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Following the breakdown of the system of government appointments, many Neo-Confucian literati turned their energies to educating younger generations in private academies, sowon. Sowon graduates solidly committed to one faction or another brought about conflict known as "factional strife." Inter-factional battles among officials in the central government and among Neo-Confucian literati throughout Korea developed into naked power struggles.
King Chungjong died in 1545, at the age of fifty-six. Long before his death, yangban officials in Seoul formed factions around each of his four potential heirs, all men from the same leading aristocratic P'ap'yong Yun clan. Chungjong's eldest son, born of Queen Changgyong, ascended the throne as King Injong. The king's younger brother, Yun Im, a proponent of Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism, soon became a powerful government figure. To the Merit Subjects, King Injong represented a return to power of men identified with Cho Kwang-jo and the rural literati. Injong held the throne for only eight months and died under mysterious circumstances.
King Chungjong's second wife, the strong-willed Queen Insun, carefully brought her eleven-year-old son, Prince Hwan, to the throne as King Myongjong. Acting as the boy's regent, she wielded the power of the throne. The queen's younger brother, Yun Won-hyong, and his faction of yangban supporters took the opportunity to press for the complete elimination of the rural literati, even going to the extent of using the authority of the Office of the Censor-General to impeach Yun Im.
No longer did combatants make the pretense that any particular party was motivated by an idealistic desire for reform or by a disagreement over the interpretation of Confucian principles. With the elimination of Cho Kwang-jo and his young idealists, inter-factional battles developed into naked power struggles and everyone knew it. Scores of people were executed and hundreds were either dismissed from government office or exiled. The entire system of appointment to government service broke down under King Myongjong. No matter how great his ability, no matter how noble his intentions, no yangban official could hope to hold even a minor government post unless he could gain the support of one faction or another. Although Confucian scholarship still mattered in gaining an appointment, it was no longer sufficient to gain or hold power. This struggle turned into yet another purge, a debilitating conflict that continued for several years. The yangban involvement in the purge of 1545 had a significant impact on the Yi government and Choson politics. Rivers of blood washed away a bright era of intellectual activity and creativity, and the divisions it created in Yi society lasted as long as the dynasty itself.
Though the circumstances surrounding each of the literati purges differed, they occurred for the same underlying reason. In each case, a purge climaxed the sustained conflict between the censoring bodies and the more highly constituted authority of the government and the palace. In practice, the royal house and the aristocratic bureaucracy lived a delicate balancing act. Each purge represented a severe but temporary reversal of a trend by the Samsa to win a paramount voice in the councils of government. In each instance, any government official linked to efforts to enlarge the policy role of the Samsa became a target for charges of factionalism and clique forming.
The four dramatic events known as the Literati Purges, sahwa - 1498, 1504, 1519, and 1545 - represented violent attempts to either arrest the growing power of the Samsa or to prevent the manipulation of the Samsa for power-seeking ends. The political balance of power in Choson tended to swing between near absolute tyranny at one extreme and mob rule at the other, where the king was reduced to little more than a figurehead. The Literati Purges represented a distinctive example of the general phenomenon of political factionalism in the early Yi dynasty.
Although the Neo-Confucian literati suffered repeated severe blows in each of the literati purges, their power continued to grow. It grew because of the solid base of support they held in the countryside and their relationship to it. The rural literati's political life was deeply enmeshed in the fabric of Seoul, but their livelihood did not depend solely on government service. They never really severed their ties with their homes or their kinsmen who also lived on the land, and their vast agricultural landholdings sustained them. These young yangban bureaucrats, with the aid of their clans, controlled the administration of the village code, a mechanism that placed them in a stronger position with respect to the peasantry than that held by local officials appointed by the central government. Their great land estates provided both the land and the financial support needed to establish numerous private academies, or sowon; local schools dedicated purely to Confucian education.
Chu Se-bung founded the first of these private Confucian academies in 1543 in Kyongsang Province. Administered by local officials, the sowon were divided into two categories: name-grant academies that received about seven acres of land, slaves and books from the government, and privately endowed academies maintained by private donations of land, slaves, grain, and money. In the wake of the Literati Purges, many Neo-Confucian literati abandoned all thought of careers in government. Instead, they devoted their energies more than ever to the sowon, focusing on scholarly inquiry and the education of the younger generations. These learned men took great interest in speculative and theoretical studies rather than practical scholarship. They found Neo-Confucianism most appealing to their intellectual tastes.
The sowon were founded ostensibly to educate local yangban youth to compete with local government schools. For the next century these schools played an illustrious role in the propagation of Neo-Confucianism and reshaped and advanced the education of Choson's yangban. By the time of King Sonjo's reign, well over one hundred of these academies operated in the southern provinces. They provided the literati an instrument through which they could lay the foundation for their revival and later pave the way for their return to power. The Neo-Confucian rural literati fashioned their survival within the context of these social and economic conditions.
The resurgence of the Neo-Confucian literati along with peace, population growth and the expanded examination quotas, combined to produce a marked increase in the number of yangban eligible for public office. The total number of government positions available however, remained nearly fixed and changed very little over time. With the increased competition for government posts, employment in the sowon became the only alternative for yangban unable to get an appointment to government service. Confrontation and conflict inevitably resulted from the clash between the yangban's rising expectations and the limited number of official posts available. It came in a form known in Korean history as "factional strife."
The last of the literati purges did not erase the deep animosities between the conservative old guard and the rural literati. Within seven years after King Sonjo ascended the Phoenix Throne in 1567, the power struggle between these two power blocks erupted into a heated factional dispute over the issue of a single government appointment in the Ministry of Personnel. Although the posts involved were only mid-level positions well below ministerial rank, the men holding them had major responsibilities in recommending and choosing candidates for appointment to other vital government offices. Anyone hoping to climb the bureaucratic ladder in that department had to start in one of these lesser posts. For an ambitious young yangban bureaucrat, getting a post in the Board of Personnel was a matter of critical concern.
Senior Third Rank Minister of Personnel Sim Ui-gyom, the brother-in-law of former King Myongjong, had become the spokesman for both the conservative old guard and the traditional yangban Neo-Confucian scholars. Kim Hyo-won, a young yangban survivor of the purge of 1545 and leader of the young and progressive elements of the rural literati, was recommended for a position in the Board of Personnel. As soon as the recommendation had been made, Sim Ui-gyom accused Kim of sycophancy and openly opposed his appointment. Despite this opposition, Kim Hyo-won was granted the posting.
By custom, the incumbent office-holder recommended his own successor. Because the Board of Personnel wielded such power, not even the Minister of Personnel himself was permitted to get involved in the appointment process. When the time came for Kim Hyo-won to step down, Sim Ui-gyom's younger brother was suggested as his replacement. This time the tables had turned and Kim exacted a small measure of revenge by refusing to recommend Minister Sim's brother to the post. The clash between Kim Hyo-won and Sim Ui-gyom quickly spread beyond the offices of the Board of Personnel. Both men soon realized that the political tactics of personal accusation, innuendo and plots that had served their predecessors so well had become ineffective. This helped to orchestrate the organization of "political parties," or factions of like-minded individuals. Upper class yangban soon began siding with one or the other of these two protagonists, each group regarding the other with hostility and contempt.
Factional strife began in earnest in 1575, when the personal quarrel between Kim Hyo-won and Sim Ui-gyom moved outside the court to large-scale public campaigns. Kim Hyo-won's faction was known as the Easterners, Tong-in, because he lived in the eastern part of Seoul. Since Sim Ui-gyom lived in the western end of the capital, his faction was known as the Westerners, So-in. The fact these two groups came into being as a consequence of an incident centering on the government office having authority over personnel appointments says much about the nature of factional strife in the Yi dynasty.
The sowon played an important role in the sustenance and growth of factionalism and became the training ground for the factional struggles underway in Seoul. Because of the Confucian-ordained hierarchy, no student could oppose a teacher's views, regardless of how erroneous they might be. This effectively stifled and restrained individual initiative and freedom of action just as blood relationships kept sons from challenging their fathers. Factional strife in Choson took place between political cliques in which membership was essentially foreordained and forever. The yangban youth who studied together in the same school formed a comradery that created not only the bond of a shared experience, but a solidarity of purpose. In effect, each of the sowon became a factional power base and a training ground for partisan dissidence.
In their attitudes and actions, sowon graduates carried with them not only their Confucian education, but a commitment to one faction or another, a solidarity on factional issues they would later face as government officials, a solidarity that transcended all question of right or wrong. A striking aspect of these factional battles is the contrast between the depth of the factional divisions and the shallowness of the issues under contention. No single incident, no single victory, no single defeat could end factional strife of this nature. Removing a faction from power in Seoul did not destroy it. The victim's descendants merely bided their time in the stronghold of their country estates until they could once again rise to office in the capital and vindictively exonerate their ancestors. As a result, factional strife produced conflict not just among officials in the central government, but also among Neo-Confucian literati throughout Korea, a phenomenon that lasted for three hundred years.
