The Korean Mind. Boye Lafayette De Mente
The bond that held this system together, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally, was the cult of chosang sungbae—which was not only adopted as the national philosophy but also made the national political ideology as well as the state religion. This meant that it was mandatory; people had no choice in the matter. The eldest son in each family was charged with the responsibility of performing the various rituals concerned with ancestor worship, a requirement that made it absolutely essential for each family to have at least one male offspring to perform the rituals as well as to carry on the family line.
The general rule was that ancestors back to the fourth generation were to be honored by their direct descendants several times a year, including their death days, ki-il (kee-eel), at their home sang chong (sahng chohng), or “mourning shrine,” where the memorial tablets (wooden slats bearing the deceased ones’ names) were kept. Ancestors from the fifth generation and back were to be commemorated only once a year during Harvest Festival visits to grave sites. Some people who were the descendants of illustrious forebears going back several more generations chose to honor them as well.
Chosang sungbae was the central theme in Korean culture for more than five hundred years, impacting virtually every aspect of society. The cult contributed to the custom of arranged marriages and was directly responsible for the obsession with having male children. It also contributed to the practice of men taking “second wives” or concubines when their first wives failed to have sons, displeased them, or weren’t sufficiently attractive to hold their interest.
Early Korean critics of the cult of ancestor worship blamed it for the relative lack of social and economic progress in the country until the advent of modern times. They said that the cult forced first sons to spend so much time involved in the process of maintaining the family system, and themselves preparing to become ancestors, that it made their lives as well as the lives of their families an aberration.
Today more traditional Korean families hold memorial services in their homes for grandparents going back four generations on the anniversaries of their deaths. For ancestors from the fifth generation and beyond, combined memorial services are held at the family tomb once a year during Chusok (Chuusoak), the Harvest Moon Festival (the Korean equivalent of America’s Thanksgiving Day), held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar (which ranges from late August to early October). Less traditional Koreans pay respect to their ancestors just once a year during Chusok. Ancestor worship rites are known as chesa (cheh-sah) or jesa (jeh-sah).
Choson 초순 Choh-suun
Land of Morning Calm
Some three thousand years ago, when the Chinese first began to pay serious attention to what is now the Korean peninsula, they found it occupied by a people who were racially akin to them but had their own distinctive language and culture. It appears that one of these early Chinese visitors, no doubt some kind of official, was so impressed with the peaceful atmosphere of the Korean countryside that in his report he used the Chinese characters cho son (choh suun), meaning “morning calm,” in reference to the region.
According to one Chinese myth, China itself founded the first Korean nation (now referred to as “Old Choson”) in 1122 B.C. In any event, by 109 B.C. (when China’s emperor Wu-Ti led an invasion army that conquered the Korean peninsula) the Chinese were officially referring to Korea as Choson. Later Choson came to be translated into English as “Land of Morning Calm” and became a phrase associated not only with the Korean landscape and unpretentious lifestyle but also the spirit and character of the people. (Choson is also commonly written as Chosun, which is closer to the phonetically correct pronunciation.)
Unfortunately, it seems that the peaceful character of the early Koreans was more of a bane than a blessing. Throughout its long history the Korean peninsula was invaded repeatedly by the Chinese and others, including Khitan tribesmen from the north, Mongols from the west, and, in later centuries, Japanese pirates and armies of the Japanese warlord Hideyoshi Toyotomi from the east. In 1386 still another invasion by Chinese forces precipitated the founding of a new dynasty in Korea in 1392 that was officially named Choson, no doubt in the hope that it would live up to that old description.
General Song Gye Yi, the founder of the new dynasty, took the title of King Taejo. To reward his supporters, he seized control of all the land in the country, thereafter parceling out much of it to them on the basis of their rank. Peasants were guaranteed the right to till the land, but they were required to pay half of their annual crops to the state as rent on the lands they tilled. Taejo reigned from 1392 until 1398, when he was ousted by the powerful literati who dominated the Privy Council. His youngest son and designated heir was assassinated on the orders of his fifth son, who also disposed of the fourth son and became King Taejong (1400-1418).
King Sejong, who ruled Korea from 1418 to 1450, is generally considered the greatest of the Choson kings. In addition to a number of inventions and innovations he is said to have created himself, he instituted many reforms and established the Chip Hyonjon (Cheep H’yohn-joan), or “Hall of Worthies” (sometimes spelled Jip Hyonjon [Jeep H’yohnjoan] and translated as “Symposium of Wise Men”), made up of a select group of scholars and scientists. In 1443, King Sejong ordered this group to create a native writing system for the Korean language, which was subsequently made available to the public in 1446. These scholar-scientists also researched various other subjects, wrote books and manuals, and acted as advisers to the king.
The next Choson king (Sejo) was neither as scholarly nor as benevolent as King Sejong. Sejo and his supporters exterminated virtually everyone who opposed him, including the country’s leading scholars, ministers, and his own younger brother, then devised a national code that was to bring the full force of Neo-Confucianism to Korea for the next five-hundred-plus years.
Under this new code the Choson court sought to control every aspect of society, including the size of dwellings (which had to be appropriate for the status of the individual family concerned), the number and placement of gates in the walls around homes, the apparel that people wore (including the materials they were made of), the accessories people wore, and their personal behavior in virtually every situation. Political purges and killings continued during most of the 1500s, but by the end of the century most organized resistance to Neo-Confucianism had ended.
Because the Neo-Confucian-based regulations were enforced strictly by the Choson court, a great calm did, in fact, descend on the countryside (a world far removed from the squabbling yangban, or “scholar-officials,” who continued to dominate the higher echelons of the government and the bureaucracy) and lasted for nearly a century.
In 1592 Japan, then ruled by warlord Hideyoshi Toyotomi, launched the first of two massive invasions against Korea, according to some historians to punish the Koreans for having aided the Mongols in the thirteenth-century invasions of Japan and for refusing to help Japan invade China at this time. These Japanese armies sent to Korea were made up mostly of samurai (sah-muu-rye), Japan’s professional warrior class, who marched to and fro in Korea, looting and then destroying virtually everything in their paths.
Despite the destruction wrought by the Japanese on land, the Koreans, under General Sun Shin Yi (usually referred to as Admiral Sun Shin Yi), eventually won the first encounter by using the world’s first ironclad warships to devastate the Japanese naval fleet. Japan’s second invasion of Korea, launched in 1597, was called off the following year by the Japanese when Toyotomi died and the fief lords in his kingdom began fighting among themselves.
Just three decades later the Manchus launched the first of another two invasions of Korea, the first in 1627 and the second in 1636, to establish their own hegemony over Korea. Unable to defend itself against the Manchu hordes, the Choson court once again agreed to accept the status of a vassal state under the new rulers of China. But the Choson court went further than that. It closed the country’s borders to all outsiders except the Chinese, eventually becoming known to the outside world as “The Hermit Kingdom.”
External enemies were not the only thing that frequently disturbed the calm of Korea. Other Choson rulers ranged from mediocre to tyrants who squandered huge amounts of tax money and carried out purges and reigns of terror resulting in the execution of hundreds of scholars and officials.
During