Ch 13 - The Hermit Kingdom

New Challenges, New Beginnings

The emergence of semi-permanent political factions had a dramatic impact on the social and economic position of Choson's yangban, many of whom took advantage of the confused postwar situation to become quite wealthy. Private academies flourished under state patronage and became the conduit through which yangban passed along deep-seated factional animosities to new generations.

The two Japanese invasions not only depleted the wealth of the country and drained it of its best and worthiest blood, they also led to a breakdown of the traditional constitution of Choson society. The breakdown first appeared late in the sixteenth century when local court-appointed examiners began to enter the state examination system. Soon, the once rigidly controlled examination system gave way to open fraud and corruption and created a situation where lineage and patronage proved more vital than knowledge. The corruption of regional examinations led to a dramatic increase in the number of candidates flocking to Seoul for the national examinations. A large number of presumably well-qualified candidates started pursuing a limited number of available postwar government posts. The chase left the majority of the yangban empty-handed. Many men suddenly found themselves either temporarily or permanently out of office.

The factional strife that began in 1575 over a personal quarrel between Kim Hyo-won and Sim Ui-gyom over personnel appointments created two powerful factions:  Kim Hyo-won's Easterners, Tong-in, and Sim Ui-gyom's Westerners, So-in. The rivalry between these two groups intensified under Choson's postwar financial problems and led to significant changes in the nation's political life. First, although political factions frequently split over minor issues, they became semi-permanent groupings. Whenever a faction took power, it insisted on monopolizing control of the government. Second, the king, who occasionally decided between factions when contentions arose, frequently found himself at the mercy of the faction in power and gradually lost the power to make appointments to government office.

Factional disputes and the dominant influence of a single faction in power had serious effects on the social and economic position of the entire yangban class. Realizing that a term in office could easily lead to economic advantage, the competition for an appointment to a government office became intense. Unfortunately, the system of recruiting bureaucrats based on merit had long since deteriorated. Both civil and military service examinations had become little more than levers in the hands of powerful officials and the faction in power. Soon, men outside the ranks of a political faction found it virtually impossible to hold office. After the wars had forced all but a few yangban from office, many found it impossible to maintain themselves on the scale to which they had grown accustom.

It soon became a yangban's ultimate goal to reach a government protected position from which he could first take revenge upon his enemies and then seize their wealth. Cut off from the government as a source of income, many yangban dropouts from the struggle for power turned their attention to enlarging their estates and establishing local bases of power. In Seoul, large numbers of yangban went into business, while in the countryside, wealth became the sole criterion of status. Due to the destruction of the land and tax registers during the Imjin War however, the government found it nearly impossible to obtain accurate information on which way to move;  to either distribute land holdings or asses taxes.

Numerous yangban, both in and out of government service, as well as many members of collateral branches of the royal family took advantage of the confused postwar situation to become quite wealthy. They began expropriating land to which they held no legal right, often under the ruse of royal consent. After accumulating land deserted during the wars, many powerful local clans dramatically increased their private land holdings by reporting their new real estate gains under the category of newly opened tax-exempt lands. The gradual rise in the number of subordinate agents of the tribute-tax collector during this period provided yet another opportunity for building wealth - overtaxing the peasants. This practice, started in the prewar period, became so rampant that peasants often turned over their land to powerful yangban, who would then help them withdraw the property from government registration so that the yangban could collect the tax themselves. Faced with a pressing demand for land from special examination graduates on the one hand and a growing drain on the national treasury caused by the yangban practice of holding unregistered land, the central government, nearly paralyzed by factional disputes, could find no way to stop this land grab.

Another significant player in this postwar redistribution of private land holdings was the sowon, or private academy, which first appeared in the latter half of the 16th century. By establishing a shrine to a Confucian sage on his property, a yangban could secure royal patronage for his sowon in the form of books, land, grain, slaves, and cash. Large concentrations of these private academies emerged near the provincial government centers, particularly in Kyongsang Province where they were most numerous. These private academies proliferated and continued to flourish throughout the seventeenth century as state patronage shifted from regional schools to private academies. A combination shrine, private study and school, the sowon became the major educational institution of the period, the favored retreat for scholars out of favor at the royal court, and the meeting place for associates. There they could teach their clansmen, write poetry, and gossip with their compatriots, all the while intensifying their bitterness toward the dominant court faction. The sowon became the conduit through which the yangban passed along their deep-seated factional animosities to new generations of hopeful youth. The number of sowon quadrupled during the 17th century, creating a vast pool of academic estates that sheltered an increasing number of literati and students.

Choson's peasants, worn down by the continuous misrule and abuse of the yangban, also adopted new strategies to gain some measure of control over their own destinies. Beginning at the clan or village level, peasants formed voluntary mutual assistance associations, or kye . Unlike the Confucianist "village code" operated by yangban leadership to enforce moral prescriptions from the government, the kye came into being for the sole purpose of securing some tangible benefit for its participants. At first, most kye associations began as either a mutual aid group or simply as a social gathering. There were lineage kye for those born in the same year, wedding and funeral kye, and neighborhood kye. In time, the thrift association became the dominant form of kye, an organization formed to overcome economic hardships through the pooling of resources such as grain, money, textiles, etc.. The popularity and widespread use of the kye reflected the changing face of village life in Korea.

The massive disruption of Choson's economic and social order caused by the two Japanese invasions left the country's government confused and disoriented just as it faced a variety of challenging problems. Instead of moving to deal with and correct such major problems as the debilitating effects of lost farmland, Choson's bureaucracy fell victim to the hydra-headed inner scourge of political factionalism. The government degenerated into abject confusion as yangban bureaucrats persisted in ceaseless petty and crippling factional struggles that only intensified after the departure of the Japanese and Chinese armies. Factionalism effectively suppressed countless individuals with originality and vision, leaving the Choson government nearly incapable of repairing the destruction and suffering caused by two foreign invasions. For a long time factional self-seeking stifled much of the basic activity that could have created and sustained a move toward a durable tradition of self-rule.

Ancestor worship and the Confucian emphasis on filial piety strongly reinforced the intensity of factional struggles and the attitudes and values they represented. When factions lacked true ideological differences, personalities and kinship relations became matters of vital importance. Loyalty to abstract and often debatable political principles vanished, overridden by the strength of personal relations and the attendant loyalties to individuals. A forebear's fight became a matter of duty and failure to do battle indicated a lack of filial respect. Neo-Confucianism became the moral sanction for an atmosphere of self-righteous intolerance and vengeance in Choson that boiled with all the intensity and fervor of a holy war. The power of Korea's ruling class has always been a clan affair. Bounded on three sides by water and surrounded by far more powerful neighbors, Korea's geographic heritage has meant that any increase in clan or tribal power had to come at the expense of other clans. This fact lies at the heart of Korea's centuries-old domestic militancy, a characteristic that has sadly demonstrated a tireless inability to compromise even when faced with foreign invasion.

Throughout King Sonjo's reign various political factions split and multiplied at a bewildering rate. Ever greedy for power, factional disputes became all-or-nothing battles for supremacy, even to the point of homicide. Distinguished less by philosophical differences than by their relative positions of dominance in the Yi court, the major factions struggled for supremacy while the minor factions battled among themselves for survival. Without a national assembly or representative government, men took matters into their own hands. They enacted the "law" that the ultimate court of appeal lay in popular riot.