조선초 정도전의 공적과 과오 규정

Abstract

Jeong Do-jeon is recorded in the Annals of the Taejo era in Joseon(Taejo Shillok) as the biggest contributor to the task of founding the Joseon dynasty. References to his meritorious actions have also been acknowledged as a historical fact by many modern studies. Interestingly, however, records of his contribution may have been credited to him by an unexpected group of people: no other than the members of the very faction which opposed and eventually eliminated Jeong Do-jeon.<BR> For a long time, Jeong Do-jeon remained in close relationships with many officials including Jeong Mong-ju, who favored the preservation of the Goryeo dynasty. And history actually does ‘not’ show him very much in action or in positions to engage in plans to bring down Goryeo and found a new dynasty instead.<BR> He did sever his ties with Jeong Mong-ju and others around 1390, and cooperated with the faction determined to build a new dynasty, but during the time right before Joseon’s foundation, he was still actually in exile. Also, while Jo Jun and others –who had been engaged in efforts to replace Goryeo with Joseon- returned to the central political arena right after Jeong Mong-ju’s assassination, Jeong Do-jeon was recalled from his exile only two months later, and even after the recall, he was not given any meaningful task.<BR> In the last years of Goryeo and the early years of Joseon, Neo-Confucianism became the dominant ideology in the philosophical community, and any meritorious deed performed in replacing an existing dynasty with a new one was actually deemed as a crime that went against Neo-Confucian causes and morality. In other words, bigger the meritorious deeds in founding the Joseon dynasty were, also bigger was the treachery committed to a dynasty to which one belonged. Anyone tagged with such dishonor would be immediately considered as an individual whose actions should not be emulated. So, the people who successfully engineered the change of state -and also survived the power struggles in the early years of Joseon-, actually spared themselves from philosophical scolding, by imposing the image of a traitor on Jeong Do-jeon, saying that he was the biggest contributor to the fall of Goryeo and rise of Joseon.