뉴스레터

A shabby-looking man in tattered clothes was walking over the Hill of Cheolryeong in Gangwon Province. Evidently weathered by the world, he looked as though he was about to be blown away like a dry leaf in the gust of wind that just blew in. But he was walking with a confident gait and piercing eyes, driven by the determination to turn the world upside down. He was on his way to visit someone who would be essential to his achieving that goal.

It was one day in the fall of 1383 (the 9th year of reign by the King Wu of the Goryeo Dynasty). And the man's name was Jeong Do-jeon (1342-1398). He had been continuously wandering in exile for close to ten years as a consequence of raising doubts about the death of King Gongmin and challenging the influential courtier Lee In-im. In those ten years, he had clenched his teeth, feeling a creepy foreboding of the fall of Goryeo. The people suffering and dying in misery needed to be saved. The person that Jeong Do-jeon was going to visit was General Lee Seong-gye in Hamheung. Jeong Do-jeon was thinking that if Lee Seong-gye agreed with him, they would work together to set the world right, but if Lee turned out to be a general with a false reputation, he would turn around without looking back.

The moment he met Jeong Do-jeon, Lee Seong-gye must have read his mind and sensed a terrifyingly extraordinary fate that was about to befall him. Now that the two had met, Jeong Do-jeon's revolution had begun.

Later, when Lee Seong-gye had become the first king of the Joseon Dynasty and was throwing a party for the courtiers who contributed to the founding of the new dynasty, Lee Seong-gye offered Jeong Do-jeon a drink and said: "I couldn't have been here without you. You are truly like a Zhang Liang (courtesy name Zifang) to me!" Jeong accepted the drink, and replied: "But there is a difference, Your Highness. In this case, Zhang Liang used the first Han emperor Liu Bang, not the other way around."

Jeong Do-jeon had just dared to say that he had chosen and used Lee Seong-gye to achieve a revolution, but none of those in presence corrected him.

Win the Hearts of the People to Gain the Justification of Rule

Jeong Do-jeon's revolution was based entirely on the 'people.' He placed the nation above the king, and the people above the nation. He regarded the people as the roots of a nation. and the gods of the king. In describing what the king was supposed to do (正寶位) in The Administrative Code of Joseon, today's equivalent of the Preamble to the Constitution, Jeong Do-jeon wrote: "The king is high and noble, but the world is extremely wide and the people in it extremely numerous. If the king fails to win their hearts, that would be a cause for great concern," implying that deposing the king was possible. If the throne was based on the people, then obviously so were the political and social systems.

The key to politics based on the people is to open wide communication channels. In The Principles of Political Economy, Jeong Do-jeon placed a great emphasis on the importance of communication channels and officials whose duty was to denounce faults and correct errors, stating that not just those censorate officials but all the other government officials, and even all the people should be allowed to criticize politics and discuss current affairs freely. In other words, he based the justification of rule on the hearts of the people.

As illustrated so far, Jeong Do-jeon was the beginning and end of the foundation of the Joseon Dynasty. Not only did he build the capital city after deciding its location, but he also wrote a huge amount of books and laws and achieved other accomplishments. He was indeed 'a superman, who didn't belong to this world or looked like the only survivor at the end of the world.'

The Failed Dream of Regaining Liadong

Jeong Do-jeon took the initiative in founding Joseon for all the people, not for a dynasty. And his vision of life was not confined to his own time but extended to include a thousand years in the future. He expressed his feelings in a poem as follows: "Who could say that a thousand years is too far in the future? I have made enduring accomplishments that will have remained written in the sky even a thousand years later!"

He talked about the Millenium Master Plan, which refers to a plan to regain Liadong, the old territory of Koguryo, to achieve a long-cherished dream from the period of Three Han Kingdoms. He specifically praised Wang Geon, the first king of Goryeo, by saying that "he (Wang Geon) made several trips to Pyeongyang and a tour of the northern borders in person, with the indeed 'grand and ambitious plan' to regain the old territory from the period of the King Dongmyeong of Koguryo." In 1393 (the second year of reign by King Taejo, the first king of Joseon), Jeong Do-jeon volunteered to be sent as an envoy to Ming, with the intention of watching the situation through a direct meeting with Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming, who had been giving Joseon a hard time with frequent threats of invasion. As an envoy, Jeong Do-jeon figured out in detail exactly what was going on in Northeast Asia at the time, including the strife within Ming's royal family, the distribution of scholar-warrior forces in the Jurchen and the Yuan Dynasty, and the Tartars as the emerging power from the North.

After returning home, Jeong Do-jeon set about making specific plans for regaining Liadoing with full support from King Taejo. For example, he wrote all kinds books on military tactics, and become the special envoy of Dongbukmyeon (present-day Hamgyeong Province) who attacked and occupied the region to make it a military key point and went over and subjugated the Jurchens. By 1394 (the third year of reign by King Taejo) he had seized military power as well, consistently working on the quest to regain Liadong.

Having found out abut what he was up to, the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang constantly demanded that Jeong Do-jeon should be sent away, calling him 'the root of trouble.' Jeong Do-jeon's project also faced strong opposition from the high-ranking officials who believed it wrong to invade the power. Undaunted, however, Jeong Do-jeon described the situations in China and gave examples from the past and the present to illustrate why regaining Liadong was needed and justified: "The boundary of China has long collapsed ever since the barbarians established Liao, Jin, and Yuan, and became the masters of the Middle Kingdom. Besides, our military is already trained and supplied with food, ready to regain the old territory of King Dongmyeong!"

Finally, in 1398 (the seventh year of reign by King Taejo), as fall approached, he was speeding up military formation training, until he was assassinated by Lee Bang-won, who was supported by Ming and the old forces. Consequently, his plan to regain Liadong was thwarted.

It is said that there is no "if" in history. But "if" King Taejo and Jeong Do-jeon had launched a campaign into Liadong, they would have stood a fairly good chance of winning. This assumption is well supported by the fact that after the Strife of Princes in Joseon (which ruined the plans for a campaign into Liadong) Ming experienced internal strife and rapid changes in the surrounding situation. This is a big, sad "if," considering that the events that followed, in which the Jurchen chieftain Nurhachi would establish Qing, take control of the Middle Kingdom, and humiliate Joseon, might not have happened. Then China's 'Northeast Project' wouldn't exist today either.