Three developments shaped the latter part of the history of Koryŏ. In the twelfth century generals seized power and inaugurated a century of military rulers. In the thirteenth century the Mongols launched a highly destructive series of invasions and eventually reduced Korea to a vassal state of the vast Mongol Empire centered in northern China. During the century of Mongol domination a third major development occurred, less dramatic than the first two but more profound in its long-term impact on Korean society, the introduction of Neo-Confucianism. This school of thought, which had developed in China in the eleventh and twelfth century, provided the ideological basis of the establishment of a new Yi dynasty in the late fourteenth century.
Koryŏ was a society dominated by a civil aristocracy (munban). Wealthy landed families held the key posts in the state, advised and intermarried with the Wang kings, controlled most of the land and economy, and supplied most of the leadership of Buddhist temples. It was from the ranks of the elite aristocratic civil officials that most of the kingdom’s writers and scholars were drawn. There was, however, an inferior line of military officials (muban). Although they were aristocrats, they held less prestige and generally did not rise to the highest ranks in the bureaucracy. In general, their voices were seldom heard. Even Korea’s military victories such as those against the Liao were usually attributed to the leadership of civil officials. It should be noted, however, that the civil officials wrote the official histories. Then in 1170, officers of the military aristocracy revolted and seized power.
Military-civil tension had existed long before the 1170 revolt.1 For example, in 1014, the military revolted when civil officials tried to limit their salaries. Yet something changed in the twelfth century that gave the military leaders the desire and confidence to wrestle power from the civilian aristocracy. Perhaps when the military helped to defeat Yi Cha-gyŏm in 1126 and Myoch’ŏng in 1135 they realized their potential power. King Ŭijong (1146–1170), a patron of the arts, was not an effective king, and disputes between civil and military officials appeared to have gotten worse under his rule. The military grew more restless; as early as 1164 some military officials plotted to overthrow the state.
The leader of the 1170 coup was Chŏng Chung-bu. Chŏng belonged to the influential Haeju Chŏng clan but represented the less powerful and prestigious muban military lineages. Before coming to power Chŏng Chung-bu served as commander of the royal guards. According to tradition, Chŏng had been humiliated when Kim Ton-jung, son of historian Kim Pu-sik, set fire to his beard. Whatever its accuracy, the story symbolizes the growing tensions between the dominant civil aristocracy and the military aristocrats that led to the military revolt. The coup was carried out as King Ŭijong and his entourage of court officials visited a temple near the capital. Chŏng, along with two other generals, Yi Ŭi-bang and Yi Ko, massacred the entire court, sparing only the king, whom they exiled to Kŏje Island off the south coast, and the crown prince, whom they banished to Chindo, another island off the south coast. Ŭijŏng was later executed by drowning. Once in power, Chŏng Chung-bu carried out an extensive purge of civil officials and managed state affairs through the Chungbang (Supreme Military Council). He replaced King Ŭijong with his brother Myŏngjong, a more compliant king. But the new monarch had little real power. Power was now in the hands of military officers. The Wang line of Koryŏ kings continued to reign, and a civil government continued to carry out the formal functions of government. Actual authority, however, was wielded by generals who developed a parallel government administration based on military clan organs. Military leaders derived their support from their own clans based on mun’gaek (retainers) and kadong (house slaves).
The first quarter century of military rule was characterized by competition for power among rival military clans. Having seized control, the military rulers do not seem to have had a clear plan of how to rule the state. As a result the period from 1170 to 1196 was one of instability in which a number of generals plotted against each other. At first Chŏng ruled along with Yi Ŭi-bang and Yi Ko, two other military officers, but Yi Ŭi-bang killed Yi Ko, who in turn was assassinated by Chŏng’s faction. Chŏng then ruled alone for several years until 1179 when the young military commander Kyŏng Tae-sŭng killed him. Eventually another general, Yi Ŭi-min, became paramount leader. Meanwhile, the countryside saw numerous rebellions. Peasants rose up against landowners and local officials, slaves revolted against masters, and even soldiers in the provinces revolted. The most famous of these revolts was that of the slave Manjŏk, a sort of Korean Spartacus. Manjŏk gathered an army of government and private slaves that met at North Mountain outside of the capital Kaesŏng in 1198 (see below). The leaders of this group were betrayed. Their revolt and that of others were eventually suppressed, but they reflect a general breakdown of authority that took place in the land during the first three decades of governance by military officials.
Stability came when in 1196, Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn seized power and established the rule of Korea by the Ch’oe family house that lasted fifty-eight years. Of the Ubang Ch’oe clan, Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn’s father was an officer who had reached the top of the military hierarchy.2 Ch’oe served as the toryŏng (military commander) and wrote a Ten-Point Memorial expressing dissatisfaction with the military rule under King Myŏngjong (1170–1197), its corruption, its inferior officials, and the interference of Buddhism in politics. He killed Yi Ŭi-min and became the new paramount military leader, thus the de facto ruler of Korea. Ch’oe restored order to the countryside that had been plagued by frequent peasant and slave revolts. He did this in part by offering some rebel leaders ranks and offices, and by freeing low-born inhabitants of special districts called pugok and hyang and merging them into the regular county system of local administration. He also broke the power of the Buddhist monasteries and temples that had ties to the courts and that had even threatened Ch’oe’s authority with their armed monks. He crushed the armed monks and forced many of the clergy, especially the illegitimate princes who had become monks, to leave the capital. Ch’oe’s twenty-two-year rule stands out in Korean history. Seldom did a single individual, who was not a king, manage to concentrate so much power in his hands.
Ch’oe created a stable rule by developing an innovative set of institutions. These institutions amounted to the establishment of two sets of government. 3 The monarchy, the court officials, and civil bureaucracy were maintained while he created a new parallel government based on house institutions that were under his direct control. The latter, in fact, became the real locus of power. The house institutions were staffed by his own retainers and slaves and by officials personally loyal to him. The most important of these was the Kyojŏng Togam (Office of Decree Enactment), which served as the effective center of political authority. The Kyojŏng Togam functioned as the highest administrative organ of his government. It had the power to collect taxes and investigate wrongdoing by officials. Having gathered effective power in his hands, Ch’oe preferred to create personal house organs that now had the actual civilian and military functions of government while preserving the older court-centered institutional structure that held only nominal power. Members of these organs were nominally appointed by the king, but were generally chosen by Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn. Ch’oe in effect created a sort of parallel dynasty to the Wang royal dynasty, passing his rulership to his son Ch’oe U, and his grandsons Ch’oe Hang and Ch’oe Ŭi.
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn’s son Ch’oe U, who governed Korea from 1218 to 1249, further elaborated on the structure of house organs. He created the Chŏngbang (Personnel Authority), an institution through which civil officials could enter government, the Sŏbang (Household Secretariat) that was formed from the men of letters among his retainers, and the Sambyŏlch’o (Three Elite Patrols) that served as a clan-controlled military force. The Sambyŏlch’o were elite military units that carried out police and combat duties. This military force originated in the two (left and right) Night Patrols Ch’oe U created as military units that would be outside the regular army command. A third unit, the Sinŭigun (Army of Transcendent Righteousness), was formed from fighters who escaped after being captured by Mongols. The Ch’oe rulers financed their house organs through sigŭp, extensive lands theoretically granted by the court, in which the Ch’oe family was allowed to directly collect taxes and tribute. In effect these lands provided an independent base of economic support for it.
Essential to the new government was the use of mun’gaek. Mun’gaek were private military retainers of great clans. The mun’gaek were important in the armies of the military clans that gained control of the Koryŏ government in 1170. After 1196 the clan of Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn was especially effective in promoting its mun’gaek. Under the Ch’oe military rulers many scholars became mun’gaek and served in the Chŏngbang (Personnel Authority) and other offices. The mun’gaek played an important role in the competition for power throughout the Koryŏ period. In addition to mun’gaek who were freedmen, kadong, male house slaves also served as armed retainers.
Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn asserted more direct control over local institutions. His task was an enormous one since under his military predecessors authority of all sorts had broken down in the provinces. Ch’oe had to deal with six peasant rebellions during his first twelve years. He utilized a variety of methods to reassert control over the countryside. The military ruler reinvigorated the power of the hojang (local headmen) and expanded the kamugwan, a central government office that oversaw rural jurisdictions. Ch’oe had officials called anch’alsa (appointed governors) meet directly with peasants and elevated or demoted a district’s status as a reward or punishment.
The Ch’oe rulers sponsored a vigorous intellectual life through their encouragement of Confucianism as a means of legitimizing their rule. They carried out civil examinations with considerable frequency, and despite the disdain of civil officials (munban) toward military officials (muban), the Ch’oe succeeded in attracting a large proportion of the former to serve in their government as civil officials or personal retainers. The military rulers were also patrons of Sŏn Buddhism, and through their support Buddhism entered a period of intellectual vigor. At the same time the military rulers struggled to undermine the power of the capital area monasteries that were often headed by members of cadet branches of the royal family and by court-connected aristocratic families. These efforts led to a rebellion by armed monks in 1217 that Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn suppressed. Overall the Ch’oe rulers appeared to have stabilized the government and developed a set of effective institutions that secured their power. Hardly, however, had they accomplished this when they were faced with the Mongol invasions. The stubborn resistance of the Ch’oe rulers to the Mongols from 1231 to 1258, for the most part directed from the island fastness of Kanghwa, eventually contributed to their downfall when a faction suing for peace with the Mongols overthrew the last Ch’oe ruler, Ch’oe Ŭi.
Perhaps that most importance cultural legacy of this period was the promotion of Sŏn Buddhism under the Ch’oe. At this time Buddhism in Korea had become divided into Kyo or textual Buddhism, which emphasized the study of sutras and elaborate rituals, and Sŏn or meditative Buddhism. The civil aristocracy patronized Kyo and lavished great wealth on temples that supported a large number of monks. Kyo temples became major land and slave owners. The military rulers, while patronizing shamanist shrines, also sought to support Sŏn, which was more austere and centered in mountain temples far from the capital and its politics. By shifting patronage to Sŏn temples they also weakened the Kyo temples as a power base for the aristocrats that supported them. Partly as a result of this support meditative Buddhism flourished during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
A key development in Korean Buddhism at this time was its revitalization under the monk Chinul, also known as Pojo Kuksa (National Preceptor Pojo) (1158–1210). Born in an aristocratic family, he took and passed the monk exams. But he quickly became disenchanted with the atmosphere of official Buddhism with its wealthy temples and politically ambitious monks. He sought to reestablish the spirit of Buddhism by working outside the official court-sponsored religious hierarchy. Trained in the Sŏn tradition, he spent most of his active years in remote mountain areas and founded Sŏng-wang-sa temple in Chŏlla Province, which became an important center for his teachings. Chinul was the first Korean Buddhist to practice koans (to use the Japanese term), the insoluble or nonsense problems that are designed to jolt one into sudden intuitive enlightenment. Derived from Chinese practice, the koan came to be practiced in Korea about the same time it was introduced to Japan. But for Chinul it was only a minor “supplementary” technique .4 His aim was to bring together and reinvigorate the various Buddhist practices.
More successfully than the earlier effort by Ŭich’ŏn, Chinul established a Buddhist doctrine and practice that could embrace the many scholastic teachings with the antitextual Sŏn. This form of Sŏn became known as Chogye. He did so by developing an original synthesis combining the emphasis on sudden enlightenment of the Sŏn and the stress on careful study emphasized by the Kyo sects of Korean Buddhism. This synthesis was summed up in the terms tan’o chomsu (sudden enlightenment and gradual cultivation) and chŏnghye ssangsu (twofold training in quiescence [meditation] and activity). Chinul has been credited with unifying Korean Buddhism by creating a broad-based doctrine that was able to incorporate the major strands of Buddhism into a blended whole. Under his immediate successor Hyesim (Chin’gak Kuksa) Chogye received the patronage of the military rulers of Korea, beginning with Ch’oe U.
Under Chinul and his successors Korean Buddhism deviated somewhat from the path of development of Buddhism in China, evolving its own distinctive body of tradition and practices. One of the major features of Korean Buddhism became the tradition of syncretism. Kyo and Sŏn practices began to blend and sects were defined more by separate lines of transmission from a master than by sharp doctrinal differences. Within this syncretic tradition, Sŏn practices of meditation, austerity, and the disciplined seeking of enlightenment became central, and the influence of Chinul profound. To this day the majority of Korean Buddhists belong to the Chogye sect of Buddhism.
Korea under the military governments developed institutions that in some ways resembled feudalism. Feudalism is usually defined as a decentralized political system in which a landowning or land-controlling warrior aristocracy supported by peasantry bound to the land is linked in a hierarchical scheme of political loyalty. It became a fully developed and dominant political-social system only in medieval Western Europe and in medieval Japan. Historians have long noted the similarities between Japanese feudalism and Western European feudalism. Less well appreciated is that many of the important transformations in Japanese society that took place in the twelfth century to establish the classic Japanese feudal society took place simultaneously in Korea. As one scholar has observed, “Civil aristocratic societies characterize both Korea and Japan at the start of the twelfth century.”5 In Japan as in Korea, the court and dynasty lost effective power to new military lineages, and in both after a period of struggle among military leaders a strong military leader emerged. In Japan this leader was Yoritomo, who in 1185 became paramount ruler of Japan, taking the title of Shogun in 1192; and in Korea Ch’oe Ch’ung-hŏn emerged as the effective ruler in 1196. In both countries the military hegemons established a parallel clan government with effective power while maintaining the dynastic organs of government. Both Ch’oe and Yoritomo made use of an elaborate system of personal retainers and military leaders who pledged to serve their military ruler through ties of loyalty, and who derived income from their extensive personal landholdings. Both recruited men of letters to serve in their private agencies and relied on these educated men to help them in administering the country. In both cases members of the old clans that had supplied the court with officials continued to serve as officials, although without the power and influence they previously had. Both patronized Zen (Sŏn) Buddhism, which became the religion of the warriors. In Japan, as well as in Korea, the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries became the great age of meditative Buddhism, which with the help of official support emerged as a major religious and cultural force. Military rulers in both Korea and Japan fiercely resisted the Mongol invasions.
But there were important differences. Yoritomo came out of a Heian order that witnessed the expansion of warrior and regional autonomy, while Ch’oe emerged from the Koryŏ system in which the military was closely tied to the dynasty. In Japan local autonomy and military culture grew stronger, while in Korea the Ch’oe, searching for appropriate forms of governance, restored many dynastic agencies, working closely with the king and his officials, thus reaffirming the importance of civil traditions in Korea. While in Japan the military traditions emerged as dominant, in Korea the civil traditions prevailed. Partly this was due to the use of the civil exams by the Ch’oe family to recruit men of learning for office, thus reinforcing the importance of scholarship. There was no civil exam system in Japan. In Japan, the emergence of military rule was a consolidation of trends that had been taking place for several centuries as power slipped away from the court and into the hands of local military elite. By contrast, in Korea, the emergence of military rule was a more dramatic break with tradition. Koryŏ monarchs were active in governing in the twelfth century, private armies had been effectively uprooted in the tenth century, the military was clearly subordinated to civil authority, and the central hierarchy was more clearly defined than in Japan.
Even under the Ch’oe the Korean government remained more centralized than was the case in either Europe or Japan. The military rulers of Koryŏ were based in the capital and maintained a orientation toward centralized rule. Yoritomo, by contrast, led a coalition of warriors rooted in the countryside. Furthermore, he had his own large provincial power base on the Kanto plain. Ch’oe had no such power base and was much more reliant on key court and military officials to support him.6 Also the mun’gaek retainers were considerably smaller in number than those available to Yoritomo and the shoguns who succeeded him. More significantly, retainers in Korea could not own land, unlike the vassals who served their lords in Europe and in Japan. An entire system of feudal law emerged in Japan and in Europe, but in Korea the Chinese-patterned legal system continued to function. So for all the parallels with developments in Japan, Korea never developed a truly feudal system. It is possible, of course, that with time Korea might have developed a more feudal-like system, but the tendency to recruit ever more civil officials during the Ch’oe clan’s rule does not suggest this was going to happen. Perhaps Korea, unlike Western Europe and Japan, which were relatively free from outside invasions, simply could not function without a centralized state. Geography made Korea less secure. Unlike Europe or Japan, Korea had to deal with powerful and often aggressive neighbors from the Manchurian plains and grasslands of Inner Asia.
The final question is why such institutions appeared in Japan and Korea around the same time, in fact, at almost exactly the same time. The answer to this is not well understood, but the fact they did suggests that Korean and Japanese historical developments are more closely linked than most scholars have previously appreciated. Both were in contrast to China, where no similar trends occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The power of the Chinese military aristocratic clans had declined sharply in the eighth to tenth centuries and saw no revival.
Would the Ch’oe family or another family have developed a dynastic system similar to the Japanese shogunate? We simply do not know, since Korea’s period of rule by military warlords came to an end with the Mongol invasions. Emerging as a unified group in the thirteenth century under their leader Genghis Khan and his successors, the Mongols built a great empire based on the grasslands of Inner Asia and subjugated the greater part of Eurasia. Few countries suffered more from the ravages of the Mongols than Korea. From 1217 to 1258 Korea endured repeated invasions as a result of the rise of the Mongols. In 1217, Khitan tribes fleeing the Mongol invasions of North China crossed the Yalu and plundered northern Korea.7 In 1218 the Mongols pursuing the Khitans aided Koryŏ forces in defeating them. The Mongols then demanded tribute from the Koreans: clothes, furs, and horses. They also demanded virgins, which the Koreans refused. For the Koreans the tribute demands were burdensome, especially horses in a country with little grazing land. In 1224, the Koryŏ stopped tribute payments and murdered the Mongol envoys. In retaliation the Mongols invaded in 1231.
The Mongols withdrew the following year after the Koryŏ government agreed to accept tributary status and to accept the placing of Mongol representatives, called darughachi, in Korea to oversee tribute collections. Later in 1232, Che Ch’oe house military rulers ordered the Koryŏ court to retreat to Kanghwa island and killed the darughachi. The military rulers then declared all-out resistance. From the protection of Kanghwa Island the Ch’oe rulers and their successors carried out a fierce and stubborn resistance that lasted four decades. The Ch’oe transferred the entire government to the small ten-by-seventeen-mile island, constructing palaces, temples, and administrative buildings where thousands of officials, soldiers, and monks carried out the functions of government. Some officials objected to abandoning the people; nonetheless, the small but easily defendable island proved to be an effective stronghold against the Mongols. The state was not, however, able to protect the countryside where the Mongol destruction was devastating. Much of the country’s heritage, including the eighty thousand wood blocks for the Tripataka, was destroyed.
The 1232 invasion ended when the Mongol commander Sartaq was killed from an arrow shot by the monk Kim Yun-hu. In 1233, the Mongols launched a new series of invasions, led by Tanqut-batu and Prince Yeku, that dragged on for several years and eventually resulted in a six-year truce from 1241 to 1247. During this time distant members of the royal family were sent to the Mongol court as hostages under the pretense that they were crown princes. But the Koryŏ government continued to resist the Mongols, refusing to send tribute. As a result further invasions occurred in 1247–1248. The most destructive invasions were a series that began with the Mongol attack of 1254 led by Jalairtai. Small bands of Mongol warriors were sent to lay waste to the countryside in an attempt to wear down Korean resistance and cut off the grain supply to the court on Kanghwa. According to later Korean accounts the Mongols killed vast numbers of people and took away over two hundred thousand as prisoners. Historians recorded that “The fields were covered with the bones of the dead; the dead were so many that they could not be counted”; wherever the Mongol army passed, “the inhabitants were all burned out, so that not even dogs and chickens remained.”8 These tactics proved effective, and in 1258 the Ch’oe clan, still adamant in resisting the Mongols, was overthrown. A new leader, Kim Chun, attempted to seek an end to the invasions. Mongol military activity continued in Korea, however, when in 1269 the military leader Im Yŏn ousted the Mongol-supported king. The king was restored to power in 1270 with Mongol assistance, and resistance was limited to holdouts in the provinces. The Sambyŏlch’o forces, led by Pae Chung-son and by Kim T’ong-jŏng, continued to fight the Mongols until they were defeated respectively on Chindo Island in 1271 and Cheju Island in 1273.
From 1270 to 1356 Korea was under Mongol domination. While the court and bureaucracy continued to govern, Koryŏ was, in reality, an appanage of the Yuan or Mongol empire that moved its center from Mongolia to what is now Beijing. This period is sometimes called the Pumaguk (Son-in-law Nation), since King Wŏnjong (r. 1259–1274) married his son, later king Ch’ungnyŏl (r. 1274–1308), to a daughter of the Yuan emperor Shizu (Kubilai Khan). He thus began a line of Koryŏ kings who had princesses of the Yuan imperial house as their primary consorts. The sons of these queens usually succeeded to the throne so that Koryŏ kings were sons-in-law of the Yuan emperors. During this period Koryŏ crown princes resided in Beijing as hostages until ascending to the throne. Even while reigning Koryŏ kings spent much of their time in Beijing rather than in Kaesŏng. Indicative of their subordinate status, Koryŏ monarchs did not take the exalted suffixes cho (“progenitor”) and chong (“ancestor”) as part of their posthumous temple names. Instead they took ch’ung (“loyal”) as the first character of their name as an expression of their loyalty to the Yuan.
Kings under the Mongol hegemony saw their authority weaken. They were sometimes at the mercy of the Yuan emperors, who could depose them at will. Several were removed, sometimes with the support of members of the Koryŏ aristocracy. Yuan emperors appointed some monarchs as King of Shenyang, a region of southern Manchuria. Thus they created two courts among the members of the Wang royal family as a means of manipulating them by playing off royal relatives against each other. To reinforce Koryŏ’s subordinate status, the organs of government were renamed to give them titles that carried less prestige or hint of sovereignty. For example, the Sam-sŏng (Three Chancelleries) were merged to form a single Council of State, and the Chungchu’wŏn (Royal Secretariat) was renamed the Milchiksa, which had the same meaning but was less exalted sounding.
As a vassal of the Yuan (Mongol) state Korea became a member of one of the world’s most cosmopolitan societies. Korean court officials, scholars, and others seeking opportunities traveled and resided in Beijing where they encountered Chinese, Mongols, Vietnamese, Central Asians, and a handful of other peoples. For some it was a time of opportunity for social advancement. A number of Koreans, following the tradition of marrying into influential and wealthy families, formed marriage alliances with Mongols and Central Asians and rose to prominence in Beijing or back in Korea. Many Koreans adopted Mongol clothing and hairstyles. A number of foreigners also made their way to Korea and served as members of government. Often they filled the need for personnel fluent in Chinese and Mongol, or familiar with the complexities of the Yuan court. Foreigners in Korea numbered in the thousands. Several foreigners became members of the Chaech’u and others became military officers. Even after Korea broke with the Yuan court, three Mongols, In Hu, Hwang Sang, and Na Se, served as military commanders during Red Turban invasions in fourteenth century.9
Korea was also the base of two efforts to conquer Japan. Having subdued the last resistance to their rule in 1273, the Mongols drafted Korean shipbuilders and sailors to construct and pilot a large Mongol fleet that invaded Japan in 1274. The invasion, launched in typhoon season, was forced to retreat when a typhoon that the Japanese called the kamikaze (divine wind) came. A second invasion in 1281 also failed when another typhoon destroyed much of the fleet. For the Japanese this would remain until 1945 a sign that theirs was a special land of the gods protected from invasion, and it contributed to the myth of their uniqueness and invincibility. To the Koreans the two invasions and an aborted planned third invasion were a costly burden. Furthermore, along with the tribute of horses and women the Mongols extracted, the forced participation in the invasions of Japan was a humiliating reminder of their subordinate status. Yet, the Mongol rule was indirect, not direct. The court and bureaucracy in Kaeŏng continued to function. After the invasions of Japan there was little direct interference in Korean affairs. As a result Korea maintained itself as a separate kingdom with its own court and culture.
Historians differ in their evaluation of the importance of the Mongol invasions and their domination of Korea. Some emphasize the continuity in Korea. They argue that there was no change in dynasty, the bureaucracy underwent relatively minor changes in organization, and while some new powerful families emerged, the social structure remained essentially the same with most of the old elite lineages continuing to dominate society. Korea’s vassalage to China was not a radical break with tradition. The Mongol rulers of China took on the role of Chinese emperors and assumed the big brother role that China often took toward Korea. When Korean kings paid homage to the Yuan rulers they were continuing a practice of seeking legitimacy by having their positions confirmed by the Celestial (Chinese) emperor.
Nevertheless, the destruction that resulted from the invasions was an enormous loss to Korea. To this day few structures before this period still exist. The scorched earth policy and the repeated and systematic invasions at least partially account for the fact that so few of Korea’s pre-fourteenth-century literary and artistic works have survived. One has only to read the lists of compilations of poetry, the praise and descriptions of famous painters given in the fifteenth-century Koryŏ sa (History of Koryŏ), and the many works of history cited in the Samguk sagi to sense how much has been lost. The Mongol invasion may have contributed to a growing consciousness of Korean cultural identity. It was, for example, during the Mongol period that the legend of Tan’gun appeared in the written record in the Samguk yusa (see below) and in the long history in verse Chewang un gi (Song of Emperors and Kings). During the Mongol period Korean monks also compiled the extant version of the Tripitaka Koreana.
The Mongol invasions may have made Koreans more cautious of outsiders. Ming China, which drove out the Mongols, maintained a policy of greater isolation and wariness of outsiders than earlier dynasties. This is generally explained as a reaction to the Mongol invasion and rule. Similarly Korea maintained a policy of limiting foreign contact that would eventually earn it the sobriquet of “the hermit Kingdom.” Most probably the experience and memory of the Mongols contributed to this idea that foreigners meant trouble. Korea’s stubborn resistance and ability to maintain itself as a separate state even during this period may have also contributed to a sense of pride, and of being the inheritor of a distinctive cultural and historical tradition.
No less important was the fact that for a short time Korea was closely connected with the truly vast cosmopolitan Mongol Empire, the largest the world had ever seen. At its peak the Mongol Empire stretched from Russia and Persia to Korea. At this time Koreans at the Mongol court met peoples and ideas from all over Eurasia. Concepts about mathematics, astrology, and medicine reached some Koreans from as far away as the Middle East. But it was the relatively close contact the royal family members, courtiers, and others in Beijing had with their Chinese counterparts that made the greatest impact. This influenced painting, calligraphy, literature, and clothing fashions. Cotton and cotton cloth making became known to Koreans at this time. By tradition cotton was brought back from Yuan China in 1363 by Mun Ik-chŏm, who had gone there as part of a diplomatic mission. He gave the seeds to his father-in-law, who successfully planted them. Gunpowder too spread to Korea during this period. Credit for this introduction is given to Ch’oe Mu-sŏn, a minor official who learned the formula from the Chinese. In 1377 Koryŏ established an office for the manufacture of gunpowder and cannons, which were first used to fight Japanese pirates. The Mongol period was one of close contact between Korean scholars and officials and their Chinese counterparts whom they met at the Yuan court in Beijing. This contact resulted in what is perhaps the most significant legacy of the Mongol period, the introduction of Neo-Confucianism to Korea. (See below.)
For all the turbulence of the latter two centuries of Koryŏ the basic structure of the social and the political order remained largely intact. At the top of society was the dynastic family. The king reigned, if not always effectively ruled. Under him the upper strata of the aristocracy that was based in the capital dominated the organs of government. A lower stratum of rural-based aristocrats sometimes referred to as hyangni controlled much of the countryside and held local offices. Underneath them were commoners and the large number of slaves and certain outcaste groups. Military rule did little to change this, since most of the military rulers were quick to acquire nongjang (landed estates) and intermarried with the civil official-aristocracy in the capital. The Mongol period saw a number of new families emerge, but recent studies indicate that while some elite families fell in status and a few new ones appeared, the old aristocracy largely survived. The central aristocracy may have actually strengthened its dominance over society. Furthermore, new families adopted the style of the old.
There were some changes. The devastation brought about by the Mongol invasions destroyed much of the wealth of the hyangni. Because of this development and the gradual penetration of the central government into the countryside, the rural aristocracy probably declined in power. Significantly, while late Koryŏ was still an aristocratic society dominated by powerful families deriving much of their wealth from landed estates, increasingly, the dominant aristocracy, or yangban as it eventually became known, associated itself with service to the state. Korea involved into a bureaucratic polity with a ruling class that identified with the state and shared a common set of values.
The struggle of Koryŏ kings to gain some independence from the aristocracy continued. The situation of late Koryŏ kings was worsened by the loss of taxable lands. During the Mongol period a great deal of taxable public land (kongiŏn) slipped into private hands, and powerful families had consolidated their power in the capital. Furthermore, raids by Japanese pirates known as wako (waegu in Korean) devastated much of the coastal areas and countermeasures against them drained the public treasury. Late Koryŏ kings tried to check the power of the powerful families by appointing eunuchs, slaves, and other outsiders to office. Most notable of these efforts was King Kongmin’s (r. 1351–1374) selection of a slave monk, Sin Ton, as his chief officer to carry out a redistribution of lands and slaves. This move was taken to undermine these powerful families and restore land and peasants to the tax rolls. Kongmin, however, was reported to have gradually lost interest in politics following the death of his Mongol wife in childbirth in 1365. According to the historical records he had a large shrine to his deceased wife constructed, hung a portrait of her that he painted himself, and spent hours in front of it grieving. Kongmin’s efforts to reign in the power of the elite then failed. Sin Ton was exiled and killed and the king was assassinated at Hŭnggwang-sa temple in 1374 by a disgruntled aristocrat threatened by Kongmin’s reforms.
The mid-fourteenth century was a time of upheaval in continental East Asia. Uprisings occurred in China against the Yuan dynasty, and a number of rebel bands emerged. One of these, led by former monk Zhu Yuanzhang, gained control over most of central and southern China. In 1356, Zhu set up a capital at Nanjing. Twelve years later, in 1368, Zhu’s forces drove the Mongols out of Beijing and back to their Mongolian homeland. In that year Zhu proclaimed a new Ming dynasty. The Mongols formed a Northern Yuan rump state and carried on the struggle with Ming, but China was now unified and free from the Mongols.
Taking advantage of Yuan weakness, Kongmin in 1356 destroyed the pro-Mongol faction led by Ki Ch’ŏl, brother of Empress Ki, the second wife of Shun, the last Mongol Emperor. Korea was now independent of Mongol control. Kongmin then pursued a anti-Mongol, pro-Ming policy. He abolished the Eastern Expedition Field Headquarters, an institution through which the Mongols kept an eye on events in Korea, and his army annexed the Yuan commandery of Ssangsŏng based in what is now the northeastern province of Hamgyŏng. He also abolished the Chŏngbang (Personnel Authority), the organ of administration created under the military rule. In 1369, the Ming recognized Kongmin as king, and the Korean court adopted the Ming calendar. The old tributary relationship between Korea and the Chinese court was re-established.
Mongol domination had ended, but the last years of the Koryŏ were troubled ones. The collapsing Mongol power and the rise of the Ming dynasty in China created turmoil on the northern border, and Ming and Mongol forces fought each other in Manchuria. A product of this turmoil, a Chinese rebel/ brigand army known as the Red Turbans plundered their way across Manchuria and twice invaded Korea, first, in 1359, with a force reported to have been forty thousand men, and two years later with a larger force of one hundred thousand, forcing the Korean court to flee to Andong in the southeastern part of the kingdom. Another threat came from the son of Ki Ch’ŏl, who led a group of Yuan refugees in Manchuria that menaced Koryŏ. Meanwhile along the southern coast Japanese pirates raided, plundered, and spread terror, even attacking Kanghwa Island and threatening the capital, Kaesŏng.
When Kongmin was assassinated his ten-year-old son came to the throne as King U. The real power, however, was in the hands of Yi In-im, head of an important clan. The Ming were suspicious of the new administration in Korea. Consequently, the Ming emperor refused to recognize King U. Yi In-im then abandoned the pro-Ming policies of Kongmin. But attempts to establish friendly relations with the Northern Yuan failed when the Mongols demanded the Koreans join them in attacking the Ming. Relations with the Ming were briefly restored but broke down when the new Chinese dynasty began to build a garrison at Iron Pass (Ch’ŏllyŏng) and create a commandery out of the former Mongol Ssangsŏng commandery in Hamgyŏng province. Domestically politics was torn between pro-Yuan factions, which included many families that had risen to prominence under the Yuan, and pro-Ming officials and aristocrats.
In 1388, the Yi In-im faction was driven out, led by a general, Ch’oe Yŏng, who became military commander. He appointed two of his supporters, generals Yi Sŏng-gye and Cho Min-su, as deputies. Ch’oe and King U then mobilized the country for an attack on the Ming and an expedition was launched under Ch’oe’s leadership. Yi Sŏng-gye was given a command of some of the forces, but he opposed the launching of a military campaign against the Ming. At Wihwa Island in the mouth of the Yalu, Yi turned back, and with the support of general Cho Min-su ousted Ch’oe Yŏng. Yi and his supporters then deposed King U and replaced him with Ch’ang, his nine-year-old son. In the following year, 1389, he ousted the recently installed King Ch’ang on the grounds that he was really the son of Sin Ton and replaced him with Kongyang, a distant relative. Yi then removed Cho Min-su and made him a commoner. Yi’s rise to power was relatively bloodless; a few high officials such as Yi Saek and Kwŏn Kŭn were banished, but otherwise he ruled with cooperation of the existing bureaucracy. With the aid of reform-minded scholar-officials he began to carry out sweeping changes. Yi supervised a new land survey, then in 1390, burned all registers in a big bonfire in the market. The next year he carried out a major land reform. With his supporters secure in high positions, he removed Kongyang in 1392. The deposed king was sent into exile and later murdered. Yi Sŏng-gye then proclaimed himself King T’aejo, the first of the new Yi dynasty, and renamed the state Chosŏn. The Wang dynasty and the Koryŏ state had come to an end.
During the nearly five centuries of the Koryŏ the process of borrowing and adapting from China continued. With these adaptations a distinctive Korean cultural style and identity emerged. Among the most important cultural achievements in late Koryŏ were those dealing with papermaking and printing. Papermaking had been introduced from China in the Silla period. Under Koryŏ high quality paper made from the mulberry shrub was valued as an import by the Chinese. Woodblock printing, also borrowed from China, became highly developed, spurred by the demand for printed Buddhist sutras. Blocks were made from wood that was soaked and boiled in salt water then coated with lacquer. The greatest publishing project of the Koryŏ was the Tripitaka Koreana. This is the most complete extant edition of the Tripitaka (The Three Baskets) that contains the Buddhist canon anywhere in the world today.10 The first copy was printed during the Liao invasions in the eleventh century and destroyed in the Mongol invasion of 1232. During the years 1235 to 1251, 81,137 woodblocks, enough to print 160,000 pages, were carved at Kanghwa and are now stored at Haein-sa temple in Mount Kaya. This is one of the great cultural treasures of Korea and an invaluable resource for Buddhists.
In addition to the woodblock tradition, Koryŏ craftsmen, drawing upon their highly skilled metal-casting techniques, produced the world’s first moveable metal type. Exactly when this happened is not known for certain. The first known use of moveable metal type was in 1234 to print twenty-eight copies of Sangjŏng kogŭm yemun (Prescribed Ritual Texts of the Past and Present). This was more than two centuries before Gutenberg. Indeed, some historians have speculated that knowledge of Korean moveable metal type may have reached Europe and inspired the development of printing there.11 The Koreans, however, did not invent a printing press. In 1392, at the end of the dynasty, a National Office for Book Publication was established to cast type and print books. Using moveable type was useful since many different books could be published. Woodblocks were still used to print books, especially when a large number of copies of a single book were needed.
Late Koryŏ scholars produced a number of medical texts. The oldest existing Korean medical text, Hyangyak kugŭp pang (Emergency Remedies of Folk Medicine), was produced in the thirteenth century during the times of the Mongol invasions. Korea’s medical tradition was derived from China but incorporated folk practices as well. A special problem for Koreans was that Chinese medical practice relied heavily on the use of medicinal herbs and had created a vast materia medica. But many of these plants were not available in Korea. Searches for indigenous medicines led to impressive compilations in the fourteenth century of native Korean hyangyak isul (prescriptions) using local materials. These efforts led to the eighty-five-volume Hyangyak chipsongbang (Compilation of Native Korean Prescriptions) published in the early fifteenth century.
The East Asian tradition of short prose essays, still popular in Korea, flourished in Koryŏ times. Koryŏ essays were classified as follows: admonition, disquisition, dirge, appreciation, proclamations, announcement, memorials, letters, and descriptions (or records). There were didactic and humorous stories written in Chinese and often set in ancient China. Authors of these essays and little stories were members of the elite, often leading officials. Among the most noted was Yi Kyu-bo, who passed the civil service exam in 1190 and rose to First Privy Councilor. Yi took the pen name “White Cloud” and styled himself as master of the lute, poetry, and wine. Yi Che-hyŏn (1287–1367), another highly regarded writer, placed first in the state exam in 1301 and had a distinguished public career.12 Other prose writers of note were Yi Il-lo (1152–1220) and Ch’ae Cha (1188–1260). History and biographies modeled on the Chinese works, especially Sima Qian’s Shiji, were popular as well.
With the Mongol threat and the relative isolation of Korea from China during the period of military rule, there appeared to be an interest in ancient history and legends. In the early thirteenth century Yi Kyu-bo wrote Tong-myŏng wang p’yŏn (The Saga of King Tongmyŏng). This was a narrative poem that dealt with the legendary founder of Koguryŏ. The purpose in writing this, Yi Kyu-bo states, was “simply to let the world know that our country always has been a land of hero-sages.” Yi Sŭng-hyu (1224–1300) composed the Chewang un’gi (Song of Emperors and Kings), a long poem recounting the rulers of Korea starting with Tan’gun. Scholars also wrote a number of other works on Korean history, now lost. All this suggests a growing sense, among the educated Koreans at least, that they were part of a society with its own history and traditions distinct from that of its neighbors.
The most important result of this interest was Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms). The Samguk yusa is a history of Korea from its mythical origins to the end of the Silla kingdom in the tenth century written in 1279 by the monk Iryŏn. Along with the Samguk sagi, the Samguk yusa remains one of the two major sources for early Korean history. The work contains a chronological table that is often more accurate than the Samguk sagi and which is an important source of historical information. This is followed by a long section, “Records of Marvels,” that contains valuable material on ancient Korea, including the earliest recorded legend of Tan’gun, a story, incidentally, not recorded in the Samguk sagi. The Samguk yusa is based on many now lost sources, such as the Karak kukki written in 1076 of which a synopsis is given. It also preserves some of the hyangga poems, the earliest literature written phonetically in Korean. The Samguk yusa, although an invaluable historical source, is better thought of as a collection of tales and stories containing many folk traditions in contrast to the Samguk sagi, which is an official history. It was written at the aftermath of the Mongol invasions by a Buddhist monk and has been viewed as part of a heightened awareness of a Korean cultural identity that many must have felt at this time. As such, it has been praised by twentieth-century nationalist historians who find the Sam’guk sagi to be too Chinese, and who see the real spirit and sentiment of Korea in Iryŏn’s work.13
The Samguk yusa contains an especially rich collection of Buddhist legends and tales. The themes of these stories reveal the importance of Buddhist morality in Korean thought and literature at this time. In some beggars, outcastes, servants, poor peasants, and children turn out to be bodhisattvas. In one story a poor girl servant keeps trying to attend a temple service but is constantly blocked by her mistress. She becomes airborne and flies directly to the Buddha land. In another tale the famed monk Silla Wŏnhyo meets another monk, Hyekong. They go fishing, eat their catch, and then defecate on a rock. Hyekong, pointing to the excrement, says “Your fish is my shit,” the meaning being that all things are part of the eternal changing world.14 In a famous story known as “Chosin’s Dream” a monk falls in love with the daughter of a magistrate. He prays for assistance in his love but the daughter marries another man. He has a dream where she appears and tells him that she secretly loves him and decides to spend her life with him. They live together for fifty years, have five children, and struggle with poverty. A son dies of starvation; a daughter becomes a beggar. Realizing their love has led only to their suffering they decide to part. Waking from the dream Chosin visits the spot in his dream where he buried his son and finds a Buddha statue buried instead. He establishes a monastery at the spot and dedicates his life to good deeds.15
Late Koryŏ saw both a period of military-dominated government, the Mongol invasions, and the Mongol domination of the state. As important as these developments may be, neither probably had as much impact on Korean society as did the rise of Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism is a modern term for the school of Confucian thought that emerged during the Song period in China, culminating in the interpretations of Zhu Xi (1130–1200). Confucianism has had an enormous influence on Korea since the time of the Three Kingdoms. It was an ethical philosophy that taught that each individual should strive to pursue a virtuous life. This involved carefully and sincerely carrying out one’s social obligations and serving family and society. It was also a political philosophy that stressed the duty of rulers to act as moral exemplars and to attend to the needs of the people in order to create a harmonious society. Confucianism respected formal learning and accepted a hierarchical society, a patriarchal family structure, and an authoritarian state. It viewed human nature as basically good if properly led, and saw human affairs as connected with natural affairs. Sometimes Confucianism is called familism in that Confucian thinkers saw the family as the primary unit of society and the state as a kind of superfamily with the ruler playing the role of the patriarchal family head. The ruler should be stern and proper but possess a fatherly love and a concern for those he rules.
But Confucianism was vague about the big questions such as: What is the nature of reality? Who is the real me? How am I connected with reality? Buddhism and to some degree Daoism supplied answers to these questions along with impressive rituals, practices of meditation, and the Buddhist concept of enlightenment. In China during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Confucian scholars began to borrow metaphysical concepts and meditative practices from the Buddhists, and to a lesser extent from the Daoists. They began to reinterpret the Confucian classics, and to derive meaning and inspiration from them. Under Song thinkers such as Cheng Yi and Cheng Hao in the eleventh century and Zhu Xi in the twelfth these new formulations of Confucianism, called by modern scholars Neo-Confucianism, were carefully elaborated in a set of works that became canonical to later generations.
The Yuan emperors sponsored this school of thought. Whatever its metaphysical teachings, the Yuan rulers saw Neo-Confucianism as a secular ideology that would assist them in the administration of their hybrid Chinese-Mongol state. When they revived the Chinese civil service exams in 1313 they made Zhu Xi’s interpretations of Chinese classics authoritative for the exams. The close relations between Korea and Beijing in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century meant that there were many opportunities for Korean scholars and court officials to come in contact with Chinese scholars and Chinese intellectual activity. In addition, the Yuan was a cosmopolitan empire in which Koreans, Vietnamese, Central Asians, and others mingled. Foreigners were allowed to sit for the Chinese civil exams. Some Koreans studied and passed them, immersing themselves in Neo-Confucian learning. Many of these Koreans brought back to their country these new exciting formulations of Confucian thought. The introduction of Neo-Confucian learning brought more than just some new lines of interpretation. It caused many educated Koreans to reexamine their government, their society, and their personal behavior. This in turn led to a revolution that transformed Korean society and formed the basis of cultural norms, ethical standards, and conceptions about state and society that still influence Koreans in the twenty-first century.
During the period of Mongol domination some Koreans tried to promote Neo-Confucian learning in their own country. Starting with An Yu (1243–1306), they encouraged the rebuilding of the Kukhak (National Academy) and the Munmyo (National Shrine to Confucius). Both were carried out during the reign of King Ch’ungnyŏ (r. 1274–1308). These were important steps in the revival of Confucianism that marked the fourteenth century. By the late fourteenth century a group of eager scholars saw in Neo-Confucianism a blueprint for perfecting Korean society. Their basic ideas were: educate the ruler to act as a good moral exemplar for society; select only the virtuous to serve the monarch and govern society; eliminate the influence of Buddhism and any other rival and false schools of thought; and remodel both government institutions and family practices such as marriage on the ideals of Confucianism, especially the Zhu Xi interpretation of them. Foremost among these zealous scholars were Chŏng Mong-ju (1337–1392) and his rival Chŏng To-jŏn. They were especially hostile to Buddhism, which was “foreign” (that is, not from China or Korea), selfish since it stressed individual enlightenment instead of serving family and society, and too otherworldly.
The last years of the Koryŏ saw a continuation of the movement by some members of the aristocracy to promote Neo-Confucianism. In 1367 the state established the Sŏnggyun’gwan (National Confucian Academy) under the leadership of Yi Saek and Chŏng Mong-ju. There Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Four Books formed a central part of its curriculum. The faculty included Chŏng To-jŏn, who later played a central role in establishing the Yi dynasty. Its curriculum was a departure from previous schools. Education at private schools that aristocratic sons attended before serving in government included Confucian texts among the Chinese classics, but the emphasis was on belles lettres and developing formal literary polish. The scholars at this new school trained their students to examine the Chinese classics in order to grasp the underlying moral principles that governed the individual, society, and the cosmos. Not surprisingly they were highly critical of the society around them. They saw in Confucian principles the learned rules for ordering society and government, and they eventually sought to use their knowledge of these principles to assist a willing king. By the late fourteenth century, Neo-Confucian scholars joined with elements among the elite and military disgruntled with the court to establish the new Yi dynasty. Under this new dynasty Korea would undergo a significant cultural transformation.
In King Sinjong’s first year [1198], the private slave Manjŏk and six others, while collecting firewood on a northern mountain, gathered public and private slaves and plotted, saying, “Since the coup in the year kyŏn-gin [1170] and the countercoup in the kyesa [1173], the country has witnessed many high officials rising from slave status. How could these generals and ministers be different from us in origins? If one has an opportunity, anybody can make it. Why should we still till and suffer under the whip?”
The slaves all agreed with this, they cut several thousand pieces of yellow paper and on each put the graph chŏng [adult man] as their symbol. They pledged: “We will start from the hallways of Hŭngguk Monastery and go to the polo grounds. Once all are assembled and start to beat drums and yell, the eunuchs in the palace will certainly respond. The public slaves will take control of the palace by force, and we will stage an uprising inside the capital, first killing Ch’oe Ch’unghŏn and others. If each slave will kill his master and burn the slave registers, there will be no people of humble status in the country, and we can all become nobles, generals, and ministers.”
On the date set to meet, their numbers did not exceed several hundred, so they feared they would not succeed and changed their plans, promising to meet at Poje Temple this time. All were ordered: “If the affair is not kept secret, then we will not succeed. Be careful not to reveal it.” Sunjŏng, the slave of Doctor of Legal Studies Han Ch’ungyu, reported this incident to his master. Ch’ungyu told Ch’oe Ch’unghŏn, who seized Manjŏk and more than one hundred others and threw them in the river. Ch’ungyu was promoted to the warder in the Royal Archives, and Sunjŏng was granted eighty yang of white gold and manumitted to commoner status. Since the remaining gang could not all be executed, the king decreed that the matter be dropped.
—From Koryŏ sa 129:12–13a
The major study of this topic is Edward J. Shultz, Generals and Scholars: Military Rule in Medieval Korea (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
Edward J. Shultz. “Ch’oe Ch’unghon: His Rise to Power,” Korean Studies 8 (1984): 58–82.
Shultz, Generals and Scholars, 54–109.
Robert E. Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen: Collected Works on Chinul (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 1–2.
Edward J. Shultz, “Ch’oe Chunghon and Minamoto Yoritomo,” Japan Review 11 (1999): 31–53. Much of the comparison between Koryŏ and medieval Japan is drawn from this article.
See Jeffrey Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974).
William Henthorn, Korea: The Mongol Invasions (Leiden: Brill, 1963); William Henthorn, “Some Notes on Koryo Military Units,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society 35 (1959): 66–75; Gari Ledyard, “The Mongol Campaigns in Korea and the Dating of the The Secret History of the Mongols,” Central Asiatic Journal 9 (1964): 1–22.
Kim Kichung, Classical Korean Literature (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 62.
Peter Yun, “Foreigners in Korea during the Period of Mongol Interference,” in Proceedings of the 1st World Congress of Korean Studies: Embracing the Other: The Interaction of Korean and Foreign Cultures, The Korean Academy of Korean Studies (Seoul: July 2002), 1221–28.
Paik Nak Choon, “Tripitika Koreana,” Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 32 (Seoul: 1951): 62–78.
J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, The Human Web (New York: W W Norton & Company, 2003), 180.
Peter H. Lee, Anthology of Korean Literature: From Early Times to the Nineteenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 51.
Choe Yong-ho, “An Outline History of Korean Historiography,” Korean Studies 4 (1980): 1–27.
Kim, Classical Korean Literature, 66–67.
Kim, Classical Korean Literature, 69–71.
Peter H. Lee and William Theodore De Bary, eds., Sources of Korean Tradition, vol. 1, From Early Times through the Sixteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 200.