Ch 15 - A Crumbling Dynasty

The Coffin King

Crown Prince Changhon, the son of King Yongjo and Lady Sonhui, grew up without direct parental guidance. Frightened of his father and unable to reveal his emotions openly, the prince's violent, psychotic behavior terrified the palace and ultimately prompted Lady Sonhui to urge King Yongjo to execute her own son to protect the kingdom.

King Yongjo and his principle wife, Queen Chongsong, ruled Choson for twenty-six years without an heir. Ever since Crown Prince Hyojong's death in 1728, the palace of the crown prince, Chosung-jon Mansion, had remained vacant. The implications of the empty palace were a source of constant worry to the king and his wife. Queen Dowager O, wife of King Kyongjong, lived the remaining days of her life at Chosung-jon, but all the court ladies who used to serve her left the palace within three years of her death. Anxiety about the lack of an heir to the Phoenix Throne ended in February 1735, when Lady Sonhui, one of the fifty-six-year-old king's secondary wives, gave birth to a son. The infant Sado's physical appearance was "magnificent;  his disposition filial, friendly and clever." Queen Chongsong and Queen Dowager Inwon were overjoyed at the arrival of this beautiful child and news of his birth was received with great joy throughout the country.

King Yongjo rejoiced that the Chosung-jon would soon have a new master. In his eagerness to formally establish Sado as Crown Prince at the earliest opportunity, the king moved his three-month-old son from the royal residence at the Chippok-hon Side Apartment into the Chosung-jon Mansion, recalled Governess Choe and all the maids who ranked under her, and made them maids of the crown prince's palace. Governess Choe was a very straightlaced woman and loyal to the crown, but she possessed a jealous, ingratiating nature. Governess Han, a cunning and envious woman who was quite talented and clever with her hands. These women had formerly served the palace of King Kyongjong and Queen Dowager O and their loyalties to the former king and queen made it difficult for them to feel any sense of closeness or devotion to the welfare of the young crown prince.

Sado displayed a number of remarkable talents within his first one hundred days of life. He began to walk at four months. At six months, he could answer his father when called. At seven months he was able to point out the four cardinal directions. By the age of two, he had mastered about sixty Chinese characters. Sado was a loving child who was kind to his brothers and sisters and filled with affection for his parents. King Yongjo was overjoyed at the birth of his son and loved him intensely. He and Lady Sonhui visited Chosung-jon daily. The lower ranking palace maids, ignorant of where their first duty lay, despised Lady Sonhui and treated her as some poor and obscure citizen. Their disrespectful tone always made Lady Sonhui uncomfortable when visiting her son. Even King Yongjo found these women insolent, yet he neither punished them nor removed them from the palace fearing they would turn against his daughter, Princess Hwapyong, and his son-in-law, Prince Kumsong.

Crown Prince Sado began life imbued with all the potential to become a remarkable ruler in Choson, but that never happened. By the time Sado reached the age of four or five, the king became inexplicably aroused to anger over the most trivial incidents. Gradually, after a series of such outbreaks, the king began spending less and less time at the Chosung-jon Mansion, not so much because he no longer wished to see his son, but because he did not like to face the palace maids. King Yongjo's eagerness to establish Sado as the crown prince apparently prevented him from ever considering what it meant for an infant to be taken away from its parents. Even though he knew the character of the women surrounding his son, Yongjo let his child grow up in the huge mansion without the care of a respected elder.

At a time when Sado needed a strict hand and constant instruction, Governess Han took advantage of the king's infrequent visits to give free reign to Sado's growing desire to play. In the absence of direct parental guidance, the child grew undisciplined in an environment where everything was done for him. Worried that his parents might catch him playing with the children of the court maids, Sado soon developed a propensity for lying and deceit to protect himself from punishment. Over the years, Sado developed a growing fear of his father and the king began to suspect that his son might grow up contrary to his expectations.

King Yongjo was a clever and benevolent man, well-informed and quick to act. Young Sado however, was slow to react and hesitatant to speak his mind. Although he had a noble and virtuous mind, Sado could never manage a quick response to even the most ordinary question. Out of fear and deference he was particularly slow to answer his father. Sado always behaved cautiously in his father's presence and treated every audience with the king as a terribly fearful ordeal. This basic character difference between Sado and his father contributed to their developing estrangement. Time after time, Sado frustrated and disappointed his father, who finally became angry and deeply concerned about the boy's development. Sadly, Yongjo's growing resentment overpowered any affection he may have felt for his son. Instead of taking a personal interest in raising his own son however, the king always kept Sado at a distance, hoping the boy would somehow grow up all by himself in complete accordance with his wishes.

In January 1746, twelve-year-old Sado moved into the Kyongchun-jon Mansion after a long period of unexplained illness. His new home was much closer to his mother's residence and she visited him frequently. Sado studied earnestly for the next two years and his life, for a while at least, was free from major problems. In May 1747, after fire destroyed the long galleries of the Changdok Palace, Sado moved into the Chuphui-dang Hall, far removed from his mother and sister, the Princess Hwapyong. From that time on, the young prince saw very little of his family. Tradgedy struck in July 1748, when Princess Hwapyong died during childbirth. King Yongjo's grief over the loss of his daughter was so overwhelming it threatened to affect his health. The king and Lady Sonhui were so overcome by the loss that everything else was driven from their minds, including the welfare of their young son, Prince Sado.

For some inexplicable reason, King Yongjo never took the time to instruct his son and never sat down with him when they were alone. He continued to ignore him and left him to do just as he pleased. Once, when the king was ill, a great gathering came to visit him, including the Queen Dowager Inwon and all the princesses and both royal sons-in-law. King Yongjo ordered the court maids to drag out all the crown prince's toys and put them on display for everyone to see, embarrassing his own son in the presence of his guests. While she lived, Princess Hwapyong used to side with her brother, scolding the king for his treatment of young Sado. After her untimely death, there was no one to intervene when the king became excessively severe with Sado or showed a lack of affection towards him. As an adolescent, Sado saw less and less of his parents and abandoned himself to all manner of amusements until there was little he had not tried.

The fifteen-year-old Sado celebrated his coming-of-age ceremony as Crown Prince Changhon on March 10, 1749. Just five days later, he began married life with Lady Hong, the daughter of Council president, Hong Pong-han. Almost immediately, the Crown Prince began to represent his father at a number of state functions. Yongjo claimed the reason for ordering Prince Changhon to represent him was that ever since his daughter's death in 1748, he was sick with grief and often in need of rest. In truth, the king preferred to send his son to those functions he would rather avoid or those he could never entrust to the eunuchs. The king repeatedly invited Crown Prince Changhon to official government meetings and publicly questioned him about the proceedings. The questioning was unkind and concentrated on subjects to which Sado could give no clear answer. Already in great fear of his father, Sado became panic-stricken and tongue-tied. Yongjo quickly scolded him in the presence of the others, as if he were intent on maligning his own son.

Crown Prince Changhon often represented his father at state council meetings, which were always a source of friction between them. The king never really understood his son and always reacted with displeasure at his words and actions. If Prince Changhon could not make a decision on a memorial to the throne and deferred to his father, he was reprimanded for his inability to make a decision. If he did not report it, he was scolded for deciding an issue without telling the king. What was worse, if the people were suffering from cold and hunger, or if there was some natural calamity such as a drought, Yongjo laid the blame on his son. It got so bad that even the passage of a thunderstorm would send Prince Changhon into a panic, fearing the king would blame him for its arrival.

The crown prince, who had always been devoted to his parents, never managed to reveal his emotions openly. Prince Changhon's behavior became more and more erratic over the years. He became terrified of everything around him, suffered from delusions, and gradually became psychotic. He interpreted the malicious rumors and reports to the king about his every action as a stinging personal rebuke. In time, his pent-up hostility could no longer be contained and he vented his anger on anyone around him. The deaths of Queen Chongsong and Dowager Queen Inwon seemed to push him over the edge. In his derangement, he took to beating court eunuchs and started to kill people at random to appease his anger. A great many court maids fell victim to his wrath and the people around him became terrified.

As Prince Changhon's mental illness became more pronounced, it took less and less to trigger his violent temper until he felt he could no longer remain in the same palace with the king. He was so overwrought at his twenty-sixth birthday that he could not force himself to speak with respect to his parents;  instead, from that day on he began to abuse them. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he took to wearing disguises and wandering about Seoul incognito. Overcome by sudden psychotic episodes, Prince Changhon began killing people almost at random;  fortune tellers died if they foretold something unlucky. Royal physicians, translators and court workmen died at his hands. People inside and outside the court lived in almost constant fear, never knowing who would be his next victim.

Early in the summer of 1762, toward the end of King Yongjo's long reign, the latent quarrelsome nature of Choson's ruling class came to a boil over a particularly vicious intrigue that developed in the royal court over the alleged activities of Prince Changhon. Members of the ruling Noron faction felt increasingly threatened by a belief that, as king, Changhon might rob them of their positions of power. A group of Noron ministers drafted a memorial to King Yongjo that detailed Changhon's misconduct. The document accused Prince Changhon of clubbing one of his concubines to death;  violating court regulations by bringing a nun into the court and cohabiting with her;  visiting Pyongyang, the chief amusement center, in disguise;  and frequenting female shamans in a village beyond Seoul's North Gate. Na Kyong-on, Steward of the Minister of the Board of Punishment, delivered the scathing memorial to the king on June 14. Upon learning the contents of the document, two of the king's ministers immediately called for Na Kyong-on's death for his disloyalty.

Not long after the ministers delivered their memorial, Prince Changhon seized Na Kyong-on's brother, a member of the Palace Guard, and tortured him unsuccessfully to learn who persuaded his brother to report to the king. The Crown Prince, who already harbored a deeply-rooted hatred for State Council president Sin Man, became convinced that Sin Man bore responsibility for making false charges against him to the king. Changhon threatened to seize president Sin Man's son, Prince Yongsong, and kill him for his father's deceit. The fear of Crown Prince Changhon's obsession with killing Prince Yongsong permeated the royal court to such a degree that many believed Yongsong's death was imminent.

On July 2-3, 1762, rumors swept through the court about an incident where Crown Prince Changhon had made a vain attempt to climb into the upper palace to attack Prince Yongsong. The rumors completely exaggerated the facts. Lady Sonhui understood that Changhon was totally unaware of what he was doing, but his actions had reached such an extreme and intolerable level she realized she could no longer rely on him. She lived in constant fear that he might become involved in some unimaginable disaster. It was her lifelong torment that his condition sprang from the king's lack of favor and that her husband was never able to overcome his prejudice towards him. Only her boundless love for her only son prevented Lady Sonhui from blaming the Crown Prince for all the turmoil.

Lady Sonhui's fears about the future of the four-hundred-year-old Yi dynasty led her to a momentous decision:  she had to protect the king, even though it meant giving up her only son. On July 4, 1762, Lady Sonhui wrote the following note to Prince Changhon's wife, Lady Hong:

"Since the rumors about what happened last night were so much more serious than anything I have heard before, I felt I would rather have been dead than have heard them. If I must live, it is only right for me to protect the kingdom and save the royal grandson, although I do not think I shall be able to face you again for the rest of my life."

On the morning of July 4, Lady Sonhui approached her husband in tears, just as he was about to sit on the throne in the Kwangwang-chong Hall at Kyonghyon-dang Mansion, .

"Since the prince's illness has become quite critical and his case is hopeless, it is only proper that you should protect yourself and the royal grandson, in order to keep the kingdom at peace. I request that you eliminate the prince, even though such a suggestion is outrageous and a sin against humanity. ...

"It would be terrible for a father to do this in view of the bond of affection between father and son;  but it is his illness which is to be blamed for this disaster, and not the prince himself. Though you eliminate him, please exert your benevolence to save the royal grandson, and allow him and his mother to live in peace."

It was not because she wished to save Prince Yongsong's life, the blood-relative of three royal ancestors, that Lady Sonhui advised King Yongjo to put Prince Changhon to death, but because she saw no other way to protect the kingdom.

Without a second thought, King Yongjo immediately proceeded to Changdok Palace, which he entered through the Kyonghwa Gate, an indication that something unpleasant was about to happen. Prince Changhon was terrified at the news of his father's arrival and ordered his horses and weapons hidden at once. Lady Hong met with her husband at the Toksong-hap Audience Chamber around noon, when suddenly a large flock of cawing magpies began circling the Kyongchun-jon Mansion;  a fearful omen. When the king's procession finally arrived at the Hwinyong-jon Shrine at about three o'clock in the afternoon, he ordered the crown prince to present himself. Convinced he was going to be killed, Prince Changhon hurried to the shrine to face his father, who was calmly seated with a sword in his hand, tapping the floor with the steel blade. The king had made the decision to kill the prince and no amount of pleading from Sado could alter the inevitability of events.

At about four o'clock that afternoon, a group of court eunuchs returned from the kitchen outside the Taejo-jon Mansion with a large rice chest. Despite his courage and physical strength, the prince offered no resistance when he was forced into the pine box. The lid was nailed shut and the rice chest bearing the terrified prince, was buried deep beneath the grass. Lady Hong was demoted to commoner status and removed from the palace. King Yongjo returned to the upper palace on July 6. That was the end of it . Thunderstorms and heavy rain swept across Seoul on the afternoon of July 11, when it was formally announced that Crown Prince Changhon was dead. Lady Hong finally learned the fate of her husband that night.

Although hesitant to do so, King Yongjo posthumously reinstated Sado as the crown prince to allow the court ministers to properly prepare the funeral, which took place on September 10,1762. That same month, Lady Hong's twelve-year-old son was formally installed as Crown Prince. In 1776, with the aid of Chief Royal Secretary Hong Kug-yong, a close relative, Prince Changhon's second son took the Phoenix Throne bearing the title King Chongjo, 22nd king of the Yi Dynasty. As soon as King Chongjo took the throne, he exacted a vengeful purge on all those responsible for his father's death or even opposed his accession. He honored his father as if he had in fact been a reigning monarch by conferring upon him the posthumous title, Changjo. To this day, Crown Prince Changhon is referred to as Choson's "Coffin King."