Voice from the North

RESURRECTING REGIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH THE LIFE AND WORK OF YI SIHANG (1672-1736)

By Sun Joo Kim

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8381-1

Contents

List of Illustrations………………………………………………viiAcknowledgments……………………………………………………ixNote on Conventions………………………………………………..xiiiIntroduction: Capturing History through a Person………………………11. Remembering Yi Sihang, a Local Elite of Significance………………..152. Reciting Life…………………………………………………..553. Defending Regional Elite Identity and Culture………………………1014. Invoking the Memory of Kim Kyongso………………………………..119Conclusion: Practicing History………………………………………143Appendix A. Yi Sihang’s Friends and Associates from the Capital…………157Appendix B. Yi Sihang’s Career History……………………………….165Glossary and Name List……………………………………………..167Notes…………………………………………………………….183Bibliography………………………………………………………217Index…………………………………………………………….235

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Remembering Yi Sihang,a Local Elite of Significance

This chapter offers an in-depth description of Yi Sihang’s personal and familialconnections and networks. I naturally introduce the names of manypeople who were mostly not figures of high achievement, not characters ofdynastic importance, and thus not known in the general history of Korea.

Yet they were members of a family, a village, a lineage, and a larger regionalelite community to which they were necessarily tied and related, sociallyand culturally. Without naming these people who have been ignored asunworthy and thus erased from historical memory, their lives cannot bereconstructed and tracked down in meaningful ways. I therefore examine”trivial” writings such as short biographies (haengjang), tomb stele inscriptions(myogalmyong), and genealogies. These types of writings are inevitablyprivate, and possibly skewed to glorify the persons and families writtenabout. Yet they can also be seen as “public” in that they were written withthe idea that someone else would eventually read them. Although northerngenealogies in particular have been criticized as fraudulent, careful readerscan find obscure clues in them that lead to hidden meanings and a betterunderstanding of the cultural contexts and social milieu in which thepersons concerned lived. These records can thus shed considerable light onsocial and cultural lives at the individual, familial, and local levels.

Remote Ancestors

Yi Sihang was born on 1672.10.20 to the Suan Yi descent group residing inUnsan, P’yongan Province (see Map 2). Members of the Suan Yi descentgroup have long claimed that their apical ancestor is Yi Kyonung, who wasdesignated a “merit subject” (kongsin)—the highest honor awarded by theKoryo court—after assisting Wang Kon (877–943; King T’aejo, r. 918–943)in unifying the country and founding the Koryo dynasty. Yet it seems thereis no historical record that bears the name of this ancestor and verifies hisaccomplishments. It is also unclear what Yi Kyonung’s clanseat (pon’gwan)was, because the clanseat of Suan originated from Yi Yonsong (?–1320), whoserved three Koryo kings—Ch’ungnyol (r. 1274–1308), Ch’ungson (r. 1298and 1308–1313), and Ch’ungsuk (r. 1313–1330)—and who earned the title ofLord of Suan (Suan-gun) in the early fourteenth century. Yi Yonsong is ahistorical person, for his name appears several times in the History of Koryo(Koryosa). He was apparently a native of Suan (in Hwanghae Province inChoson), which was originally a hyon but was upgraded to a kun in recognitionof his merit. He earned fame for his loyalist death on behalf of KingCh’ungson. Much later, in 1662, he was enshrined in the Yonggye Academy(Yonggye sowon) in Suan, which received a royal charter in 1708. Yi Sihangrecorded the history of this royal chartered private academy, in which heillustrated Yi Yonsong’s lofty character, spread of Confucian scholarship, benevolentadministration, and loyal death. Other ancestors whose names canbe verified from historical records are Yi Inu, who commanded troops againstthe Red Turbans in 1358, and Yi Susaeng, one of the seventy-two Koryoloyalists who refused to acknowledge and serve the new Choson dynasty buthid in Tumun-dong, Kyonggi Province after the fall of Koryo in 1392.

Three prominent scholar-officials in the late Choson lent prestige to earliereditions of the Suan Yi genealogy by writing prefaces to them, in which theyalso acknowledged the historical origin of the Suan Yi descent group fromYi Yonsong. Kim Yu (1653–1719) wrote a preface to the 1715 edition whenhe was the governor of Hwanghae Province. A recognized disciple of SongSiyol (1607–1689) and Pak Sech’ae (1631–1695), Kim Yu was a good friend ofYi Sihang (see Appendix A) and later assumed the position of director (taejehak)of the Office of Royal Decrees (Yemun’gwan) and of the Office of SpecialCouncilors (Hongmun’gwan), one of the most prestigious bureaucraticpositions in Choson Korea. In the preface, Kim mentions that he himselfis related to the Suan Yi lineage through his maternal line (oeye), and praisesthe family for knowing the value of genealogy and unstintingly underwritingthe publication of its genealogy. The preface to the 1781 edition is byNam Hyollo (1729–?), the headmaster (taesasong) of the Royal ConfucianAcademy (Songgyun’gwan) at the time. Nam was a descendant of Nam Chae(1351–1419), a merit subject for his assistance in the founding of the Chosondynasty, whose maternal line was from the Suan Yi. Nam recognizes thatthe Suan Yi is a renowned lineage from ancient times and that its clanseatoriginates with the Lord of Suan. Hong Sokchu (1774–1842), the directorof the Office of Special Councilors at the time, is the author of the prefaceto the 1832 edition. Hong notes that this edition consists of twenty-two volumes,making it more extensive than any other prominent lineage, and attributesthe growth of the Suan Yi lineage to the virtue (tok) accumulated byits progenitor, the Lord of Suan, who died for the king. Hong’s connection tothe Suan Yi lineage came from his grandfather Hong Naksong (1718–1798),who was the director of the aforementioned Yonggye Academy, the royalchartered private academy where the Lord of Suan was enshrined.

All three authors mention that they initially declined the requests fromSuan Yi members to write a preface to the genealogy. In the case of Hong,he turned down several requests before he agreed. It was very common forlineage representatives to seek a preface and/or postscript to their genealogyfrom high court officials and renowned scholars, who often declined suchrequests, whether courteously or disdainfully. It is nevertheless unusual forthe Suan Yi lineage to have these three very eminent scholar-officials agreeto write a preface. Apparently, its members successfully called on friendshipand blood relations as well as intellectual connections, no matter howremote. In the late Choson period, a written genealogy was not just a recordof a family’s past and present but an important site of memory—one thatdefined the status of its commemorators, as well as of the living members ofthe lineage, at the time of compilation. The greatness of ancestors, whetherinvented or not, affected the status of their descendants. A genealogy isclearly a private record, yet its public nature cannot be overlooked. Thusthese prefaces written by renowned public figures had the effect of authenticatingthe history and honor of this lineage.

As Hong Sokchu remarks in his preface, the branches of the Suan Yilineage grew in number, with the majority of descendants of the Lord ofSuan moving out of Suan to other parts of the Korean peninsula, in particularto P’yongan and Hwanghae provinces, from which twenty-three out oftwenty-six Suan Yi munkwa passers emerged during the Choson dynasty.Yet, although their numbers increased, the Suan Yi did not do well in establishingthemselves as central elites. Yi Yonggyon, whose place of residenceis unknown, earned his munkwa degree in 1429—the only person from theSuan Yi to do so before the seventeenth century. The social and politicaldownfall of the Suan Yi lineage in the early Choson period may have had todo with the loyalist position taken by its late Koryo ancestors.

The revival of the lineage—which in any case failed to raise the family toprominence— was spearheaded by the branch that moved to Unsan, whichin 1652 produced the first munkwa passer since Yi Yonggyon in 1429, followedlater by five more munkwa passers. It was Yi Sindong, a grandsonof Yi Susaeng, who began to reside in Unsan after he was banished for a”trivial” crime he committed during the reign of King Songjong (r. 1469–1494),when the policy of population relocation (samin) was very strict.Late Choson northerners often recalled that it was the early Choson relocationpolicy that had led their ancestors to the land they made their adoptedhome, and the Suan Yi descent group in Unsan is no exception. As wasoften the case for move-in ancestors (iphyangjo) who founded a new residenceremoved from their original clanseat, Yi Sindong does not appear inany other historical sources. Genealogical records on Yi Sindong’s son andgrandson also cannot be verified from other sources, leaving the traces offamily history murky until the early seventeenth century, and thus makingthe connection between late Koryo figures and those in the seventeenth centuryuncertain. Although the compiler of the 1683 Suan Yi genealogy notesthat most family records were lost during the Japanese (1592–1598) andManchu (1627 and 1636) invasions, there is room to doubt that Yi Sihangand his descent group were an offshoot of the lineage of Yi Yonsong. However,if the family origin of Unsan’s Suan Yi descent group was in fact veryobscure, it would have been impossible for its members to forge marriageties with established local elite families in Chongju, Yongbyon, and evenP’yongyang from the seventeenth century on. As noted earlier, membersof the Suan Yi lineage probably did not fare well politically because of itsancestors’ loyalty to the preceding dynasty, and thus did not leave historicalrecords traceable in the seventeenth century, when its descendants tried toreconstruct the history of their progenitors in the early Choson period.

Unsan

Unsan (Figure 2) is located in northern P’yongan Province, north of Yongbyonand northeast of Chongju, along the Ch’wi River, a tributary of theCh’ongch’on River. It was a county, a garrison (chin), or a part of anothercounty during the Koryo and the early Choson periods, and was finally designateda county under the supervision of a junior fifth grade magistrate(kunsu) from the early fifteenth century on, except for a few years between1459 and 1462. Being located in the mountainous inland region of northernP’yongan Province, Unsan was difficult to reach and its land was very barren,able to support only about a hundred households in 1459. A countyhad to have enough land and people—the two most important sources ofrevenue—to stand as an independent administrative unit. Lacking these resources,court officials recommended that Unsan be abolished and incorporatedinto Yongbyon, a recommendation the king evidently accepted.

However, the court soon realized that a county was needed there forstrategic reasons. The route between Yongbyon and the counties along themiddle reach of the Amnok (or Yalu) River was often used by Chinese diplomatsas well as Choson officials, and it was inconvenient for them notto have a county between the two areas because the distance was too far.For defense purposes it was also undesirable to leave this vast area withoutan administrative and defense system. In 1462, the court recognized thatthere were 76 households of local clerks (hyangni), 6 households of countyservants (ilsu), 52 public slaves, and 497 other households in Unsan, whichcould support a county apparatus. Therefore, the court restored Unsan as acounty that year.

In the late Choson, Unsan was still recognized as a critical defense pointshould Qing (1644–1911) from north of the Amnok River cross the riverin its middle and upper reaches, where the water was shallow, and movesouth toward P’yongyang and then Seoul. The vast area between the Isanand Ch’angsong county seats and Unsan was an administrative and defensivevacuum, so Yi Sihang even proposed establishing a new county in thisstrategically important area around the Kuksa Pass.

The number of households in Unsan must have fluctuated greatly in thefifteenth century. According to the Veritable Records of King Sejong’s GeographicSurvey (Sejong sillok chiriji), compiled in 1454, there were only 225households with 2,763 people residing there. Wet field was almost nonexistent(only 2 kyol); dry land consisted of 4,354 kyol, which seems to have beeninflated substantially. The land was cultivable but not fertile. It was mountainous,and thus materials such as animal skins, mushrooms, and ginsengwere among its tribute items. There were an iron mine and a couple of ceramicmanufacturers. There were no indigenous surname groups (t’osong) inUnsan, although there were twelve moved-in surname groups (ipchinsong).The surname groups recorded in this early Choson government documentmust have represented local elites of the given county, for it was still not prevalentfor commoners to have surnames at the time. The Suan Yi was not oneof those moved-in surname groups, but this fits the above story that Yi Sindongfirst moved to Unsan during the reign of King Songjong in the latefifteenth century. Although the Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea(Sinjung tongguk yoji sungnam), compiled in 1530, still does not show theSuan Yi in its entry of surname groups in Unsan, the Cultural Geography ofKorea (Yojidoso), a publication of 1757–1765, does. In a nineteenth-centurygazetteer, one surname group from the Sejong sillok chiriji has disappearedand five new descent groups, including the Suan Yi, have been added.

Unsan was a strategic point and also a transportation hub, connectingcounties along the coastal areas and those far inland and along the middlereaches of the Amnok River. This must have given people in Unsan somealternatives to making a living from agriculture alone. In the late fifteenthcentury, supplying salt to those counties in the hinterland was a serious concernfor the court; boatmen transported salt by river from the coastal regionto Unsan, from which it was distributed overland to other inland counties.Salt was traded for rice or other grain, which then was stored in Unsan’s granaryfor military provisions. Unsan’s terrain was hilly but not without landfor dry cultivation. In 1501, an inspector from the capital noted that therewas rather a large amount of uncultivated land in Unsan. Yi Sindong andhis descendants may have taken advantage of the opportunities to reclaimthis unoccupied land and to trade in goods such as salt.

The population of Unsan grew to 8,419 (3,297 males and 4,402 females)in 1,741 households, according to the 1759 cadastral survey, showing a hugeincrease compared to the early Choson. The 1872 gazetteer reports 2,383households and 14,179 people (9,159 males and 5,020 females), probably relyingon the 1870 survey. The data on arable land are alarming—696 kyolof dry land and 14 kyol of wet field in the late eighteenth century. This hadchanged to 830 kyol of dry land and 13 kyol of wet field about a centurylater. The increase in wet field in the late Choson is understandable, butdry land decreased significantly from the mid-fifteenth century. Scholarshave found that the amount of arable land recorded in the Sejong sillokchiriji, especially for P’yongan Province, was extremely high, and explainthat this may have included land to be reclaimed. At any rate, the averageland possibly cultivated by each household (with an average of six peopleper household) calculated from the 1872 record was 0.35 kyol. Analysis of the1845 tax rosters of two districts in Chinju, Kyongsang Province, shows thattaxpayers cultivated on average about 0.25 kyol in one district and 0.26 kyolin the other. It is difficult to compare the economic well-being of peopleliving in Unsan and Chinju using these numbers because we do not knowhow many people on average Chinju taxpayers had in their households,and the topographical and climatic conditions of the two districts are verydifferent. Although Unsan residents seem to have worked more land, whatthey produced from their hilly land in a cold climate was probably of lessvalue than crops produced in smaller but more fertile wet fields in Chinju.
(Continues…)Excerpted from Voice from the North by Sun Joo Kim. Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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