Taejo, Yi Seong-gye: The Founder Whose Grave Was Planted With Reeds

At a glance

• 🏹A soldier before a king

  Clever and bold from childhood and outstanding at archery, he grew into a major force repelling Red Turban invasions and Japanese pirates.

• 🧭Born at Yeongheung, surnamed for Jeonju

  He was born at Hwaryeong-bu in Yeongheung, in the far north-east, while his family's bon-gwan — its ancestral seat — was Jeonju.

• 👑Reigned 1392–1398

  He changed the state name to Joseon and moved the capital to Hanyang, then withdrew as retired king after his sons fought over the succession.

• 🌾A grave planted with reeds

  Geonwolleung's mound was turfed with cheongwan reeds from the north instead of the usual Mohwagwan turf.

The founder of Joseon did not come from the Goryeo court. He came from its edge, and his family had spent four generations working for the other side.

His ancestor Yi An-sa moved into Namgyeong, in the Gando region, under Yuan rule and became a Yuan local official. Yi An-sa's son Yi Haeng-ri and grandson Yi Chun served the Yuan for generations as chiliarchs around the Tumen and Deokwon.

Yi Seong-gye's father Yi Ja-chun was likewise a chiliarch at Ssangseong, where the Yuan commandery stood. In 1356 he turned and cooperated with Goryeo's attack on that commandery, did great service in expelling Yuan power, and received Goryeo office; by 1361 he was chiliarch-commander of Sakbangdo and the strongman of the north-east.

So the son inherited both a private army and a habit of choosing sides at the right moment. In the tenth month of 1361 he captured and killed the rebel Pak Ui, and when the Red Turbans took the capital that year he led 2,000 of his own troops into the operation that retook it the following January.

He is described as clever and bold from childhood, and outstandingly good with a bow. Every Joseon king after him was a scholar first. He was not.

The single most quoted moment in his life is a march that stopped.

At the Wihwado retreat he came back to Gaegyeong, removed Choe Yeong, deposed King U and installed King Chang, and so took political and military power. With the active support of the new scholar-officials he built a base as the head of the rising political force, expelled King Gongyang, and acceded as the founder of a new dynasty.

Then, in order: he changed the state name to Joseon, and moved the capital to Hanyang. Those two are separate decisions and each took its own argument — how the name was settled and why the capital moved are told on their own.

And then it went wrong at home. Disillusioned by his sons' fighting over the right of succession, he handed over the throne and withdrew as retired king. He had reigned six years.

He died on 24 May 1408, in a detached hall of Changdeokgung, still in retirement. The palace where the founder of Joseon actually died is not the one he built.

Geonwolleung is unusually well documented, and the documents are about arguments.

The site was fixed at Geomam in Yangju and Pak Ja-cheong, superintendent of the tomb-construction office, began the work. Opinion then split over whether the underground chamber should be a stone chamber or a lime-packed one — and on 26 July the crown prince Yi Je was ordered to go to Jongmyo and divine the answer. The divination came out for a stone chamber.

A state that had just replaced a dynasty on the argument of Confucian merit settled its founder's grave by casting lots in the ancestral shrine. Both things are true at once, and Jongmyo is where the second one happened.

The works were completed on 7 September and the state funeral held on 9 September. In the intercalary fourth month of 1409 the spirit-path stele was raised, its text by Gwon Geun, its calligraphy by Seong Seok-rin and its seal-script heading by Jeong Gu.

Later kings kept coming back. In 1690 Sukjong, finding the stele's characters worn because no pavilion had been built over it, ordered one, completed in 1691. In 1764 Yeongjo went in person for repairs to the T-shaped shrine, performed the rite and stayed a night to watch the work. In 1784, when the stonework and the screen wall collapsed, Jeongjo followed Yeongjo's precedent, performed the offering himself and then began repairs.

The tomb reads in three tiers, and the record gives the inventory.

The mound stands over a stone chamber, ringed with a stone screen and a balustrade. The facing stones carry the twelve zodiac animals to mark the directions, and the corner stones carry ritual bell-and-pestle motifs — early-Joseon features.

The platform is built in three tiers. On the upper tier a spirit stone sits in the centre with pillar stones to either side; on the middle tier a stone lantern stands at the centre with a pair of civil officials facing each other; on the lower tier a centre stone sits between a facing pair of military officials.

Below the mound is the T-shaped shrine — a three-bay hall with a two-bay antechamber — which keeps its eighteenth-century ikgong bracketing well enough to have been designated a Treasure in 2011. The Chungwan tonggo records the distance from the shrine to the red spirit gate as about 97 paces, and lists a kitchen hall and a guard room; only the guard room survives.

And then the grass. Geonwolleung was built in 1408, and eight more tombs were added around it afterwards — which is where the name Donggureung, the East Nine Tombs, comes from. Walk the other eight first and the ninth stops being subtle.

Places connected to Taejo

• 

  Donggureung Royal Tombs

  Geonwolleung, his tomb, is the first of the nine here — and the one with reeds instead of turf.

• 

  Changdeokgung Palace

  The palace where he died in 1408, in a detached hall, while retired.

• 

  Jongmyo Shrine

  Where the crown prince was sent to divine whether his father's grave should have a stone chamber.

• 

  Jeonju Hanok Village

  Jeonju, the ancestral seat his family took its bon-gwan from, generations before the dynasty existed.

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