How Joseon Was Founded and Named: Context for Gyeongbokgung and Jongmyo

The founding in four steps

• ↩️1388 — Wihwado retreat

  Yi Seong-gye and other commanders turned the army back and displaced the political leadership behind the Liaodong campaign.

• 👑1392 — a new dynasty

  Yi Seong-gye became its first monarch, although the state name remained Goryeo.

• 📨November 1392 — the name debated

  A request from Ming to report the new state name prompted the founding leadership to convene the ministers.

• 📜February 1393 — Joseon in use

  After the formal process of asking Ming to select the proposed name, Joseon came into use.

The founding was the end of a longer struggle, not a single ceremony in 1392.

In 1388, Yi Seong-gye and other commanders turned back at Wihwado, then removed King U and Choe Yeong, who had led the Liaodong campaign. The rising military group joined with scholar-officials, pursued land reform and removed opponents including King Chang and Yi Saek before founding the new dynasty in 1392.

For the wider sequence before and after this transition, read the Goryeo overview and the Joseon dynasty overview. This article stays with the narrower question of how the new state acquired its name.

Yi Seong-gye became the first monarch in the seventh lunar month of 1392, but the state name remained Goryeo for about seven months. In other words, the change of ruler and the change of state name were separate decisions.

The decision was delayed until Ming asked in November 1392 to be informed quickly of the new name. The founding leadership then gathered the ministers, settled on Joseon and went through the diplomatic form of asking Ming to choose it. The name was used from February 1393.

This does not mean Ming invented the name. The Korean court proposed and debated it; the request shaped the diplomatic procedure and the timing recorded in the source.

The name connected the new dynasty to a much older past. The encyclopedia explains that “Joseon” derived from Gojoseon and carried the late-Goryeo idea that Korean history continued from Dangun.

It also suited the dynasty's Confucian ruling elite. Gija, whom scholars associated with the arrival of Confucian civilisation on the peninsula, was traditionally described as a ruler of Gojoseon. The name therefore joined an ancient historical lineage with the ideological legitimacy the new rulers wanted to claim.

Gojoseon and the Joseon dynasty were different states separated by roughly two millennia. The shared name is a deliberate claim of succession, not evidence that they were the same country.

Naming the dynasty did not complete the new state. Its institutions, capital and royal spaces still had to be established. The next major spatial decision was the move from Gaegyeong to Hanyang in 1394, followed by construction of the capital's principal ritual, royal, administrative and defensive sites.

That is a different question from the founding itself. Continue with why Joseon moved to Hanyang to read the capital plan through the places that remain in central Seoul.

Places that make the founding easier to read

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  Gyeongbokgung Palace

  Gyeongbokgung, the principal palace built after the capital moved to Hanyang.

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  Jongmyo Shrine

  Jongmyo, where the dynasty's royal ancestral line was enshrined.

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  National Museum of Korea

  The National Museum of Korea galleries provide material context for Joseon's institutions and law.

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