Taejo of Joseon

Taejo (Korean: 태조; Hanja: 太祖; 4 November 1335 – 27 June 1408), personal name Yi Sŏng-gye (이성계; 李成桂), later Yi Tan (이단; 李旦), was the founder and first monarch of the Joseon dynasty of Korea. After overthrowing the Goryeo dynasty, he ascended to the throne in 1392 and abdicated six years later during a strife between his sons. He was honored as Emperor Go (고황제; 高皇帝) following the establishment of the Korean Empire.
Taejo emphasized continuity over change. No new institutions were created, and no massive purges occurred during his reign. His new dynasty was largely dominated by the same ruling families and officials that had served the previous regime. He re-established amicable ties with Japan and improved relations with Ming China.
The future King Taejo was born in Ssangseong Prefecture on the frontiers of the Yuan dynasty. Taejo's father was Yi Cha-ch'un, an official of Korean ethnicity serving the Mongol-led Yuan. His mother, Lady Ch'oe, came from a family originally from Deungju (present-day Anbyŏn County, North Korea). In 1356, the Yi family defected to Goryeo, helping Goryeo seize control of Ssangseong Prefecture from its governor, Cho So-saeng.
By the late 14th century, the 400-year-old Goryeo dynasty established by Wang Kŏn in 918 was tottering, its foundations collapsing from years of war and de facto occupation by the disintegrating Mongol Empire. The legitimacy of the royal family itself was also becoming an increasingly disputed issue within the court. The ruling house not only failed to govern the kingdom effectively but was also affected by rivalry among its various branches and by generations of forced intermarriage with members of the Yuan imperial family. King U's biological mother being a known slave led to rumors contesting his descent from King Gongmin.
Influential aristocrats, generals, and ministers struggled for royal favor and vied for domination of the court, resulting in deep divisions between various factions. With the ever-increasing number of raids against Goryeo conducted by Japanese pirates and the Red Turbans, those who came to dominate the royal court were the reform-minded Sinjin faction of the scholar-officials and the opposing Gwonmun faction of the old aristocratic families as well as generals who could actually fight off the foreign threats—namely Yi Sŏng-gye and his rival Ch'oe Yŏng. As the Ming dynasty started to emerge, the Yuan forces became more vulnerable, and Goryeo regained its full independence by the mid-1350s although Yuan remnants effectively occupied northeastern territories with large garrisons of troops.
Yi Sŏng-gye started his career as a military officer in 1360 and would eventually rise up the ranks. In October 1361, he killed Pak Ŭi who rebelled against the government. In the same year when the Red Turbans had invaded and seized Gaegyeong (present-day Kaesŏng), he helped recapture the capital city with 3,000 men. In 1362, General Naghachu invaded Goryeo and Yi Sŏng-gye defeated him after being appointed as commander.
General Yi had gained prestige during the late 1370s and early 1380s by pushing Mongol remnants off the peninsula and also by repelling the well-organized Japanese pirates in a series of successful engagements. In the wake of the rise of the Ming dynasty under Zhu Yuanzhang (the Hongwu Emperor), the royal court in Goryeo split into two competing factions: the camp led by General Yi (supporting the Ming) and the one led by General Choe (supporting the Yuan).
When a Ming messenger came to Goryeo in 1388 to demand the return of a significant portion of Goryeo's northern territory, Ch'oe Yŏng seized the opportunity and played upon the prevailing anti-Ming atmosphere to argue for the invasion of the Liaodong Peninsula. Goryeo claimed to be the successor of the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo; as such, reclaiming Manchuria as part of Korean territory was a tenet of its foreign policy throughout its history.
A staunchly opposed Yi Sŏng-gye was chosen to lead the invasion; however, at Wihwa Island on the Amnok River, he made a momentous decision known as the Wihwado Retreat (위화도 회군; 威化島 回軍; lit. 'Turning back the army from Wihwa Island') which would alter the course of Korean history. Aware of the support he enjoyed from both high-ranking officials and the general populace, he decided to revolt and return to Gaegyeong to secure control of the government.
General Yi led his army from the Amnok River straight into the capital, defeated forces loyal to the royal family (led by General Ch'oe whom he proceeded to eliminate), and forcibly dethroned King U in a de facto coup d'état but did not ascend to the throne himself. Instead, he placed on the throne King U's eight-year-old son, Wang Ch'ang, and following a failed attempt to restore the former king to the throne, had both U and his son put to death. Yi Sŏng-gye, now the undisputed power behind the throne, soon forcibly had a distant royal relative named Wang Yo (posthumously King Gongyang) crowned as the new ruler, even among opposition from Goryeo loyalists. After indirectly enforcing his grasp on the royal court through the puppet king, he proceeded to ally himself with Sinjin scholar-officials such as Chŏng To-jŏn and Cho Chun.
One of the most widely known events that occurred during this period was in 1392 when one of Yi Sŏng-gye's sons, Yi Pang-wŏn, organized a banquet for the renowned scholar and statesman Chŏng Mong-ju who refused to be won over by General Yi despite their assorted correspondence in the form of archaic poems and continued to be a faithful advocate for the old regime. Chŏng Mong-ju was revered throughout Goryeo, even by Yi Pang-wŏn himself, but in the eyes of the supporters of the new dynasty, he was seen as an obstacle which had to be removed. After the banquet, he was killed by five men on the Seonjuk Bridge.
In 1392, Yi Sŏng-gye forced King Gongyang to abdicate, exiled him to Wonju (where he and his family were secretly executed), and enthroned himself as the new king, thus ending Goryeo's 475 years of rule. In 1393, he changed his dynasty's name to Joseon.
Among his early achievements was the improvement of relations with the Ming; this had its origin in Taejo's refusal to attack their neighbor. Shortly after his accession, he sent envoys to inform the court at Nanjing that a dynastic change had taken place. Envoys were also dispatched to Japan, seeking the re-establishment of amicable connections. The mission was successful, and Ashikaga Yoshimitsu was reported to have been favorably impressed by this embassy. Envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom were received in 1392, 1394 and 1397, as well as from Siam in 1393.
In 1394, the new capital was established at Hanseong (present-day Seoul).
When the new dynasty was officially promulgated, the issue of which son would be the heir to the throne was brought up. Although Yi Pang-wŏn, Taejo's fifth son by his first wife Queen Sinui, had contributed the most to his father's rise to power, he harbored a profound hatred against two of Taejo's key allies, Chŏng To-jŏn and Nam Ŭn.
Both sides were fully aware of the mutual animosity and felt constantly threatened. When it became clear that Yi Pang-wŏn was the most worthy successor, Chŏng To-jŏn, who had meet and formed a political alliance with Queen Sindeok prior, used his influence to convince the king that the wisest choice would be the son that he loved most, not the son that he felt was best for the kingdom.
In 1392, the eighth son of King Taejo and his second son by Queen Sindeok, Yi Pang-sŏk, was appointed as crown prince. After the sudden death of the queen in 1396 and while Taejo was still in mourning for his wife, Chŏng To-jŏn began conspiring to preemptively kill Yi Pang-wŏn and his brothers to secure his position in the royal court.
Upon hearing of this plan in 1398, Yi Pang-wŏn and his wife, Princess Jeongnyeong, immediately revolted and raided the palace, killing Chŏng To-jŏn, his followers, and the two sons of the late Queen Sindeok. This incident became known as the First Strife of Princes (제1차 왕자의 난). Aghast at the fact that his sons were willing to kill each other for the throne and psychologically exhausted by the death of his second wife, Taejo immediately named his second son, Yi Pang-gwa (posthumously King Jeongjong), as the new successor and abdicated.
Thereafter, Taejo retired to the Hamhung Royal Villa and maintained distance with his fifth son for the rest of his life. Allegedly, Yi Pang-wŏn sent emissaries numerous times and each time the former king executed them to express his firm decision not to meet his son again. This historical anecdote gave birth to the term Hamhung Chasa (함흥차사; 咸興差使) which means a person who never comes back despite several nudges. However, recent studies have found that Taejo did not actually execute any of the emissaries; these people died during revolts which coincidentally occurred in the region.
In 1400, King Jeongjong named Yi Pang-wŏn as heir presumptive and voluntarily abdicated. That same year, Yi Pang-wŏn assumed the throne of Joseon; he is posthumously known as King Taejong.
King Taejo died ten years after his abdication on 27 June 1408 in Changdeokgung. He was buried at Geonwolleung (건원릉) in the Donggureung Cluster (present-day Guri, South Korea). The tomb of his umbilical cord is located in Geumsan County, South Korea.
Although Taejo overthrew Goryeo and expelled officials who remained loyal to the previous dynasty, many regard him as a revolutionary and a decisive ruler who eliminated an inept, obsolete and crippled governing system to save the nation from foreign forces and conflicts.
The resulting safeguarding of domestic security led the Koreans to rebuild and further discover their culture. In the midst of the rival Yuan and Ming dynasties, Joseon encouraged the development of national identity which was once threatened by the Mongols. However, some scholars, particularly in North Korea, view Taejo as a mere traitor to the old regime and bourgeois apostate while paralleling him to General Ch'oe Yŏng, a military elite who conservatively served Goryeo to death.
His diplomatic successes in securing Korea in the early modern period are notable.
One of the many issues demonstrating the early strained relationship between Joseon and Ming was the debate of Taejo's genealogy which began as early as 1394 and became a source of diplomatic friction that lasted over 200 years. The Collected Regulations of the Great Ming erroneously recorded 'Yi Tan' (Taejo's personal name) as the son of Yi In-im and that Yi Tan killed the last four kings of Goryeo. This established Ming's opinion of Taejo as an usurper first and foremost from the time of the Hongwu Emperor when he repeatedly refused to acknowledge Taejo as the new sovereign of the Korean Peninsula. The first mention of this error was in 1518 (about 9 years after the publication). Those who saw the publication petitioned the Ming for redress including, among others, left chanseong Yi Kye-maeng and minister of rites Nam Gon, who wrote Jonggye Byeonmu (종계변무; 宗系辨誣). It took until 1584 (after many Ming envoys had seen the petitions) through chief scholar Hwang Chŏng-uk that the issue was finally addressed. The Wanli Emperor commissioned a second edition in 1576 (covering the years between 1479 and 1584). About a year after its completion, Yu Hong saw the revision and returned to Joseon with the good news.