Confucianism and Military Service in Early Seventeenth-Century Chosŏn Korea

Title

Confucianism and Military Service in Early Seventeenth-Century Chosŏn Korea

Author

Nam-Lin HUR

Page

51-84

DOI

Abstract

Chosŏn Korea's military system remained enigmatic in that, on paper, it looked well maintained; however, whenever it was faced with the task of national defense, it failed miserably. The leaders, including the king, seemed to be highly supportive of strong national defense, but when it came to the issue of how it should be put into practice, they almost always betrayed what they purported. The problem was the members of the ruling-class sajok who tried to free themselves from the duty of military service despite their verbal emphasis on the importance of national defense. Their efforts at avoiding military service always proved to be successful, leaving the nation's military capacity all but much paralyzed whenever it was needed. In this article, Hur traces how, in the early seventeenth century, just after the nation had been subjected to the terror of foreign invasion, sajok men tried to avoid military service. To free themselves from military duty, sajok men turned to the privileges bestowed by learning, which, under Confucianism, was considered to be of greater value than the military arts. For its part, the government recognized the class interests of the sajok and exempted them from military service. When hard pressed by foreign threats, the government often resorted to ad hoc measures (such as the kogang test and hop'ae law) in an attempt to mobilize sajok men, but such measures did not result in any changes. Hur explores how the values of the civil and military arts, both of which were embraced by Confucianism, were pitted against each other in Chosŏn Korea's politics, which was heavily laden with unbridgeable class interests that favored the sajok.

Keyword

civil versus military, population register, national defense, sajok

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1973