Resurgence of Neo-Confucian Rule

The ninth King of Joseon Dynasty, Seongjong (r.1469-1494) ascended to the throne as a child and ruled under the regency of the dowager queen and minister-consultants. The anti-Sejo literati used the institution of the royal lecture to try to abolish Buddhist rituals and other anomalies in the life of the court, and the unfortunate child was subject to a rigorous schedule of two to four royal lectures per day. The Office of Study Promotion was expanded to serve as a censorate in addition to providing royal lecturers. Heavy Confucian indoctrination was the order of the day, and state support of Buddhism gradually diminished. During King Seongjong's reign, officials' rights to collect tax and rent from official land as personal income began to wane.

Young scholars were treated well and given opportunities at the newly established Hall of Leave for Study, and Confucianism once again found its place in the royal administration. An ambitious publication program was implemented, producing such works as a compendium of Korean historical geography; also issued was an anthology of Korean-Chinese literature, as well as an illustrated text on traditional music.

Such efforts to restore Confucian rule were not sufficient to satisfy the scholarly class in general, however. Those among them who had suffered discrimination during King Sejo's reign gained a foothold at court, but economic conditions were not greatly improved. Following the implementation of a central collection and distribution of rent policy on the officials' land, the officials and yangban sought land control for the right to farm, thereby encroaching upon the peasant's share of land ownership rights. Moreover, land area grew as a result of reclamation, and this contributed further to the growth of agricultural estates, a process which the dynasty attempted to prevent. Some agricultural estates gathered bondsmen and peasants, many of whom abandoned their free status in order to escape the heavy land tax, corvee, and tribute taxes that had been imposed on them.

As the desire to hold landed interests became more intense, those yangban who had already established themselves as the owners of meritorious subject land, special land grants, reclaimed land, or accumulated landed rights to cultivate land suddenly became targets of intense criticism.

Those literati who could not afford land became impoverished. These literati upheld the family and clan rites and etiquette prescribed by Neo-Confucian doctrine, but were impoverished by the costly rituals involved - marriages, funerals and memorial ceremonies. To maintain themselves, they depended heavily on their kinship ties, relying on assistance given by an appointed official of the same kin group. These mutual assistance relationships affected both officials in the capital, and landed yangban in the outlying areas as well. This was also a key factor in the politico-economic life of each yangban during the Joseon Dynasty and was intensified during King Seongjong's reign. Kim Jongjik (1432-1492) was a leading scholar-official with many followers, who advocated the Neo-Confucian rectification theory which implied condemnation of King Sejo's usurpation. His success represented for a while the peak of the resurgent Neo-Confucian school.

King Seongjong's successor in 1495 was King Yeonsangun, whose reign was noted for his unscrupulous suppression of the literati. In the initial period, he was hard-pressed by that clamorous group which opposed Buddhist rituals observed at the death of the Queen Mother. Infuriated by the hundreds of memorials and protests made by the Neo-Confucian literati, King Yeonsangun lashed out at them. His first purge was based on an accusation of state crimes because one of Kim Jongjik's students had implicitly criticized King Sejo's usurpation in his historical notes. Through this purge and another which followed in 1504, King Yeonsangun eliminated the checks exercised by historians, the censorate, and state councilors. Confucian statecraft almost collapsed. His extraordinary anti-Confucian and anti-Buddhist acts contravened the Gyeongguk daejeon and dismayed the yangban as a whole until he was finally deposed.

It fell to King Jungjong (r.1506-1544), supported by the officials who had deposed King Yeonsan-gun, to restore Confucian rule. The resurgence of the Neo-Confucian school made the enhancement of the economic status of the literati an urgent necessity. Some were rewarded with meritorious subject land, but others found a solution through securing charters for private schools endowed with some land and bondsmen. Such local private schools became the intellectual training ground for new schools of thought.

The increase of refugee peasants contributed to the ever increasing burden of taxes upon the remaining peasants. Jo Gwangjo, an influential school official, advocated the recommendation system for the recruitment of government officials and the organization of local guilds to improve the impoverished condition of the literati. The recommendation system was implemented and his group was recruited for official posts, but this alone did not satisfy them since they were not rewarded with appropriate land. In 1519, the year they achieved their goal of implementing the recommendation examination system, these Neo-Confucian scholars faced a spurious charge of treason.

The ministers and the literati were often embroiled in royal succession problems, and competed among themselves for places in the bureaucracy, especially since their numbers had rapidly increased with the expansion of private schools. Their common interests based on local school and kinship organizations were bound to spilt them into factions, all the more bitterly divided for being within the same status. The number of private schools exceeded one hundred in the late 16th century, and eminent scholars of the Neo-Confucian philosophy sheltered themselves in such institutions.

As for the people in general, they were hard-pressed by the levies of land tax, corvee, military tax, service and especially tribute tax, which was collected by authorized agents. The growth of agricultural estates accelerated, contributing further to the decline of the peasant economy. A righteous outlaw named Im Kkeokjeong rose up against the greedy officials. Recruiting a large group of peasants, he confiscated the wealth of rich yangban officials and distributed it to the poor. He seized government granaries and gave relief to hungry people in the provinces of Gyeonggi-do and Hwanghae-do. Although he was caught and beheaded in 1562, his chivalry and revolutionary ideas captured the admiration of the people and inspired the popular novel,Hong Gildong jeon, the Tale of Hong Gildong.