Joseon: five centuries of Confucian Korea
The Joseon dynasty rules Korea for five centuries and remakes it as one of the most thoroughly Confucian societies in the world.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
- Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History — Michael E. Robinson, University of Hawai'i Press (2007)
In 1392 the general Yi Seong-gye ended the Goryeo dynasty and founded a new one, which he named Joseon after the ancient kingdom. Two years later he moved the capital to Hanyang, today’s Seoul. His family would rule for more than five hundred years, one of the longest-lasting dynasties in world history.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
A Confucian revolution
The founders were backed by scholar-officials who followed Neo-Confucianism, the philosophy of the Chinese thinker Zhu Xi. They blamed Buddhism for Goryeo’s decay, cut back the monasteries’ wealth and set out to remake society around Confucian ethics: loyalty to the king, filial piety to parents, the authority of husbands and elders, and ritual correctness.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
Over two centuries this changed Korean family life profoundly. In Goryeo, daughters had often inherited equally and husbands might live with their wives’ families. By the seventeenth century inheritance favoured the eldest son, women moved into their husband’s household, widows were discouraged from remarrying, and lineages kept genealogies tracing descent through the male line. Rites for ancestors, carried out by the eldest son, became the centre of family religion.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
Scholars, examinations and slaves
At the top stood the yangban, an aristocracy whose status depended on descent and on success in the civil service examinations, which tested mastery of the Confucian classics. Below them were the “middle people” (technical specialists), commoners, mostly farmers, and the “base people”, including butchers, entertainers and a large slave population; historians estimate that at times a third or more of the population was enslaved. Merchants were looked down on.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
Joseon’s high point came under King Sejong (r. 1418–1450), whose court produced the Hangul alphabet, scientific instruments and agricultural manuals. The dynasty also kept an extraordinarily detailed record of its reigns, the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, now listed by UNESCO.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- The Korean Language Reform of 1446 — Gari Ledyard, Singu Munhwasa (1998)
Shocks and the “hermit kingdom”
Joseon survived devastating invasions by Japan in 1592–98 and by the Manchus in 1627 and 1636, after which it accepted the new Qing dynasty as overlord while privately regarding itself as the true heir of Ming civilisation. It then limited contact with the outside world so strictly that Westerners called it the “hermit kingdom”. Catholicism, which spread from the late eighteenth century, was savagely persecuted, and thousands of believers were executed in the 1860s.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China — Samuel Hawley, Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch (2005)
In the nineteenth century the kingdom was weakened by factional fighting, peasant revolts and pressure from Japan, China, Russia and the West. Japan forced it open by treaty in 1876. In 1897 King Gojong declared the Korean Empire to assert equality with China and Japan, but it was too late: Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and annexed it in 1910.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History — Bruce Cumings, W. W. Norton (1997)
- The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 — Peter Duus, University of California Press (1995)
What remains
Joseon’s palaces still stand in central Seoul, and its world lives on in historical dramas watched across Asia. More deeply, its values shape Korean family life, the obsession with education and the instinct to sort people by age and rank. Even Koreans who reject Confucianism as a philosophy often live by its habits.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea — Michael J. Seth, University of Hawai'i Press (2002)
Joseon was a stable, cultivated kingdom of scholar-officials that produced Hangul, a remarkable historical record and an ethic of learning and loyalty. Its long survival shows the strength of Korean civilisation.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea Old and New: A History — Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner, Ilchokak / Korea Institute, Harvard University (1990)
Critics, from early-twentieth-century reformers to many feminists today, see Joseon as a hierarchical society that oppressed women, slaves and commoners, despised trade and left Korea too weak to resist imperialism. Japanese colonial historians pushed an exaggerated version of this view to justify their rule, which makes it sensitive.
- A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present — Michael J. Seth, Rowman & Littlefield (2016)
- Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History — Michael E. Robinson, University of Hawai'i Press (2007)
Why it matters today
Much of what outsiders notice about Korean manners, from respect for age and the levels of polite speech to ancestor rites, family registers, education fever and the importance of the eldest son, took shape in Joseon. Modern Koreans argue about this inheritance constantly: it is the root of their loyalty and diligence, and of hierarchies many now want to escape.