A History of Korea (50 page)

Unlike Lady Chang, most palace girls, who were servants attending to mostly female members of the royal family, had little chance of becoming a royal concubine, much less of exerting great influence on political affairs. But, as with other privileged females, they could express themselves through a discreet but historically significant medium of empowerment at the time, vernacular writing. The Korean alphabet had been devised and promulgated in the mid-fifteenth century, but well into the nineteenth century literary Chinese remained the dominant form of writing in the circles of
learned elites and government affairs. Females, who could not expect to become literate in the high culture, took advantage of the alphabet’s great functionality to leave behind a treasure trove of valuable writings, ranging from letters and diaries to poetry, novels, and chronicles. Among the most illuminating examples of the latter came from a palace lady who apparently had witnessed the events surrounding the Queen Inhy
n–Lady Chang affair. This author penned the “Biography of Queen Inhy
n,” a sympathetic portrayal of the queen that still stands as a precious unofficial source of information about these events.

The vernacular culture exerted perhaps the greatest influence in regard to females by shining a spotlight on the social class of “kisaeng,” or courtesans. Like the Japanese
geisha
, the
kisaeng
courtesans carried out both sexual and artistic functions. And, like the palace ladies, many courtesans were attached to government service, usually provincial or county government offices. This reflected also their “base” social status, which put them in the same category as slaves. Their sometimes scandalous love affairs and renowned talents in music, dance, and letters gave these women prominent standing in the folk culture as a whole, while the lives and accomplishments of certain
kisaeng
became legendary. In fact, a disproportionate number of famous females from the Chos
n era were
kisaeng
. In addition to Hwang Chini, the early-sixteenth century figure renowned for both her great beauty and extraordinary literary skills, many other
kisaeng
gained fame for their talents and romances. The sorrowful tales of their forced parting from their lovers became the basis for some of the great literary and musical expressions of premodern Korea (
Chapter 12
), and they constitute a rich source of information about Korean culture and society at the time.

The prominence of such low-status females in the historical memory of the Chos
n dynasty, especially of the mid-Chos
n era, also testifies to the solidification of the decrease in standing of females as a whole, especially of the aristocracy. It became rare, for example, for daughters to gain equal inheritance with their brothers, especially the oldest son, and movement and visibility for women were significantly curtailed. These developments also
went hand-in-hand with the hardening of the hereditary social hierarchy beginning in the seventeenth century. The social and political discrimination against the offspring of concubines and remarried widows, a semi-Confucian legal measure from the early Chos
n, now took firm root throughout society. One consequence was the increasing practice, among elite families, to adopt nephews—often distant nephews—into a household instead of allowing a concubine’s son to become the legal heir. These concubines’ descendants, including those of
kisaeng
courtesans, became a distinctive hereditary status group that, by the nineteenth century, swelled in numbers to constitute a major social force.

LATENCY OF THE MID-CHOS
N ORDER

As suggested by the formation of these conventionally “traditional” Korean social patterns, the mid-Chos
n era stood as a time of reconstruction and systematization in the wake of the foreign invasions. The Japanese invasions might have been more devastating in terms of human and material loss, but the Manchu invasions, particularly the Manchu conquest of China shortly thereafter, dealt a greater blow to Koreans’ sense of self and propriety. At the heart of the political conflicts and social strife lay the task of implementing a sense of Confucian order, and of reformulating a national identity as that of the sole remaining true civilization. The bloody contests that embroiled Song Siy
l and others also demonstrated that a significant strain in Korea’s sociopolitical leadership sought to reassess Korea’s place Under Heaven by asserting native practices that transcended Confucian orthodoxy. And as the Lady Chang episode demonstrated, the self-styled rationality of Confucianism, now after nearly three centuries as the official social ideology, still had to contend with longstanding native beliefs and practices.

One possible consequence of the persistence of native tendencies was the rise of money as a social force, particularly amidst the economic expansion and advances in agricultural techniques and production of this era. Lady Chang, who is conventionally known as someone from low social origin befitting her position as palace
lady, actually entered the royal compounds through the maneuvering of her wealthy family. Her social status, in fact, was that of a “chungin”—hereditary lineages of technical officials such as interpreters, physicians, and accountants. Her father was a prominent interpreter who likely used his great wealth, gained through his trading activities while accompanying government embassies to China, to wield political influence. There is strong evidence that many of the rich but sub-aristocratic members of society who could not hope to enter high office or marriage relations with the ruling aristocracy—i.e., those belonging to the secondary status groups—turned to monetary influence-peddling to gain the prestige that otherwise was denied them. If so, the Lady Chang story unveils a significant undercurrent of social fluidity in her time.