A History of Korea (55 page)

Ch
ngjo’s own accomplishments as monarch might have matched those of his predecessor in half the time, although it is widely lamented that he did not reign longer. While maintaining Y
ngjo’s intolerance for factional strife, Ch
ngjo was keen to promote cultural advances through the circulation of new ideas. The combination of his interest in new models and publications from China and his desire to cultivate talented young officials appears to have brought Pak Chega to his attention. A year following the publication of Pak’s
Discourse on Northern Learning
, King Ch
ngjo appointed him in 1779 to his compiler’s position in the Royal Library. Pak in fact was one of four new pathbreaking officials in this post—all of them were concubine’s children or descendants. The monarch had earlier proclaimed a policy of opening the path toward higher government office for these long-discriminated men. Indeed, Pak appears to have enjoyed the favoritism of King Ch
ngjo, who in 1790 sent him as a special ambassador to China.

By then Pak had served for over a decade in the Royal Library, where he befriended and mentored other young officials, none more accomplished than Ch
ng Yagyong. Beginning with his entrance into government service in the 1780s, Ch
ng went on to establish himself as one of his era’s foremost intellectuals and is today commonly cited as the greatest thinker of the late Chos
n. He was certainly one of the most prolific authors and versatile minds. He produced hundreds of masterful writings on topics ranging from the core Confucian pursuits of statecraft, philosophy, and social criticism to history, economy, science and engineering, architecture, and religion. In the realm of religion, in fact, Ch
ng may have been the first major scholar-official of his time to embrace
not only the scientific but the religious and philosophical teachings of Catholicism. He may even have converted. Korean visitors to China had begun to notice the Catholic presence in the form of Jesuit priests in Beijing in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the closing years of the eighteenth century that the potential challenges from this religion became a serious issue in Korea. The first Korean Catholic was baptized in China in 1784, and soon Korean and foreign missionaries clandestinely pursued their work in Korea itself, converting thousands by the turn of century, including many from the aristocracy and secondary status groups. Over protests urging a harsh crackdown on a set of teachings that appeared to promote an abandonment of one’s social and ritual responsibilities, King Ch
ngjo cautioned patience and treated this religion as a superstitious curiosity that needed to be monitored. Following Ch
ngjo’s death in 1800, however, the Chos
n court soon pursued a mass persecution of Catholics, and amidst this tumult Ch
ng Yagyong was stripped of his position and sent into exile.