The small number of educated upper-class people in Koryo, people who considered books to be essential, kept the normal run of an edition small. The interest in printed texts became great enough however, that the Song government occasionally sent people to Koryo to secure works unavailable in China. The growing importance of printed texts prompted the Koryo government to establish a National Office for Book Publication and charge it with casting metal type and printing books. It would be another 220 years before Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, would develop such an innovation for printing.

The great Chinese Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose work and influence might be compared to that of Saint Thomas Aquinas in medieval Europe, produced numerous historical works and commentaries on the Confucian classics. After passing the top government civil service examination at age 18, half the average age of other candidates, he became a staunch critic of government corruption. Known as one of China's greatest thinkers, Zhu Xi completed commentaries on several classic Confucian texts in 1177 and soon afterward reopened the Confucian White Deer Grotto Academy, which became the foremost center for Confucian studies in East Asia.

The introduction of Buddhism into China around the 1st century, an event comparable to the spread of Christianity in the West, stimulated Chinese philosophers. It led them to interpret Buddhist teachings in the light of their own Confucian and Daoist philosophies. Influenced by their familiar pragmatic Confucian beliefs, they responded creatively to the more practical aspects of Buddhism's spiritual discipline. Traditional Chinese scholars however, both Confucian and Daoist, saw Buddhism as a direct challenge to their cultural foundation. They reexamined their own philosophies and worked out a way to integrate Buddhism into a new Chinese culture. The success of this endeavor equipped the Chinese with a "both-and" mentality that tended to integrate religious diversity with far less difficulty than the "either-or" mentality of the Western world.

The Chinese synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism culminated in Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian philosophy, which combined the simple, practical and ethical concepts of Confucius with a metaphysical backing that amounted almost to a religion. It guides people to learn the truth (Tao) in order to solve problems, which leads in turn to a harmony with Dao, or truth (unification), the core of Confucianism and Daoism. Zhu Xi's great achievement, Neo-Confucianism, sharpened and revitalized Confucian thought and gave it clear and definite aims and ideals. He literally made Confucianism a systematized philosophy of government, a philosophy that spread throughout China and became orthodox doctrine virtually everywhere. Zhu Xi never rose from his lowly position in China's bureaucratic hierarchy and died in disgrace, yet his reformed Confucianism became the dominant creed of China and had a particularly strong impact in Koryo.

Confucius believed that good government existed when its greatest goal was the people's whole welfare. This goal could only be reached when the ablest men ran the government and talented men from all classes had open access to government administration. Governing ability derived from character and knowledge, which in turn were developed only by an education system open to anyone qualified to absorb it. The Confucian ruler must be held accountable for his trusteeship in high office. If he misruled, if the lives of his subjects turned wretched, if he ignored or even violated the principles of nature, then his reign, by definition, lacked authority. As the Chinese put it, he had forfeited the "Mandate of Heaven" and had to go. People had not only the right, but almost a moral obligation to overthrow such a man.

Confucius placed great emphasis on the teaching of propriety. In the broadest sense, propriety meant the conduct of a man superior in intellect and character, superior in his sense of responsibility and obligation to duty, superior in his feeling for accepted ceremony and manners, and finally, superior in his knowledge of the central problem of how to govern men. If people were well governed as Confucius believed, they would be happy, the state would be secure, and society would flourish. To this day, Confucian philosophy remains a tacit underpinning of political thought in Asia.

Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian writings greatly encouraged Confucian studies in Koryo. Under King Chungnyol, Confucianism acquired a greater intellectual and emotional force than it had ever known before. In Kaesong, the government rebuilt the National Academy, destroyed during earlier Mongol invasions, to teach the new doctrine and constructed a National Shrine to Confucius. A well-endowed foundation provided scholarships for students and helped turn scholarly attention toward the substantive study of the Chinese classics and histories.

King Chungnyol's son developed many contacts with eminent Chinese scholars while he lived in Khanbalik and became an enthusiastic Neo-Confucian. When the crown prince returned to Kaesong to take the Koryo throne as King Chungson, he brought along a personal library of some 4,000 books. His personal library helped lift Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism to the point where it came to dominate the thinking of Koryo's bureaucrats. They saw the ideal, changeless, hierarchical society envisioned by Confucius as ordained by the very nature of reality, a society headed by a monarchy and governed by a bureaucracy. The adherents of Neo-Confucianism considered innovations in government and violations of the relationships set down by Confucius to be not only foolish and impractical, but sinful.

Following the disintegration of the Choe clan's militaristic regime, a new bureaucratic class of literati emerged in Koryo, men who found Neo-Confucianism to be particularly attractive. These scholar-bureaucrats reached their position not by protected hereditary appointment from aristocratic families, but on the basis of their scholarly achievement in the rigorous examination system. They were educated, knowledgeable men, highly competent administrators of government affairs. They came not only from the central government's clerical force, but from the ranks of petty officials, or ajuns, in provincial government administrations. The majority of them were either small-scale agricultural estate owners or independent farmers who built their estates by living on and working the land themselves or with the help of tenant and slave labor. Men of personal integrity and honesty, they despised the wealthy and powerful families who illegally accumulated huge estates using political muscle, usually in cooperation with the Mongols.

The Eastern Expedition Field Headquarters, established in 1280 to direct Kublai Khan's second invasion of Japan, still held power in Koryo. Outwardly, the Mongols used the headquarters offices as a conduit for maintaining liaison between Koryo and the Yuan court. Behind the scenes however, the Mongol-dominated office became an opportune device for interference in Koryo's internal politics. The office directly supervised the Koryo civil service examinations and increasingly involved itself in internal administrative matters. Koryo officialdom stubbornly opposed every such attempt by the Yuan Mongols to dictate policy and increased its internal resistance to their rule.

Faced with stiffening opposition in Koryo, the Mongols expanded their dominion by placing vast areas of the peninsula under the direct control of three military districts. The Ssangsong Commandery, located in Hamgyong Province at modern Yonghung, controlled the territory north of the Ch'ol-lyong Pass. The Tongnyong Commandery at Pyongyang in Pyongan Province administered the area north of the Chabiryong Pass. Finally, the T'amna Commandery directed the Mongol's vast livestock breeding operations established on Cheju Island off the southwest tip of Korea.

At the end of the thirteenth century, the ruling courts in Khanbalik and Kaesong were so closely linked that Koryo found its future inextricably tied to that of the Yuan Empire. The divisive policy of forcing Koryo kings to marry Mongol princesses did more than merely serve the Mongol purpose of keeping Koryo kings weak, it made Koryo literally a "son-in-law" nation. In order to strengthen his royal authority, King Wonjong petitioned Kublai Khan for his son, later to become King Chungnyol, to marry a Yuan princess. Under his own policy of reconciliation, Kublai Khan consented to the request and offered one of his own daughters to the Koryo crown prince.

The serious issues that arose from this system of imposed royal marriages and vassal tribute created deep and bitter dissension within Kaesong's royal court. When King Chungnyol's Mongol queen died in 1297, the Crown Prince rushed to Kaesong from his Khanbalik residence in a fury. He blamed the women and eunuchs of the royal court for his mother's death and ordered large numbers of them executed. When the Crown Prince took the throne as King Chungson following his father's early departure, he immediately turned out most of the officials appointed by his father and tried to strip the power of the eunuchs and the court aristocracy.

The women of the Kaesong court soon embroiled King Chungson in yet another problem. Chungson's Mongol queen became intensely jealous of Lady Cho, one of his concubines. In an act of vengeance, the queen sent a slanderous report about Lady Cho's affairs to Emperor Wu Tsung's Yuan court in Khanbalik. The emperor took the issue seriously enough to order both King Chungson and his queen to Khanbalik where he went into the matter more in depth. Taking advantage of the opportunity to eliminate an independent-minded ruler in Koryo, the Yuan emperor removed Chungson from the throne, appointed him King of Shenyang, and reinstated his father, King Chungnyol, on the throne. Chungnyol died less than a year later. Chungson returned to the royal throne in Kaesong in 1309, relinquishing the Mongol kingdom of Shenyang to his nephew, Wang Ko.

King Chungson made a few spasmodic attempts during his reign to regain fiscal sanity through desperately needed land reform and policy changes. For example, Chungson enlisted the help of young scholar-officials to attempt to correct the abusive behavior of Koryo's powerful families backed by the power of the Yuan dynasty. He tried to stop land transfers into private hands and regain some of the royal court's authority. His marginal success at reforming the kingdom eventually came to nothing however, because the landowners he tried to check had strong Mongol support.

Koryo's financial problems were so bad that at one point a Mongol official actually attempted to instill some sense and efficiency into the chaotic economy, though no doubt with different motives from those of Koryo's reformers. He quickly discovered he could not muster sufficient power to overcome that of the aristocrats and their Mongol backers. Unless the Mongol capacity for intervening in Koryo's internal affairs could be weakened, no manner of reform would ever succeed. Either in frustration or because of his preference for scholarly pursuits over government problems, King Chungson abdicated the throne after only five years and returned to Khanbalik for a life of study. His son, the Crown Prince Kangnung, took the Koryo throne as King Chungsuk.

The emergence of a literati class among Koryo's rural landowners caused a profound change in the political scene. The literati, who saw government positions awarded solely on the basis of wealth and social position, felt that for the good of the nation, leading government offices ought to be filled by those best qualified. Private individuals owned much of the land properly belonging to the state. Above all, Buddhism dominated the state, a religion which in many ways ran contrary to Confucian principles of social relations. Koryo's scholar-bureaucrats saw violations of Confucian principles at every turn, not just in government, but in society at large. Unable to find fulfillment either in Buddhism or in Confucianism alone, the scholar-officials of later Koryo turned to Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism as their spiritual mainstay.

The intolerant doctrine of Neo-Confucianism expounded a political ethic that stressed the mutual relationship of ruler and subject and its philosophy quickly rejected all other teachings. The adoption of Neo-Confucianism tended to undercut Buddhism, which the literati attacked by condemning the misconduct of monks, the practices of the monasteries, and the great expense incurred by the state for Buddhist festivals. In time, inspired by a reformist zeal, the literati shifted their emphasis to a blanket condemnation of Buddhism. Koryo's new Confucian scholars disagreed with the idea that one should denounce one's family ties to become a monk because the very basis of Confucian philosophy was founded on strong family and social relationships. Normally, Buddhist and Confucian creeds coexisted with little conflict and had this new movement appeared in more stable and prosperous times, it might have led to little more than minor government reforms with perhaps a few restrictions on Buddhism, but these were troubled times.