Seoul > Hanseong Soul-t'ukpyolsi Korea, South

The new Joseon capital is established at Hanseong (Seoul) in 1394.

Envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom had been received in 1392 and 1394 and 1397; Siam had sent an envoy in 1393.

In this process of establishing the new dynasty's foreign relations, envoys had been dispatched to Japan, seeking the reestablishment of amicable relations.

The mission is successful; and Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu is reported to have been favorably impressed by this initial embassy.

Korea’s Joseon Dynasty had been founded by Taejo Yi Seong-gye in 1392 in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Goryeo Kingdom at what is today the city of Kaesong, Korea.

The capital had been relocated to Hanseong (modern-day Seoul) from Gaegyeong (modern-day Gaeseong) in 1394 and the Gyeongbokgung palace had been erected.

Munmyo, Korea's primary Confucian shrine, is established in Hanseong by the scholar An Hyang in 1398, in the seventh and final year of the reign of King Taejo on the campus of Sungkyunkwan University, established in the same year to offer prayers and memorials to Confucius and his disciples, and to promote the study of the Confucian canon.

When the new Joseon dynasty was promulgated and officially brought into existence, Taejo had raised the issue of which son will be his successor.

Although Taejo's fifth son by Queen Sineui, Yi Bang-won, had contributed most to assisting his father's rise to power, he harbors a profound hatred against two of his father's key allies in the court, the prime minister Jeong Do-jeon and Nam Eun.

Both sides are fully aware of the mutual animosity that exists between each other and constantly felt threatened.

When it becomes clear that Yi Bang-won is the most worthy successor to the throne, Jeong Do-jeon uses his influence on the king to persuade him that the wisest choice would be in the son that Taejo loves most, not the son that Taejo feels is best for the kingdom.

In 1392, the eighth son of King Taejo (the second son of Queen Sindeok), Grand Prince Uian (Yi Bang-seok), had been appointed Prince Royal, or successor to the throne.

After the sudden death of the queen, and while King Taejo was still in mourning for his second wife, Jeong Do-jeon conspires to preemptively kill Yi Bang-won and his brothers to secure his position in court.

In 1398, upon hearing of this plan, Yi Bang-won immediately revolts and raids the palace, killing Jeong Do-jeon, his followers, and the two sons of the late Queen Sindeok.

This incident becomes known as the First Strife of Princes.

Aghast at the fact that his sons are willing to kill each other for the crown, and psychologically exhausted from the death of his second wife, King Taejo immediately crowns his second son Yi Bang-gwa, later King Jeongjong, as the new ruler.

Hereafter, King Taejo retires to the Hamhung Royal Villa.

...King Injo flees from Hanseong (Seoul) to Ganghwa Island in panic.

The Manchus, despite their dominance over the situation, push for peace negotiations, probably because Hong Taiji is concerned about home defenses.

Their peace offer to Korea is soon accepted, despite the opposition of some anti-Manchu statesmen who fail to appreciate the strong position of Manchus.

The following settlement is agreed upon in Ganghwa Island:

1.Korea will abandon the Ming era name Tianqi.

2.Korea will offer Yi Gak as a hostage as a substitute for a royal prince.

3. (Later) Jin and Korea will not violate each others' territory.

In the meantime, Amin in Pyongyang loots the city for days, before he is ordered by Hang Taji to sign the peace agreement, which is more favorable to the Manchus.

After the four month expedition, the Manchu army withdraws to Mukden.

The two sides conduct postwar negotiations.

The Manchus force Korea to open markets near the borders because the long conflict with Ming China has brought economic hardship to the Manchus.

Korea also returns the Warka tribe to Later Jin.

The Manchus are to exact regular tribute from Korea for the next several years.

The relationship between Joseon and Later Jin has remained uncomfortable and bleak.

While the first invasion had not as catastrophic to Korea as the second, nine years later, will be, it is bitterly resented by Confucian statesmen and scholars who believe that it had been treacherous for Korea to abandon Ming China after the Chinese assistance against Japan during the Seven-Year War.

This resentment is further enflamed when in 1636 the Manchus demand to change the terms of the diplomatic relationship from one of equality to Suzerainty-Tributary.

The Korean Court, dominated by anti-Manchu hawks, rejects the demand.

This leads to the second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636.

There are twelve French Jesuit priests living and preaching in Korea and an estimated twenty-three thousand native Korean converts by the time the Heungseon Daewongun assumes de facto control of the government in 1864.

Korea has maintained a policy of strict isolationism from the outside world throughout the history of the Joseon Dynasty (with the exceptions being interaction with the Qing dynasty and occasional trading with Japan through the island of Tsushima).

However, it had not succeeded entirely in sealing itself off from foreign contact.

Catholic missionaries had begun to show an interest in Korea as early as the sixteenth century with their arrival in China and Japan.

Through Korean envoy missions to the Qing court in the eighteenth century, foreign ideas, including Christianity, had begun to enter Korea and by the late eighteenth century Korea had had its first native Christians.

However, it had been only in the mid nineteenth century that the first western Catholic missionaries had begun to enter Korea.

This had been accomplished by stealth, either via the Korean border with Manchuria or the Yellow Sea.

These French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society jad arrived in Korea in the 1840s to proselytize to a growing Korean flock.

Bishop Siméon-François Berneux, appointed in 1856 as head of the infant Korean Catholic church, estimated in 1859 that the number of Korean faithful had reached nearly seventeen thousand.

At first, the Korean court had turned a blind eye to such incursions.

This attitude changes abruptly, however, with the enthronement of the fourteen year old King Gojong in 1864.

By Korean tradition, the regency in the case of a minority would go to the ranking dowager queen, In this case, it was the conservative mother of the previous crown prince, who had died before he could ascend the throne.

The new king’s father, Yi Ha-ung, a wily and ambitious man in his early forties, is given the traditional title of the non-reigning father of a king: Heungseon Daewongun, or “Prince of the Great Court”.

He is also known to period western diplomats as Prince Gung.

Though the Heungseon Daewongun’s authority at court is not official, stemming in fact from the traditional imperative in Confucian societies for sons to obey their fathers, he quickly seizes the initiative and begins to control state policy.

He will become one of the most effective and forceful leaders of the five hundred-year-old Joseon Dynasty.

With the aged dowager regent’s blessing, the Heungseon Daewongun sets out upon a dual campaign of both strengthening central authority and Korean isolation from the disintegrating traditional order outside its borders.

The late Joseon Dynasty, which patronizes Neo-Confucianism as the state ideology, has seen an increasing polarization between orthodox Confucian scholars and efforts by other Confucian scholars to revive social ethics and reform society.

The increasing presence and pressure from the West has created a greater sense of urgency among reformers, and thus Choe Je-u, who is from Gyeongju and whose pen name is 'Suun',had written his treatise, Comprehensive Book of Eastern Learning, or Dongkyeong Daejon.

This treatise, which marks the first use of the term "Eastern Learning", calls for a rejection of God (in the Christian sense), and other aspects of Christian theology.

Calling for a return to the "Way of Heaven", Choe, who had been alarmed by the intrusion of Christianity (Cheonjugyo Catholicism), and the Anglo-French occupation of Beijing, believes that the best way to counter foreign influence in Korea is to introduce democracy, establish human rights and create a paradise on Earth independent of foreign interference.

Choe Je-u's treatise argues a return to the Confucian understanding of Heaven, with emphasis on self-cultivation and improving one's nature.

As Choe had written, the Way of Heaven is within one's own mind, and so by improving one's nature, one also attains the Way of Heaven.

Donghak is not accompanied by a specific agenda or systematic doctrine.

Choe believes in improvising as events occur.

He has no practical plans or visions of how one would go about establishing a paradise on Earth, let alone what paradise means except that all people are equal.

Nevertheless, Choe's advocacy of democracy, human rights and nationalism strikes a chord among the peasant guerrillas and Donghak has spread across Korea rapidly.

Choe is executed on March 10, 1864 by order of the Heungseon Daewongun.

While Donghak had originated as a reform movement and revival of Confucian teachings, it will gradually evolve into a religion known today as Cheondoism in Korea under the third patriarch.

Donghak followers, exasperated by the weak Korean state’s helplessness in the face of China’s heavy-handed attempts to counter rising Japanese influence, revolt against the government in 1894.

Both China and Japan dispatch troops in August to suppress the rebellion.