King Jeongjo: The Grandson Who Was Made Someone Else's Heir

At a glance

• 👑Reigned 1776–1800

  The twenty-second king of Joseon. Personal name Yi San, art name Hongjae. He took the throne at 25 after a year as regent.

• 📚The Gyujanggak

  Established on his accession and grown into the core organ of his government, in place of the faded Hongmungwan.

• 🧱A new city at Suwon

  The building of the new city of Hwaseong is listed among his achievements, alongside the Jangyongyeong guard and the Ilseongnok.

• ⚰️Buried beside his father

  By his will he was buried on the eastern hill of Yungneung; he and Queen Hyoui were later joined at what is now Geolleung.

He was invested as royal grandson-heir in 1759, in Yeongjo's thirty-fifth year. He was seven.

Just as his birth father Prince Jangheon had been sacrificed to factional strife, Jeongjo too went through every kind of danger as heir, and got through it with the help of Hong Guk-yeong and others. He acted as regent from 1775, and when Yeongjo died the following year he came to the throne at twenty-five.

He had used the waiting years on books. He set up a library called Gaeyuwa, took an interest in the Qianlong culture of Qing China, imported books and worked at his studies.

Then the accession, and a list of names. He established the Gyujanggak at once, professing a politics of culture, while removing Jeong Hu-gyeom, Hong In-han, Hong Sang-gan and Yun Yang-ro, who had obstructed his accession. He went further and expelled even Hong Guk-yeong, who had traded on the king's favour to practise sedo politics, and concentrated on building a system of direct personal rule.

Expelling the man who had protected him is the detail worth keeping. It is the same decision as the Gyujanggak, made about a person instead of an institution.

It is easy to read "royal library" and move on. The record is more specific.

He made the Gyujanggak the symbolic seat of literary authority in place of the faded Hongmungwan, progressively assigning it the functions of the Hongmungwan, the Royal Secretariat, the Office of Annals and the Office of the Royal Genealogy, and grew it into the core organ of his regime.

Two slogans carried it. Under jakseongjihwa he gathered established talent and selected and educated junior civil officials, raising them as pillars of the state and securing them as his own loyal following. Under umunjichi he pursued the import of the Siku Quanshu, begun while he was still heir, and put effort into publishing — developing new type: Imjinja, Jeongyuja, Hanguja, Saengsaengja, Jeongrija and Chunchugwanja.

The ban on importing Chinese editions of the Four Books and Three Classics was only possible because of that accumulation of a culture of his own. A publishing programme as an import-substitution policy.

He also absorbed the strengths of the various schools — the Silhak school rooted in the Namin and the Bukhak school based in the Noron — and encouraged their distinctive scholarship; and he actively supported the wihang literature of the jungin and the classes below them.

The list of his achievements beyond the Gyujanggak runs: the compilation of the Ilseongnok, the Muyedobotongji, the founding of the Jangyongyeong guard, the reform of penal administration, the abolition of the gungcha tax-collection law, the promulgation of the Jahyul jeonchik and the Seoryu sotong jeolmok, the abolition of the slave-recapture law, the making and distribution of the Cheonsehryeok calendar, and the tonggong policy.

The Seoryu sotong jeolmok opened office to the sons of secondary wives; the abolition of the slave-recapture law ended the state hunt for runaways. Those two sit oddly beside a fortress, and they are the same reign.

Among his achievements is the construction of the new city of Hwaseong at Suwon. The wall itself — how it was built in two and a half years, and why it came out 5.4 km — is in Hwaseong Fortress.

What belongs here is where it points. He died in the sixth month of 1800, at the age of 49, and by his own will was buried on the eastern hill of Yungneung. When his consort Queen Hyoui died in 1821 they were interred together on the western hill of Hyeollyungwon — which is today's Geolleung.

Yungneung is his father's tomb. Read the map that way and the reign has a spine: a son who had to be registered as someone else's heir moved his father's grave to Suwon, built a walled city beside it, and left instructions to be buried on the next hill.

One last change happened long after he was dead. His temple name was originally Jeongjong. In 1899, when the Korean Empire was established, it was raised to Jeongjo and he was posthumously honoured as the Emperor Seon. That is why older records and the title of his own annals do not spell his name the way the signs do.

Places connected to Jeongjo

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  Suwon Hwaseong Fortress

  The new city he built at Suwon — the achievement his reign is usually reduced to.

• 

  Yungneung and Geolleung Royal Tombs

  His father's tomb and his own: he asked to be buried on the hill beside it, and Geolleung is where he and Queen Hyoui ended up.

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  Changdeokgung Palace

  The palace where the Gyujanggak was established on his accession in 1776.

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