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THE l894 TONGHAK PEASANT REVOLT IN KOREA: A CULTURAL
INTERPRETATION OF AN ECONOMIC REVOLT

By

Hyung-Sook Yoon

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Anthropology

1979

To my parents.

ii

ABSTRACT

THE 1894 TONGHAK PEASANT REVOLT IN KOREA: A CULTURAL
INTERPRETATION OF AN ECONOMIC REVOLT

By
Hyung-Sook Yoon

The purpose of the thesis is to give a cultural interpreta-
tion of the Tonghak peasant revolt in Korea, which occurred in 1894.
The Tonghak peasant revolt initially started as a local revolt against
a severe socioeconomic exploitation of the Kobu magistrate in Cholla
Province of Korea. While similar types of local peasant revolts were
common in the period, the Kobu revolts became more than a local revolt.
It invoked a nation-wide peasant war against the socioeconomic system
of Yi Dynasty Korea.

A question was raised as to: (l) the nature of the peasant
revolt of l894 and (2) the source of the integrating power of peasants'
grievances. The suggestion of the thesis is that the strength of the
1894 peasant revolt lay in the ideological and organizational role
of the Tonghak religion ("Eastern Learning," which was later called
"Ch'ondogyo" or "the Heavenly Way Religion"). The Tonghak religion
was founded by Ch'oe Che-u in l860 and became a religion of the Korean
masses.

The foundation of a mass religion has a very significant

socio-cultural implication in that in Yi Dynasty Korea Neo-Confucian

Hyung-Sook Yoon

ideology was the only officially acknowledged cosmology. Neo-
Confucianism was the ordering feature not only of the universe but
also of the Yi Dynasty society. In this regard, the culture of Yi
Dynasty Korea was dominated by the Neo-Confucian ideological back-
ground. This does not mean that ideology as such should define
culture. Though culture is not reducible to ideology, culture still
can be discussed in an ideological context.

Therefore, in focusing the study of the revolt on its cul-
tural aspect, a plea was made that the economic revolt--in the sense
that it was directly related to the worsening economic condition of
the peasants--should be understood in the broader context of culture.
The Tonghak revolt itself expressed its concern with specific cultural
themes against the values of the Nee-Confucian ideology.

A study of the Tonghak peasant revolt in its cultural aspects
is important to understand the later development of the Tonghak
religion as a political organization and its participation in the
nationalistic movement against Japanese imperialism. Though the
ideology of Tonghak expressed the universal divinity of man in
religious terms and universal equality in political terms, it had to
be readjusted to the ideology of the nation-state, which was the domi-
nant ideology of colonized societies of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries.

LIST OF

Chapter
I.

II.

III.

IV.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLES ........................
INTRODUCTION .....................
The Problem .....................
Religion, the State, and Cultural Integration:
A Historical Overview ...............
The Focus of the Study ...............
ELITES' RESPONSE TO THE SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY YI-KOREA .............
Social Change and Modern Ideology . . .. .......
Losing Faction and "Silhak School" (Practical
Learning) .....................
Silhak and Catholicism ...............
Reactionary Attempt to Restore the Monarchical
Absolutism by the Regent Taewongun ........
"Kaewha Tang" (Enlightenment Party) and Kapsin Coup .
DEVELOPMENT OF TONGHAK AS A MASS RELIGION .......
Little Tradition and Village Autonomy ........
Changing Agrarian Economy and Social Relationship
in Late Yi-Korea .................
The Foundation of Tonghak Religion .........
Background of Ch'oe Che-u ..............
Tonghak Thought ...................
Tonghak as a Mass Religion .............
Development of Tonghak Organization .........
TONGHAK REVOLTS ....................
The Tonghak Revolt: The First Revolt ........
The Tonghak Revolt: The Second Revolt ........
The Role of the Estranged Yangban-Class People
as Organizers of Rebellion ............

iii

21
21

24
29

30
35

45
45
48
60
62
65
72
77

77
83

86

Chapter
V. CONC

LUSION ......................

Exploitation and Revolt: Some Problems in the

Th
Th

APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conceptualization of a Correlation Between

"Exploitation" and Revolt .............
e Center of a Nation and Culture .........
e Nation, the State, and Cultural Integration . . .

iv

Page
93

93
99

102
112

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

l. Rice and Bean Export Through Three Trading Ports:
l889 to 1894 ..................... 54

2. Comparison of Number of Fishing Ships: Korea and Other
Countries ....................... 57

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The Problem

In February of 1894, a group of peasants revolted against
the severe economic exploitation of the Kobu magistrate of Cholla
Province of Korea. A series of sporadic peasant revolts had taken
place since the middle of the nineteenth century and the Government
did not pay any special attention to the Kobu revolt.

However, the Kobu revolt turned out to be more than a local
peasant revolt against a county magistrate. It crossed the local
boundary and consolidated peasant grievances against the socioeconomic
system of Yi-Korea. The revolt of Kobu county changed into a peasant
war against the Government; the latter had to fight against the
peasants in collaboration with the foreign powers of China and Japan.

Since both Ch'ing China and Meiji Japan entertained conflict-
ing interests over Korea, the invitation of these two powers into
Korean internal affairs was to provide them with an opportunity to
wage an official war between themselves over the dominance of Korea.
As a result there was the Sine-Japanese war (1894), which gave Japan
permanent dominance over the Korean peninsula until the end of its
colonial period (1910-1945).

What, then, was the nature of the peasant war of l894, which
turned the country into such a turmoil? What was the integrating

1

power of peasant grievances which made it possible for the Kobu
revolt to cross the local community boundary? Did these grievances
stem from socioeconomic exploitation alone? Or did socioeconomic
exploitation offend a sense of justice in some new way not realized
before in Korean history?

This study is an attempt to analyze the l894 peasant revolt
as a cultural revolt against the politically compromised traditional
elite in the late nineteenth century of Yi-Korea. It was the power of'
Japanese capitalism which led to the political compromising of the
old elite, while it was the influence of Western forms of egalitarian-
ism which spearheaded the attack on the ideology which had for so long
defined the position of the traditional elite in Korean society and
culture.

The strength of the 1894 revolt lay in the ideological and
organizational role of the "New Heavenly Way" (or "Tonghak," meaning
"Eastern Learning"), a religion which was founded and pr0pagated
by Ch'oe Che-u since 1860. As the New Heavenly Way religion gained
popularity among the masses, the Government executed Ch'oe on the
charge of confusing or misleading people with false doctrine. The
Government official who questioned Ch'oe was said to ask him whether
the new religion was not identical with the Western Learning (Chris-
tianity) that had been prohibited in Korea by the Government. Ch'oe
answered that his doctrine was not the same as Christianity. On the
contrary, it was originated to confront the Western Learning with the
Eastern Learning. Therefore it might be more proper to be called the

Eastern Learning (Oh, l940: 12).

After the Government's execution of Ch'oe, the Eastern Learn-
ing had spread among peasants continuously despite the Government's
decree of prohibition of the doctrine. Under the leadership of
Ch'oe's successor, Ch'oe Si-hyong, the movement became systematically
organized throughout the country. In each Province, provincial lead-
ers were appointed by Ch'oe Si-hyong while local leaders were
recruited through a consensus of believers in each county.

When the Kobu revolt occurred, Jon Bong-jun, a Tonghak leader
of Kobu, happened to play an intermediary role between the Government
and peasants on the request of the latter. Through his involvement,
the whole organization of the religion got entangled in the peasant
war against the central Government. As a result, the war which
started in 1894 became identical with Tonghak revolts (revolts of
followers of the Eastern Learning) (Griffis, 1905: 445).

Religion, the State, and Cultural Integration:
A Historical Overview

Throughout the Yi dynasty of Korea (1392-1910), Neo-
Confucianism dominated as political ideology of the State. Under
this ideological system, Yangban1 aristocratic culture was formed and
transmitted until challenged by introduction of modern ideology from
foreign countries.

The intermarriage of the secular power of the Yi dynasty and
Neo-Confucian political ideology was not a historical accident. The
adoption of Neo-Confucianism as the State ideology was deliberately
performed in the process of legitimizing the change of dynasties from

Koryo to Yi.

Koryo dynasty (976-1392) had a very favorable policy toward
Buddhism. It granted tax exemption on lands attached to Buddhist
temples and on any form of governmental labor service of Buddhist
monks. This policy of Koryo dynasty toward Buddhism resulted in an
accumulation of temple lands and an increase in the number of monks,
who were converted to the religion as a way of avoiding the public
labor service (Han, 1970: 185).

Accumulation of temple land reduced the pr0portion of public
land that was to be allotted to scholar-officials of the State for
their civil service. And the increase of the number of covree
exemptors resulted in a shortage of labor to cultivate the public
land.

Consequently the scholar-officials formed an interest group
which was economically opposed to the State policy toward Buddhism.
The economic interest of scholar-officials of Koryo dynasty coincided
with its cultural-ideological interest as the latter were recruited
fron Confucian scholars.

The conflicts of interest between scholar-officials and the
ideological and economic system of the Koryo dynasty made the former
launch an attack against the latter in the form of ideological battle
between Confucianism and Buddhism. However, "after Korean acceptance
of the Sung philosophy, the struggle between the Buddhist and Confucian
forces was political and economic rather than ideological" (Hakwonsa,
1960: 319). This was evident because “when the new school of Confucian
philosophy of the Sung dynasty was first introduced to Korea, Korean

scholars did not understand its philosophical importance" (p. 319).

As much as Buddhism lent its theoretical justification for
the Koryo dynasty, the criticism of Buddhism meant the ideological
denial of the legitimacy of Koryo Kingdom. This political implica-
tion of Neo-Confucianism against Buddhism was well expressed in the
former's collaboration with a newly advancing military group led by
General Yi Sung-Kae to form a new dynasty, that of Yi-Korea. Thereby,

Neo-Confucianism laid down the theoretical corner-stone for the
new dynasty, being inspired by the ancient Chou system of Govern-
ment as expounded by Confucius and his followers cluminating in
the interpretations of Chu Hsi (Hakwonsa, 1960: 319).

The history of collaboration of the secular regime and Con-
fucian ideology in the process of formation of the Yi dynasty gives an
explanation as to why the separation between political and moral or
ideological issues had not been achieved through the Yi dynasty.

Neo-Confucianism became an instrument of political strife giving
rise to many rival doctrines. Schools of epistemology, human
nature and rituals were born and fought one another. . . . (There
were, in fact, so many schools that . . . everything in Korean
life, including the individual‘s way of thinking and social behav-
ior, had to conform to Chu Hsi philosophy; all other ideas were
barred, and suppressed as heresy.) (Hakwonsa, 1960: 319-20).

Considering the interrelationship between the Yi regime and
Confucian ideology. it would be acceptable to call the Yi dynasty a
quasi-theocratic State. In this quasi-theocratic State, any religious
ideas and movements other than the State religion should be regarded
as a threat to the very foundation of the dynasty. It does not mean
that Confucianism was the only religion in Yi-Korea. That was far
from the truth.

Apart from the question of whether Confucianism is a religion

or not, Buddhism, Taoism, and Shamanism had led the religious life of

Korean people of Yi-Korea. Especially, Shamanism had formed a main
stream of religious life of the lower class (Yu, 1975). Therefore,
while the Confucian ideology was predominant, penetrating from the
upper-class strata to the lower-class strata, Buddhism, Taoism, and
Shamanism co-existed with Confucianism in a synthetic form among the
lower-class strata.

When Catholicism was first introduced into Korea in the
seventeenth century, it was subject to severe persecutions by the Yi
Government. It was condemned as ”i-tan" ("heresy"). The word
"heresy" refers to what is not orthodox within a tradition. But a
new interpretation of the English word "heresy" with reference to the
Yi-dynastic situation is required. In this case, the word rather
meant a religion or religious ideas which went against the state
interest and ideology. And the implication was political. Many
converts to Catholicism in its earliest introduction in Korea came
from the losing faction, Namin (Southerners) and the oppressed, such
as women.2

The cultural category which the Koreans used in designat-
ing the teachings and practices of those with whom they dif-
fered was expressed by such words as i-dan (i-tuan in Chinese),
chwa-do (tso-tao), i-hak (i-hsueh), an sa (hsieh), which shared
a common meaning of "different from the way of the sages."

These words were frequently used in opposition to ch6n (cheng),
meaning "right," ”straight," or changdo (cheng-tao , the straight
path."

The terms employed by Han Yu in the ninth century A.D. to abuse
Buddhism were taken up by the Koreans for the same purpose, and
later they were used to attack the doctrines of Lao-tzu, Chung-
tzu, Yang Chu and Mo-tzu. With the ascendary of Neo-Confucianism,
the undisputed orthodox ideology of the state, . . . such terms,

i-tan, chwa-do, §a_and so forth, were conveniently used by those
who were inleading position ideologically. . . (Chung, 1970: 59).

We must ask why the state condemned Catholicism as a "heresy"
while other religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Shamanism co-
existed? Specifically, what was the circumstance which brought about
the negative policy of the state toward Catholicism?

Buddhism and Taoism did not oppose the ethical and religious
basis of the Confucian state, which stressed the prime importance of
"hsiao" or "filial piety of a son toward his own father" (Lee, 1976).
Ancestor worship was an expression of the same principle of filial
piety.

The most graphic challenge of Catholicism against Confucianisni
came in the form of the burning of ancestral altars by Korean Catholic
converts in accordance with an order from Rome in 1758.3

The heresy controversy was brought out again when Ch'oe
Che-u's Tonghak was attracting a number of followers among peasants
in the late nineteenth century. Seeing that his teaching was gaining
popularity among peasants, the government executed Ch'oe on the charge
of confusing the society with a heathen doctrine (Sohn, 1970: 210).

The following is said to be an actual dialogue between Suh
Hon-jung of Kyongsang Province and Ch'oe Che-u in the courtyard of
Daegu in 1964.4

The Governor said, "Since you confused minds of pe0ple with

your heathen doctrine, your crime is very heavy."

The teacher replied, "What do you mean?"

The Governor said, "Isn't your so-called 'Way' the same as

the Western Learning (Catholicism)?"

The teacher replied, "No, that is not true. My 'Way' is

the Heavenly Way. It was originated in the East and learnt in
the East. Therefore, it is proper to name it 'Eastern Learning,‘
but it is not right to call it 'Western Learning.'"

The Governor said, "If you mean it a Heavenly Way, wh did

you not teach it with 'Confucian Way' of Choson SYi-Korea origin
but with the two word Ch'onju (the Heavenly Lord ?"

The teacher replied, "Though the two words 'Chonju' is the
same of the Eastern Learning and the Western Learning, but the
principle of Chonju is different."

When the Governor heard the teacher say this, he shouted at
him and said, “Whether they are Western Learning or Eastern
Learning, all doctrines outside of the Confucian ideology are
heretic an?! heathen1r [emphasis mine] (Oh, 1940: 5-6).

 

The Focus of the Study
As Gale Omvedt (1976) demonstrated in her study of non-Brahman
movements in Western India during the colonial period (1871-1930),
cultural revolt by a culturally subjugated group against the culturally'
dominant group is necessary to achieve modernization." By "cultural
dominance," I mean the monopoly held by one group of people over the
social ideology which defines social reality for all. And by “moderni-
zation," I mean the on-going process toward socio-cultural equality.5
By definition, then, these two terms are in conflict.
Omvedt also suggested that economic and cultural interests
are not identical, although they may overlap. She stated:
The basic colonial agrarian structure is "capitalist” not semi-
feudal; the primary basis of landlord power in a colonial society
is a capitalist market economy and legal and property relations.

. "Feudalism" survives in terms of its cultural forms, and
peasant revolt in the countryside is bound up with cultural
revolt--against those traditional forms of authority as well as
purely economic revolt (p. 301).

In this regard, it is very important to distinguish the cultural issue
from the economic issue when we discuss peasant revolts during the
colonial period. It is also important to remember that
colonialism involved not simply the imposition of new forms of
social organization upon the traditional one, but the transfor-

mation of the very basis of . . . society, creating new forms
out of "traditional" materials (Omvedt, 1976: 3).

Though it is generally agreed among Korean historians that
peasant revolts were always directed against the economic exploita-
tion and social oppression of the Yangban aristocratic class of Yi-
Korea, the question of who exploited peasants in what way has not been
seriously asked. Neither has the nature of "exploitation" been asked.
It has just been assumed that people of the Yangban class exploited
all those of the non-Yangban class. However, in light of the fact
that the nature of Yangban through the history of Yi-Korea has changed,
we should deal with Yangban as a cultural class rather than an economic
class.

Although Yangban-class culture was the target of peasant
criticism, a number of Yangban-class people themselves belonged to
the lower economic strata. In an economic sense, there was little
distinction between poor Yangbans and peasants (Sohn, 1970: 148-49).
Treatment of Yangban as a socioeconomic class may derive from the
formalistic perspective of the social structure of Yi-Korea.

Within the framework of the Confucian ideology of social rela-
tionships, the social strata of Yi-Korea was divided into four cate-
gories. At the top of the social strata, there was a Yangban class
(literary class). Their responsibility and social duty was to read
Confucian literature and the interpretations of Neo-Confucianism in
order to be prepared to serve as government officials. They were not
to engage in any manual work, even when they were hungry. Under the
Yangban class, the Chungin (intermediary class) served as petty offi-
cials. Having been trained for professional services, such as medi-

cine, astronomy, accounting, geomancy, etc., they consisted largely of

10

local government officials of various sorts. The Yangban-class and
Chungin-class people accounted for a minority of the Yi population.

Beneath the Chungin class came the Sgggjg.(commoners), who
made up a majority of Yi-Korea. They cultivated the farmlands for
the aristocratic class and provided their labor for the official works
and military service. Though merchants and artisans belonged to
the Sgggjg_class, they were considered marginal to the class, there-
fore, inferior to farmers (Sohn, 1970: 150).

The lowest social class, mostly consisting of slaves, public
or private, was called Ch'onmin. To this category belonged blind
fortune-tellers, shamans (male and female), kisaeng (female enter-
tainers), Buddhist monks and nuns, butchers, etc. .Butchers,
especially, were considered as the meanest of them all and ordered to
take a separate residence from the common people (SOhfl, 1970: 150)-

In the beginning of Yi-Korea, the Yangban class was the domi-
nant class in a cultural as well as economic sense. Generally, they
were landowners. It was only natural that the Yangban class was very
jealous of its social class distinction and continuity.

The theory of natural and hereditary superiority was one of
the best strategies they utilized. To preserve the purity of the
Yangban class, interclass mating was prohibited and the offspring of
Yangban-commoner, or Yangban-Ch'anmin class mating were considered as
dangling or outcasts. It was the rule that social status of children
was determined by that of their mothers. If one's mother's social
origin was from that of the slave, he belonged to the slave class

even when his father was a Yangban (Sohn, 1970: 149).

11

The preservation of the Yangban-class purity was also rein-
forced by the political endorsement that only those from the Yangban
class could take the civil examination for the government offices.
Even in the process of selection of Government officials, the Yangban
class paid keen attention to prevent any possible deception by the
non-Yangban class (Sohn, 1970: 149).

Despite the conscious effort to control the Yangban popula-
tion to a limited number of people, the Yangban population grew
rapidly by the seventeenth century. Growth of the Yangban population
in turn produced the economic stratification within the Yangban class.
The poor economic situation of many Yangban-class peOple early in the
seventeenth century was observed by one of the Neo-Confucian scholars
in Yi-Korea, Yi Ik (1579-1624):

Among the four classes of people, the literati are always poor
while the farmers, artisans and merchants make their living
through their labor. The scholars are blamed for their hunger
and coldness; because they use their minds only in reading books,
not a piece of cloth nor a grain of rice comes out of their
labors. If they fail to realize their ambitions in time, they
have nowhere to get food and clothing (Lee, 1973: 9).

The Tale of a Yangban (see Appendix) by Pak Chiwon gives a good pic-

 

ture of the economic predicament of a Yangban.

The economic lot of the poor Yangbans did not improve until
the end of the v1 dynasty. Therefore, the Tonghak cultural revolt
against the predominant Confucian ideology derived not only from the
economically and culturally exploited peasants but also from those
who belonged to the culturally dominant Yangban class. However, the
cultural interest of Yangban-class members who participated in the

cultural revolts against the Neo-Confucian ideology varied more or

12

less along the line of their economic background. While poor
Yangban-class people identified their cultural interest with that of
the mass, rich Yangban-class people tried to establish a new cultural
identity based on a new elite idea.

Internal reactions against the dominant cultural system
usually occur in a transitional society where the basis of the old
social order is undergoing radical change. This applies to a society
experiencing new cultural contacts or in the process of rapid tech-
nological development, which produces a new social environment to
which the old ideological system is unable to adapt. In this situa-
tion, intellectual elites are most important in creating a new ideo-
logical system to encompass the new social phenomena.

However, the emphasis on the role of intellectual elites for
the creation of a new ideology should not put aside the factor of
cultural revolt from the bottom.

The ideological arrangement of social phenomena ultimately
comes from social processes. Though symbolic elaboration of social
phenomena makes room for contradictions between a symbolic arrangement
and social phenomena, in the last instance, changes in socioeconomic
structure become the source of ideological change.

The emphasis of the role of intellectual elites in formulating
new ideologies depends on the fact that:

Only a very limited group of people in any society engages in

theorizing, in the business of "ideas" and the construction of

Weltanschaun en. But everyone in society participates in its
"knowledge" in one way or another. Put differently, only a few
are concerned with the theoretical interpretation of the world,
but everybody lives in a world of some sort (Berger & Luckman,
1967: 15 .

13

The reality of everyday life is organized around the "here" of
my body and "now" of my present. This "here and now" is the
focus of my attention to the reality of everyday life. What

is "here and now" presented me in everyday life is the realise
§jmgm_of my consciousness. This means that I experience every-
day life in terms of degree of closeness and remoteness, both
spatially and temporally (Berger & Luckman, 1967: 22).

The basis of everyday life for peasants in late Yi-Korea
was being destroyed by a changing socioeconomic structure. Inter-
nally, the Korean domestic economy had been developing from an agrarian
economy to a comnercial exchange economy based on money as a single
medium of exchange. Externally, foreign capitalists' interest in the
Korean market began to be felt and prompted the change in the Korean
economic structure.6

The basis of everyday life consists not only of socioeconomic
conditions but also of knowledge and assumptions about such conditions.
And the knowledge is one's reflective activity on his social interac-
tion. In short, one's knowledge and experience of social interaction
are in an ongoing dialectical relationship.

Under the changing socieconomic environment, the Korean masses
were prepared to accept a new system of ideological order to meet the
social conditions of the period. However, the development of peasant
cultural revolts against the culturally dominant group tended to be
absorbed into a new cultural system provided by reactionary elites.
This eventual submergence of the peasants' cultural interest within
the cultural interest of the new elites can be attributed to the

former's lack of articulatory skill to theorize about the "here and

now" of "everyday life" of "everybody," and their remoteness from the

14

power domain of discourse concerning the ideological construction of
the world.

This was very evident in the history of late Yi-Korea. Its old
social order had been challenged by internal as well as external forces
since the seventeenth century. The emptiness of formalistic Neo-
Confucian ideology, which was the State ideology, had been criticized
by a group of literary elites who were interested in the Western cul-
ture and technology through their contacts with China. They formed a
new school, which was later called "Silhak" or "Practical School.“

Unlike tradition-bound orthodox Neo-Confucian scholars, they
were more interested in practical matters that would be applied in
practical matters such as how to improve the agricultural technology,
how to increase the wealth of the nation by international trade and
exchange economy, etc. (Kalton, 1975: 29-45). Though they were from
the Yangban class, they rigorously criticized the contradictions of the
Yangban society. They even called the Yangban class thieves who were
stealing things from people, meaning commoners, "in the bright day-
light" (Pak, 17__).

The school of "Practical Learning" or Silhak gave an intel-
lectual influence to a group of young elites who were interested in
the radical change of the socio-political system of the late Yi
dynasty. This group of young men formed a secret political party
and named it "Kaewha Tang" (meaning "Enlightenment Party"). Its name
was later changed to "Tonglip Tang" (meaning "Independent Party").

Their political goal was the establishment of a modern civil

society, based on equality of people and sovereignty of the Korean

15

Nation-State. The Meiji imperial restoration of Japan was an ideal
model for their radical political action (Sunoo, 1974: 71).

In 1884, this group of young elites put their political goal
into action in the form of an attempted coup. They were aided by the
Japanese minister, Takaeo, who provided military support. Minister
Takaeo was in Korea on a mission to protect Japanese residents in
Korea. The coup d'etat failed. Those who escaped punishment went to
Japan and the United States (Sunoo, 1974).

Among many factors contributing to the failure of the 1884
coup, the lack of communication between the masses and the new elites
has been pointed out as most crucial. One could ask why, if they
were aiming at the construction of a civil society of universal
equality and national sovereignty, did they not try to identify their
political interests with those of the masses? For the masses began to
show signs of discontent at this same time.

Hwang Hyon, a Neo-Confucian scholar in the late Yi-Korea,
described the resistance of the masses during this period as follows:

Under this exploiting situation, people more thought about
resistance. Out of anger, if one cried out about Yangban
exploitation, soon a crowd of supporters gathered around and
drove out their government officials. Tens of similar inci-
dents happened every year. We called them "Minu" (meaning
grievances of pe0ple). According to the traditional law,
leaders of revolts had been executed. However, under the
present circumstances, since we could not execute them all
for there are too many to execute, usually we showed generous
judgments and sent them in exile. The officials who were the
cause of the revolts sought support from the deep source with
money and soon promoted to another high position and moved
to the appointed place (Han, 1971: 106).

The lack of downward communication from the elites to the

masses was duplicated by the lack of upward communication by the

16

masses to the elites. During the mass revolt of 1894, again, there
was little evidence that leaders of Tonghaks attempted to plead with
the young elites of the "Enlightenment Party."7
The identification of socio-political interests of the masses
and the elites became possible after the Japanese colonialism. Hav-
ing faced their common enemy of Japanese colonialists, political
independence from Japan was set up as their common goal. Here, how-
ever, special attention should be given to the fact that the identi—
fication of the masses and the elites was emerging only after
political annexation of Korea to Japan. Before the transference of
the political power of the Korean Government to the Japanese colonial-
ists, not only the monarch, the ruling regent, and.the tradition-
bound aristocrats, but also the new elites were more interested in
gaining the political power through various alignments with differ-

8

ent foreign powers. It is revealing that "nationalism" was a

strategic concept rather than a given understanding of the nation as
a whole'that they shared a common goal and interest.

In reality, though the ideology of “nationalism" suggests a
specific ideological commitment common to an enormously
varied scatter of groups and classes (including varied grou s
and classes of forming part of the same subject nationality)
which had in fact very different economic, social, political
and cultural aims (Miliband, 1977)-

In fact,

"Nationalism" does not properly cover these different aims,
and is too easily turned into a catch-all formula, dispensed
with, of course, for it describes some very real drives. But
these drives and many others are given much greater precision
if they are seen to point, as they all do, to statehood: how-
ever diverse the groups and their aims, and whether based on
"nationality” or not, what they do have in common is the will

17

to acquire their "own" state, to be "masters in their own
house," to achieve independent statehood--often on the basis Ofii
combination of nationalities, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural
groupings, depending on articular historical and local cir-
cumstances (Miliband, 1977).

If the Tonghak revolt had characteristics of class warfare,
it began to lose those characteristics after Tonghak's defeat by the
aligned military forces of Korea and Japan. The new leader of
Tonghak, Son Pyong-hi, changed the name of Tonghak to "Ch6ngdogyo,"
meaning "The Heavenly Way Religion." He emphasized that the Heavenly
Way was a religion, not a political organization (Henderson, 1958: 55)-

Though Son engaged in the propagation of Chondogyo as a
religion, he did not stay away from the political arena. After the
Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, the ideology of nationalism
had been broiling. Son mobilized the rising nationalism in the
Declaration of Independence on March 1, 1919, which was the first
nation-wide demonstration of the consciousness of the Korean nation-
alism (Shin, 1967: 10-17). Thedemonstration did not achieve its goal.
The anti-Japanese movement that was organized by religious leaders
(Chandogyo, Christianity, and Buddhism) in the March lst (1919) demon-
stration lost its sense of direction as the leaders were arrested and
put into prison (Kang, 1977: 103-22; Juhn, K.C., 1977: 103-24).

Though the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that Korea
was an independent country, it did not state a clear understanding
of the essential nature of imperial Japanese economic aggression.

It was after the introduction of Marxism and Leninism that Korean

intellectuals began to have systematic understanding of the nature

18

of Japanese imperialism and anti-Japanese struggle in terms of anti-

imperialism from the perspective of world history (Shin, 1967: 10-17).
The introduction of socialism to Korea was mediated by

Korean students in Tokyo around the 19205. While the analysis of

socio—cultural origins of those students requires a separate study,

Kim Sam's argument sounds convincing that the participation of national

bourgeoisie in the nationalistic movement was not intense until 1935.

The national bourgeoisie during the Japanese colonialism

 

came from the traditional land-owning class. Juhn (1977) describes
the formation of a new bourgeoisie group from Korean landowners as
follows:

The Japanese Government-General was successful in its initial
attempt to utilize Korean landowners' capital by encouraging the
formation of several Korean-owned banks. Upon completion of the
land survey in 1918, large Korean landowners invested primarily
in banking and commercial activities. They were, of course, pre-
ceded by the royal family and other an ban. . . .

The brother of the last emperor of Korea became the presi-
dent of Hansong Bank in Seoul in 1903. All the remaining officers
,were members of yangban class. . . . All of the top executives
of the Korean Life Insurance Company established in 1921 by Han
were members of the yangban class (PP. 42-52).

By acknowledging the socioeconomic privilege of the Yangban
class, Japanese colonialists tried to mobilize the support of their
colonialism from the colonized group of Korea. However, in the 19305,
a new relationship between the Japanese colonialists and the Korean
national bourgeoisie was inevitable. On September 18, 1931, Japan
occupied Manchuria. And the occupation of Manchuria by Japan set a
turning point in the Japanese economic policy of Korea. The economy
of Korea was designed as a part of the Japanese war economy. Big

capital came to Korea from Japan and broke the native bourgeoisie,

19

which had formerly cooperated with the Japanese; hence this class
too turned against the Japanese. In 1935 the nationalists were the
first to raise the appeal for the unity of all classes and parties
against Japan (Kim & Wales, 1941: 224-25).

Now the new bourgeoisie elites led the Korean national front
with the mass support at their back. In other words, the masses were
now following the elites against whom they had formerly waged their
initial cultural revolt.

In this historical process, the relationship of the masses
to the political elites had been determined not only by the interac-
tional process between them per se, but also by the power structure
among the political elites and that between the national political
elites and foreign powers. It must be remembered that the masses were
not living on their own in little villages but always in interaction
with the power above. An understanding of the Tonghak revolt as a
cultural revolt therefore requires an understanding of political
factionalism among the literary elites in late nineteenth century

Yi-Korea.

20

Footnotes--Chapter I

1Yangban literally means two attending classes of the King,
that. is, literary and military servants.

2Chung (1970: 57-86) discusses the historical origin of the
concept of heresy in Korea.

3When the Government found out that Yoon Chich'ung burned the
ancestral altar, it executed him (Kim, 1971).

4In the preface of his book, Oh (1940) said that the book
was written with an intention to explain the Tonghak religion to
those who had a misunderstanding of the religion. Therefore, the
recording of Ch'oe Che-u's dialogue with Suh Hong-jung must be
intended against the charge that the Tonghak religion was identical
with Sohak (Christianity).

5Omvedt (1976) defines "modernization" by three criteria as
follows: (1) in economic terms, the development of an industrialized
economy and the provision of an adequate standard of living for the
majority of the society's population--in other words, both develop-
ment and distribution, though these are sometimes seen as conflicting;
(2) in political terms, the development of a political organization
that is both effective, i.e., capable of maintaining the interests
of its members within the arena of modern nation-states, and democratic
providing for widespread political participation and a role in deci-
sion making by citizens conceived of as equals within the political
sphere; and (3) in cultural terms, the formation of a rational,
scientific, and universalistic (i.e., equalitarian) culture which
will over-ride the hierarchical status order (p. 11).

6In Part 5, Chapter VI, Ch'oi (1971) deals with the develop-
ment and exchange economy based on money.

7Longford (1921) stated, "Their [Tonghaks'] sentiments and
those of Kim Ok Kiun [one of the leading Kaewha members] were as
opposite as the poles, and it is difficult to believe that any sym-
pathy with the latter's fate could have entered their minds" (pp. 331-
32 .

8Queen Min argued for the opening of the country to Japan.
Her intention was to oppose the foreign policy of the regent Tae-
wongun. After the resignation of Taewongun from the regentship,
Queen Min turned against Japan and the pro-Japan elites. During the
revolt of the old soldiers, she asked Ch'ing China for help. After
the revolt (1882), she became ardently pro-China. When a group of
radical Japanese plotted to slay Queen Min, Taewongun was known to
help them enter her residence.

CHAPTER II

ELITES' RESPONSE TO THE SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY YI-KOREA

In this chapter, a social and historical background is fur-
nished to give a picture of the socio-cultural setting at the time of
the revolt. Especially, we discuss the trend of social thought after

the opening of Korea to the modern era.

Social Change and Modern Ideology

 

Since the opening of Korea, changes in social thought have
been remarkable. The exposure of Korean intellectuals to Western
civilization and religion through China influenced Confucian scholars'
outlook and cosmology, which had been sino-centered until that time.
During the period of Korean intellectual contacts with the Western
ideas that came through China, the masses were participating in a
reformulation of their own ideology which would eventually transform
the socio-cultural system of Yi-Korea into a modern society. We
will examine the extent of mass participation in this ideological
shift.

Shin Young-ha (1976) categorized social thought after the opening
of Korea to foreign countries other than China into four main currents,
each of them representing different socio-cultural roots and inter-
ests. According to his categorization, the social thoughts in the

21

22

transitional period to the modern society can be divided as follows:
(1) Tonghak (Eastern Learning),(2) Kaewha (Enlightenment Movement or
Modernization Movement), (3) the WijBn a h'5 (The Monarch should
follow the principle of neo-Confucianism while rejecting the influ-
ence of the evil doctrine--Western culture), (4) the doctrine of
Tongdosogi (Eastern Way and Western Technology) (pp. 4-9).

These four currents of social thought carried many common
expressions such as "modernization"--meaning the establishment of an
industrialized civil society, "national independence," etc.; how-
ever, these expressions did not always have the same connotation.
There is a question of what "modernization" or "nationalism" would
have meant to different socio-cultural groups. To the regent
Taewongun, King, and conservative Neo-Confucian scholars, "nation-
alism" meant the absolute sovereignty of the feudalistic Yi Kingdom
based on the Neo-Confucian political ideology. They argued for "The
Wijongsachok," meaning that the Monarch should follow the principle
of Neo-Confucianism while rejecting the influence of the evil doc-
trine (Western culture). But a group of young elites called for the
Opening of the country and the enlightenment of Korean people with new
ideas coming from the West and Japan. They called their ideology
"Kaewha," meaning "Enlightenment." Among these young elites, there
was a split around the issue of methods. One group insisted on the
opening of the country in a radical way. The other group argued that
Yi-Korea should adopt the Western technology and preserve the Eastern
Way. The doctrine of the latter group was expressed by the term

“Tongdosdgi,” meaning "Eastern Way and Western technology." The Split

23

of the young elites' group was interrelated with their political and
interpersonal networks.1
While elites were arguing about Korea's right response toward
the changing social situations, the masses were forming their own
idea for the period. When Ch'oe Che-u started to preach his new
religion, "Tonghak" or "New Heavenly Way Religion," the masses of
the country began to consolidate their class interests that cross-
cut their local interest. One could argue that change of the late
Yi-Korea made it possible for them to communicate across the local
boundary. However, the point is that whenever the social structure
permits it, they are ready to identify their socio-cultural interest.
Neglecting the point, Cho (1969) deals with the "Tonghak"
movement and "kaewha" movement chronologically in his "Motives and
Essence of Enlightenment Movement," only to suggest that "the Tonghak
rebellion was a synthetic expression of modern consciousness."
And he continues:
So far we have viewed how modern consciousness had grown and
what were the social dilemmas which stirred it. In short, we
have tried to grasp the process of Korean modernization by
examining the process of transformation which took place within
the framework of Korean society. Our chief aim in the above
chapters was to view the modernization movement as spontaneous
and self-conscious, without direct influence from foreign
sources. However, it was under direct foreign stimulus and
support and by foreign coercion and instigation that modern
consciousness took the form of the enlightenment movement.
Cho's effort to overview the trend of social thoughts in the
transitional period of Yi-Korea fails to recognize the importance of
the fact that different currents of social thought representing

varied socio-cultural roots and interests were not compatible with

24

each other. Their incompatibility was due to the very fact that
they were of different socio-cultural origins.

The merger of the four major currents of social thought was
possible only after the collapse of the socio-cultural system of
Yi-Korea and with a common enemy of the Japanese colonialist. It
was through deliberate strategies by the "Independence Club" that
people of various social strata began to develop the consciousness of

a modern Korean nation based on equality of the people (Shin, 1975)-
As Chong-sik Lee (1963) succinctly put it in his The Politics

of Korean Nationalism,

Hostile relationships between classes, more specifically

between the two divisions of the rulers and the ruled, impeded
the growth of nationalism in Korea. Until the distinction
between the Yangban and the rest of the population could be
diminished, it would be impossible to unite all under one symbol.
Because Korean royalty had been deeply involved in government
affairs and at the head of a corrupt regime, the king failed to
become the center for national cohesion as did the Japanese
emperor. Modern nationalism in Korea was to begin as a movement
against the regime rather than in defense of it.

Therefore, in the following sections, the different social
responses of pe0p1e will be discussed, emphasizing their socio-
cultural origins and interest.

Losing Faction and "Silhak School"
(Practical Learning)'

There had been an interrelationship between the schools of
Neo-Confucianism and political factions throughout the Yi dynastic
history. The first sign of disagreement among the Yi Neo-Confucian
scholars was shown from the earliest beginning of the dynasty when
they argued over the interpretation of Neo-Confucianism, as it was

applied to the legitimacy of the new government.

25

The group of scholars who supported the new regime was called
Kwanhakpa, the opposition group as Sallimpa. Once the two different
groups of scholars were identified with different schools, their
political factional identities were drawn along their ideological
lines. It was, however, not until Sano when political factions came
into being in the real sense of the term. During the reign of Sano,
there was rivalry between two queens which set the stage of real
political confrontations in a thin disguise of ideological battle.2

And by 1683, the four factions came to exist and fought for
power until the seizure of the dynasty by Japanese colonialists.3

In the factional struggle, generally Noron (Old Doctrine)
maintained its political dominance over the other three factions. The
ideological position of the Noron faction was known to be authentic
and orthodox in its interpretation of Chu Hsi and xenophobic in its
response to foreign ideas.

The Noron, usually the party in power during the initial decades
of Western contacts, espoused a rigid Chu Hsi orthodoxy and,
harking back to the Song Confucianists' revulsion against Buddhism,
regarded the introduction of all foreign ideas as subversive. The
Noron was at the same time the champion of rigid, classic social
structure, an emphasis which probably lay closer to native Korean
stress on the purity of the bloodline than it did to Confucian
concepts (Henderson & Yang, 1958: 97).

While the factional history of Yi-Korea illuminates the fact
that ideological confrontation did involve socio-political confronta-
tion between different factions, and vice versa, it was not until
the seventeenth century when an entirely new idea had been developed

by a group of people called “Silhak School" scholars.

26

When Namin Yi Su-gwang accompanied his king to Peking in
1603, he brought many Western books, technology, and a European map.
With a knowledge of Western science, he also brought the basic ele—
ments of Christian faith to Korea, taking with him Matteo Richi's

Jr
T'ien-chu Shil-i (f 153;); ): Exposition of the Real Meaning of
the Lord of Heaven.

The contacts of Korean intellectuals with Western ideas and
religion through China had a great impact on a group of Neo-Confucian
scholars in their construction of a world view. The introduction of
the world map from China relativized the Sino-centered world view of
Korean intellectuals. Hong Tae-young, one of the best Silhak scholars
in the seventeenth century, said as follows:

Seen from Heaven China and the barbarians (Ch'ing China) are

of a kind, and there is no distinction of "within" (N) and
"without” ( 9 ). It is only that seen from the point of view

of the Chinese, China is within and the barbarians are without,
while from the point of view of the barbarians they are within
while the Chinese are without. Since Confucius was a man of

Chou he naturally esteemed Chou, but had he been born beyond

the borders he fittingly would have written a Spring and Autumn
Annals of that region (Kalton, 1975: 34).

A significant socio-cultural implication of the development of
the Silhak School was that the Silhak emerged from the Namin (south-
erners). The Namin faction was discriminated against by the cultural
system itself. If it was not discriminated against by the system, at
least it was on the losing side of the political battle for a long
time. Henderson and Yang (1958, 1959) described the impact of the
socio-cultural interest of the group on its intellectual and ideo-

logical development as follows:

27

The sons of the concubines of the aristocracy gently reared

and educated but without career opportunities, flocked to the
opposing factions, especially Namin. Natural opposition to
philosophic orthodoxy and the need to buttress opposition with
an ideology often made the Namin avid champions of ideas opposed
to classic Chu Hsi-ism. It was among them that the ideas of
the "School of Han Learning" developed by those Ch'ing scholars.
. . . When Western ideas of philosophy, religion, and science
came to China it was associates of the Namin who went with the
tribute missions to China, responded to these ideas, brought
them back to Korea, and propagated them. From this group the
first Christian leaders came. From them new social and politi-
cal ideas gradually found their avenue. Against Christianity
and Western influence those associated with a certain Namin
group, Noron influence accordingly hardened. Since the Noron
represented the government, all government means were used to
prevent the new influence from entering the country.

 

 

Though Henderson and Yang describe that those who were on
the losing side of the factional fight took up "Practical Learning"
in their opposition to the prevailing ideology, it was not a con-
scious movement of intellectuals to set up a new school which led to
the formation of the "Silhak School."

It was a Korean national historian who called the intellec-
tuals with a new interest in the progressive ideas as "Practical
Learning School Scholars":

Silhak Practical Learning is now used as a term to group
together a number of scholars of the late Yi dynasty who are
considered to have had common interests and shared a common
approach to study. But these men never saw themselves as a
single group or movement united under the rubric "Silhak" or,
for that matter, under any other rubric. A number of subgroups,
formed on the basis of friendship, blood and marriage relation-
ships, or master-disciple bonds, etc., did exist; but the first
to group the members of these various subgroups into a larger
unity was Chang Chi Y6n in his history of Korean Confucianism,
Choson Yugyo Yonwon, which was published in 1922, a year after
his death. Chang saw them simply as followers of school of Han
Learning which arose in China during the Ch'ing dynasty, and it
was not until about a decade later that a group of nationalistic
Korean scholars, Chong In-bo, Mun Ilp-yong and Choe ham-son,
began referring to them by the term “Silhak." They used the

 

28

term "Silhak" because unlike the outworn Neo-Confucianism
metaphysics, the studies of the "Silhak" scholar were still of
immediate relevance to the problems that they themselves were
facing in Korea's early modern periods (Kalton, 1975: 30).
Though it was not a conscious movement of the time by "Silhak"
scholars, the fact that they were from the same socio-cultural origins
accounts for their common socio-cultural interests and conscious
struggle for their attainments.

Silhak school had developed with the following distinctive
characteristics: (1) the spirit of criticism, (2) the spirit of
seeking evidence to establish true facts, and (3) the spirit of
practicality (Kalton, 1975).

The adoption of the idea of equality from Catholicism often
accompanied the conversion of Namin scholars to Catholicism, a total
rejection of Neo-Confucianism. Though there have been arguments
whether the Silhak School should be treated as a revolutionary thought,
an antithesis of Neo-Confucianism, the arguments seem to derive from
missing the distinction between the idiom that Silhak scholars were
using and their ideas based on changing social reality. As the intel—
lectual field of the Yi dynasty was dominated by Confucian tradition
almost until the last day of the dynasty, the battle between intel-
lectuals was intelligible only in the Confucian idiom.

That fact that 59393, the ruling faction, interpreted the
philosophy of the Tonghak movement as heresy instead of as a totally
new idea proves that even the orthodox scholars preferred to level a

new social thought in Confucian framework. In fact, the new social

thought was communicable to the opposing party and the society in toto

29

only in the Confucian idiom. The problem of using the traditional
terminology while proposing a new social system was very well demon-
strated even in a revolt against the traditional system, in the

Tonghak peasant revolt of 1894.

Silhak and Catholicism

 

The native Confucian scholars who were known in history as
men of "Silhak" and Namin by political identity developed their
scholarly and scientific curiosity of Christinaity into a religious
faith.4

Introduced into Korea through the contact with the men of
Silhak and Jesuits in China, it attracted a number of followers. By
social status new converts were either Southerners who had lost their
governmental service for a long period of time and withdrawn from
society, or members of the lower middle class, or the oppressed
commoners and women and children who had no social identification in
a society ruled by the Yangban.

What greatly attracted their attention to this Catholicism
was the doctrine of human equality; especially the idea that oppressed
people, the lower middle class, and commoners could worship together
greatly moved the minds of these people. Women, who were socially
discriminated against by men, felt the same when they were allowed to
share a place with men.5

The Ngrgg_faction, which was the adamant defender of the
orthodox line in its interpretation of social structure and Neo-

Confucianism, attacked hard on the progressive faction and the new

foreign religion.

30

The most violent persecution of all started in 1866, under
the Regent of King Kojong, the Taewongun. His reactionary measures
against the Neo-Confucian scholars of his reign testified that his
persecution of Catholicism was not motivated to preserve the ideologi-
cal position of the ruling Confucian scholars but by the political
reality that favorable policy toward the foreign religion did him no
good but harm.

Although the formal persecution ended with the resignation of
the Taewongun in 1873, Catholicism remained under a cloud, and no
priests succeeded in crossing the border of Korea until 1876, the
year of the first foreign treaty with Japan. Some of these were
later expelled from the country, but foreign pressures were becoming
too strong to permit another full-scale persecution. The "Ordinance
for the Suppression of Evil Doctrines," passed at Confucian insistence
in 1881, was anti-Catholic in intent, but chose the means of trying
to revitalize and purify Confucianism as an ideological weapon to stop
the spread of Catholicism (Yi, 1970: 188).

Reactionary Attempt to Restore the Monarchical
Absolutism by the Regent Taewongun

The relationship between aristicratic class and the Monarch
was that of love and hatred. While the Monarch needed the political
support of the aristocratic class, at the same time, he had to
compete for political power with that same group.

From the earliest time of the Yi dynasty, the central govern-
ment tried to maintain strict control over the officials. Provincial

supervisors and district magistrates were never assigned to their home

31

provinces or districts and their tenure of office was limited. The
Government was especially careful to see that provincial supervisors
served for only one year in a given province. This was especially
important because the supervisor also commanded the tr00ps stationed
in his province (Han, 19701 231)-

The district magistrates were also frequently rotated, and
for this reason had to depend heavily upon the petty officials under
them, who were chosen from the local population and thus had good
knowledge of the local situation, which the magistrates needed for
the effective discharge of their duties. Aside from the petty
officials on their own staffs, the magistrates governed through a
council of local Yangban (Han, 1970: 233)-

Central control was further strengthened through a liaison
system. One member of the district council and one member of the
magistrate's staff were regularly sent to reside in Seoul to manage
relations between the national and district Governments, facilitating
the delivery of messages and taxes. In addition, another member of
the magistrate's staff was sent to reside with the provincial super-
visor. In this way every member of the Yangban class was either
absorbed into or controlled by the Government (Hansl970= 233)-

Land was officially nationalized and private landowning by a
limited number of officials who had special merit grant was confined
to the Kyongkyi Province, to be in the control of the central Govern-

ment (Ch'oi, 1971).

32

Despite all devices to maintain the centralized Government,
the advancement of the aristocratic class in the power domain some-
times crippled the Monarch's power and weakened his authority.

In the central Government there existed a strategy known as
Ch'okchok Sedo politics (Ch'okchok means in-laws of the King. Sedo
politics means "power politics.").6 Since it was the Monarch who
played the last card in the political struggle between political fac-
tions, the aristocrats plotted with in-laws of the royal family that
the succession of the kingship would go to the one who had the same
political interest. The advancement of in-law politics was most
remarkable when young kings succeeded to the kingship. Sometimes,
political power was transferred to the father of the queen in the name
of regentship (Han, 1970: 337).7

In rural areas, the development of §§w93_(private Cunfucian
academies) had coincided with the growth of the political power of
the aristocratic class.8 The exploitation by s§wgg_became one of
the most notorious social problems in the late Yi-Korea. The growth
of the g§wgg_economy and its power meant the automatic decrease of
central power and revenue.9

The §§wgg_of Taewongun's days was the source of corruption
and extortion of people. It not only exploited commoners by over-
taxing the tenants of §§w9n_land, but also put the local administra-
tion out of order by commanding its authority above the local
Government. Politically speaking, the §§w9g_were beyond the control
of the State. The letter issued by the Kwangyang séwgg, for example,

surpassed the authority of the central Government (Kim, 1971: 8).

33

When Taewongun came into power as a ruling regent in 1866,
he was determined to restore the absolute monarchism. He imme-
diately began to reform the old traditional Government and its
policies. His main target was to destroy the foundation of Confu-
cian scholars and in-law politics.

He changed the military regulation and the conscription sys-
tem. Previously, all male Koreans had had to register at the military
office at the age of fifteen. They were conscripted as soldiers in
the time of peace. In time of peace, and when there was no need for
laborers, they had to contribute cotton or similar materials to the
Government as a kind of special military tax. This system only
applied to Common citizens, but exempted offspring of the higher
Government officials.

Further, the offspring of the common people were responsible
for the grain taxation which their fathers and grandfathers had been
unable to pay. This system was changed by Taewongun. He proclaimed
that the conscription must apply to both the common citizens and the
higher officials alike, and made a new military tax regulation.
Yangban-class people objected to the new policy, insisting that appli-
cation of the same to the commoners and Yangban class would result in
the confusion of social status (Kim, 1971).10

Second, he closed up many unnecessary Confucian institutions
throughout the country, and the Buddhist temples of the Koryo dynasty.
The Confucian temples and institutions which were erected all over
the nation he had deemed as unnecessary because that was where the

royal families and upper-class people met and wasted time on social

34

life and where they were scheming to get all the wealth into their
hands. First, he ordered the abolishment of all §§w99§_except forty-
seven out of hundreds.H Later, he stepped up his strong policy
against the §§wgg_and ordered the abolishment of Mandong-myo, a shrine
of Song Siyol, of Hwayang séwgg, the stronghold of the Ngrgg,1

In his foreign policy, Taewongun maintained a harder line
against any foreign attempt to open the door of the country. And
his anti-foreign, anti-Catholicism became a rallying point of mobiliz-
ing the support of the masses and aristocratic Confucian scholars
against their common enemy of foreign forces and ideas. His famous
slogan was "Chuwha Maeguk," meaning "those who insist on friendly
relationship with any foreign countries are the people who sell their
country to the foreign countries" (Sohn, 1970: 194).

It should be remembered that by the late nineteenth century,
the internal policy was not able to be made without any political
consideration of external forces and vice versa. While the external
forces tried to capitalize on the internal political struggle of
Yi-Korea, those in the internal political struggle tried to use
external forces to their best advantage}3

Though the masses supported Taewongun's anti-foreignism,
they were not organized to support him in his political struggle
against his political enemy. And the aristocratic class was ready
to compromise with foreign powers to maintain their own faction in
power.14 Above all, Taewongun's interest in "nationalism" was not
motivated by the same reason as that of the masses who responded to

his xenophobic call to oppose any foreign forces. While the

35

reactionary regent Taewongun was interested in the absolute power
of the Monarch, it was the wish of the masses in the transitional
period of Korea to have their own nation to be ruled by their own
monarch. But, soon they found that the basis of the traditional
world view had been radically changed. And even the legendary sage
Kings of China would not have a good answer to the social problems
of the period.15

When the masses realized their potential as a social force,
they were moving toward the realization of their cultural and econ-
omic interest, not that of the Monarch or aristocratic class. The
fulfillment of their cultural and economic interest could not be
achieved, though, unless the cultural system of Yi-Korea was com—
pletely rejected, and a new socio-cultural system was devised.

“Kaewha Tang" (Enlightenment Party)
and Kapsin Coup

 

 

In the modern transformational period of Korea, a group of
young elites formed a progressive party. They were of broad social
origins and had a common interest in Western ideas and science.16
They called their party "Kaewha Tang" (meaning "Enlightenment Party").
It was aimed at advancing modern ideology--meaning Western ideology--
and enlightening Korea through the opening of the country to foreign
countries.

The participation in and influence on the Kaewha ideology
formation by the Chungin class (Intermediary class)17 was great.

Park Kye-su and O Kyong-sok, who acted respectively as assistant and

interpreter for Korean missions to China, had seen that China was

36

subdued by the overwhelming military might and technological prowess
of the Western powers, and concluded that a similar fate would befall
Korea. They brought back many books from China introducing Western
civilization (Lee, 1976: 2471-18

One of O Kyong-sok's friends, Yu Tae-ch'i, happened to read
the books and agreed on the need to prepare for a crisis to come.
To infuse a new thought in the young generation, they opened a class
for reading Silhak classics of the late Yi dynasty and books on
Western civilization. They enrolled talented youths from Yangban
families.19 The young elites who enrolled in the class later formed
Kaewha Tang.

The concept of "Kaewha" (Enlightenment) can not be defined
in simplistic terms. Yu Kil-jun, one of the most prominent Kaewha
members, said that the concept of "Kaewha" could be defined "as
the best stage of the all human affairs . . . and it has no limit in
its aiming at the complete stage." And Si Jae-pil, one of the Kapsin
coup members, said in the "Independent News" that "The concept of
Kaewha means that things should be done as it is" (Lee: 1976: 245)-

The development of Kaewha thought and the party would be
divided into two time periods. It was formulated by a handful of
young intellectuals toward the end of the 18605 (Lee, 1975: 247)-

During the 18705, it was focusing on the opening of the country
to foreign forces. In the following 18805, the major issue was how
to enrich the country and strengthen the military power of the country.
During the latter period the Kaewha party was developed by two split

factions of moderate and radical progressive reformers. While debating

37

on this issue, the moderate faction was more powerful than the
radicals.

In the 18805, the confrontation between the moderates and
radicals became violent and the issue of debates was shifted to the
problem of national independence and civil rights, modern reforms,
and enlightenment of the nation.

The idea of building a modern civil society seems to have
been introduced to Korea through China. However, the growth of pro-
gressive thinkers in Korea can not be fully apprehended without dis-
cussing the modernization of Meiji Japan.

Japan had been establishing a modern nation-state through the
Meiji restoration of 1866. To inform of her domestic change, Japan
sent a ceremonial envoy to Korea wishing a new diplomatic relationship
in a modern form (Sunoo, 1974: 71). The Japanese mission group met
with rejection by the Korean government, which insisted that as long
as Japan used the term "Emperor" for her king, she should not expect
any tie to be established with Korea (Conroy, 1960: 28).20 The rejec-
tion of the Japanese envoy to the Korean government was thought to be
an insult to Japan and her people. Seikan ron ("Conquer Korea" argu-
ment) was proposed by reactionary feudalistic politicians (Conroy,
1960: 18).21

It is very important to consider Japanese internal affairs
and their influence on Korean progressive thinkers. For when the
Korean Government sent a mission to Japan in accordance with the

treaty of Chemulpo (between Korea and Japan), the young progressive

38

elites were very much influenced by Japanese thinkers through exchange
of ideas and friendship (Conroy, 1960).22

Impressed by the modernization of Japan, they decided that
"independence of Korea from China" was the first step in building a
modern nation-state. "Independence" of the Korean nation from China
was very much a political slogan. In actuality, Korea had always
been relatively autonomous. Harold Sunoo (1974), a Korean political
scientist, describes the Korea-China relationship as follows: "The
fundamental relationship between Korea and China was not a treaty
commitment, but was a series of ceremonial obligations between a
'superior' and 'inferior' power in a mutually profitable relation-
ship" (p. 71).

While staying in Japan, Kim Ok-keun from the envoy group of
1877 made close contact with such members of the Japanese high
officials, including the former Premiers, Okubo, Inukai, and the lead-
ers from the former Samurai group Toyota (Sunoo, 1974: 114).

On his return to Korea, Kim organized a political party
called the "Progressive Party." The "Progressive Party" was a small
minority which had won the royal confidence and which the Japanese
were willing to finance. Besides the Japanese Government's sympathy
for the Progressive Party, there was a civilian group which had secret
plans to support Kim and his group. This group was led by Di Ken-taro,
one of the organized leading socialists in early Japan. Oi's plan
was to organize a secret group among the Japanese, and to support

Kim's group in overthrowing the conservative influence in the Korean

39

Government, and simultaneously to take over the Japanese Government by
revolution (Sunoo, 1974: 114).

As the Japanese-supported young progressives were attempt-
ing various radical reforms, the conservatives in the Government
reacted, trying to eliminate the progressive activities. Upon the
reactionary measures by the conservatives, the progressives felt the
urgent need of radical actions.

The Progressive Party under Kim Ok-keun and the military
students under the leadership of So Jai-pil set a coup d'etat on the
day when the new post office building was to be inaugurated
(December 4, 1884). The Progressives' plan, at first, was to report
that the palace had been set on fire, thereby rousing the reactionary
group from their banquet seats, shooting them as they left the party.
However, the plan failed (Sunoo, 1974: 165).

Jai-pil 56, one of the Kapsin coup members and a leader of
the Independence Movement later, recalls the events as follows in
his "Memoirs":

Throughout the history of Korea, rare were revolutions whether
political or social. In the five hundred years old history of
Yi-Korea, I never heard that there was any case like the Kapsin
coup of December (1884). The revolution of 918 by Wang (the
founder of Koryo dynasty). and even the warfares in the Three
Kingdoms' era from fourth century through tenth century were

not aiming at the economic as well as social welfare of people.
But the Kapsin coup was different from other revolutions in
other countries in that it was not carried out by the anger of
the masses, but by young elites of the aristocratic class. It
was very similar to the following two cases: That is, in
England when the aristocrats forced King John to sign the famous
Magna Charta at Runnymede in 1215, and a group of young radicals
from Satsuma revolted against the feudalistic Tokugawa shognate

and restored the imperial power in 1867 [sic|. The reformists
of the Kapsin coup, without any doubt, had been inspired by the

40

two preceding events. The only difference between the aristo-
cratic elites coup of Japan and England, and Korea was that in
the former they succeeded while in the latter it failed (Yu,
1977: 204).

41

Footnotes--Chapter II

 

1One of the leading members of the conservative Kaewha group,
Min Youngwhan, shared new ideas with Kim Ok-keun, a radical Kaewha
group's leading member, in his early interest in new ideas. Later
he turned against the radical Kaewha members with Queen Min. He was
a relative of Queen Min.

2King Sano's first queen died without having borne a son.
Prince Kwanghae, the son of one of the King's concubines, was made
Crown Prince. But when the King married a second queen and she bore
him a son, some of the Northerners (Pukin) held that this child had
the legitimate right of succession. They were overridden, and Prince
Kwanghae ascended the throne at his father's death with the support
of the faction now called the Great Northerners (Taepuk), and pro-
ceeded to eliminate the Small Northerners (SoPuk) who had opposed
him (Han, 1970: 300).

3Four factions are: (l) Noron (Old Doctrine), (2) Soron
(Young Doctrine), (3) Namin (Southerners), and (4) Pukin (Northerners).

4For example, Chong Yak-yong (1762-1836), a prominent Silhak

scholar, became a convert to Catholicism, for which he was banished
in 1801 to a remote island for 18 years (Han, 1970: 326). Chong
yak-j6n, another Silhak scholar, who wrote "On the Fishes of Chasan
Island," lived in exile for 16 years on the island of Chasan (now
Huksan Island) for having a Catholic faith. Yi-Sung-hun, who was the
first Baptist in Korean Catholic history, was from the Namin faction.
7i Sung-huh was baptized in Peking by Bishop Alexandre de Gouvea in
783.

:Taewongun's wife was known to have a faith in Catholicism.

6Kim (1971) states: "In Confucian thought, Sedo (fit’=§
politis means righteous Government or the rule of the righ6?’While
Sedo ( %) politics refers to power politics. In Korean politics,
both mea fiat someone else other than King is ruling" (p. 43).

7It was the case when Chongjo, upon his death, put his 11-
years-old son (King Sunjo) under the protection of a trusted retainer,
Kim Cho- -sun. He managed to have Sunjo marry his daughter, occupied
the leading posts in the Government himself, and placed members of
his family in most of the other important offices.

8The 56won (private Confucian school) was the local institu-
tion whose purpose was to worship the great scholars and royal sub-
jects of the past, and through their worship and their teachings to
nurture Confucian virtues.

42

The origin of 56won started in 1541 when Chu Sebung founded
the first important s6won at P' unggi in the northern part of Kyong-
sang Province, where the great Koryo Confucian scholar An Yu lived.

It was the wish of Chu Sebung to worship An Yu and promote Confucian-
ism through his moral influence.

King Myongjong granted slaves and lands to encourage the pur-
pose of the s6won. P' unggi s6won, as a private Confucian school,
began to produce many great scholars. As the success of the P' unggi
sowon spread rapidly as a private institution, many scholars of high
intellectual quality preferred to teach at the 56won, which usually
was at their hometown. As a result, the best scholars and students
were drawn to the s6won.

The development of s6won had a crucial influence on the mode
of political factionalism of Yi-Korea. For the s6won provided the
symbolic front for the group of scholars from the same geographic
and factional interest; it was in the name of ideology, which was
identified by the school of so- -and- -so s6won, that the Confucian
bureaucrats of Yi- Korea fought each other.

Early in the reign of Sukjong when there were rapid shifts
of power, each succeeding faction tried to close its rivals' s6won
to weaken their cultural and economic strength. Until the Noron
faction brought a degree of stability to Government there was a
great deal of Opening and closing of 56won until a relatively stable
pattern emerged. The Yangban barred from office, as had been the case
before the Japanese invasion (1592- ),were concentrated largely in
Kyongsang Province, where accordingly the s6won were most numerous.

It should be added that the Kyongsang scholars were descended mostly
from the old Southern faction.

9Kim (1971) uses Yi SBngun's Choan Ch'aegunse Sa (The History
of Recent Korea) as source material on this.

10Kim (1971) used SBngun's Kuksa Taekwan (A Comprehensive
History of Korea) as his source material.

11
12

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taken from Ilsongrok (King's Diary), Kojong 8 (August 7).
Hwayang ston was demolished in Kojong 2 (1865).

13The followers of Catholicism wanted to use the power of
the French naval force to advance their political position. Nam
Chong Sam, one of the early Catholic converts, suggested to Taewongun
a three-nations'league with France and England to confront the advanc-
ing Russian power from the North. Taewongun agreed. As a result,
the preliminary contact between Taewongun and the Catholics to promote
a three-nations' league was making headway. Then Taewongun suddenly
changed his attitude toward the negotiation and began to persecute the
Catholic movement. The Government arrested Catholic leaders and for-
eign missionaries. Nine out of 12 missionaries and many other Korean

43

Catholics were executed (Kim, 1971: 101). Kim's original source is
Kojong Sillok (The Record of Actual Facts During King Kojong's
Reign), Kojong 3 (January 5-9).

14Yi Hangno's §§_(a personal letter to the King) points out
the impossibility of military confrontations with the advanced powers.
His §Q was intended to criticize Taewongun's foreign policy and to ask
his stepdown from the regentship. Considering that Yi Hangno was a
Neo-Confucian scholar, his criticism of anti-foreign policy of Taewon-
gun and his insistence on the opening of the country can not but be
interpreted by political implication.

15Ch'oe Che-u said that even the Yo-Shun (sage Kings in
Chinese legends) could not have an answer to the social problems of
nineteenth century Korea.

16

17"The Chungin were specialists in eight strictly defined
fields, which in rank order were: (1) interpreters for spoken
Chinese (all officials knew the written language), Manchu (or Jurchen),
Mongol, and Japanese, in that rank order; (2) legal assistants,
attached to the Bureau of Crime to give officials of the Board of
Punishment advice on the exact penalties to be prescribed, together
with the Confucian (usually Chinese) precedents therefore; (3) astrolo-
gers to help designate propitious days for ceremonies and beneficent
locations for royal burial sites and advice on geographical and astro-
nomical matters; (4) medical doctors, primarily for the palace but
secondly for outside practice and, by extension, herbalists;
(5) accountants; (6) copyists or secretaries; (7) artists to draw the
maps, charts, plans, and court portraits; (8) the supervisor of the
government's one hydraulic clock" (Henderson, 1968: 394, note 35).

18
scholar.

19The following people were enrolled in the class: Kim
Yunsik, Kim Hong,jip, Yun-jung, Pak Yong-hyo, Kim Ok-keun, Pak
Yong-hyo, Hong Yong-sik, So Kwang-bom, and Yu Kil-jun.

20Conroy (1960) uses "Memo or Conversation, September 14,
1870: Gaimusho (Japanese Foreign Office), Dai Nihon Gaiko Bunsho or
Nihon Gaiko Bunsho (Japanese Foreign Affairs Documents)."

2‘Conroy (1960) explains Seikan Ron as follows: "Seikan Ron
is an expression which occurs again and again in Japanese documents
and newspapers of the 1870's. With its Confucian overtone it means
'the argument (Ron) over whether Japan should inflict righteous pun-
ishment (for the insult) by conquering Korea (Seikan).'"

 

Yangban, Chungin (Intermediary class), Buddhist monks, etc.

Park Kye-su was a grandson of Park Chi-won, a Silhak

44

22Fukuza and other Japanese Liberals began to be in close
touch with potential Korean reformers about 1881 (Conroy, 1960: 134).

Inoue Kakugoro, a young non-samurai of Hiroshima prefecture,
came to Tokyo to study at Fukuzawa's school, lived at Fukuzawa's
house, and acted as tutor to Fukuzawa's son. A favorite with his
teacher, he became most active of the Keio group on Korean affairs.
It seems that he handled secret correspondence between Fukuzawa,

Kim Ok-keun, and Pak Young-hyo (pp. 135-36). _

Before the plot of 1884 coup, Inoue Kakugoro set out to Korea
with a mission of civilizing the country: "The purpose of my going
to Korea was in a word to make Korea move toward civilization. The
reason I had that purpose was because I had stayed for three years
in Fukuzawa's house and was much influenced by his discussions. . .
(Fiji Shimpo [newspaper], August 27, 1910) (p. 137).

Fukuzawa also gave Kim and Pak some lessons in theoretical
politics, the main point of these being that "all civilized nations
in the world, including Japan, have sovereignty, but Korea with a
culture 2000 years old still belongs to big old China. For the first
time Kim and Pak realized the true significance of independence
(Tabohashi, "A Study of Japanese Korean Relations," 1940, I. 909)

p. 138 .

CHAPTER III
DEVELOPMENT OF TONGHAK AS A MASS RELIGION

Little Tradition and Village Autonomy

Before the emergence of the modern state, village autonomy
had been maintained to a degree that Redfield (1967) finally char-
acterized as a situation in which the small community was an "inte-
grated whole," "a culture unit." The pre-modern state apparently
did not have a direct control of the whole population, due to the lack
of communicational system, standing military army, and the efficient
bureaucratic system that the modern state has.

Despite its isolation, however, village life in the pre-
modern state existed in the larger political context of the state.
This was the case with Imperial China, Thailand, Ceylon, Vietnam,
Tokugawa Japan, and Yi-Korea (Befu, 1965). The state's interest in
the village was expressed and realized in various taxes that it
imposed on the villagers (Wolf, 1969; Griffis, 1905).

Then how was it possible for the pre-modern state to levy
taxes from the rural people with its limited bureaucratic instru-
ments and functionaries? To explain the articulation of the two
different levels of social structure and interest, the role of inter-
mediaries between the state and village should be called in.

The intermediary class is characterized by its responsibility
to the state and delegation of the village interest to the state.

45

46

The specific form of intermediary class is different from culture to
culture. In China, the scholar-gentry who did not hold formal office
stood between the masses of the peasantry and formal officialdom
(Wolf, 1969). In Tokugawa Japan, the village headman, with the
support of his own villagers, represented the latter's interest to
the Tokugawa government while transmitting the governmental message
back to them (Befu, 1965).

Although their main messages to the villagers were about
taxation, their approach was always to the moral duty of the peasantry.
Differently put, the peasant's tax duty to the state was a moral duty,
an extension of filial piety, which was the prime aegis of the Confu-
cian ethic. The head of the state was compared to the head of a
family. Therefore, peasants were expected to respect the moral claim
of the state head.

In the cosmic image of the Confucian ideology, the peasantry
formed the periphery of the center, the emperor. The center-periphery
relations between the state and villages were expressed as the continuum
of the great and little tradition by Redfield (1967). The great tra-
dition of the elite class, he explained, was localized or parochial-
ized in the process of its transmission to the peasantry. And since
the little tradition was a product of local adaptation of the uni-
versalistic great tradition, it was by nature heterogeneous and
exclusive, so the argument goes.

It is true that village autonomy, to a large extent guaran-
teed by the subsistence economy, could create a heterogeneous local

tradition, which seemingly was distinctively integrated. However, to

47

neglect the vertical linkage between village life and the state and
the importance of articulation between the two would lead one to an
impasse when one has to explain the interclass facionalism in India,
China, and Korea (Scott, 1976; Omvedt, 1976; Wolf, 1969; Brandt,
1971).

Then what did hold the interclass coalitions intact? Is it
the ideology of kinship in China and Korea, and other Southeastern
Asian countries, and that of the caste system in India? Attacking
the problem in the Indian context from the Marxist point of view,
Omvedt (1976) bluntly says that:

It also seems true that the value system of caste as such

has had an important causal influence on the development

of Indian civilization, to use Marxist terminology. the "super-
structure" is not simply an epiphenomenon. But to show that
economic factors are secondary to religious ones in ideology

or the same as providing that they are secondary in fact.

The issue of what the caste system is (what its values and order-
ing features are) is different from the issue of how it arose
(what historical problems it was a solution to) and how it is
maintained or changed (p. 35).

Omvedt's emphasis on economic factors in explanation of
social structure and "the ordering features" is well taken, but only
with some reservation as to the problem of conceptualization of
"change." Apart from the rhetoric of "nothing really changes" or
"everything changes," the specificity of change needs some discussion
in the final conclusion. The flow of this thesis, however, makes it
evident that this is not the adequate place to discuss it.

Rather than talking about the problem of the conceptualiza-
tion of "change," we will study the actual change in the agrarian

economic structure and social relationship in nineteenth century

Yi-Korea.

48

Changigg Agrarian Economy and Social
Relationship of Late Yi-Korea

 

 

In principle, lands were owned by the state in Yi-Korea.
Peasants were allowed to till the public land with various kinds of
taxation duties. The government bureaucrats were paid by the govern-
ment from the portion of what the government siphoned off from the
peasantry. When the government granted a portion of the public land
to specially merited officials, the right to collect rent from the
land was given, not the right to own the land.

The change'hithe form of land control and type of ownership
began to come after the Japanese invasion of 1592-1598. The emergence
of a de facto private landowning class is suspected to have preceded
this period. However, the increase in private landownership was
negligible compared to the later period.

After the Japanese invasion, the population size had
lessened and the acreage of arable land was reduced from the prewar
level of 1,708,000 kygl_to 541,000 kygl.(Ch'oi, 1971). The source
of government revenue was thereby reduced as well. To remedy the
financial situation, the government promulgated a new law encourag-
ing reclamation of wild land and cultivation of the deserted land.
It promised such privileges as an exemption from taxes for three
years and a guarantee of the cultivating right for ten years for
whatever reclaimed or recultivated. The recultivator was supposed
to pay one-third of the crops as rent to the original cultivator
when and if the latter made an appearance (Ch'oi, 1971).

This was the first official recognition of ground-rent and

the beginning of the development of private landownership and

49

tenancy. The development of an exchange economy and the wide cir-
culation of coins in the following period prompted sales of farmland.
Two groups of landowners emerged: one from the bureaucratic class
and the other from the rural people (Ch'oi, 1971).

In what condition what kinds of peasants made their way
into a landowning class is not clear from the information that I
have now. However, the emergence of a private landowning class
suggests that the lot of the tilling peasant was not much improved.

The mode of government taxation had changed too since the
seventeenth century. While the government in the earlier period
took into consideration the yearly yield fluctuation and stipulated
that all taxable land be annually surveyed and the amount of tax be
detenmined by the size of the farms, by the reign of Sukjong (1675-
1720) the land tax had changed to a fixed-rent system, taxing a fixed
amount of the grain, regardless of the nature of the harvest (Ch'oi,
1971).

While in the past, the government got necessary materials
through specialty tributes from various localities, now the specialty
tributes were received in grain. This meant: (l) peasants were
levied more their portion of grain; (2) rice became a single medium
of exchange, which could make the way from the money-exchange economy;
and (3) the government had to purchase its necessities from the mar-
kets.

The government employed "tribute contractors" for this pur-

pose and let them provide the government necessities. This made a

 

 

50

great contribution to the development of a commercial economy, which
had already been underway.

While the tribute contractors needed no investment capital,
being paid in advance for procuring the items needed by the govern-
ment, they often faced difficulties because the amount of their pay-
ment was fixed while commodity prices frequently fluctuated, threaten-
ing them with heavy losses.

The amount of necessary commodities for the government was
fixed item by item by law. However, the demand frequently exceeded
this amount. A contractor who could get together sufficient capital
to purchase the tribute things could buy more than needed and store
them to wait until the price was going high. In other words, they
were becoming wholesalers. This could be possible since the govern-
ment granted monopoly of the commercial business to the government
licensing contractors.1

By the nineteenth century, the official contractors had
declined and a new group of private wholesalers emerged and monopo-
lized the commercial contracts. They were called "inn-keepers"
("Kaekju" and "Yokak") because they engaged in offering services for
trading, sales on commission, warehousing, and transportation, and,
at the same time, in connected business, such as inn-keeping and
banking.2 Residing in big cities where the commodities were largely
transacted, they bought specialties from small local producers and
sold them to retailers who came to buy goods from them.

Below the "Kaekju" and "Yokak," there were peddlers (or

traveling merchants) who had a direct connection with local markets.

 

51

They were called "Botjim Changsa" or peddlers, because they carried
their goods from place to place as local markets were opened at dif-
ferent times of regular intervals at different places. They monopo-
lized rights in local markets in designated areas and had certain
rights and duties under the control and protection of the Yi govern-
ment. They enjoyed monopolistic commercial rights in local markets
and in return for the privilege they paid taxes and assisted the
government in case of national emergency.3

Having an intimate knowledge of local markets throughout the
country, they were quick to take advantage of local business oppor-
tunity. They, as traveling merchants, also engaged in money
lending, seeking their customers among the peasants and small retail-
ers (Juhn, 1977).

The expansion of the outside control of the rural economy
by such commercial agents as "Kaekju" and "Pobusang" had a signifi-
cant implication for the increasing hardship of the peasant economy
and the changing social relationship in rural areas.

As it is often characterized, the peasant economy is dis-
tinguished from other types of economy by the fact that the family
is a unit of consumption as well as a unit of production and the goal
of the peasant economy is to meet the peasant's subsistence needs.
Within the framework of the subsistence economy, the peasant subsis-
tence crisis is an individual family problem. Although peasants are
involved with local markets, their involvement with markets is not
intensive. Even granted that their involvement with local markets is

intensive, if the local markets are not enmeshed in a nationwide

52

market network, peasant subsistence crisis will be limited to the
local level. James Scott (1976) explains it very clearly in Ihg_
Moral Economy of the Peasant as follows:
In a small restricted market, price and yield tended to
offset one another; the smaller the local harvest, the
greater the per unit price and vice versa, since supply
and demand were largely determined by the harvest itself.
Then, peasants' involvement with the world market could be most
devastating to the peasant economy, for
within a world market, however, this nexus between local
harvest and price is broken and the world price varies
more or less independently of local supply--a small har-
vest is as likely to fetch a small price per unit as a large
harvest (Scott, 1976).

After the opening of Korea to Japan in 1876, the Korean rice
export to Japan played a crucial role in changing the traditional
agrarian economic structure of Yi-Korea.

From the beginning of the Korean-Japanese trading relation-
ship, the treaty regulation allowed for Japanese businessmen to
export Korean rice to Japan, with a benefit of tax exemption. Since
during the period of the 18805 to 18905, Japan had been experiencing
an acute shortage of rice as her urban population rapidly increased,
the price of rice had been rapidly going up. Therefore, Japanese
businessmen were naturally induced to invest in the Korean rice
import. The export of Korean rice to Japan raised the living expenses
of Korean people.

Homer Hulbert (1901), a missionary who had been residing in

Korea, observed the impact of Korean rice export to Japan on the

Korean economy as follows:

53

The opening of Korea naturally gave an impulse to agriculture.
The higher prices of cereals that prevailed in Japan soon
influenced the Korean market and the export of beans and rice
has been very great. This has increased the amount of circu-
lating medium and has raised the prices of all commodities.
The natural law of supply and demand has been into play and
the cost of living in Japan and Korea is gradually becoming
equalized (p. 4).

From what Hulbert stated, two points need to be discussed.
First, the export of rice gave an impulse to agriculture. Second,
there was an increased amount of circulating medium as a result of
rice export.

We could ask whether the Korean peasants were producing more
and enjoyed the fringe benefits coming from the production of surplus
for an international market (if this was what Hulbert meant by "an
impulse to agriculture"). On the contrary, Korean peasants had more
acute economic hardship than before. One result of the economic
situation was an ominous rise in banditry through the 18805 and early
18905. Well-organized robber bands began to appear with bases deep
in the mountains, attacking shipments of tax grain and convoys of
imported goods on their way to Seoul, the capital city of Yi-Korea.
Another result was a wave of local uprisings of various kinds, usually
against corrupt officials (Han, 1970).

Even without any available data on the mode of land control
of this period, we can easily infer that what was exported was not
in proportion to what was produced. In other words, what was left to
peasants was not enough to guarantee their subsistence economy. The
retail price for rice rose steeply (Han, 1970). When peasants were

left with insufficient grain for subsistence, they had to buy what

they produced with even higher prices.

 

 

54

Table 1

Rice and Bean Export Through Three Trading Ports: 1889 to 1894

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inch'on Pusan Wansan
Tons { Tons 7 Tons f

Beans 9,619 32,868 9,748 43,417 7,088 20,909
1889 Rice 693 4,009 1,338 7,627

Beans 17,389 69,870 15,274 69,303 8,546 28,353
1890 Rice 22,645 143,040 32,090 196,180 46 425

Beans 20,841 82,966 12,499 60,075 2,210 9,282
1891 Rice 22,827 120,507 32,349 182,325 62 555

Beans 261,699 52,227 269,298 65,207 14,251 3,120
1892 Rice 263,164 76,071 365,968 117,710 1,448 615

Beans 157,275 28,664 167,985 42,374 45,138 8,843
1893 Rice 152,366 41,145 50,743 15,382 260 101

Beans 146,235 27,782 39,062 8,209 92,949 15,540
1894 Rice 396,805 100,320 51,092 16,035 11,785 4,660
Source: Han (1970).

 

55

It is not very clear what Hulbert meant by the increased
amount of circulating medium. However, we can safely relate it to the
intensified commercial activities in Yi-Korea. After the opening of
Korean trading ports to foreigners, the "Kaekju" and "Yokak" came to
handle trade with foreign merchants at the seaports as wholesalers,
and sold goods Uplocal consumers, most of them consisting of peasants.
The imported goods were daily necessities such as kitchen utensils,
kerosene, and clothing.

It was not only the Korean rice export to Japan that had a
direct impact on the subsistence economy of Korean peasants, but also
the Japanese fishing activity in the Korean coastal areas. Fishing
was the major source of animal protein in Koreans' diets (Han, 1972).5
Increased fishing activity of Japanese fishermen left few sea animals
for Korean fishermen, who had fishing equipment far inferior to that
of Japanese fishermen.

When Korea opened three trading ports in 1876, in the trade
regulation between Korean and Japan it was stated that Japanese fisher-
men could fish around the seashore of four Korean Provinces--Hamkyong,
Kangwon, Kyongsang, and Cholla Provinces. It was also stated that on
the payment of licensing fees set by the Korean government, Japanese
fishermen could sell their fishing products to Koreans.

According to a Japanese report of that time from January 1890
to August 1892, the number of Japanese fishing ships that applied for
fishing licenses at Pusan's customs house amounted to 1,677.

The number of fishing ships that were engaging in fishery around the

 

56

seashore of Kyongsang and Cholla Provinces accounted for more than
2,000 (Han, 1954).6

If we look at the number of fishing ships that were operating
between 1890 and 1893, we find that Japanese fishing ships were almost
monopolizing the fishing industry around the Korean seashore.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century of Yi-Korea,
"an increase in exploitation that touches many peasants simultaneously,
that is sudden and that threatens existing subsistence arrangements"
was happening (Scott, 1976). As Scott (1976) argues in The Moral
Economy of the Peasant, "only a shock of substantial scope produces a
large body of the peasants with a collective reason to act." And

if the shock is also sudden it is more difficult to adapt to
routinely or incrementally and is more likely to be a sharp
moral departure from existing norms of reciprocity. Much of
the potential for peasant rebellion must be understood, then,
in terms of the structural vulnerability of the peasantry to
the kinds of shocks in question.

Though Scott's suggestion of the structural vulnerability of
the peasantry to the sudden shocks of substantial scope in conjunc-
tion with peasant revolts should be critically evaluated with more
detailed data in order to determine its applicability to the Korean
context of the nineteenth century, a changing economic structure of
Yi-Korea and a corresponding social structural change should have had
a significant implication to the new social phenomena.

New economic and social relationships emerged not out of a
vacuum, but out of the traditional socioeconomic relationship. The

traditional elite and mass relationship had changed. In the tradi-

tional society, while Yangban and peasants were culturally

57

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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59

Who is it, then, that speaks to the peasant and what is it that
they communicate which moves the peasant to violent political
action? Peasants often harbor a deep sense of injustice, but
this sense of injustice must be given shape and expression in
organization before it can become active on the political
scene. . . (Wolf, 1969).

The cultural elites were the ones who created a new ideology
and political organizations. Here, we can not agree with Scott's argu-
ment that "nationalism" as the universal ideology within the political
boundary of the state was the unique cultural response to foreign domi-
nance. Scott (1974) insists that:

Peasanttunjsings(especially in the colonial context) were more
or less spontaneous uprisings displaying all the trademarks of
peasant localism in a world in which the big battalions 0f secu-
lar nationalism were the only effective opposition to the colonial
setting.

We can not agree with Scott's suggestion that peasant revolts
and nationalism were exclusively peasant based. Peasants were known
to be stubbornly traditional. The explanation that has been provided
for the primordial sentiments of peasants oftentimes pointed out the
backwardness of peasants. As an alternative for the theory of "back-
wardness of peasants," Scott suggests peasants' indignation of elites'
violation of the traditional morality--which threatened their subsis-
tence economy--and desperate appeal to the return to the tradition.

If nationalism was a reassertion of the tradition of a nation
vis-a-vis traditions of other nations, it presupposed one universal-
istic tradition pertaining to one nation. In reality, the cultural
tradition that nationalism invoked was in favor of a particular group

of people and in disfavor of a vast number of people within a nation.

Therefore, the cultural system oftentimes had to be revolted in order

 

61

and devoted following throughout the provinces of southeastern and
southwestern Korea (Weems, 1964: 11; 0h, 1940)-

The growing number of Tonghak members were the objects of
continuing concern and suspicion on the part of the government.
Finally, the government, afraid of Ch'oe's growing influence among the
masses, arrested him on the charge of "heresy" and executed him on
April 15, 1894 (Weems, 1964: 12).

The execution of Ch'oe Che-u was not the end of the Tonghak
religion. Despite the persecution of the government toward Tonghak,
Tonghak's strength continued to grow. In 1892, the alarmed government
authorities launched an intensified drive to wipe out the sect.

Early in that year, Cho Pyong-sik, the king's Governor of
Ch'ungchong Province, began the implementation of this policy of eradi-
cation by issuing an edict making the Tonghak sect illegal in his
province. Under the circumstances, Tonghak followers pressured the
leader of Tonghak, Ch'oe Si-hyong, to take action against the govern-
ment persecution.

Ch'oe Si-hyong called for a mass meeting at Samnye (near
Chonju, Cholla provincial capital) on December 19, 1892. Meanwhile,
Ch'oe wrote a petition to the government pleading the innocence of the
Tonghak founder, Ch'oe Che-u, from the charge of "heresy" (Oh, 1940).
Though the government did not promise them the freedom of their reli-
gion, they returned home with the Governor's words that if they fol-
lowed the law of the government well, they would not be persecuted

(Oh, 1940).

62

Early in 1893, it became apparent that no actual change in
conditions would result from the Tonghak appeals on the provincial
level. Another mass meeting of Tonghak members was held at Poin in
Ch'ungchong Province to prepare a direct appeal to the King. The
petition to the King was, in its substance, almost an exact repetition
of the previous appeals to the provincial governors, asking redress of
the wrong done to the late Great Divine Teacher, Ch'oe Che-u (Weems,
1964: 22).

The King "admonished the Tonghak, in a fatherly way, to abandon
their false doctrines and study the true Confucian wisdom. If they did
not heed his admonitions he would be compelled to chastise them even
unto death" (Weems, 1964: 26).7 Without any king's promise for
the freedom of their religion, Tonghak members returned back home in

their obedience to the King.

Background of Ch'oe Che-u

 

Ch'oe Che-u was born on December 18, 1824, at Yongdam in the
vicinity of Kyongju, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Silla in
southeastern Korea. His father was known to be a patriotic Confucian
scholar (Weems, 1964: 7). However, the fact that his mother was a
concubine had placed him in an inferior social class and made him
ineligible to become a governmental official.

Oh Chi-young (1940) tells the background of Ch'oe's mother as
follows in "Chondogyo Changgunsa" (The History of the Heavenly

Religion):

63

She is a woman of "Hahn" (family) in Kumsung [1, Kyongjoo. She
was widowed when she was young. After she was widowed she was
staying at her parents'. One day, she felt a sudden dizziness
and got into a trance. The bright light poured into her eyes
and strange atmosphere grabbed her. It moved her, while she was
unconscious, into the house of Ch'oe (family) in Mokjung rj_
away from her house. When Ch'oe (Ch'oe Che-u's father) listened
to her, he was deeply moved and accepted a nuptial bondage with
her (p. 17).

From this study, it is evident that Ch'oe Che-u's mother was
married to his father not only as a secondary wife but in her second
marriage. This doubly disadvantageous status of his mother suggests
that he might be discontent with the socio-cultural system which
degraded his social status.8

Ch'oe's mother died when he was six years old and he was left
an orphan at the age of sixteen upon the death of his father. Besides
the unhappy family situation, he is known to have been in poor health.
Through his illness experience later he came to encounter God (Junkin,
1895: 56-60).

He seems to have been concerned about the social situation of
the period and discontented with it from his early age. While he was
going to primary school, he was jibed by his schoolmates that his eyes
were shaped as those of traitors. Then he replied to them, without a
show of much disturbance, "I will be a traitor, you be the obedient
people!" (Hakwonsa, 1960).

When Ch'oe was eighteen, he embarked on a pilgrimage in order
to find the answer to the troubled situation of the time. His search
was to lead him to all corners of the country over the next fourteen

years, observing and studying the people in all walks of life living

everywhere, always seeking the clue to a new truth (Hakwonsa, 1960).

64

Having heard of a foreign religion, Christianity, and the mili-
tary power of the foreign countries, he believed that their power came
from their own religion. The only way to be stronger than them was
to found a new religion, one far better than their Christianity (Ch'oe,
1965).

Finally, at the age of thirty-two, he came across a book
entitled Chgg§g_(literally, Heavenly Writing) (Hakwonsa, 1960: 342-
48). This was the clue he had been seeking for. He stopped roaming
and over the ensuing years, concentrated his studies on the §h9g§g_
alone. At last, at the age of thirty-eight, he found his answer and
went forth to preach it aloud.

From whom he received Chgg§9_is not certain. Some say that he
had received it from an unknown Buddhist monk in Ulsan, South Kyong-
sang Province. According to Ch'oe, he received it from God directly
while he was in a trance (Hakwonsa, 1960).

His illness experience is very interesting in that through the
illness experience he met God, who came down upon him when he was in a
trance, and empowered him. His experience of encountering God shows
the shamanistic elements of Tonghak religion. When God descended on
him and ordered him to preach a new religion, he was not only led to a
new spiritual domain but also delivered from his physical illness
(Junkin, 1895a: 56-60).

At first, Ch'oe refused to accept God's commandment to preach
a new religion. When God repeatedly commanded him to his mission,

he realized that he should follow the commandment (Junkin, 1895a).

65

When God departed him, Ch'oe Che-u grasped a pen nearby and
wrote down the following words on the paper:

Since from aforetime we had worshipped Thee, Lord of Heaven,
according to thy good will, do Thou always bestow upon us to
know and not forget all things (concerning Thee); and since
thine unspeakable thoughts have come to us, do Thou abundantly
for us according to our desire (Junkin, 1895a).

Ch'oe then picked up the scroll, burned it, poured the ashes
into a bowl of water, and drank it. Immediately his illness was
healed (Junkin, 1895a: 57).

When Ch'oe Che-u began to preach a new religion, he named it
"Tonghak," meaning “Eastern Learning."9 He said that his "Eastern
Learning" was far superior in its power than that of "Western Learn-
ing" (Christianity). Despite his proclamation of the difference
between his teaching and Christianity, there was a suspicion that he
was preaching the "Western Learning."

Hulbert (1906), a Western missionary in Korea at that time,
gave his opinion about Tonghak as follows:

It would be interesting to inquire by what process he was led
to the point of attempting to propagate such a creed which had
nothing in common either with Buddhism, Confucianism or Taoism.
We can not help thinking that the spread of Roman Catholicism
which was especially rapid during the reign of King Chuljong had
brought to his notice the basic fact of Christianity, the wor-
ship of one true God. He did not accept Christianity. As a fact
Ch'oe Che-u had nothing to do with the Roman Catholic, but the
doctrines he taught were in certain respects similar to Chris-
tianity and the excited public were in no position to make close
distinctions (pp. 419-20).
Tonghak Thought
The Chondogyo (Tonghak or Eastern Learning later changed its

name to Chondogyo or Heavenly Way Religion) concept of the Ultimate

66

Reality usually denoted by two terms: Hanullim (The Heavenly Lord)
and Chigi_(lhe Ultimate Energy).

There has been a debate whether Chondogyo used the term Hanullim
as a Korean rendering Of the Chinese term, Chonju, or not. Ch'oe Donghi
(1965) denies the Opinion of borrowing the term from Catholics in
China. He argues that "Chonju" was the Chinese pronunciation of the
Latin Deus, which meant God, not the Heavenly Lord. "Hanullim," he
continues, is a combination of "Hanull" (the Heaven) and "nim" (the
honorific ending mark meaning Lord). Likewise, Chonju (f :5) is a
combination of "Chan" :A’ Heaven) and "ju" :E, Lord). In Catholic
usage, Chonju simply denotes "God.” Therefore, Catholics always call
their God "Chonjunim," which is a combination Of "Chonju CTN? , God)
and "nim" (the honorific ending mark meaning "Lord").

Here the concept of Heavenly Lord does not carry the personal
sense as in the Western concept of God. Ch'ondogyo thinkers such as
Paek Se-myong attempted to define God as Ponche saengmyong (Original
Body of Life) or Chonche saengmyong (The Totality of Life). These
terms are in reality interchangeable (Kim, 1975: 47-53).

The original Body of Life or the Totality of Life signifies
the ontological essence of the Universe and the Ultimate Reality. It
is from the Original Body of Life that everything in the Universe has
emanated. All things in the Universe, including man, have originated
from the self-evolving process of the Totality of Life, which is the
essence of all phenomena. It is not a creator, but the ultimate evolu-
tionary cause of all things that is the ultimate cause of the Universe.

Therefore, God is not a supernatural Being who exists transcendentally,

67

outside or beyond man, but an immanent Being, who is simply the
totality of all the individuated things in the Universe.

Chjgj, "the Ultimate Energy," denotes the essence and the
ultimate source of the Universe. It is a monistic, causal power
immanent in the Universe, and it is the evolutionary force through
which all things are manifested (Kim, 1975: 48).

The idea of the "Ultimate Reality" as an immanent Being of

the Universe produces the idea that "Man is God" (In Nae Ch'on) or

 

"Divinity in Man'l (Si Ch'onju).

Si Ch'onju ("Bearing Godl or "Divinity in Man“) is the earliest
and one of the most fundamental ideas depicting the essence of man
in Ch'ondogyo thought (Kim, 1975:49). Ch'oe Suun explained Si
Ch'onju as follows: "Serving (bearing) means that one has Spirit
within and Energy without. . . . God means calling with respect and
serving like parents." Here Suun (Ch'oe Che-u) is affirming man's
essential quality. Man accompanies someone within himself, who is
higher in position than oneself.

Having the Spirit within signifies that in its developing
process the Totality of Life of the Universe has become gradually
individuated, complex and high, and has reached the most highly
developed stage of the human world after passing through the stages
of the vegetable and animal worlds, and therefore, man, who has the
most highly developed intellectual power, "has the Spirit within“

(Kim, 1975: 49).

68

The phrase "Man has energy without" implies that man is an
individuated life and that God is the Totality of Life, and in this
relationship there is no gap, and no separation.

In Nae Chon means "Man is God." Since man is a life indi-

 

viduated from the Totality of Life, namely the Life of God, logic-
cally Chondogyo affirms that man is one with God in the essence of
his being. Yi Tonghwa, a theologian of the religion, states the
significance of In Nae Chon as follows:

If we are asked to state the essence of In Nae Chon in one

simple word, we can state it as "manhood-centralism." Man-

hood is the most perfect being (or character) among all

beings in the universe, and therefore is the highest being

representing the character of the universe. Originally,

the universe had one absolute being (character), but it has

evolved into thousands of different levels of beings through

the law of muwi ihwa (natural becoming). At the end of the

progressive evolution, the character of the universe has

achieved the level of manhood (Kim, 1975).

A mythical expression of man's oneness with God was made

early by Ch'oe Si-hyong, the successor of Ch'oe Che-u, as follows:

Heaven, earth, and man, all follow one principle and one

energy. Man is a lump of Heaven, and Heaven is the spirit

of all things. Man is Heaven (God), and Heaven is man.

Therefore, outside man, there is no Heaven, and outside

Heaven, there is no man (Kim, 1975).

The most unique and important idea in Chondogyo is Sain

Yochon, which means "treat Man as Heaven." This idea is based upon
the ideas of Si Chonju (divinity in man) and In Nae Chon (man is
God). Since man is essentially divine in his nature, one must treat
his fellow man as God; with the utmost concern, respect, sincerity,

dignity, and equality.

69

The concept of man's essential divinity and, thus, his essen-
tial equality were quite new and revolutionary in the nineteenth
century feudalistic society of Korea. Especially the idea of ngg,
192393 presented a dynamic counterspirit against the feudalistic
ethical system based on a discriminatory class ethic of the time.

Ch'oe Si-hyong said as follows as the practical ethics of
Tonghak:

Do not strike a child in the house of believers, for such an
act would be disobedience to the will of God.
If a guest comes to your house, think that God has arrived.

The peaceful harmony of husband and wife is the heart of our
way (truth), and therefore, if a wife is disobedient, bow
before her with all earnestness. If one bows once, twice
and repeatedly, even the wife who has the hardest heart will
be reconciled.

Treat all men like God. Do not strike a child, for striking
a child is striking God.

Respect all men in the house like God. Especially respect
your daughter-in-law.

Do not judge others. Judging others is judging God.
(Weems, 1964: 16; Oh, 1940: 41-42)
Tonghak as a Mass Religion
The theology and philoSOphy incorporated in the Sacred Formula
and in the doctrinal principles derived therefrom were very diffi-
cult. They could not have been fully grasped by the illiterate
majority of Koreans. The mysticism associated with ritualistic
incantations of the Sacred Formula, however, was appealing to the
illiterate mass.
While Ch'oe Che-u's doctrine embodied Buddhism, Confucianism,

Taoism, and even Christianity, it also utilized Ch'amwisol (the

70

Theory of Interpretation of Omens) so that it would appeal to the
mass. Ch'amwisol, which, by the nineteenth century, had come to
exert an important combination of spirit worship and the supersti-
tion of shamanism on the one hand, and the pseudo-scientific prac-
tices of geomancy on the other. Many Ch'amwisol writings, foretelling
the ultimate fall of the Yi Dynasty and making prophesies of war and
other adversities, were widely known and believed during the Yi
Dynasty period (1392-1910). In order to propitiate the Spirits which
might bring these calamities, certain magic formulas, utilizing key
words or ideographs from traditional Ch'amwisol literature, had been
devised. Among them were the character combinations Kung-Kung and
Ul-UL (EJZ) (Weems, 1964: 9).

Moreover, certain religious ceremonies of Tonghak bore some
similarity to those of shamanistic spirit worship, and the Tonghak
practice of building altars on mountains was adopted from shamanism
(Weems, 1964).

Junkin (1895b), in "Seven Months Among the Tong Haks,"
describes the Tonghaks' belief in the magical power of their religion:

To the ordinary Korean such power [take over of the Govern-

ment offices] so quickly acquired seemed to substantiate their
reports of magical power. Little persuasion or threatening was
now needed to swell the ranks. Thousands joined in a day,
several who attended our meeting in the morning were on the
warpath in the evening. Great were the promises and bright the
prospects of the initiated. They struck a very effective chord
in the Korean's heart.

No sickness would enter the house; crops would never fail;

debts would not be paid for taxes; in the battle the bullets
of the enemy would be changed to water. Indeed magical power

of the leaders was limitless. It gave an opportunity also to
pay off an old score with an enemy (pp. 203-204).

71

Another interesting description about Tonghaks' belief in
the magical power of the religion comes when the Tonghaks found that
the magical power did not work:

Some time in January was the first meeting of the Tong Haks [sic]
in that province (Cholla Province) with Japanese soldiers. There
were thousands of them mustered, most of them believing in the
magical power of their leaders and marching boldly to meet their
foe. There were only a couple of dozen of Japanese soldiers in
the Capital, but when their bullets began to take effect, the
rebels, disappointed, fled. It is said that when they saw their
comrades fall they cried out to the leader in chief to use his
magic. He replied that though he had now repeated those letters
for ten years yet he knew of no better trick under such circum-
stances than to run (Junkin, 1895b: 204).

The image of the Western missionary as a source of power to
Tonghak rebels is more interesting:

I at once became exceedingly popular in the vicinity as they
imagined I might be of some service in preventing the Japanese
entering their village. Some little time before this the vil-
lagers assembled and requested us to allow them to erect a
Christian flag before their door. All shades of belief, rebel
and loyal, Christian and devil-worshiper, joined heartily in
erecting the pole. The flag was white with a red St. George's
cross across the middle. They all assembled and as we ran up
the flag we joined in singing in Korean "All hail the power of
Jesus' Name" (Junkin, 1895b: 205).

Ch'oe also set his doctrines to music so that the masses
would understand and accept them more readily. His teachings were

compiled and published under the title Yongdam Yusa, Yongdam (near

 

KyOngju, North KyOngsang Province) being his birthplace, where he
systematized his message of salvation to the masses in distress.
The songs he sang in Yongdam were a mixture of traditional elements
from Confucianism, Buddhism, and SOn-gyo (the spirit of Hwarang)
(Sohn, 1970: 201).

72

Develgpment of Tonghak Orggnization

Tonghak developed its organization under the leadership of
Ch'oe Si-hyong, Ch'oe Che-u's successor. Ch'oe Si-hyong was an
effective organizer. In winter Of 1862-63, with the approval of
Ch'oe Che-u, he appointed Chopchu, or local group leaders, in each
locality where there were Tonghak members, and inspected the religious
activities of each of these groups as Ch'oe Che-u's representative.
This system made the Tonghak organization more cohesive, and, by
providing local channels of communication and administrative control,
enabled Ch'oe Che-u to make personal contact with large numbers of
his followers through the representatives of each locality (Weems,
1964: 15).

When Ch'oe Che-u was arrested on the charge of preaching a
"heretic doctrine," Ch'oe Si-hyong went to a remote mountain to hide
himself. There he carried on Ch'oe Che-u's teachings and produced
various regulations that Tonghak members should follow. He formu-

lated the religious and ethical principles in his Nae Su-domun (Inner

 

Rules of Conduct), disseminated to all local Tonghak groups (p'o) in
December 1888 (Weems, 1964: 16).

In 1875, he promulgated three regulations which had the
effect of making certain Tonghak Observances official and standard.
These were: (1) the outlawing of idolatry among Tonghak members,
(2) abstinence from eating fish and meat and from drinking and smok-
ing, and (3) the use of one bowl of pure water in worship (Weems,

1964).

 

73

By moving about secretly, Ch'oe Si-hyong was able to exercise
effective supervision through the local and regional headquarters
which he himself had set up when Ch'oe Che-u was still alive.

In 1878, Ch'oe Si-hyong held the first regularly scheduled
Tonghak worship service, implementing the Kg§j§p_(worship) prin-
ciples, that previously had been promulgated by the founder. The
Kggj§p_system consisted of: (1) deciding upon a fixed time for
worship, (2) assembling believers at each locality during the
scheduled worship period, and (3) studying the faith together. From
this beginning, the Tonghak organization developed as a system of
church organization similar to that of Christian denominations
(Weems, 1964).

In 1887, four years after the institution of this system,
Ch'oe Si-hyong ordered that Tonghak followers must first present
their problems to the six responsible officials in the local Tonghak
unit before approaching himself. The purpose of this was to strengthen
the local organizations and standardize administrative procedures
(Weems, 1964: 18).

On January 24, 1887, Ch'oe Si-hyong issued an official order
requiring all believers to observe forty-nine days of regular prayer
twice a year, in the spring and autumn, as an established part of the

religious activities of Tonghak members.

74

Footnotes--Chapter III

 

1The distinction between "Kaekju" and "Yokak" is not clear-
cut. It is generally noticed that the kinds of things they dealt
with were different. However, commodities they dealt with over-
lapped (Han, 1964).

2About the exact number of "Kaekju" or "Yokak" throughout
the country there are no available data, but according to the record
of 1890, about 160 "Kaekju" were working around Pusan trading port.

Sang-bok Han (1972), a Korean anthropologist who studied the

fishing villages of Korea, discusses the Kaekju system in the con-
temporary Kaekju system working in modern Korea. To quote his des-
cription of Kaekju:

The main function of a Kaekju (in Mokpo) is buying and sell-
ing goods by consignment as a middleman in commercial transac-
tions: the Kaekju also provides financing, lodging, and
transporting services to his clients. . . .

The Kaekju acts as a kind of insurance agent for the sellers
(fishermen) and buyers (wholesalers, retailers, and consumers),
and takes a commission for his guarantee to sell and buy commodi-
ties. . . .

The Kaekju normally lends money to the fishermen for the pur-
chase of boats, nets, and other needed commodities such as rice,
barley, . . . etc.

Sometime the Kaekju merely advances money or the necessi-
ties of life to fishermen in the slack season in order to gain a
preemptive right over their coming catches. In return, the
fishermen must make commercial transactions only through their
monopolistic Keakju at an agreed price or at a price set by the
Kaekju, usually below the free market rate. The fishermen are
also expected to repay their debt in kind during the fishing
season.

When the fishermen come to Mokpo to do business with their
Kaekju, he offers lodging and food free of change for a couple
of days until they complete their transactions. . . .

3Peddlers had the following obligations to the government:
(1) tax obligation, (2) loyalty to the king, (3) policing of local
markets, and (4) providing of information on the local situation
(Han, 1964).

4In Corea, The Hermit Nation, Griffis (1905) counted the
number of peddlers at about 200,000.

5As of 1960, 80 percent of animal protein Of the Korean
peOple was provided by fishery.

I I, ) If; /)
6Han's (1964) original source is: W if (317’ if; '\
:fll j. .
”I’M it’ll!

75

7Weems (1964) cites Mr. Heard to Mr. Gresham (U.S. Department
of State, "Foreign Relations of the United StatesJ'1894).

81n the process of Confucianizing Yi-Korea, the government
issued various codes of the right conduct according to Neo-Confucian
ideology. One of the concerns that preoccupied the literati officials
was "rectification Of names" (Chongmyong) which determined and identi-
fied social status of people.

According to the family rule set up by the state within the
framework of Neo-Confucianism, only one woman can qualify for becoming
the mother of a husband's rightful heir, the primary wife (cho). Since
the distinction between primary and secondary wives had grave conse-
quences for the social status of the various wives' sons, yangban
daughters were rarely married as a secondary wife (Mattielli, 1977).

9In his trance God came down upon Ch'oe Che-u:

One day in April, suddenly I felt dizzy and trembling. I did
not know what kind of symptom it was. At an undescribable moment,
an angelic word was heard. I was deadstruck with fear and asked.
"Don't be afraid! ‘Dgn't be fearful! The people on the earth
call me 'Sangjae'(r.ép) or Heavenly King. Don't you know the
Sangjae?" I asked the reason why Sangjae had to come down to me.
He replied."I have not done very much work either. I am going to
send you to the world to teach this law to them. Please do not
have any doubt on these words." "Then shall I teach them the
Western Learning (Catholicism)?" I askéd'God. He answered,ifNo,
that is not so. I have a talisman. Its name is Sonyak (dafipg)
or 'heavenly medicine.‘ It looks like the shape of Taeguk 61
Kung-Kung (Eé), meaning bow. With this talisman you will be
healing the sickness of people. And with my magic formula teach
all the people. Then you will have a long life and will spread
the virtue to the whole world." (Originally from “P'odokmun”
meaning "Words for Spreading the Virtue," which was said to be
written by Ch'oe Che-u.)

The above was quoted from Ch'oe (1965: 111).
Ch'oe Che-u seems to consider the Western Learning (Catholi-
cism) and the Western technology identical. The following quotation
from his writing shows his view of the Western Learning and its tech-
nology:
In the year of "Kangsin" (1860), I heard that Westerners say that
it is Heavenly Lord's will to conquer the entire world and estab-
lish churches and spread their religion. They are said to have no
desire for the status and wealth. Then I came to have a doubt
whether they could really do that, whether they could really do
that? ("Podokmun") (Ch'oe, 1965: 110).

And Ch'oe also said:
In the April of "Kangsin" year (1860), the whole world was dis-
turbed and the peOple's heart was troubled. They did not know
where to go. Furthermore, there was a rumor hovering around that

76

the Western people polished and practiced their morality so well
that in their magical activity, there is nothing that can not be
done and that to their destroying weapons, there is no one who
can defeat them. Even China is doomed to perish. How can we
deny the apprehension that our country might fall into the same
fate? . . .

There must be no other reason. They call the Way "Western
Way," their learning "Learning of the Heavenly Lord," and their
religion "the Holy Religion." Would it not mean that they know
the heavenly time and receive the heavenly command? . . .

Thege is no end in talking about these things (Ch'oe, 1965:
111 .

10In 1894 when Chon Pong-jun took over Peaksan (White Moun-
tain), he wore a white hat and bead and rode on a white horse,
incanting the twenty-one letter magic formula (Han, 1969: 304).

CHAPTER IV

TONGHAK REVOLTS

The Tonghak Revolt: The First Revolt

 

The first uprising of Tonghak, ignited by an extreme exploi-
tation of the district magistrate of Kobu, Cholla Province, in 1894,
was not an incidental event. The socio-cultural reality of the period
led the masses to the inevitable movement to claim their own cultural
and economic interest. The fact that there had been a series of mass
revolts since the early nineteenth century testifies that the "Kobu
incident" was more of a local expression of the mass grievance than
the cause of their indignation about the aristocratic exploitation
(Han, 1971).

Cho Pyong-kap, the district magistrate of Kobu, was appointed
to his post in 1892. As a district magistrate, he used various means
to exploit his people using his good office. He encouraged peasants
to bring waste land under cultivation by promises of tax exemption,
and then taxed them. He levied forced contributions of rice upon the
tenant farmers under the pretext of charity for poor Buddhist monks
(Weems, 1964).

Among all exploitative activities, the imposition of a water
tax on peasants became the direct cause of the peasants' revolt.

At first, the people complained to Cho's superiors up to the

provincial governor, but without success. Chon Pong-jun, a local

77

78

Tonghak leader who was acting as an intermediary between the peasants
and the government officials to convey peasants' grievances, realized
at this point that appeals to local officials were futile, and chose
the only alternative--violent revolt.

In February 1894, Chon led about a thousand angry peasants
in destroying the irrigation system that they had been forced to
build and then,in an attack on the government Office, they broke into
the armory and took the weapons stored there. And then they seized
the tax grain in the government warehouse and distributed it to the
needy people (Han, 1969: 297).

If the Kobu incident was settled down as a local peasants'
revolt against the malfeasance Of a local magistrate as many other
sporadic local revolts of the period, the significance of the event
would have lessened. Unlike any other local peasants' revolt, the
Kobu incident crossed the local boundary and mobilized the masses in
the same socio-cultural predicament against the cultural system
itself.

The role of Tonghak religion and its local leader, Chon, was
crucial in the religious mobilization. The leader of the Kobu revolt,
Chon Pong-jun, was born in 1854 in Kobu County in the northern part
of Cholla Province. He was from a prominent family whose members
had traditionally been local bureaucrats (Weems, 1964: 37).1 That
is, they were members neither of the official class nor of the socially
unaccepted lower classes. His father had chafed under the unjust and

venal administrations of local officials and had been executed for

79

complicity in an uprising against the corrupt Kobu magistrates (Kim,
1967: 153).

Though he was brought up in poverty, Chon had access to the
Confucian classics and managed to acquire a good classical educa-
tion. His enthusiasm for learning was demonstrated by his interest
in teaching his fellows and also his efforts to expand his knowledge
through seeking historical information from the village elders
(Kim, 1967: 155).

He became a Tonghak member at the age of thirty, some nine
years before his assumption of control of the military wing Of the
Tonghak movement at Poun convention in 1893. He had studied the
doctrine under Ch'oe Si-hyong, and became a ChOpju (leader of a
local unit) in his home district of Kobu (Han, 1969). His experience
in leading the farming people in their difficulties with the local
authorities enabled him to link many of these people to the Tonghak
movement and to enhance his promises as a Tonghak leader.

After the first act of the rebellion, Chon conducted an
extensive propaganda-recruiting campaign. His statement of his
loyalty to the king and accusation of the Yangban class for the
social contradictions was his ideological tactic to mobilize the
mass. His statements described the purpose of the rebellion as:

(l) destruction of the Yangban class, the center of official corrup-
tion; and (2) establishment of peace for the country and safety for
the people. This statement of purpose contained no reference to

clearing the founder's name and no specific reference to eliminating

80

foreign influence, which was its slogan in the second uprising
(Weems, 1964: 39).

In order to strengthen his manpower position and to have
machinery to mobilize new peOple (both Tonghak believers and non-
believers) along the route of march toward Seoul, Chon utilized the
Tonghak organizational structure where it existed, and organized new
local units where expedient. All local units under the control of
Chon's rebel administration were recognized as local military con-
trol units, under a new system of military government that Chon
established (Weems, 1964).

When a report of this incident reached Seoul, a special
inspector was sent out to appraise the situation and take appropriate
action. The inspector blamed the whole affair on the Tonghak religion,
and began arresting believers and having their homes destroyed. Chon,
as the leader of the revolt, apparently wished some kind of compro-
mise with the government. But as the government began to persecute
Tonghak members as rebels of the government, he had no recourse but
violence. Chon sent a message to other Tonghak groups in the province
urging them to rise up against oppression as he had (Han, 1969: 302).

The rebels moved northward, controlling Mujang, Taein, and
Puan. The local government troops were defeated by the rebels and
had to call for help from Seoul. When the central government troops
were dispatched the rebels, perhaps feeling that they were not yet
strong enough to face government troops, turned south. They took
towns in their party and grew daily in numbers, until by the time

they reached Mujang they had increased to about ten thousand. The

81

government troops in ChOnju were reinforced and marched in pursuit,
narrowly missing the Tonghak force at Youngkwang. After taking
Hampyong it turned north again, and the government trOOps attacked.
The rebels beat them off and forced them to retreat to Yongkwang.

This was May 27th, by which time the revolt had spread into Chungchong
and Kyongsang Provinces as well. On May 31 the Tonghak took ChOnju,
which offered no resistance (Han, 1969: 312). The government, mean-
while, had at least partially come to its senses. The governor of
Cholla Province had been dismissed and the magistrate of Kobu
imprisoned. King Kojong promised that all corrupt officials would

be discussed and the grievances of the Cholla people redressed (Han,
1969: 305). On the other hand, the government troops reached ChOnju
and bombarded the town, and two Tonghak counterattacks were unable

to drive them off. There were many casualties, and the rebels began
to grow discouraged. Some of them believed that now that the King had
given his promise, there was no longer any reason to fight. The gov-
ernment commander promised good treatment to all who surrendered. At
last there was a formal agreement between the government and rebels;
the rebels withdrew from ChOnju and returned to their homes (Han,
1969).

The number of specific demands had grown with the success of
the revolt, but the two major ones were equitablemtaxation and the
halting of rice export to Japan. In addition to the demand of the
halting of rice exports to Japan, they asked the punishment of
peddlers and inn-keepers (Pobusang, Kaekju, and Yokak) who collabo-

rated with Japanese rice buyers in exporting Korean rice to Japan.

82

This shows the rising consciousness of economic conflicts of peasants
with the emerging merchang class in the late nineteenth century of
Yi-Korea.

After they had more or less quieted down, the government
carried out its part of the bargain by setting up "Correction Offices"
in each of the fifty-three districts of Cholla Province, staffed by
Tonghak, under the general supervision of Chon Pong-jun, the leader
of the revolt. They were to act in an advisory capacity to each dis-
trict magistrate in order to prevent extortion and protect the
peasants' interest.

Once the offices were organized, the Tonghak made their pro-
gram public in a formal document of twelve items. The reform proposal
of Tonghak reads as follows:

1. government cooperation with the Tonghak followers;
punishment of corrupt officials;
strict punishment of atrocious plutocrats;
punishment of dishonest Confucianists and yangbans;
destruction of all slavery registers and system;
improved treatment of low and mean class;
permission for widows to marry;

no tax levies other than the statutory ones;

\OQNOSU'I-bwm

recruitment of government officials by merit and compe-
tence and not by family background;
10. strict punishment of persons having secret connections

with the Japanese;

83

11. government cancellation of all debts involving peasants;
12. equitable redistribution of land for future cultivation.
The reform proposal of twelve items by Tonghaks can be
analyzed in political, economic, and cultural dimensions. First,
the Tonghaks demonstrated their political interest by stating (#1)
and demanding (#2, 3, and 4). Second, they claimed their socio-
cultural interest in #5, 6, 7, and 9. Third, it specified the way
that would help their economic interest.
Before the proposal was put into practice, another uprising

was soon to come.

The Tonghak Revolt: The Second Revolt

 

When the seriousness of the situation was brought home to
the Seoul government, there were doubts whether its forces could
handle the rebels, unaided by foreign powers. Against the advice of
many Officials, King Kojong appealed to China for help. Ships were
immediately ordered to Inch'on and in June a Chinese flotilla assembled
in Asan Bay after the Chinese had informed Japan of their action in
accordance with the agreement between them (Sunoo, 1971).

The Japanese Minister in Seoul had been gravely concerned
about the harm the revolt might do to Japanese interest, and had kept
his government closely informed. When news of the Chinese move came,
a Japanese ship sailed for Inch'on and landed troops there on June 10,
ostensibly to protect the legation. This provoked a Chinese reaction,
and troops of both nations began to pour into Korea in large numbers.

The Korean government protested that the revolt had been quelled, and

84

there was no justification for sending troops. China, satisfied
that she still had the upper hand, proposed a mutual withdrawal
from Korea.

But the Japanese saw in the situation an opportunity to drive
the Chinese out of Korea (Sunoo, 1971). They therefore proposed
that Japanese troops remain in order to "renovate Korean home
affairs" so that no other similar incident would happen in the future.
China refused the Japanese proposal, as was expected. Japan continued
to press Korea for "renovation" in order to prevent further revolt.

It also asked Korea to scrap trade relations with China.

To meet the Korean government's contention that the Tonghak
revolt had been suppressed so that there was no longer any need for
foreign troops in the country, the Japanese minister had sent an
inspector to Cholla Province to assess the situation. He had secret
instructions to prolong his inspection as much as he could and finally
to report that the rebels were still active. At the same time,
secret agents were sent to the province, where they contacted Chon
Pong-jun, the Tonghak leader, and tried to convince him that the
Japanese were on his side against the corrupt and oppressive govern-
ment in Seoul. The agents knew quite well, of course, that Tonghak
was violently anti-Japanese, and were hOping to provoke another
revolt, which would give them further reason for keeping troops in
Korea (Sunoo, 1971).

Chon Pong-jun had been following events with deepening sus-

picion and dismay. He finally decided to lead a second revolt. He

85

waited until after the harvest in October, and he raised the flame
of revolt once more.

The second uprising was aroused against the Japanese troops.
A hundred thousand peasants rose in Cholla Province alone. Mean-
while, Tonghak members in other provinces engaged in numerous harass-
ing actions. The Japanese acted with ruthless efficiency. A
battalion was dispatched to the fighting front and marched south in
three groups. In early November it encountered the Tonghak main
force as it moved on the strategic town of Kongju. A desperate
battle ensued that lasted for seven days. Even the immense numbers
of the Tonghak could not stand against experienced troops with modern
training and equipment, and they were finally beaten and retreated
south, leaving many casualties behind. Chon Pong-jun attempted to
appeal to the Korean soldiers who had been brought along by the
Japanese, but in vain. Along with Japanese and government troops,
many peddlers voluntarily joined in the government efforts to trample
down the peasants' revolt led by Tonghak (Han, 1969: 303).

The alligned troops of Japan and Korea defeated the rebels
and arrested Chon Pong-jun on December 12, 1895. Chon was sent to
Seoul on December 28, and most of the other leaders soon after (Han,
1969: 347).

Having dealt with the Tonghak, Japan proceeded to deal with
the Chinese. The Chinese army was defeated at P'yongyang and driven
out of Korea. Its naval forces were defeated in numerous engagements,
and the Japanese occupied the strategic naval posts. Under the cir-

cumstances, China was forced to ask for negotiations, and in April

86

1895 the treaty of Shimonoseki brought the war to a close (Sunoo,

1971).

The Role of the Estranged Yangban-Class Pegple
as Organizers of Rebellion

 

The leaders of the movement were mostly yangban who had been
ruined by the social confusion and political conflicts of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the sons of yangban by con-
cubines, whose status was ambiguous at best. For instance, the
founder of the Tonghak religion, Ch'oe Che-u, was the son of a con-
cubine. He particularly seemed to be interested in the idea of
equality regardless of one's origin of birth. He gave a practical
example of treating everybody as equal regardless of their social
origins by adopting a slave girl as his daughter-in-law (Weems,
1964: 10).

Alienated by their own miserable circumstances and the
failure of the Confucian social system, the estranged yangbans turned
to revolutionary action (Han, 1969). Though they were poor, they
were highly educated. Therefore, it was they who gave coherent
organization and purpose to what might otherwise have been just
another peasant uprising.

With yangban participation in the revolts, the Tonghak
peasant uprisings were multi-class movements in a cultural sense.

The cultural reality did not necessarily correspond with the
economic reality. The economic reality of estranged yangban was no
better than the commoners. Hence there was emerging a single economic

class from multi-cultural classes.

87

As was discussed in the preceding chapter, originally all
in the yangban class were landlords. This situation, however, had
changed since the number in the yangban class had increased. The
limited number of offices that the government could offer to the
yangban class carried the inherent contradiction of the system that
produced a gap between the yangban class as a cultural class and the
yangban class as an economic class. While the yangban class as a
cultural class was given the best privileges, as an economic class
it could not afford those privileges.

The yangban class number amounted to 7.4 percent of the numeri-
cal population in 1690, and ended up by being 48.6 percent (70.3
percent of the number of households) in 1858; the commoners, who began
by being 49.5 percent of the population, fell to 20.1 percent; and
the slaves fell from 43.1 percent of the population to 15.9 percent
in the 1783-1789 period and 31.1 percent in 1859. The rate of yang-
ban increase was rather constant from 80 to 100 percent, in each of
the four periods covered. The decrease in commoners, however, rose
sharply from only 0.3 percent in the seventeenth century to 50.3
percent in the nineteenth century (Henderson, 1968: 41).2

The percentage of yangban-class people is rather high and it
does not correspond with other reports by foreigners who had been to
Korea during the late nineteenth century. They reported that the
late Yi-Korea was ruled by a few aristocratic yangbans.3 Even those
who counted the number of yangban-class people a big proportion of the
population differ from about 2,000,000 yangban to 400,000-450,000.
Griffs (1905) states that the yangban numbered "400,000 or, with their

88

family nearly 2,000,000." Longford (1921) estimates the number simi-
larly at 20 percent of the population or 2,000,000. Other estimates
hover around 18 percent. Kikuchi Kenjo, a contemporary observer,
estimated the Seoul population in the early 18905 at between 200,000
and 250,000, of which he thought the yangban pOpulation was seven-
tenths of between 140,000 and 175,000. In contrast, Taketsugi Ouchi,
writing later, estimated the yangban population of Seoul in the period
1900-1910 at only 10,000 out of a total 200,000 city population.

The inexactness of these figures is revealing. It is clear
that, at the end of a long dynasty in which a "rigid" social system is
said to have operated, neither the government, the people, nor the
yangban themselves were in any agreement on how large the ruling class
was or who was in it. .There was a vague partial consensus that two
million peOple considered themselves--or were thought to consider
themselves--yangban.

Discussing the problem of estimating the exact number of
yangban, Henderson (1968) suggests that the intermediary group resid-
ing in the countryside considered themselves as belonging to the
yangban class. He further suggests that the intermediary group might
not have had any political power but their social influence was
great.4

Those intermediary-class members considered themselves as
yangban by imitating the life style of yangban. Henderson (1968)
compares this inter—class movement with the "inter-caste movement in

India where Sanskritizing one's customs and ritual amounts to claiming

89

ritually higher status than has been granted by local opinion and was
an accepted mode of social mobility in the caste system."

Even accepting the argument that a majority of the yangban
population in the nineteenth century came from the intermediary class,
we could still speculate that their cultural expectation was not much
different from the rest of the yangban class.

The penetration of outside economic agents into rural areas
had increased, upsetting the traditional socioeconomic relationship
between rural elites and peasants. Therefore, it was not only the
contradiction of the system itself that led them to revolt, but also
a Miolent confrontation between the agrarian economy and emerging
pre-capitalist economy. The Confucian ideology, which basically was
a product of an agrarian society, barred scholars from manual work or
from investing in commercial activities. Without any other means
of livelihood, unemployed scholars became nothing but proletarian
intelligentsia. Especially the emerging pre-capitalist economy
through foreign capitalistic infiltration must have made the predica-
ment keener than ever.

In this nonequation of wealth and cultural expectation, some
impoverished yangban on occasion ignored the cultural expectation
and borrowed money from paekchOng (butchers), which was the most
despised class in traditional Korea.5

Under the situation, yangban was no longer a social class
useful to explain the social structure of late Yi-Korea. The economic

relationship was polarized even without the yangban class. Then, how

90

can the argument of the thesis, that the Tonghak movement carried
themes of a cultural revolt, find justification?

First of all, the new emerging economic class was generated
out of the traditional elites, yangbans. And the wealth of the
minority of yangban class was defended by the Confucian elite ideology.
Second, the inter-class movement that Henderson (l968) insists is
the very proof that the yangban class had lost their legitimacy as an
unviolable one, and the unfoundedness of the ascribed superiority of
the yangban class became so obvious to the masses. Their exploita-
tive relationship was inevitable to be rejected by a cultural reason.
In conjunction with the second argument, third, it can be pointed out
that the ideological foundation of Yi-Korea and its Yangban dominance
had an inherent problem that the ideological base was so absolutely
unviolable that the changing economic-social structure was hardly
able to find any room for an ideological adjustment. It was a dilemma
of Yi-Korea that a flexibility of its ideological system could mean
taking a risk of denying the very foundation of the dynasty and the
yangban ideology, "the ordering features of the value system."

As Peter Berger (l967) says in The Sacred Canopy, "theocracy

 

may serve as legitimations both for the powerful and the powerless,
for the privileged and for the deprived" (p. 59). But theocracy
inevitably carries the danger of being disconfirmed by changing social
conditions. As long as "real reality" or "ultimate reality" is not
here on earth, what happens on earth is less subject to confirmation

or disconfirmation of the empirical reality (Geertz, l973: l04).

91

The Confucian cosmology declared that the secular society
was a reflection of the heavenly order, therefore unviolable. The
king of the state was given a mandate to govern, and was therefore
unchallengeable. Ironically, the unchallengeable mandateship of the
king could be challenged only through a successful challenge of a
secular power. Then the deposed king was described to have lost the
mandate of heaven. Therefore, within the Confucian ideology, the
masses had a cultural reason to rebel as well as a cultural reason
not to rebel.

The Tonghak revolt, however, was not to claim the transfer-
ence of the heavenly mandate. The historical context of the Tonghak
peasant revolts was different from other peasant revolts in Yi
dynasty history, recorded or unrecorded. How different was the his-
torical context of the Tonghak peasant revolts from other peasant
revolts in Korean history is a too complex and difficult question to
answer. Therefore, we will be content to be reminded of a cultural

reason to rebel in the Confucian ideology.

92

Footnotes--Chapter IV

 

1Henderson (l968) states that Chon was from the intermediary
class, while Kim (l967) describes Chon as a commoner.

2Henderson (l968) uses the study on the local p0pulation of
Yi-Korea by Shikata, Hirosi.

3According to a Japanese spy's report on Korea, only one-
tenth of the population of Korea belonged to the aristocratic class

(V
\\

"I
,\

I'
‘ I

\

c, . . \- "
I\ v\l :' ./

(Han, 1971: l8). ;; iii

/
,sifi-
~ fl
Al )

4His observation could be near to the fact. A recent anthro-
pological study of a Korean village shows that pe0ple in a small vil-
lage of Kangwha Island describe yangban as people who know the correct
way of behaving (Parun haengdong). Contents of the correct way of
behaving were moralistic, such as "yangban never lies, yangban never
steals, etc." (Brandt, l97l: 89).

The Tale of a Yangban by Pak Chi-won is a story about a
yangban who had to sell his cultural title and a merchant who
attempted an inter-class mobility. The description of the magis—
trate about how a yangban should behave well shows the importance of
the imitation of yangban behavior as a way to be a yangban (see
Appendix).

Amon the intermediary class, the following pe0ple could be
counted: (l? those who had to live in exile after losing a factional
fight in Seoul, (2) those who had not been producing government
exam-passers for a long time, (3) those who had acquired yangban
class by falsifying their family record, (4) those who had been
granted minor offices in the country by donating their labor or money
for governmental purposes, and (5) those who purchased the title from
other yangban.

5Paekchon in Korea can be compared with gtg_in Japan.

CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION

Exploitation and Revolt: Some Problems in the
Conceptualization of a Correlation Between
"Exploitation“ and Revolt

The word "exploitation" has been used very loosely throughout
the thesis. Now it seems necessary to discuss the nature of "exploi-
tation." How exactly were the Korean masses--mainly comprised of
peasants--exploited in the nineteenth century Yi-Korea? Since the
"exploitation" is ultimately a conceptualization of human social
relationship, it is not correct to define it in quantative economic
terms of "give and take." Furthermore, it is hard to define "exploi-
tation" when one has to deal with the value judgment that the term
inevitably carries.

Once George Dalton (l974) addressed himself to the question
of "How exactly are peasants 'exploited'?" Though his question was
ambitious, he ended up with no other solution than agreeing with
Schumpeter, from whom he quoted, that:

The masses have not always felt themselves to be frustrated
and exploited. But the intellectuals who formulated their
views for them have always told them that they were, without
gggessarily meaning by it anything precise (Sohumpeter, l942:

The intellectuals in particular that Dalton had in mind in his

article were "anthropologists and others who analyze peasant commu-

nities" (p. 56l).

93

94

Upon receiving responses from Newcomer and Rubenstein (l975),
Newcomer (l977), and Derman and Levin (l977), Dalton fell back upon
a phrase of an anonymous Pole that "Under capitalism, man exploits
man. Under communism, it is the other way around." So what is new
about peasant exploitation? Then why did Dalton address himself to
the question, in the first place?

Dalton (l972) said that he was to suggest that one must not
equate "exploitation" with coerced payments of peasants to non-
peasants. Rather one has to

(a) spell out what each side gives and gets out of the relation-
ship which incude the payment and (b) to describe the subjective
reactions of those who are forced to pay toward the political-
religious-economic superiors to whom they pay. A true believer
who gladly gives one-tenth of his income to his church does not
feel exploited. He approves of his religion, his church, and the
services he gets from both. . . .

If I were to call a relationship "exploitation," I would
then say that I mean by it a face-to-face relationship between a
social superior and as inferior feels he is giving his superior
more than he's getting from him or disapproves of other actions
of the superior he is forced to comply with.

The problem with Dalton's suggestion is how to know for cer-
tain whether peasants would feel subjectively that what they give and
take are balanced. The second problem with Dalton is that he takes
the relationship between politico-religious-economic superiors and
inferiors for granted. Third, what would be the degree of the sub-
jective feeling of being "exploited" when they show their resentment?
Fourth, what does define how much should be taken back for what they
give? And how are they justified as an equalizing process of "give
and take?" Fifth, we should ask the possibility of "legitimized

unbalanced reciprocity" that peasants are aware of but tolerate.

95

Also emphasizing the subjective aSpect of being exploited,
James Scott (l976) insists that:

In the final analysis, what exploitation would mean to the
actor can be understood in their cultural system, what the cul-
tural system would define as an "exploitative" situation.

Once the criterion for what constitute a fair or equitable
relationship has been provided, it becomes possible in principle
to say something about how exploitative any particular relation-
ship is by judging how far it departs from that standard.

But even Scott's "phenomenological approach of 'exploitation'"
also carries some methodological problems. His correlation of
peasant's ethic of subsistence economy (as culturally defined),
violation of the subsistence ethic, and revolt begs some questions.
Would peasant revolts be the only sign that they feel exploited? In
that case, the explanation of peasants' subjective feeling of exploi-
tation and the degree of the departure of the social relationship
from the standard of conventional moral economy can be accused of

being an ad hoc inductive argument deriving only from an a posteriori

 

situation. And the absence of revolt should suggest that the point
of anger has not been reached yet. Scott, of course, deals with the
prevalence of the exploitive situation and of the peasants' anger

and the frequent absence of peasant revolts. He proposes some struc-
tural explanation for the phenomena.

He insists that there is an ongoing articulation between what
constitutes cultural definition of "moral economy of the peasant" and
the social arrangements to meet the culturally defined "subsistence
ethic" of peasants. Especially, in the Southeast Asia context with

which he deals in his The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), the

 

patron-client relationship has played a major role as a structural

96

device that guaranteed not only the subsistence economy of peasants
but also a stable social relationship.

The patronage involved not only provision of the subsistence
economy of peasants but also that of "moral fund" of peasants. When
the patrons do not observe the moral duty in times of subsistence
crisis, peasants are structurally vulnerable to the crisis. There-
fore, when there were subsistence crises, oftentimes there were
"appeals to the tradition," appeals of peasants to the elites'
observance of the traditionally defined "justice."

Granted that Scott's argument on the structural vulnerability
of peasants' subsistence economy and the resulting indignation of
peasants, the revolt needs not necessarily be in the form of "an
appeal to the tradition."

A rejection of the tradition can be an alternative program
to the subsistence crisis. In the traditional society based on the
hierarchy of social relationship, the exploitation was cultural
exploitation in the domain of economic relationships. Therefore, it
is more crucial to ask if the peasants' indignation at the subsis-
tence crisis was a moral anger; who is it, then, who could tap the
moral anger and what is it that they communicate which moves peasants
to violent political action? Two minimum qualifications for tapping
the peasants' anger are (l) intellectual skills and (2) ongoing moral
relationship with peasants.

In China, the unemployed scholar-gentry belonged to this
category. In Yi-Korea, the poor yangbans, unemployed cultural elites,

played into this role of a cultural broker. Through the mediation

97

of the poor intelligentsia, various types of cultural revolts took
place. In imperial China, the Taiping rebellion was one good example
of the cultural revolt. The Taiping rebels envisioned a social

order which would do away with the rule of the Chinese gentry (Wolf,
l969). They directed their attack not only against the scholar-
gentry but also against their ideology, Confucianism, as the religion
of a class of enemies; in its place they would institute their own
vision of the Heavenly Kingdom of all the Chinese. Especially,
granting of equality to women was a good example of their concern
with cultural themes.

The Tonghak peasant revolt of Korea also demonstrated that
the peasants were very much concerned with cultural themes, i.e., the
equality of women, slaves, and the abolition of ascripted status
hierarchy. If the correlation between the worsened subsistence
situation and subjective consciousness of exploitation and anger
was obvious, the anger was not directed toward an appeal to the tra-
dition and the "justice" that the tradition defined. It was an
appeal to a new cultural system in which the source of the economic
exploitation would be abolished.

Because of the universalistic character of Tonghak doctrine,
its leaders could mobilize the localized uprisings of peasants in
the late nineteenth century Yi-Korea into a nation-wide political

action.

98

The Center of a Nation and Culture

If the first uprising of Tonghak peasants was directed
against the cultural system which was responsible for the increasing
"exploitation," the second uprising of Tonghak peasants showed the
rising consciousness of "nationalism."

The first political action was to reject "what was uniquely
us," the Confucian tradition of Korea. The second stage of their
political action was to claim "what was uniquely us." The two state-
ments seem to be contradictory. And if we leave the two statements
here, we see the obvious contradiction in them.

But who are "we"? In an effort to identify the nature of "we"
in the late Yi-Korea, we discussed the different ideological responses
of different social groups in a changing social environment in the
late Yi-Korea. The conservative Confucian elites appealed to the
Confucian tradition, which was characterized by the cultural elites'
class dominance. A group of young elites imported foreign ideology
of "civil society" and "national independence." Their position was
that for the Korean nation to be independent from imperial China,
it had to rely on the political support of imperial China. To
recapitulate it, to be independent, Korea had to be dependent. At
this point, their ideology of nationalism was a concern for the
transference of political power from the conservative faction with
the derivative power of imperial Japan.

Originating among the culturally dominated masses, Tonghak
identified "we" as the universal divinity in man. Since everybody

carries the divinity in them, man is a universal man. There should

99

be no distinction between men and between man and woman. National
liberation, therefore, can not overlook social liberation. This is
especially so, because Heaven is on earth. Therefore, the Tonghak
religion is an ideological expression of the principle that man is
God; the equal society is a political expression of the principle
(Weems, l964).

Due to their radical position on the socioeconomic emancipa-
tion of the masses, when the country was divided into South and North
after its liberation from Japan, the communist regime in the North
advocated that Chondogyo (the Heavenly Way Religion, as Tonghak was
later called) was ”one of the active forces in liberated Korea."
Ch'oe Che-u was said to have advocated a society in which "there will
never be classes or estates." Ch'oe Si-hyong, the second leader of
Tonghak, is characterized as the Korean Pugachev, a famous Russian
peasant revolt leader (Weems, l964).

Chondogyo Chong-u Tang (Chondogyo Young Friends Party), which
was organized during the later Japanese colonial period with a mis-
sion to improve Korean culture, became one of the two noncommunist
political parties in northern Korea which are recognized and included

in the communist-controlled political front (Weems, l964).

The Nation, the State, and Cultural Integration
Within the framework of Omvedt's (l976) theoretical position
of "modernized culture" or "democratic culture," we will throw in some
problems of the ideology of "democratic culture" and cultural inte-

gration of the nation-state. She defines "modernization" in cultural

100

terms as "the formulation of a rational, scientific, and universal-
istic (i.e., equalitarian) culture which will over-ride the hier-
archical status order. . . ."

If scientific rationality is the basis of human identity,
each individual is the center of his/her own identity. If one finds
the center of his/her own identity within him/herself, the advocacy
of nationalism is not a logical conclusion. This is the same problem
with Tonghak's theological claim of universal humanism, "man is God.“
Then why create even the boundary of a nation, notwithstanding the
political boundary of the state? For "the center of the identity
is everywhere, and that of circumsperance is nowhere?" (Tezuka,
l977). But the state exists as a political reality exists. In this
situation, the state becomes

merely organized means for reconciling the multiplicity of
objectives among the members. In this the State cannot pro-
vide identity but only membership. It cannot provide mean-
ing, for its policy is left to individuals to seek it out as
they can (Apter, l963).

While the national value presupposes the universal application
to "members" of the state, the political existence of the state
requires a base that will validate "the national value." This is
possible only through the politicization of individual life to some
degree so that conformity to the ideology of the nation-state becomes
a matter of being moral or immoral (Apter, l963).

If the state's manipulation of morality becomes monopolistic,

the danger of cultural exploitation becomes larger. Even when the

state's claim that its morality is based on the equality of the whole

lOl

nation, if it becomes the center of the moral system, it is creating
another form of religion, which Apter (l963) calls "political
religion." If the political religion prevails and politics is the
answer to all earthly problems, we could ask the same question of
"What is j;gafl_("heresy") in modern times?

The Tonghaks' emphasis on the democratic culture which rep-
resents the masses seemed to find a niche in the communist North.
However, that is not the end of a happy story in which the oppressed
people's ideology finally achieved its realization. In the North
Korean case, we could further inquire about the degree of political
monopolization of the moral system under the catchphrase of "increased
production" and "the political liberation of the south."

And then, after all, what did really change?

APPENDIX

102

YANGBAN CHON OR THE TALE OF A YANGBAN
by Pak Chiwon

 

The word yangban is, so to speak, a title of honor applied
to the aristocracy.

In the Congson district of Kangwon province there once lived
a yangban, and he was very wise and liked nothing better than to pass
the day and night reading the classics. His reputation was such
that every new magistrate upon assuming his post came in person to
the grass hut to pay his respects.

However, this yangban, having not so much as one scrap of
rice field, was extremely poor. Therefore, every year he lived off
the rice loaned to him by the district government office. But as he
could not pay it back, and continued to borrow year after year, his
debt reached the point of one thousand bags of rice.

One day, the governor of the province came unexpectedly on
a tour of the area. Upon inspecting the accounts of the grain loans,
he became extremely angry.

l'Who is this wretch of a yangban who is eating his rice for
nothing? Send the sheriff for this fellow at once!" he cried, and
sent off a stern command that the yangban be seized.

However, the magistrate reflected (This yangban is a poor
man, and there is absolutely no way for him to repay the thousand

bags of rice, so how can we cast him into prison?). He considered it

103

104

a tragic thing, but there was no way to ignore the command of a
higher official.

Upon hearing the news, the yangban wept day and night, for
there was no way that he could devise a scheme for the situation.

His wife, seeing what a predicament he was in, heaped upon
him one imprecation after another.

"Up to now, you've done nothing but read your classics, so
that now we can't pay back the rice we've borrowed. You call your-
selves yangbans and go swaggering about, but in truth you're not worth
a penny! Yangbans are a damned disgrace!"

At the other end of the village lived a wealthy man of no
distinguished lineage. This wealthy man heard how the yangban was to
be arrested, and he called his grown sons together.

"No matter how poor a yangban's family may be, they are
always treated with respect by others and live in the grand manner.
We have much property, but are always treated disrespectuflly and
are reduced to a life of ignominy. We can not even show off by riding
a horse," said he.

The father drew a long heavy sigh, and the oldest son said
in exasperation, "Is that all? Why, if we see so much as the yang-
ban's nose, we are completely at a loss and must bow and scrape and
kowtow at the steps of his house and rub our noses in the dirt and
crawl around on our knees." Thus he carried on until the youngest
son joined in.

"Even though we have accumulated much wealth, we still have

to live like this. It's an intolerable disgrace and shame."

105

The father opened his mouth again. "As I see it now, that
yangban over there is poor, so he can't repay the rice he borrowed,
and seems to have gotten himself into quite a predicament. Unless
something is done, the poor fellow won't be able to maintain his
yangban status." Saying this, he looked to see if his sons had
caught the intent of his words, and the youngest fellow burst out,
"Why don't you buy the title from him?"

The oldest son chimed in, "Father, that's a splendid idea!
If we pay back his rice debt and buy his title, we'll really be well-
off. We, too, will be able to show off for once."

The wealthy man scurried off to the yangban's house. He
proposed a deal whereby he would pay off the rice debt if the yangban
would hand over his title. The yangban was in a helpless situation,
patiently waiting to be seized and taken away. He immediately
accepted the proposition with no questions asked.

Therefore, the wealthy man went without delay to the govern-
ment office and paid the yangban's rice debt, much to the surprise
of the magistrate. At any rate, the yangban's transgression had
been accounted for and that alone was reason for congratulation.
However, in order to discover how and why the debt had been paid, he
went in haste to the yangban's house.

Well now, how could this have come to pass? The yangban,
dressed like a commoner in a felt hat and rude shirt, threw himself
down in the front yard and kowtowed, kowtowed, saying, "Your humble
servant, your humble servant. . . ." and could not look the magis-

trate directly in the face.

106

The magistrate turned pale in his astonishment and quickly
went down and grasped the yangban's hand and tried to pull him up.

"See here now. What the devil is all this about? What is
the meaning of this bowing down on your knees to me?"

The yangban was all the more unable to overcome his fear,
and bowing low and beating his head against the ground, he exclaimed,
"My Lord, your humble servant is most sorry. I do not humble myself
before you without reason. The fact is that I sold my title in order
to pay my rice debt. As a result, the wealthy man from across the
village has become a yangban. Never again may I call myself a yangban.
Now I am a commoner who dare not look upon my Lord."

Hearing this, the magistrate let the words sink into his
thoughts and after awhile he spoke thus: "This wealthy man is in
truth a gentleman. He can be said to be a yangban indeed. He is
not parsimonious, and displays the quality of righteousness. Seeing
the pitiful state of another, he shows mercy. He despises lowli-
ness and reveres nobility and is wise. Indeed, this kind of person
is a genuine yangban. However, he has been privately dealing in
the buying and selling of a yangban title. Inasmuch as there is
no sort of document or record, we have no way of knowing if there will
be a future lawsuit. Such being the case, I shall summon you both
in front of all the people of the district in order to clarify the
facts. We will make a 'Testimony of the Transaction of Yangban Title'
and in order to confirm it, I will affix the seal of the district

magistrate in witness to the fact."

107

Thus making his pledge, the magistrate turned around and
departed.

Having returned to the government office, the magistrate
called his county clerk and starting with the yangbans who lived in
the Chongson district, and the farmers and the artisans and the
traders without exception, caused them to be gathered together.

After some time, all the people gathered in the wide court-
yard of the government building.

The wealthy man sat down to the right of where the yangbans
had seated themselves, and the yangban who had sold his title sat
down with the administrative officers below the porch. At last they
commenced the business of making a "Testimony of the Transaction of
Yangban Title."

This was the testimony:

"On a certain day in the ninth month of the tenth year of
reign of King Kollong, we make this record. In repaying his rice
debt, a yangban, surrendering himself, sold his title of yangban for
the price of one thousand bags of rice.

"From the beginning, yangban have been called by many names.
For example, one who studied the classics was called sgnbj_(scholar),
a yangban who participated in political affairs was called tagbg_
(high official), and one who displayed high virtue was called kgggha_
(gentleman). From ancient times, the military stood on the west
side and these officers followed a hierarchy. The east side also
stood in their order. Therefore, the man who has bought the yang-

ban's title must, of his own accord, choose either the east or west

108

category, must never behave in a low manner, and must imitate the
high standards of conduct set by our ancestors.

"First of all, every day, early in the morning, he must fold
up his bedding and light the oil lamp. Sitting up on his knees,
he must read aloud the classics, line after line, as quickly and
as smoothly as a gourd dipper rolls across the ice. He must endure
hunger and bear with the cold. He must speak not of his poverty.
Should he sit idly, he must bite his teeth together, pound the back
of his head, cough and clear his throat, keep his mouth firmly shut
and swallow his saliva. He must rub his horsehair skullcap or kat_
lightly along his sleeve so as to remove the dust and enhance the
luster. When washing, he must not scrub himself with his fists;
once or twice he should brush his teeth sufficiently. He must call
his servants in a firm, dignified voice. He must walk in a digni-
fied manner, stepping lightly with his feet turned outward. In
copying the Chinese anthology and the Tang poetry, he should be able
to write so small as to fill one hundred characteristics to a line.

"He must not grasp money in his hand, nor ask the current
price of rice. However hot the weather, he must not remove his socks;
when seated at the dinner table, he must always be properly attired.
When dining, he must not eat his soup first, and when eating his
soup, slurring noises. He must not poke about and play with his
chopsticks. He must not eat raw onions. When drinking wine, he
must not suck on his beard; when smoking, he must not suck on his

pipe so strongly as to make the flame die out.

109

"No matter how exasperating his wife may be, he must not beat
her. In his anger, he must not kick at the furniture. When rebuk-
ing servants, he must not use abusive language or unseemly insults
such as 'base knave who ought to be killed,‘ or 'low slut.‘ When
reprimanding livestock, he must not speak ill of its owner.

"Even though an illness should afflict his house, he must not
call the shaman. When the time comes to perform the ceremonies in his
stead. Even though the weather be cold, he must not warm his hands
before the brazier. When talking, he must not splutter his saliva
in another's face. He must never slaughter a cow. He must never
gamble.

"If he does not abide by these standards of conduct, bring
this document to the government office and we will begin litigations
against him."

At this, the lord of the town and the district magistrate
wrote their names at the bottom of the testimony; the chief clerk
and the special investigator also signed as witnesses to the document.
Then it was passed to a clerk who affixed the official seals, making
a sound like the striking of a large drum, announcing a strict com-
mand. The seals were struck all neatly in line, like the evening
stars appearing in the sky.

As the revenue clerk once more read the decree, the wealthy
man who had bought his yangban title sighed to himself and said,
"What? Is that all there is to being a yangban? I had been led to

believe that a yangban was like some supernatural being, so I did

110

not hesitate to invest one thousand bags of rice. Can't you change
the terms so as to give me more than this?"

The magistrate, seeing how unappreciative the man was, yet
conscious of his obligation to him for the one thousand bags of rice,
bore with this and amended the "Testimony to the Transaction of
Yangban Title."

"Heaven created people in four categories, and among them the
scholar-yangban occupies first place, and he has fabulous advantages.
He neither works at farming nor at trade. If he studies hard, he
may pass the civil service examination; at the very least, he may
pass the preliminary examination for ghjggg, If he passes, he will
receive his red badge of office, and with that, even though it is
only two feet long, there is nothing which he cannot do. The badge
of office is as good as a bag of money. Even should a ghin§a_not
take office until he is forty years of age, from a lower position he
may gain his reputation and in the future move up to a higher post.

"His beard will turn white beneath a sun shade. Though he
has not eaten, the effusive display of respect from his servants will
make him forget his hunger. Flowers will fill his house like cour-
tesans and the cranes will roost in his front yard.

"Even though a scholar be poor and rusticate in the country,
he is still a law unto himself; a man who can demand his neighbor's
cow so that his fields may be plowed first, and who may require the
people of the district to weed his fields. Should someone slight

the yangban, the wretch will be seized and lye will be poured down

111

his nose, and he will be tied down by his topknot and his beard
will be torn out hair by hair, and no one will attend his griev-
ances."

The clerk had read this far when the wealthy man stopped
him, waving his hands and shouting, "Enough! Enough! Stop it!
St0p it! It's more than I can bear! This is more than I bargained
for! You would make me into a thief!"

With this, the wealthy man jumped up, shaking his head, and
ran off. Until the day he died, the word “yangban" never passed

his lips again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

112

Apter, David
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Befu, Harumi
l965

Berger, Peter
l967

Berger, Peter, &
l967

Brandt, Vincent
l97l

Chesneaux, Jean
l973

Cho, Chi-hun
1969

Ch'oe, Tong-Hi
l965a

1965b

Ch'oe, Tong-Hi
l973

1962

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