2 History
In (messy) progress
For the Hansalim founders, democracy was not simply a suitable management structure but a fundamental way of life that had been tested and proved through decades of struggle against successive dictatorships. The role of cooperatives in the struggle for democracy in Korea went back to the pro-democracy movement of the 1960s and 70s (in which many of the Hansalim founders were involved1) and inherited a long tradition of anti-state resistance from the pre-war independence movement (see Figure 2.1). But even before the western models of cooperatives and credit unions were transmitted to Korea there existed a long and sophisticated tradition of cooperative self-governing institutions in rural Korea.
In this chapter we take a long detour through history to understand the deep foundations of the Korean practice of democratic self-government as a peasant tradition that inspired the resistance against colonial rule and domestic dictatorship and found its clearest modern expression in the Hansalim Life Movement. This part of the story introduces not only a fascinating world of rural peasant culture but also a long evolution in the roles and rights of women, the end of slavery, religious transformation and even some philosophy. Brace yourselves.
2.1 Cultural-Historical Background
If you look closely at the timeline in Figure 2.1 you will notice that, before the annexation of Korea by Japan, it was known as ‘Joseon.’ The entire peninsula of Korea from the boarder with Manchuria in the north to the Island of Jeju in the South Sea was governed by the Yi Dynasty for more than 500 years from 1392 until a brief period of independent modernisation began in 1897 only to be cut short when Japan began its take-over in 1904.2 The Yi Dynasty and its literary elites were heavily influenced by Confucian ideology and statecraft and the Joseon era was shaped by the dominance of a uniquely Korean form of neo-Confucianism.
The influence of Confucianism in Korea is a legacy of centuries of intellectual and cultural commerce with China as Korea’s nearest neighbour by land. However, in the context of the history of Korean civilization (between 3000 and 5000 years depending on who you ask) Confucian thought plays only one part among others. Since long before the arrival of Buddhism and Confucianism, Korea’s cultural evolution has been uniquely shaped by an ancient bedrock of shamanism that was closely intertwined with rural life.3 Throughout the entire history of Korea the shamanistic beliefs and practices of the common people have remained stubbornly unmoveable, even from the royal courts, and were variously tolerated by or incorporated into the state religious ideology of each dynasty.4
Park Kyong-ni, the renowned author of Toji (‘Land’), described Korea’s journey from a Shamanistic worldview to Buddhism and finally Confucianism as one of a narrowing of perspective.5 The unlimited world inhabited by an infinite diversity of spirits became a philosophically bounded world under Buddhism and finally a hierarchically bounded world of Confucian social ideals in which the invisible and intangible was subordinated to the practical social life of the community.
As Buddhism became the dominant ideology and a powerful political force in the pre-Joseon dynasties, shamanism became less important in the rites of the state but remained part of the day-to-day lives of the population at large. The transition from the Goryeo period (918-1392) to the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) brought with it a turn away from Buddhism as the state religion towards neo-Confucianism and the institutionalisation of shamanism as profession in service of the state. Reacting to the internal conflicts and upheaval of the late Goryeo period, the newly established Joseon state sought to create a more stable Kingdom. On the one hand, with a purposeful focus on Confucian ethics, the state enacted tax reforms to stabilise government finances while eliminating unfair tax burdens and refocusing the economy on agriculture and away from commerce and other economic activities6 regarded as improper (because they were profit-making). On the other hand, new measures were used to protect class privilege by adopting the neo-Confucian model of family and social structure as the state ideology; perpetuating chattel slavery, reinforcing dependence of the majority of commoners on feudal systems and closing down social mobility.
The Joseon class system
For 500 years consecutive monarchs, aided by a ruling gentry of Confucian Scholar Officials, the yangban, used gradual changes in policy, law and customs to transform the peninsula into a caste-based and rigidly patriarchal society structured around the Confucian values of filial piety, loyalty (to superiors) and propriety - knowing ones place and following the rules. Although already in place in simplified form for centuries earlier, by the late Joseon period the hereditary class system had become highly complex (see Table 2.1), restrictive and increasingly unstable. Joseon society was categorised into the citizen classes (yangin) and the lowborn classes (cheonmin). The citizen classes were subject to taxation (with the exception of the yangban who were exempt from taxation and military conscription) and were given different levels of rights, obligations and legal protections according to their respective status. The lowborn, though they were exempt from paying tax, were more or less excluded from normal society except when their work was useful to a member of the citizen classes.
Outside the royal family, the most privileged classes were the yangban (or ‘two orders’) of officials: the civilian scholar-officials and the military officials. They were the hereditary landed aristocrats of Korean society and took up roles as high-level government officials. They lived in substantial houses with estates along with their extended families, servants and slaves. Their relative status within the yangban class was determined by a combination of family lineage, patronage, scholarly tradition (or faction) and the national civil service exam.
Next in status to the yangban were the secondary status classes. Most of these were either the mid-level officials which included the technical officials (jungin) – who had expertise in languages, medicine, law, astronomy, accounting, drafting, calligraphy and painting – and the government clerks responsible for administration (hyangni). These classes were also hereditary and lived in the centre of towns and cities.7
Next came the descendants of the concubines of yangban and mid-level officials. They were the illegitimate sons of aristocrats and officials who were excluded from the rights and privileges enjoyed by legitimate heirs. Instead they inherited their mother’s lower status and, although they had relatively more access to wealth and education than their commoner peers, they were systematically discriminated against in law and custom.
Almost at the bottom of the hierarchy of citizens came the commoners (sangmin or yangmin). They were the peasant farmers (property-owning and tenant), craftsmen and merchants. Together they formed the majority of the population and bore the heaviest tax burden in addition to being subject to corvee labour and military conscription. Finally, at the very bottom, were the commoners who worked in lowborn positions, mainly low-ranking service jobs for the state that were deemed to be undignified or unclean. Although they legally shared the same status as regular commoners they were treated more like the lowborn.
Now we come to the ‘lowborn’. The cheonmin were those without legal status as citizens, whose work was seen as demeaning or corrupting but whose services were necessary for the commoners or desired by the royal family, the yangban and the other official classes. The most respectable of the lowborn were the propertyless professionals who included shamans, healers, gisaeng (female entertainers or courtesans) and servants. Below them were the baekjeong or ‘ignorant men’ who were the butchers, wicker weavers, itinerant performers, executioners and tanners or leather workers. Not only were the baekjeong discriminated against in law and through other customs to do with speech and clothing but they also had to live in separate communities, segregated from the rest of society. Finally, there were the unfree (nobi) – the concubines, public slaves (state-owned) and private slaves – who were chattel property. Even their status as slave was hereditary and thus their children automatically became the property of their yangban masters. Thus, discrimination against lower status groups by those of higher status ran throughout the whole hierarchy of Joseon society, driven by the intention to ensure the political and financial stability of the government and the ruling classes.
| Category | Class | Description | Tax status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citizens (yangin) |
Yangban (the two orders): 1. Civil branch - scholar-officials. 2. Military branch - military officials (relegated to mid-level officials by late Joseon). |
Hereditary ruling classes who lived as large extended families in houses with estates, servants and slaves. | Exempt from paying tax. |
| 2. Mid-level officials - jungin (technical officials) and hyangni (clerks). | Hereditary administrative classes who lived in central districts of towns and cities. | Low tax burden. | |
| 3. Descendants of the concubines of yangban and mid-level officials. | Illegitimate sons of aristocratic and sub-aristocratic families, discriminated against in law and custom. | ||
| 4. Commoners (sangmin / yangmin) - peasant farmers, craftsmen, merchants. | Majority of the working population including property owning peasant and tenant farmers. | Heaviest tax burden, subject to corvee labour and military conscription. | |
| 5. Commoners working in lowborn positions - low-ranking service jobs for the state. | Legally classed as citizens but treated more like lowborn. | ||
| Lowborn (cheonmin) |
6. Shamans (government and private), trained healers (government), servants, professional mourners, gisaeng (female entertainers including prostitutes). | Social outcasts discriminated against in law and custom but with professional roles. | Exempt until changes in law changed status of baekjeong to commoner (citizen). Registered private shamans taxed through special government office. |
| 7. Ignorant men (baekjeong): butchers, wicker weavers, itinerant performers, executioners, tanners. | Lowest status classes responsible for the jobs considered beneath the dignity of ordinary people and required to live in separate communities. | ||
| 8. Nobi (unfree): concubines, government-owned gisaeng (courtesans), government-owned slaves, privately-owned slaves. | Chattel property. |
You might notice that one particular group of people is missing from this list in Table 2.1. With the exception of courtesans and concubines, there is no mention mothers, daughters and wives (legitimate ones) of the men of each class. That is because the status of women in Joseon requires its own discussion in the context of this wider class structure. And this story is much more complex and interesting than contemporary stereotypes of Korean society might lead you to believe. It begins, of course, with religion.
2.2 Cooperation in pre-colonial Korea
More or less formal arrangements for organising mutual aid and cooperation within communities have been common in many societies around the world for hundreds if not thousands of years.16 Since the Unified Silla dynasty (668-935 CE) Korea was governed by a sophisticated centralised state with a professional civil service, a comprehensive system of law, taxation and land-tenure, a vast library of books of historical records and Buddhist writings, a ruling aristocracy and a state religion (Buddhism).
Following the collapse of Silla, the Goryeo dynasty was founded in 935 and the Confucian state model began to be adopted in earnest. It was based on the Tang system with the addition of powers delegated to officials to censor royal decisions (a kind of auditing role) which set a precedent for maintaining a check on monarchical power that continued throughout the Joseon dynasty in various forms.
By the early Joseon the central government consisted of the monarch and a bureaucracy of central ministries and provincial governments with magistrates and local administrative divisions. The bureaucracy not only implemented the monarch’s policies but its leading representatives (from the civil and military official classes - yangban) also provided advice and criticism and had the power to rectify state policy and official appointments in opposition to the monarch.17
One of the key mechanisms for guaranteeing the survival of this distribution of power was the rule that historians be present to record verbatim what was said in every meeting between the monarch, his officials and advisors from among the bureaucracy. This was part of the wider process of meticulous record keeping for the sake of transmitting a continuous historical record of daily events and decisions to future generations. Referred to as the Joseon Wangjo Shillok (Annals of the Joseon Dynasty), this chronologically arranged record consists of 2,077 volumes of history which covers the first 472 years of the dynasty from 1392-1863 and records daily accounts of events, decisions and observations relating to all areas of Joseon life and society.18
This Confucianism-inspired method of regulating monarchic power created the conditions for a continuous competition for political influence between the monarch, the central bureaucracy and the regions and a constant eb and flow of alliance building ensued over the subsequent centuries as social and economic changes tipped the scales of power in favour of different constituencies at different times. In effect, the historical records provided a counterweight to an incrementally developing constitution while preserving a valuable source of knowledge on state-craft and a long record of experimentation with various institutions for national and local governance. This was the context in which cooperative organisation evolved, first among the ruling classes and later among the commoners.
Self-governing institutions among the aristocracy
In the early Joseon period, yangban in the provinces exercised their authority through local self-governing associations called yuhyangso, the membership of which was restricted to the most prominent yangban in the area who were listed in the local register.19 They chose a jwasu (head of the organisation), several byeolgam (officers) and a hyangni (regional official) through an election by majority vote of the organisation’s members. These organisations provided the yangban with a means of dominating the lower classes in their villages and districts while obstructing the central government’s influence. They became intensely political organisations and as a consequence were alternately promoted and abolished depending on which faction held more influence in the capitol.
By the mid Joseon period a new institution for governing the countryside had replaced the yuhyangso: the community compact (hyangyak). It was an idea developed by the Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) and based on the concept by Lu Dajun (1031-1082). The hyangyak was a voluntary association with the purpose of providing mutual assistance and edification in moral living for all members of society, not only the yangban. It specified the virtues required in communal life, described meeting procedures, social etiquette and appropriate family and communal rituals.20
The hyangyak were created for large and small units of government from counties to villages and all residents in that region from a citizen class (yangban, mid-level officials and commoners) were required to join or face banishment.21 These organisations handled nearly all local affairs from arranging mutual aid, ensuring tax obligations to the state were met, punishing and rewarding behaviour and enforcing social norms. They were managed on the basis of written regulations and registers of people eligible to vote and take up official positions (i.e. a select group of yangban). As you might expect, these organisations served the interests of the yangban and often degenerated into means of organising illegal exploitation of the commoners.22
By the late Joseon period, the yangban had begun to form dongyak – which operated with even stricter separation between the yangban and commoners – and donggye – which were mutual aid societies that functioned like a combination of a credit-union and insurance fund to cover large expenses such as rebuilding bridges or paying for weddings. Although they were supposed to benefit the entire community, collected dues from all members and were run by consensus, commoners were excluded from decision making and gradually left to form their own organisations called chongye as a kind of rebellion against the the dongyak and dongye of the yangban.23
Cooperative organisation among the commoners
Gye had existed in various forms since long before the Joseon dynasty but it wasn’t until they were institutionalised as donggye by the yangban that they became a common feature of rural life in Korea. Following the eighteenth century, as commoners left the dongyak and donggye in increasing numbers to form their own mutual aid societies the yangban started to lose control of the villages. Improvements in agricultural technology and the growth of a monetary economy stimulated the rapid formation of gye (mutual aid societies) of all kinds, among all sections of society across the country.
The most common type, chongye (village gye) included all residents in a village without class discrimination including commoners and lowborn and was run by the members themselves. In practice they excluded the yangban who would not lower themselves to join since they could not expect to be given leadership positions. They collected membership dues and meticulously recorded their accounts and changes in personnel which included executive officers, mid-level managers and entry-level officers. The chongye typically made decisions on all aspects of village affairs and distribution of their resources by consensus through “no-holds-barred discussions.”24 somewhat like a hybrid of village assemblies and credit unions.
All types of gye, except the lest formal types formed by women or children, operated an office and wrote formal regulations to set out their purpose, bylaws, income and expenses.25 Gye became a wildly popular form of self-organising and mutual aid and in addition to the most popular chongye the were a multitude of gye organised by people for all kinds of purposes including26:
- Nonggye: for raising agricultural funds and purchase equipment for farming.
- Sanggye: for young men supporting elderly parents.
- Geumsonggye: for protecting pine trees and preventing illegal use of the forests and mountains, such as slashing and burning.
- Seodanggye: for raising money to run village schools.
- Upigye: for livestock farmers.
- Donggyeonggye: for people of the same age (especially yangban) to cultivate friendship and fun.
- Saljugye: for slaves to unite and rebel against their masters.
- Chimmokgye: friendship gye.
- Informal gye formed by women or children for collective purchasing.
During the 300 years when gye were popular, the peak was the eighteenth century. But even as late as the early colonial period (1920s), when a formal census of gye was undertaken, 30,000 gye were recorded with a combined membership of around 80,000 (see Figure 2.1).
For women during the late Joseon and into the colonial period, gye offered a means for increasing economic independence despite the restrictive social hierarchy. This is because one legitimate area of relative autonomy for women was in the home, namely housekeeping or salim. It was expected that, in their role as housewife and mother, they control the household economy and oversee the education of their children. The latter provided an indirect route to involvement in affairs outside the home through cultivating a strong influence over their children, especially first born sons. The former, made it possible for women to accumulate some degree of economic power by careful management of the household finances. Through setting up their own gye women were able to gather their economic resources together for their own purposes independent from men and these later became a prototype for women’s associations and cooperatives in the colonial period. In addition to participation in women’s gye, it is possible that commoner and lowborn women found a greater role in the public life of the community through their participation in the activities of the chongye (village gye) either directly or indirectly through their male family members. More research is needed to find out if this was significant or not and it is likely that women were not involved in decision making while the Confucian patriarchal norms remained deeply engrained at all levels of society.
One of the most important functions of the chongye in village life was to make decisions regarding collective farm labour which was organised through the dure system. Like gye, the dure was an ancient institution and it is not clear exactly when they originated but, by the Joseon period, their main function was as farmers’ coops which embodied the belief that “Farming is the foundation of the World.”27 As the rice transplanting technique became established during the eighteenth century, dure spread rapidly throughout the country until almost every village had at least one.
Most able-bodied commoners and lowborn (both men and women) in a village belonged to their village dure. Families of widows, the sick, and the elderly without adult males were exempt from participation in the work activities, but they still received the benefits of collective labour without discrimination.28 Each dure had an office, a set of rules and regulations, a leader and multiple people assigned specific roles including keeping the accounts, preparing meals, watching over livestock and overseeing those working in the fields, each of whom was selected in annual elections.
The first of two general assemblies each each year was held before the farming season began as part of the homi modeum ritual when each members’ weeding hoe (homi) was hung together in the village hall and shamanic rituals were performed. After the rituals the members gathered over a meal to elect officers for the new year and plan the year’s work. At this meeting they also set wages, initiated new members and decided on repairs or purchasing of farming tools and musical instruments (vitally important to dure activities!).
The work of the dure was not carried out continuously year round but specifically organised for the busy periods of the farming year when collective labour relieved the burden on individual households. These included rice planting, irrigation, weed pulling, harvesting, threshing and weaving hemp cloth. Much of this work was carried out to the accompaniment of a folk band or music performed by the dure members themselves (hence the importance of musical instruments in a dure’s inventory). The work was broken up by episodes of feasting, music, games and dancing all covered by the expenses of the dure or by whichever member whose land was worked that day and had the means to provide it.
The end of the farming season was marked by a second general assembly and a finale of festivities known as homi geori (or homi ssisi in Jeolla province). The festival included mass group games such as a giant tug-of-war, musical entertainment, a mountain-god worshipping ritual, theatre and folktales, drinking and dancing. During the assembly the dure members settled the accounts and decided on the distribution of mutual aid.
The dure form of democratic practice was not simply a convenient management structure through which to organise collective work. It was far more than that. It was a cultural institution encompassing the whole of communal life including not only economic solidarity and care of the vulnerable but also leisure and sporting activities, coming of age rites, training of the younger generation, and not least the artistic expression of collective identity through music, ritual and visual arts displayed in the flags, banners and costumes made by each dure. The picture of democratic practice that this conjures up is exceedingly rich and appealing as a way of transforming what could otherwise be a tedious and burdensome way of life into a more meaningful and satisfying rhythm of labour and relaxation, secured by the collective promise of mutual aid and cooperation. Rooted in the indigenous spiritual worldview that predated the both the Confucian and the Buddhist influences on Korea, the dure were partly responsible for a revival of shamanic rituals and folk culture that later played a vital role in the pro-democracy movement in the 1960s-80s.
The role of folk culture
This ritual and artistic culture of the dure is thought to have originated in the ancient agricultural festivals of the northwestern tribes of the Korean peninsula in the 3rd-century-CE at which singing and dancing were performed in shamanic rituals accompanied by simple instruments. Such rituals and the musical style associated with them are the indigenous roots of Korean traditional folk music that is still performed today. Revived and popularised by the dure, this theatrical-musical tradition evolved beyond the dure themselves into an independent form of folk culture among the rural population which became immensely popular and is now commonly referred to as nongak (‘farm music’) or pungmul nori.
The musical elements of nongak evolved into a variety of sub-genres and regional variations but the basic set of instruments are percussive (drums and gongs) with flutes and double-reed instruments often also playing a role alongside vocalisations and sometimes singing and a two-stringed fiddle. Very different from court music enjoyed by the aristocracy, nongak is highly complex rhythmically and also polyphonous and syncopated, giving it the feel of a wild combination of jazz and acoustic breakbeat.
A nongak performance is traditionally a fundamentally participatory rather than spectator event. It typically involved a combination of music, acrobatics, processions with flags and collective dancing, folk songs, comedy and theatrical interludes which often included talchum (mask dance performance). At the finale of the performance the music increases in tempo, volume and intensity until it provokes everyone to communal dancing building up to a prolonged ecstatic sense of togetherness. This performance would also be accompanied by large-scale group games such as the giant tug-of-war, wrestling competitions and other folk games for men, women and children.
Nongak seems to have played a crucial role in the life of the dure.29 Not only did it enhance the efficiency and enjoyment of collective labour, it also transformed the public and ritual life of the village into an exciting and unifying series of festivities, making the intervening times of rest and quietness all the more satisfying. In its form of participatory performance and collective ecstatic meditation it also provided both a living metaphor of united diversity and a practical expression of the interplay between individual skill and collective harmony. Thus, what the regulations, offices and procedures of democratic management aimed at through words and reason, nongak demonstrated in symbolic and emotional reality accessible to all through direct experience. In addition to its unifying power, nongak also provided a context for collective reflection on contemporary society through the subject matter of the the theatrical elements (especially the talchum ‘mask dances’). Through comedy they portrayed the hypocrisy of the ruling classes with biting satire of local dignitaries and corrupt officials. Thus, they could raise people’s consciousness of injustices and communicate the shared values and worldview of the commoners over and against propaganda by their local and national rulers.
Finally, I want to suggest one further benefit of the nongak tradition within dure. As a counterbalance to the serious activity of deciding on economic and village affairs, nongak provided a safe context for light-hearted fun and low stakes deliberation; a kind of playful version of democratic practice through which young and inexperienced dure members could learn the skills necessary to participate in the higher-stakes consensus-based decision making processes of the community as a whole. This is of course, only my theory, and some more research would be needed to see if there was any evidence of this connection. Nevertheless, the point still stands that, at the centre of the dure’s democratic practice was this creative combination of ritual and collective artistic activity that are brought together in festivals and organised by the community themselves. Nongak thus became a nationwide mosaic of local expressions of folk culture that provided an alternative to the narrative of Korean identity promoted by the ruling classes. In conjunction with the growth of vernacular literary culture among the lower classes it gave rise to a strong shared identity among the rural peasantry that eventually led to an explosive peasant uprising.
2.3 Eastern Learning and peasant uprisings
The birth of Donghak
If you were to wander the countryside and towns in those days you would have seen a stark contrast in living conditions between the rulers and the ruled. As a mostly agrarian society of peasant farmers, the common folk lived in mud huts with thatched roofs and made careful use of every natural resource available to maintain their meagre lives. Here and there, however, you would catch an occasional glimpse of the most beautiful traditional Korean houses or hanok: all expertly built around landscaped courtyards and settled on massive stone foundations from which rose wide wooden pillars to support ornately tiled roofs. Positioned in the most auspicious and picturesque locations, equipped with underfloor heating and designed to provide natural air conditioning, these architectural masterpieces provided a walled and gated paradise for the landowning male elites who occupied all the highest offices of the bureaucracy and military. In these mansions - many of which remain today - the yangban and their households of wives, concubines, children, servants and house slaves lived together in a family-scale replica of the authoritarian Confucian state, ruling their lands and districts in similar fashion.
However, generations of sexual exploitation of women as concubines by the ruling elites had produced a large and growing cohort of educated and capable scholars and clerks who, despite their skill, were blocked from social advancement because their mothers’ status excluded them from the inherited privilege of their paternal line. This led to a growing undercurrent of social unrest among not only the oppressed slave and lower classes but also among the second-class officials who faced systemic discrimination on the basis of patrilineal status.
Over the previous decades, the experiences and grievances of these non-aristocratic classes had been expressed and widely shared through a vibrant and often subversive and satirical popular culture in literature, pansori (singing of epic narratives), talchum (mask dances) and folk painting. One of the unexpected catalysts for this flowering of folk and non-aristocratic culture was the invention, several centuries earlier in 1446, of the Korean alphabet. King Sejong and his state research institute, the Hall of Worthies, had created the unique writing system to enable the common people to become better educated (mainly about Confucian ideals) without having to endure the difficult process of learning the Chinese characters used by the aristocracy and literati.
Consequently, the gradual spread of the ability of ordinary people to put the vernacular into writing finally gave rise, in the 19th century, to a popular genre of literature by and for the common people - with many women among its most popular authors. It also facilitated the standardisation and spread of the pansori narratives. Examples of such literature include biographies of the lower classes as well as tales of righteous bandits robbing the rich to give to the poor (sound familiar?!). Spread by the rise of this popular culture, the experiences and living conditions of normal people across the country were becoming more widely known, no doubt contributing to a growing sense of shared identity among the common people and middle-level elites who openly derided the corruption and hypocrisy of the aristocracy, bureaucracy and Buddhist monks. Occasionally, throughout the ….. this growing popular unease overflowed into peasant uprisings.
Just as this popular culture was on rise, a young man called Choi Je-u (Su-un) was about to experience a dramatic spiritual awakening. Born in 1824 near Gyeongju (south-east Korea), he was the son of an impoverished yangban and became an orphan at the age of 16, his mother having died 10 years previously. His father had given him an education but Su-un and his wife were left in poverty and with little prospect of advancement because of his low social status as the son of his father’s concubine.30
It seems he made a living teaching local children and continued to study Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism until he left his family in 1844 aged 24 to wander the country, returning home in 1855 after he ran out of money.31 As he wandered the country he observed the pitiful living conditions of the common people and the endemic corruption of the Confucian bureaucracy. He also became more aware of the influx into Korea of new ideas through Catholic missionaries and western Imperialists as well as the growing threat of military domination by the western powers. Perceiving his country to be in a state of chaos and confusion in the face of the military and technological superiority of the west and it’s apparently unifying ideology of Catholicism or “Western Learning”, he sought an alternative faith that could provide a rival unifying and empowering force to the Korean people.
On returning to his family after his travels, he spent forty-nine days in meditation and prayer in a cave near the Buddhist temple of Dongdosa. Finally, in 1860, he experienced an encounter with God in a mysterious voice that said: “Do not fear and do not be afraid. Humanity calls me Sangje (God): don’t you recognize Sangje?”
Su-un reported that God told him to teach the Truth and gave him a healing talisman in the form of the ‘Great Ultimate’ and an incantation which is a prayer to be filled with the Spirit of God that brings divine life within, guards against forgetfulness and awakens an awareness of all things. In their translation of the Donggyeong Daejeon (Great Scripture of Eastern Learning), Kim and Yoon provide a translation and explanation of Su-un’s incantation as follows:
Jigigeumji weonwi daegang (至氣今至願爲大降) which means “I pray for the great descent of the Ultimate Energy now,” is the technique of receiving the Spirit, which is actually the first part of the Incantation; Si cheonju johwa jeong (侍天主造化定), which means “God is within us and all are made well,” is the second part of the Incantation; and yeongse bulmang mansaji (永世不忘萬事知), which means “eternally not forgetting and being aware of all things,” is the poem of “Not Forgetting (God),” which is the last part of the Incantation. The entire Incantation consists of twenty-one Chinese characters.”32
Following this encounter, Su-un began life as a wandering teacher, spreading the Truth that he called “Eastern Learning” (Donghak) to distinguish it from the Western Learning of Catholicism. He wrote his teachings in Chinese script and also in the Korean alphabet as songs and poetry to make it accessible to both the educated classes and the common people. These writings and songs were compiled by his successor Choi Si-hyeong (Haewol) and become the Donghak scriptures. They include descriptions of his experiences, philosophical thoughts and discussions with his followers as well as poetry, prayers and stories.
In the sutra called Nonhak-Mun33 Su-un writes that the Divine Spirit (or Hanullim) told him “My mind is your mind” (曰吾心即汝心也) which is interpreted to express the true nature of humanity as bearers of Divine Life. The incantation itself encompasses the central teaching of Donghak that Hanullim (God or Divine Spirit / 靈) is in all things and therefore humans also bear God within them. However, through selfishness and negative outside influences, people have forgotten this truth that they are fundamentally one with God and habitually act in opposition to the Way. This is the cause of human suffering and evil. To recover oneness with God one needs to cultivate the mind of God within oneself and to act justly towards others (Susim Jeonggi 守心正氣).34
Emphasising the equality of all people and attacking the Confucian social hierarchy, Donghak quickly spread nationwide among the rural population and was especially popular among the commoners and peasant farmers. After Su-un was arrested and executed in 1864, the government declared donghak illegal and it went underground. Su-un’s successor, Haewol, refined the ethical concepts of Donghak and reorganised it as an underground movement.35 Within just over 30 years, by the 1890s, Donghak had grown into a decentralised underground network of local branches loosely governed by Haewol and a council of other regional leaders.
The Donghak Uprising
Notes for rest of chapter: 1. Donghak Uprising was not aligned with Su-un and Haewol’s teaching but merged with wider popular peasant uprisings into a more violent expression of discontent but also formed self-governing jipgangso. 2. Ultimately the uprising failed and precipitated Japanese occupation and then Donghak became a formalised religion called Cheondogyo.
Sam-Woong Kim, Biography of Jang Il-Soon: The Beautiful Life of Muwidang, ed. Muwidang People (Seoul, Korea: Dure, 2019).↩︎
Kyung Moon Hwang, A History of Korea, 3rd Edition (London, England: Red Globe Press, 2021).↩︎
Youngsook Kim Harvey, Six Korean Women: Socialization of Shamans (West Publishing Co, 1980); Won-Oh Choi, An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology (Global Oriental Ltd, 2008).↩︎
Yŏng-Jŏng Kim, Women of Korea : A History from Ancient Times to 1945 : An Abridged and Translated Edition of Han’guk Yòsòng-Sa Which Was Written Under the Direction of the Committee for the Compilation of the History of Korean Women, 2nd ed (Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 1977); Hwang, A History of Korea.↩︎
Kyong-Ni Park, “The Life Movement from a Mother’s Heart,” in Rice and Meditation, ed. Mosim and Salim Research Institute, 모심과 살림 총서 (Seoul: Mosim; Salim Research Institute, 2002), 80–87.↩︎
Katrina Maynes, “Korean Perceptions of Chastity, Gender Roles, and Libido; from Kisaengs to the Twenty First Century,” Grand Valley Journal of History 1, no. 1-2 (2012): 1–19, https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvjh.↩︎
Myoung-Ho Ro and No Myŏngho, “The Makeup of Koryŏ Aristocratic Families: Bilateral Kindred,” Korean Studies 41 (2017): 173–99, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44508444.↩︎
Theodore Jun Yoo, The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education Labor, and Health (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 19.↩︎
Byeong-Seon Yoon, Won-Kyu Song, and Hae-Jin Lee, “The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in South Korea,” Monthly Review; New York 65, no. 1 (May 2013): 56–62, https://doi.org/10.14452/MR-065-01-2013-05\_5.↩︎
Maynes, “Korean Perceptions of Chastity, Gender Roles, and Libido; from Kisaengs to the Twenty First Century”.↩︎
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, KAIROS (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2021).↩︎
KOCIS, A Handbook of Korea, Tenth Edition (Seoul, Korea: The Korean Overseas Culture; Information Service, 1998).↩︎
Nae-Hyun Kwon, “11. Rural Society and Zhu Xi’s Community Compact,” in Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society, ed. The Organization of Korean Historians (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 148, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004261150.↩︎
E-Wha Lee, Korea’s Pastimes and Customs: A Social History (Paramus, New Jersey: Homa & Sekey Books, 2006), 178.↩︎
Hae Jun Lee, “12. Why Did Peasants Create the Dure,” in Everyday Life in Joseon-Era Korea: Economy and Society, ed. The Organization of Korean Historians (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014), 160, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004261150.↩︎
Yong-Ha Shin, “Social History of the Dure Community and Nongak,” Civilizational Transition and the Life Movement as a New Alternative Movement (Hansalim Moim, 1989).↩︎
Carl F Young, Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and Chondogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence (University of Hawai’i Press., 2014), 3, http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctt13x1k6b.2.↩︎
Yong Choon Kim, Suk San Yoon, and Central Headquarters of Chondogyo, Chondogyo Scripture: Donggyeong Daejeon (Great Scripture of Eastern Learning) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2007), 79.↩︎