The Land of Morning Calm and Evening Struggle--Joseon Korea #1: Birth and Death of a Dynasty

Recently, in addition to the Regency and Heian Japan research I've been conducting, I've started researching Joseon Korea. Though I spent two years living in South Korea, until recently my knowledge of pre-20th century Korea was somewhat limited. These entries will occupy my third slot in my rotating Thursday historical entry series. As of this time, I have no plan to add another period to my historical series.

Joseon  (Joseonguk, lit. Joseon Country or Kingdom of Joseon) was the political entity that controlled the Korean peninsula from 1392 to 1897. At its height, Joseon controlled the entire area of what is now the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Most of what we'd consider "Korean" culture today was established during this period.

The Joseon state was controlled by the Yi dynasty. The originator of the dynasty was one Yi Seong-gye, later Taejo. Throughout this series, I will be using the terms Yi Dynasty, Joseon, and Joseon Dynasty fairly interchangeably.

Originally Taejo was a military official under the previous Goryeo Dynasty (which, incidentally, also lasted 500 years). At the time Goryeo was dealing with being under the influence and presence of the Mongols, who had for several centuries prior also controlled China during the Yuan Dynasty period. The collapse of the Mongol-lead Yuan Dynasty and its replacement with the Han Chinese-lead Ming Dynasty provided an opportunity to eliminate Mongol influence. Goryeo military forces proceeded to eliminate Mongols remaining on the peninsula. Taejo made a name for himself during this period for actions against the Mongols, Japanese pirates, and certain Chinese forces, including an anti-Yuan rebel army.

The splintering dynastic transition lead to factions in the Goryeo court who supported both the Yuan and Ming  Dynasties. Yi, as you might surmise from his blade dancing with the Mongols, was more of a Ming man. Unfortunately, the Ming also wanted Goryeo to cough up a large portion of their northern territory. I won't dive into the details of all the various claims, but the Goryeo government planned a further northern invasion into Ming territory. Yi was selected to lead the invasion despite his protests.

Instead, he turned around and overthrew the king. There were some shenigans with puppet rulers for a little bit but, in the end, Yi eventually ascended the throne himself inaugurating a new dynasty. Over the five centuries of Joseon's existence, the country reached heights of culture, technology, art, and literature. During this period, King Seijong the Great commissioned scholars to create hangul, the modern Korean alphabet, to improve literacy.

Joseon had a mostly peaceful two-century span between the the 17th and 19th centuries accompanying a mostly isolationist period. Unfortunately, that period of peace was book-ended by intense instability. The early centuries of the period were marked by intense and often violent political struggles between various political and scholar-bureaucrat factions.

Geography didn't help matters. The Korean Peninsula's position between China and the rising power of Japan lead to a battlefield destiny. Invasions from Manchus and Japan made the first three centuries of the dynasty an often unstable affair. Japanese and Chinese pirates also were a persistent problem.

Both the Kingdom of Joseon and the Yi Dynasty (effectively the same thing) would last until Japanese chicanery, including the brutal assassination of the reformist Empress Myeongseong, at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century robbed the Korean Peninsula of its independence until the end of World War II.

Magical Mondays #10: I am most certainly not number four, East Asian fear of the number four

Welcome to my tenth Magical Monday. In these segments, I'll be briefly examining various magical traditions, creatures, and elements that people have been believed in (or continue to believed in) throughout history. Eventually, I may also move onto depictions that appear only in novels, but there's plenty of historical material to keep me busy for a while.

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Most  cultures that have developed number systems have also ascribed both power and meaning to numbers. As expressions of mathematical reality, they occupy an unusual sort of place in existence. Even absent complex numerology, certain individual numbers have gained special attention.

If one travels to Hong Kong, for example, they will find many buildings missing a fourth floor. Obviously the builders in Hong Kong aren't idiots. They build skyscrapers, so they've likely mastered basic arithmetic. The issue isn't counting; it's superstition. The number four is considered unlucky.

This fear comes not from some complicated numerology analysis or some ancient religious influence, but rather from something a bit more prosaic: the word four is rather close in sound to the word death in many East Asian languages. 

Let's take a linguistic step back.  The reason for this convergence is the influence of China on the various countries surrounding it. The might and majesty of the Middle Kingdom lead to the spread of its philosophies, language, and even religions all over East Asia. Even in the case of languages that are otherwise totally unrelated and unlike any form of Chinese (e.g., Japanese), Chinese words have been borrowed and/or modified to be brought into the language. Along with that borrowing came the similarity between death and four. 

As I don't want to get side-tracked by linguistics, I'll just note when I say "Chinese" I'm actually referring to the collective Chinese dialects. Despite the fact they are often called dialects, most of these "dialects" are in fact separate spoken language as different from each other as most Romance languages are. The particular nature of the Chinese writing system, which is more meaning than phonetically based, however, allows them to all be written, for the most part, the same way.

Chinese itself is a tonal language. The tone pattern associated with a word changes meaning. The complexity of these tones will vary on the individual dialect. I mention this because four and death are not perfect homonyms in most Chinese dialects (nor were they in the ancient Chinese dialects that influenced all their neighbors). The tone distinguished them. They were still quite close. Some of the languages that integrated Chinese words were not tonal, and thus some of them now have true homonyms between death and four.

Now, there's a certain irony in all of this. There's something else that spread throughout East Asia and has come to heavily influence it--Buddhism. The fundamental tenets of Buddhism are referred to as the Four Noble Truths. It's slightly surprising to have a key aspect of such an influential religion associated with the unlucky number four.  Buddhism, however, despite its current association with East Asia is actually South Asian in geographical, theological, and linguistic origin.

One might rightly wonder if this superstition is still common. Well, it's hard to say what percentage of people believe it, but I can testify from personal experience based on my time in Korea that it's far from an extinct there both in individual people or in general building numbering schemes.