http://www.koreaaward.com/korea/history_EarlyJoseonPeriod_03.htm


Resurgence of Neo-Confucian Rule

The ninth King of Joseon Dynasty, Seongjong (r.1469-1494) ascended to
the throne as a child and ruled under the regency of the dowager queen
and minister-consultants. The anti-Sejo literati used the institution
of the royal lecture to try to abolish Buddhist rituals and other
anomalies in the life of the court, and the unfortunate child was
subject to a rigorous schedule of two to four royal lectures per day.
The Office of Study Promotion was expanded to serve as a censorate in
addition to providing royal lecturers. Heavy Confucian indoctrination
was the order of the day, and state support of Buddhism gradually
diminished. During King Seongjong's reign, officials' rights to
collect tax and rent from official land as personal income began to
wane.

Young scholars were treated well and given opportunities at the newly
established Hall of Leave for Study, and Confucianism once again found
its place in the royal administration. An ambitious publication
program was implemented, producing such works as a compendium of
Korean historical geography; also issued was an anthology of Korean-
Chinese literature, as well as an illustrated text on traditional
music.

Such efforts to restore Confucian rule were not sufficient to satisfy
the scholarly class in general, however. Those among them who had
suffered discrimination during King Sejo's reign gained a foothold at
court, but economic conditions were not greatly improved. Following
the implementation of a central collection and distribution of rent
policy on the officials' land, the officials and yangban sought land
control for the right to farm, thereby encroaching upon the peasant's
share of land ownership rights. Moreover, land area grew as a result
of reclamation, and this contributed further to the growth of
agricultural estates, a process which the dynasty attempted to
prevent. Some agricultural estates gathered bondsmen and peasants,
many of whom abandoned their free status in order to escape the heavy
land tax, corvee, and tribute taxes that had been imposed on them.

As the desire to hold landed interests became more intense, those
yangban who had already established themselves as the owners of
meritorious subject land, special land grants, reclaimed land, or
accumulated landed rights to cultivate land suddenly became targets of
intense criticism.

Those literati who could not afford land became impoverished. These
literati upheld the family and clan rites and etiquette prescribed by
Neo-Confucian doctrine, but were impoverished by the costly rituals
involved - marriages, funerals and memorial ceremonies. To maintain
themselves, they depended heavily on their kinship ties, relying on
assistance given by an appointed official of the same kin group. These
mutual assistance relationships affected both officials in the
capital, and landed yangban in the outlying areas as well. This was
also a key factor in the politico-economic life of each yangban during
the Joseon Dynasty and was intensified during King Seongjong's reign.
Kim Jongjik (1432-1492) was a leading scholar-official with many
followers, who advocated the Neo-Confucian rectification theory which
implied condemnation of King Sejo's usurpation. His success
represented for a while the peak of the resurgent Neo-Confucian
school.

King Seongjong's successor in 1495 was King Yeonsangun, whose reign
was noted for his unscrupulous suppression of the literati. In the
initial period, he was hard-pressed by that clamorous group which
opposed Buddhist rituals observed at the death of the Queen Mother.
Infuriated by the hundreds of memorials and protests made by the Neo-
Confucian literati, King Yeonsangun lashed out at them. His first
purge was based on an accusation of state crimes because one of Kim
Jongjik's students had implicitly criticized King Sejo's usurpation in
his historical notes. Through this purge and another which followed in
1504, King Yeonsangun eliminated the checks exercised by historians,
the censorate, and state councilors. Confucian statecraft almost
collapsed. His extraordinary anti-Confucian and anti-Buddhist acts
contravened the Gyeongguk daejeon and dismayed the yangban as a whole
until he was finally deposed.

About KoreaIt fell to King Jungjong (r.1506-1544), supported by the
officials who had deposed King Yeonsan-gun, to restore Confucian rule.
The resurgence of the Neo-Confucian school made the enhancement of the
economic status of the literati an urgent necessity. Some were
rewarded with meritorious subject land, but others found a solution
through securing charters for private schools endowed with some land
and bondsmen. Such local private schools became the intellectual
training ground for new schools of thought.

The increase of refugee peasants contributed to the ever increasing
burden of taxes upon the remaining peasants. Jo Gwangjo, an
influential school official, advocated the recommendation system for
the recruitment of government officials and the organization of local
guilds to improve the impoverished condition of the literati. The
recommendation system was implemented and his group was recruited for
official posts, but this alone did not satisfy them since they were
not rewarded with appropriate land. In 1519, the year they achieved
their goal of implementing the recommendation examination system,
these Neo-Confucian scholars faced a spurious charge of treason.

The ministers and the literati were often embroiled in royal
succession problems, and competed among themselves for places in the
bureaucracy, especially since their numbers had rapidly increased with
the expansion of private schools. Their common interests based on
local school and kinship organizations were bound to spilt them into
factions, all the more bitterly divided for being within the same
status. The number of private schools exceeded one hundred in the late
16th century, and eminent scholars of the Neo-Confucian philosophy
sheltered themselves in such institutions.

As for the people in general, they were hard-pressed by the levies of
land tax, corvee, military tax, service and especially tribute tax,
which was collected by authorized agents. The growth of agricultural
estates accelerated, contributing further to the decline of the
peasant economy. A righteous outlaw named Im Kkeokjeong rose up
against the greedy officials. Recruiting a large group of peasants, he
confiscated the wealth of rich yangban officials and distributed it to
the poor. He seized government granaries and gave relief to hungry
people in the provinces of Gyeonggi-do and Hwanghae-do. Although he
was caught and beheaded in 1562, his chivalry and revolutionary ideas
captured the admiration of the people and inspired the popular novel,
Hong Gildong jeon, the Tale of Hong Gildong.