The world of Toegye Yi Hwang

If you’ve been to Korea and spent a 1,000 won note, you’ve seen the image of Yi Hwang (1501-70), who is better known by his pen name Toegye. Recently I gave a presentation to the Toegye Association — and I spoke about the world the Master Toegye lived in, his society and social practices. It was not what most people think it was.

One might assume that since Toegye was a major figure, maybe "the" major figure in Korean Confucianism, that the things he taught were what we see in Korea’s Confucianism today. But that is not the case.

The Confucianism of Toegye’s day was very different from what we think of when we think of Confucianism today.

Confucianism today is associated with male domination: the rights of the eldest son, primogeniture and generally the oppression of women. The common aphorisms we learn in school about Confucianism all applied in late Confucianism: "namjon yeobi" — “respect for men, humility for women." "Samgang oryun" — the three bonds and the five relationships which were: king and subject, parent and child, and husband and wife. These three relationships are bonds — they cannot change. Then the five relationships include these first three again, and add senior and junior and friend to friend.

When we learn of these fundamentals of Confucianism, we often emphasize the hierarchy of the relationships. All are hierarchical except for the friend-to-friend relationship.

While some of these principles were found in Toegye's day, some were not quite the same, notably the husband-and-wife relationship. Women had much more authority and had greater prerogatives — notably they could inherit property on an equal footing with their brothers, and retain separate rights to that property. And also marriage practices gave women equal footing with men — that is to say that at times brides would move into the grooms’ village, but at other times, a groom would move into the wife’s village.

Although the later period of the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty saw the development of single-surname villages, where all the patrilineal kinsmen lived in the same village, in early and mid-Joseon, just as often the groom would move in with the wife’s kinsfolk. Toegye’s family itself shows several cases of uxorilocal marriage — the technical term for moving into the bride’s house. Toegye’s grandfather and great-grandfather moved into their wives’ houses, and Toegye’s son moved into his wife’s house. Over five generations of Toegye’s family, three practiced basically the non-Confucian form of marriage.

Was it non-Confucian? Or should we say the orthodox — and restricted form of a marriage that has come to be viewed as Confucian — was still Confucian but just not as restrictive. In broader terms, we can say early Korean Confucianism was still Confucian, but was not as restrictive or limited as later Confucianism. Just because a woman can inherit property equally with her brothers does not mean Confucianism cannot function. Just because a groom moves into the bride’s house does not mean that Confucianism cannot function.

In addition to inheritance and marriage patterns, there were other ways that Toegye’s Confucianism was more open and less restricted. Women would participate in and actually host the ancestor ceremonies — later on, this would be the domain of men, and the responsibility of the eldest son. But in Toegye’s day, women were as active in the ceremonies as were the men.

And finally, in late Joseon Confucianism, the emphasis on males became so strong that if a man did not have a son born to him, he would certainly adopt a son from within the surname group. For the sake of my talk to the Toegye Association, I was able to find cases of marriage into the brides’ household, but I did not look up close relatives that died without a male heir — though surely there were those because we can see that in all the early records. In later times, the jokbo (genealogical charts) show near universal adoptions for those without a male hair. But at Toegye’s time, a daughter could be an heir to property, and if there were neither a son nor a daughter, the jokbo would say “no heir” and that was that.

In all these ways, we see general traits and practices of a more open and egalitarian Confucian society, but in one specific way, Toegye’s case shows a rare kind of openness that is not existent in later Joseon society and that is the character of Toegye’s wife. His first wife died, and his second wife was a real character — outgoing, stirring up controversies and not at all the stay-at-home, quiet, ideal wife we think of in Confucianism. And Toegye did not seem embarrassed or in any way tried to rein her in.

In so many ways this man who we like to think of as the paragon of orthodox Confucian values was a picture of how things were before they became so stuffy and orthodox.

Mark Peterson (frogoutsidethewell@gmail.com) is a professor emeritus of Korean studies at Brigham Young University in Utah. The views expressed here are his own.