Notes

MILITARY RULE
Koryŏ was a society dominated by a civil aristocracy (munban). Wealthy
landed families held the key posts in the state, advised and intermarried
with the Wang kings, controlled most of the land and economy, and supplied
most of the leadership of Buddhist temples. It was from the ranks of
the elite aristocratic civil officials that most of the kingdom’s writers and
scholars were drawn. There was, however, an inferior line of military officials
(muban). Although they were aristocrats, they held less prestige and
generally did not rise to the highest ranks in the bureaucracy. In general,
their voices were seldom heard. Even Korea’s military victories such as
those against the Liao were usually attributed to the leadership of civil
officials. It should be noted, however, that the civil officials wrote the official
histories. Then in 1170, officers of the military aristocracy revolted
and seized power.
Military-civil tension had existed long before the 1170 revolt.1 For
example, in 1014, the military revolted when civil officials tried to limit
their salaries. Yet something changed in the twelfth century that gave
the military leaders the desire and confidence to wrestle power from the
civilian aristocracy. Perhaps when the military helped to defeat Yi Chagyŏm
in 1126 and Myoch’ŏng in 1135 they realized their potential power.
King Ŭijong (r. 1146–1170), a patron of the arts, was not an effective king,
and disputes between civil and military officials appeared to have gotten
worse under his rule. The military grew more restless; as early as 1164
some military officials plotted to overthrow the state.
The leader of the 1170 coup was Chŏng Chung-bu (1106–1179). Chŏng
belonged to the influential Haeju Chŏng clan but represented the less
powerful and prestigious muban military lineages. Before coming to
power Chŏng Chung-bu served as commander of the royal guards. According
to tradition, Chŏng had been humiliated when Kim Ton-jung,
son of historian Kim Pu-sik, set fire to his beard. Whatever its accuracy,
the story symbolizes the growing tensions between the dominant civil
aristocracy and the military aristocrats that led to the military revolt. The
coup was carried out as King Ŭijong and his entourage of court officials
visited a temple near the capital. Chŏng, along with two other generals,
Yi Ŭi-bang and Yi Ko, massacred the entire court, sparing only the king,
whom they exiled to Kŏje Island off the south coast, and the crown prince,
whom they banished to Chindo, another island off the south coast. Ŭijong
was later executed by drowning. Once in power, Chŏng Chung-bu carried
out an extensive purge of civil officials and managed state affairs
through the Chungbang (Supreme Military Council). He replaced King
Ŭijong with the king’s brother Myŏngjong, who was more compliant.
But the new monarch had little real power. Power was now in the hands
of military officers. The Wang line of Koryŏ kings continued to reign,
and a civil government continued to carry out the formal functions of
government. Actual authority, however, was wielded by generals who
developed a parallel government administration based on military clan
organs. Military leaders derived their support from their own clans based
on mun’gaek (retainers) and kadong (house slaves).
The first quarter century of military rule was characterized by competition
for power among rival military clans. Having seized control, the
military rulers do not seem to have had a clear plan of how to rule the
state. As a result, the period from 1170 to 1196 was one of instability in
which a number of generals plotted against each other. At first, Chŏng
ruled along with Yi Ŭi-bang and Yi Ko, two other military officers, but Yi
Ŭi-bang killed Yi Ko, who in turn was assassinated by Chŏng’s faction.
Chŏng then ruled alone for several years until 1179 when the young military
commander Kyŏng Tae-sŏng killed him. Eventually another general,
Yi Ŭi-min (d. 1196), became paramount leader. Meanwhile, the countryside
saw numerous rebellions. Peasants rose up against landowners and
local officials, slaves revolted against masters, and even soldiers in the
provinces revolted. The most famous of these revolts was that of the slave
Manjŏk (?–1198), a sort of Korean Spartacus. Manjŏk gathered an army of
government and private slaves that met at North Mountain outside of the
capital Kaesŏng in 1198 (see below). The leaders of this group were betrayed.
Their revolt and those of others were eventually suppressed, but
they reflect a general breakdown of authority that took place in the land
during the first three decades of governance by military officials.
Stability came when in 1196 Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn (1149–1219) seized
power and established the rule of Korea by the Ch’oe family house that
lasted fifty-eight years. Of the Ubong Ch’oe clan, Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn’s
father was an officer who had reached the top of the military hierarchy.2
Ch’oe served as the toryŏng (military commander) and wrote a Ten-Point
Memorial expressing dissatisfaction with the military rule under King
Myŏngjong (r. 1170–1197), its corruption, its inferior officials, and the
interference of Buddhism in politics. He killed Yi Ŭi-min and became the
new paramount military leader, thus the de facto ruler of Korea. Ch’oe
restored order to the areas that had been plagued by frequent peasant
and slave revolts. He did this in part by offering some rebel leaders ranks
and offices, and by freeing low-born inhabitants of special districts called
pugok and hyang and merging them into the regular county system of local
administration. He also broke the power of the Buddhist monasteries and
temples that had ties to the courts and that had even threatened Ch’oe’s
authority with their armed monks. He crushed the armed monks and
forced many of the clergy, especially the illegitimate princes who had become
monks, to leave the capital. Ch’oe’s twenty-two-year rule stands out
in Korean history. Seldom did a single individual, who was not a king,
manage to concentrate so much power in his hands.
Ch’oe created a stable rule by developing an innovative set of institutions.
These institutions amounted to the establishment of two sets of
government.3 The monarchy, the court officials, and civil bureaucracy
were maintained, while he created a new parallel government based on
house institutions that were under his direct control. The latter, in fact,
became the real locus of power. The house institutions were staffed by
his own retainers and slaves and by officials personally loyal to him.
The most important of these was the Kyojŏng Togam (Office of Decree
Enactment), which served as the effective center of political authority.
The Kyojŏng Togam functioned as the highest administrative organ of his
government. It had the power to collect taxes and investigate wrongdoing
by officials. Having gathered effective power in his hands, Ch’oe
preferred to create personal house organs that now had the actual civilian
and military functions of government while preserving the older courtcentered
institutional structure that held only nominal power. Members
of these organs were nominally appointed by the king, but were generally
chosen by Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn. Ch’oe in effect created a sort of parallel
dynasty to the Wang royal dynasty, passing his rulership to his son Ch’oe
U, and his grandsons Ch’oe Hang and Ch’oe Ŭi.
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn’s son Ch’oe U, who governed Korea from 1218 to
1249, further elaborated on the structure of house organs. He created the
Chŏngbang (Personnel Authority), an institution through which civil officials
could enter government, the Sŏbang (Household Secretariat) that was
formed from the men of letters among his retainers, and the Sambyŏlch’o
(Three Elite Patrols) that served as a clan-controlled military force. The
Sambyŏlch’o were elite military units that carried out police and combat
duties. This military force originated in the two (left and right) Yabyŏlch’o
(Night Patrols) Ch’oe U created as military units that would be outside
the regular army command. A third unit, the Sinŭigun (Army of Transcendent
Righteousness), was formed from fighters who escaped after
being captured by Mongols. The Ch’oe rulers financed their house organs
through sigŭp, extensive lands theoretically granted by the court, in which
the Ch’oe family was allowed to directly collect taxes and tribute. In effect
these lands provided an independent base of economic support for it.
Essential to the new government was the use of mun’gaek. Mun’gaek
were private military retainers of great clans. The mun’gaek were important
in the armies of the military clans that gained control of the Koryŏ
government in 1170. After 1196 the clan of Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn was especially
effective in promoting its mun’gaek. Under the Ch’oe military
rulers many scholars became mun’gaek and served in the Chŏngbang
(Personnel Authority) and other offices. The mun’gaek played an important
role in the competition for power throughout the Koryŏ period. In
addition to mun’gaek who were freedmen, kadong, male house slaves,
also served as armed retainers.
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn asserted more direct control over local institutions.
His task was an enormous one because under his military predecessors
authority of all sorts had broken down in the provinces. Ch’oe had to
deal with six peasant rebellions during his first twelve years. He utilized
a variety of methods to reassert control over the countryside. The
military ruler reinvigorated the power of the hojang (local headmen) and
expanded the kamugwan, a central government office that oversaw rural
jurisdictions. Ch’oe had officials called anch’alsa (appointed governors)
meet directly with peasants and elevated or demoted a district’s status
as a reward or punishment.
The Ch’oe rulers sponsored a vigorous intellectual life through their encouragement
of Confucianism as a means of legitimizing their rule. They
carried out civil examinations with considerable frequency, and despite
the disdain of civil officials (munban) toward military officials (muban), the
Ch’oe succeeded in attracting a large proportion of the former to serve
in their government as civil officials or personal retainers. The military
rulers were also patrons of Sŏn Buddhism, and through their support
Buddhism entered a period of intellectual vigor. At the same time, the
military rulers struggled to undermine the power of the capital-area monasteries
that were often headed by members of cadet branches of the royal
family and by court-connected aristocratic families. These efforts led to
a rebellion by armed monks in 1217 that Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn suppressed.
Overall, the Ch’oe rulers appeared to have stabilized the government and
developed a set of effective institutions that secured their power. Hardly,
however, had they accomplished this when they were faced with the
Mongol invasions. The stubborn resistance of the Ch’oe rulers to the Mongols
from 1231 to 1258, for the most part directed from the island fastness
of Kanghwa, eventually contributed to their downfall when a faction suing
for peace with the Mongols overthrew the last Ch’oe ruler, Ch’oe Ŭi.