Court Disputes over the Deposition of the Queen Dowager and the Evolving Causes for the Palace Coup of 1623 : A Refutation of Professor Oh’s Criticism

Abstract

By reexamining the nature of the court disputes over the queen dowager, suspected of her involvement in a treason case, and the causes for the Palace Coup of 1623, which dethroned the king who had con fined the queen dowager in her palace, this review article refutes Prof. Oh Soo-chang’s criticism against my monograph Mohu ǔi panyǒk (The treason of the queen dowager). Unlike prof. Oh who argued that the essence of the disputes was the issue of king’s disloyalty to the queen dowager, the key nature of the disputes was whether the king had to punish the queen dowager, his stepmother, who was charged of seeking treason, according to the state law based on the Confucian value of ch’ung or kongǔi (loyalty) or show mercy to her adopting another Confucian value of hyo or saǔn (filial piety). There were many similar cases and debates on the queen dowagers who were involved in treason cases in Chinese history. The majority of Neo-Confucian scholars like Zhu Xi (1130~1200), in particular, placed much more emphasis on ch’ung and even thought that the queen dowager should have been punished.BRIn Chosǒn Korea in the early 1600s the great controversy came to an end by confining the queen dowager in her palace, but the king was dethroned five years later by a palace coup. According to the message promulgated in the name of the Queen Dowager immediately following the coup, the causes for the coup can be classified broadly into two categories: the deposed king’s betrayal of Ming China to the barbaric Manchu (43%) and the confinement of the queen dowager and the murder of her young son (31%). The later sources, however, tended not to cite the betrayal of Ming China, but excessively emphasized the confinement of the queen dowager, a serious royal violation of the Confucian value hyo. The issue of foreign policy, the betrayal of the Ming emperor, was struck off the official causes for the coup.BRDuring the Manchu invasion of Korea (1636~1637), King Injo (r. 1623~1649), who led the coup and ascended the throne, eventually surrendered to the Manchu emperor, with the result that one of the primary causes for the coup was now lost. In order to maintain his legitimacy and offset the lost cause with the other one, Injo and his officials had little option but to lay utmost emphasis on the former king’s unfilial act. Although prof. Oh insists that the coup was a righteous restoration to eliminate royal depravity, the causes for the coup were not singular and morphed as time went on, depending on the political situations in domestic and foreign affairs.