Yesong Controversy

Overview

The Yesong controversy (禮訟) was a dispute during the reigns of Kings Hyeonjong and Sukjong of Joseon. When King Hyojong and his queen, Queen Insun, died, the Westerners and Southerners twice argued over how long Queen Dowager Jaui (Queen Jang-ryeol Jo, commonly called Queen Dowager Jo), the second wife of King Injo, should wear mourning clothes. The two rounds were the Gihae Yesong of 1659 (the first year of Hyeonjong's reign) and the Gapin Yesong of 1674 (the 15th year of Hyeonjong). On the surface it was a question of royal funeral rites. Beneath it lay a difference in Neo-Confucian ideology over whether the principle of patrilineal succession (宗法, jongbeop) should be applied to the royal family in the same way as to the gentry (sadaebu). The outcome also changed which faction held power.

Background

King Injo had three sons: Crown Prince Sohyeon, Grand Prince Bongnim, and Grand Prince Inpyeong. After Crown Prince Sohyeon returned from captivity in Qing as a hostage following the Second Manchu invasion of Korea, he died within three months. By the principle of primogeniture, the eldest son of Crown Prince Sohyeon should have inherited the throne. Instead, the second son, Grand Prince Bongnim, became crown prince and ascended the throne as King Hyojong. Crown Princess Consort Kang, wife of Crown Prince Sohyeon, was put to death on the false charge of having tried to poison King Injo, and her three sons were exiled to Jeju Island, where two of them died. Because Hyojong had become king as a second son by an irregular path, the question of whether Queen Dowager Jaui, who stood in the position of a mother, should wear mourning for an eldest son or for a second son became directly a question of legitimacy.

Development

Gihae Yesong (1659)

When King Hyojong died suddenly in 1659, the issue was whether Queen Dowager Jaui's mourning period should be three years (two years by counting) or one year. At first, Chief State Councillor Jeong Tae-hwa set it at one year, citing the provision of the Gyeongguk daejeon that the mourning period was one year whether the deceased was an eldest or second son. Westerners such as Song Si-yeol and Song Jun-gil held, based on Zhu Xi's Jiali (家禮), that since Hyojong was a second son, one year was appropriate. Their reasoning was that although he had inherited the throne, he was a legitimate son who was not the eldest, a case of "embodied but not correct" (體而不正).

Southerners such as Heo Mok and Yun Seon-do countered that although Hyojong was a second son, he had inherited the throne and should therefore be treated as an eldest son, so three years of mourning was required. Yun Hyu, who allied with the Southerners, argued for three years of mourning on the position that whoever inherits the throne becomes a subject even to his own mother. Yun Seon-do criticized the Westerners' one-year theory as dividing the lineage of succession from the legitimate line and thereby lowering the king's status. He accused Song Si-yeol and others of treason but was himself exiled instead. In the end, the one-year theory was adopted, and the Westerners maintained their dominance.