This dissertation looks at the nature of Korean society in the seventeenth century in connection with the origins of the chauvinistic conservatism that prevailed among yangban elites on the threshold of the so-called modern period in the mid-nineteenth century, by examining court debates over two issues: persecution of the queen dowager and foreign policies toward Ming China and the Manchus. These two related matters were the hottest issues throughout the reign of King Kwanghae (1575-1642; r. 1608-23), and they foreshadowed the direction in which Choso n politics and society would move once these debates concluded.
In the course of the persecution of the queen dowager, his legal mother, which could be regarded as a violation of the principle of filial piety, King Kwanghae appealed to another universal moral principle, loyalty to the throne, to justify his actions. Between the declining Ming and the rising Manchus, he placed more emphasis on friendly relations with the Manchus than the traditional lord-subject and father-son relationship with the Ming in order to avoid a possible Manchu invasion. Meanwhile, court officials, Confucian supremacists, understood King Kwanghae's policy line as a simultaneous transgression of the two primary moral principles, loyalty and filial piety, on which the ruling ideology of Choso n society had been based for over 200 years.
The Palace Coup of 1623 took place in this context and labeled King Kwanghae's politics and policies as immoral and heretical. The Manchu compromise of 1627, however, undermined the legitimacy of the new regime because the compromise itself was a more serious violation of the moral principles. The coup leaders needed and wanted to offset their own violation of a moral principle (a father-son relationship with the Ming) with the defense of another principle (unconditional filial piety to the mother) to maintain the legitimacy of their regime, with the result that the politics and policies of Choso n Korea lost flexibility. This self-defensive politico-intellectual trend consequently hampered Korea in coping effectively with the reality of a new world order dominated by the industrialized powers in the nineteenth century.
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