Medieval Korea: from the Goryeo to Joseon periods

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Korea by Dr John Lee and comedian Erika Ehler to learn all about the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties. Nowadays, Korean culture has a global reach and international fanbase – but what about the country's medieval history? During the period known in Europe as the Middle Ages, the ancient kingdoms of Korea were unified, and the resulting polity ruled in turn by two dynasties, the Goryeo and the Joseon. This episode explores this period in Korea’s history, from the foundation of the Goryeo state in 918, through the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century and the coup that brought the Joseon dynasty to power, to the Japanese invasions of the 1590s. Along the way, we take in a foundation myth involving a garlic-eating bear, look at the position of women and enslaved people in Joseon society, explore the architectural styles of the period, and tell the story of Sejong the Great and the creation of Hangul. If you’re a fan of Korean culture, palace coups and political intrigue, and the everyday details of life in the past, you’ll love our episode on medieval Korea. If you want more East Asian history, listen to our episodes on Edo Japan and Tang Dynasty China. And for more on the Mongols, check out our episode on Genghis Khan. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Auréliane Perrin Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Studio and Edit Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Series Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:39Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me with a Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are mastering our hungle and watching out for marauding Mongols as we march back through the centuries to learn all about medieval Korea. And to help us sort out our choreo from our Choson dynasties, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, he's Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University of Durham. He's a historian of early modern East Asia, especially the Korean Peninsula, with a particular research focus on environmental history. It's Dr John Lee, welcome John.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me, I'm really happy to be here.

• 2:16Greg Jenner?

  Pleasure to have you in. And in Comedy Corner, she's an Emmy-nominated writer and comedian. Maybe you've watched one of the many hilarious shows she's written for, including Late Night Mash, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, or Kunk on Life. Or maybe you've seen her guesting on Frankie Boyle's New World Order, or comedians giving lectures, or you've seen her live on tour as a stand-up. It's Erica Eila, welcome Erica.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 2:36Greg Jenner?

  Welcome to the show.

• 2:37Speaker 05

  Happy to be here.

• 2:38Greg Jenner?

  We're delighted to have you in. It is your first time on the podcast, so I am contractually obliged to ask you, do you like history?

• 2:45Speaker 05

  I will say I liked history when my hot history teacher taught it to me.

• 2:49Greg Jenner?

  Oh, no, okay, so there's a crush involved.

• 2:52Speaker 05

  There was a crush involved.

• 2:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  But it did get me interested, it did, I got really good marks back here.

• 2:57Greg Jenner?

  Okay, hot teacher, that's good. But history now, are you still, you still into history now, or are you sort of, is that a faded time for you?

• 3:05Speaker 05

  I'd say it's a bit faded, but it's one of those things where I don't actively seek it out, but whenever somebody tells me something, I do find it really interesting. Like, my dad's like a real history nerd, and sometimes when we're on road trips, that's his way of connecting with his daughter. It's an interesting choice, it doesn't always work, but I do find it, I do find it enlightening. Like, it's fun to learn.

• 3:23Greg Jenner?

  It's very strong dad energy to do history. And I mean, I've heard that when you were younger, you were a bit of a K-pop fan.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, when I was in high school, yeah. It was very popular in my, in my high school. In fact, it started like a drama on prom night because this one girl wanted only K-pop songs. It wasn't me, to be clear, I'm a little bit more. But yeah, and it was super popular, yeah.

• 3:46Greg Jenner?

  I mean, it's still, I mean, it's huge.

• 3:47Speaker 05

  I mean, it still is now, yeah.

• 3:48Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely massive. So you know a little bit about the kind of modern sort of K-pop culture, do you know anything about the history of Korea, medieval Korea in fact?

• 3:56Speaker 05

  Not at all, not at all.

• 3:59Greg Jenner?

  Ditto. So, what do you know?

• 4:06Greg Jenner?

  This is called the So What Do You Know? This is why I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject. Now, nowadays, Korean culture, of course, is a global sensation, so maybe you love Korean masterpiece movies like Parasite, or you're tuning into your K-dramas like Squid Game or Crash Landing on New. Perhaps you've, well, you've adored K-pop, perhaps you caught BTS on their record-breaking tour, or saw them at the World Cup final, maybe you've got a bias or a bias record you can't stop thinking about it, or maybe you've just, you know, obsessed with Korean skincare, or Kinchi, or Blackpink, or K-pop Demon Hunters, my daughter's favourite film. But when it comes to medieval Korea, maybe you know a little bit about the historical K-dramas, but I'm not sure there's much more beyond that, certainly not for me.

• 4:50Greg Jenner?

  So perhaps the history's less familiar, so what do we need to know about medieval Korea? How does it measure up to the plot of Alchemy of Souls? And what does a garlic-eating bear have to do with anything? Let's find out. Right, John, I've said this episode is about medieval Korea. Medieval's sort of a European concept, we go Romans to Renaissance in European history. Does the same apply to Korea, and can we, can we identify our medieval period?

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Right, so the era roughly contemporaneous with the European Middle Ages, that would be the Koryo and Choson eras in, in Korean history. So Koryo ruling from 918, and Choson lasting all the way from 1392 to 1910. So one of the longest regimes of the, like, late medieval, early modern world. And these dynasties ruled pretty much the Korean Peninsula, so that's roughly comprising North and South Korea today. And just to give you a sense of size, the Korean Peninsula is roughly the size of Great Britain.

• 5:50Greg Jenner?

  Oh, great.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, roughly.

• 5:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay, tiny bit smaller.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Today, we'll be looking at a period from the establishment of Koryo rule in 918 to the 1590s, an important decade when you see these sort of failed Japanese invasions that lead to a lot of changes in Korean society.

• 6:08Greg Jenner?

  So 918 to the 1590s, so that's the equivalent of Alfred the Great to Queen Elizabeth I. It's quite a lot of history by British, you know, if you're comparisons there. For the Korean people, where do we begin our origin myth? Do you know the origin story of the Korean people? Have you ever encountered it?

• 6:23Speaker 05

  I can't say I have, no.

• 6:24Greg Jenner?

  Do you want to have a guess?

• 6:25Speaker 05

  The origin of Korean?

• 6:26Greg Jenner?

  Like, a myth.

• 6:27Speaker 05

  A myth, how they came about?

• 6:29Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Speaker 05

  I assume a god is involved, I would guess.

• 6:33Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  A god is involved. Maybe if I, with the knowledge I know about K-pop, that there was a boot camp of them all trying to be like, really, we're gonna make you these beautiful people with clear skin. And then they're like, that's Koreans.

• 6:49Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, so they're all learning choreography.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay, I mean, I love that. I think god involved is an interesting, it's not far off, but I mean, we have to say, it involves lions and tigers and bears, oh my, not the lions, it involves tigers and bears. How does this story begin? What does it tell us about the beginnings?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Well, so this common origin myth that you still see, if you open like a primary school history textbook today in North or South Korea, involves, it starts with a god, so you're right on that, named Hwanung, who went to live among humans on a mountain, according to legend, this is Tepeksan, probably referring to Pekeusan, which is a mountain on the sort of present-day North Korean-Chinese border. And on that mountain, there was a bear and a tiger living in a cave, and they prayed to this god to make them, to turn them into humans.

• 7:46Greg Jenner?

  Ah.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  And so the god answered their prayers, but with a contest, so.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  It was a K-pop contest, yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  So he gave them wormwood and 20 pieces of garlic, and said, if you can just eat this and not see sunlight for 100 days, their wish should be granted. He would turn them into a human. The tiger failed, he couldn't take it after, he just left. But the bear was patient and succeeded, and the god turned the bear into a woman. And they had a child, and this child was named Tan Gun, who would rule supposedly for 1500 years, or a huge, long period of time. And his descendants are, according to this myth, the founders of Korea's ancient kingdoms.

• 8:39Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:41Greg Jenner?

  So they're in a cave with garlic and wormwood, you said? What's wormwood?

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Okay, the Korean term would probably be suk, which could be wormwood or mugwort, so a type of herb, an edible herb.

• 8:51Greg Jenner?

  An edible herb, okay, lovely, garlic and herbs, not so bad.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:55Greg Jenner?

  So Erica, is 100 days of darkness and constant garlic breath worth it to be a human? Is being a human that good?

• 9:02Speaker 05

  I don't know if our experience is that good, but I, I like garlic, though.

• 9:06Greg Jenner?

  Okay, okay, I mean, I feel like a bear in a cave, that's, that's easy, bears live in caves.

• 9:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:12Greg Jenner?

  Poor tiger.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Also, I thought tigers would be stronger.

• 9:15Greg Jenner?

  So, okay, so we have our origin myth. But when does Korea emerge as a single kingdom? Because I, as I understand from ancient Korean history, there are quite a lot of disparate ancient kingdoms. But we're into the medieval period. So when did we get our foundational Korean kingdom? Or don't we?

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, there's various sort of ancient kingdoms that are pointed out in the archaeological record. But if we look at the written documentary evidence, by the third or fourth, third or fourth century common era, you have three kingdoms firmly established on the Korean peninsula, known as Goryeo, Baejeon, and Shilla. And then in the 10th century, a warlord named Wanggon would unify the Korean peninsula and establish the first ruler of the Goryeo dynasty, which starts our sort of medieval narrative in 1918.

• 10:10Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  So this kingdom consisted again of the Korean peninsula plus a chunk of Manchuria as well, with the river, the Amnok River forming the boundary with Chinese dynasties.

• 10:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Manchuria is northeast China, right? So that's quite a large stretch of land.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  That's right. So the earlier kingdom I mentioned, Goryeo, actually controlled a huge chunk of Manchuria back in, again, a much earlier period.

• 10:35Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so the Goryeo dynasty, that's where, is that where we get the word Goryeo from?

• 10:39Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 10:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and is that where we get the word Korea from?

• 10:41Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 10:42Greg Jenner?

  That's helpful. Okay, good. So presumably, the reason that, you know, K-pop bands are so good at Goryeo is because they're named after Korea.

• 10:50Speaker 05

  It's within them.

• 10:51Greg Jenner?

  It's natural, it's in the name, the clue's there, it's very helpful. We have our first Korean king, Wanggon, is it?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Wanggon, yes, sir.

• 10:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, great. So he's sort of the first warlord who controls this landmass, which is very, very helpful. But we're already jumping ahead because we're into now the 12th century. And we get a serious rebellion against the Goryeo rule. Erica, can you guess the profession of the man who leads this rebellion? He's not a sort of king, he's got another hobby.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  I'm gonna say cook.

• 11:18Greg Jenner?

  Oh, nice.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  Just cuz.

• 11:21Greg Jenner?

  Just, you know, just really good.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  I have a feeling. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like Korean food's very good. If someone's a leader, maybe that's where it came from.

• 11:30Greg Jenner?

  I would certainly follow a good cook into battle.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:32Greg Jenner?

  You know, if you know that you're gonna get a really good meal out of it. It's not a cook. The phrase is a geomancer?

• 11:38Speaker 04

  A geomancer, that's right, that's right. So we have no idea about this man's cooking skills, but Myeongchung was his name, a geomancer.

• 11:48Greg Jenner?

  Which means what, sorcerer?

• 11:50Speaker 04

  In a sense, it's like a diviner, a sort of a master of sort of this kind of East Asian, some would call it a sort of pseudoscience of, in Chinese feng shui, in Korean feng shui, finding fortunate places to build your house or bury your ancestors. And in a sense, yeah, you could say a sort of expert fortune teller and diviner.

• 12:15Greg Jenner?

  That's pretty, I mean, pretty handy as a leader.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he's like doing a vibe check everywhere to make sure that it's, yeah, all good.

• 12:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's a good place for battle, yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Vibe check, yeah, we're gonna win.

• 12:27Greg Jenner?

  That's really, I mean, geo, I suppose, is where we get the word earth from. So the idea of the earth geo, he's looking, he's places and he feels something is a positive place to be or, you know, does that mean he's sort of got fortune telling skills as well? He knows what's coming. Pretty handy. Does that mean, therefore, that he wins? You know, does, is it Myeongchung, his name, Myeongchung?

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Myeongchung, that's right.

• 12:49Greg Jenner?

  Does he win this rebellion?

• 12:51Speaker 04

  He does not.

• 12:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, well.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  You should have seen, I was about to make the same joke. No, you're fine.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  He must have told his followers something else. But essentially, he tried to move the Korean capital from the Goryeo capital of Kaesong, which is in, close to the current DMZ that separates South and North Korea on the North Korean side presently.

• 13:14Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  He wanted to move the capital to Pyongyang, the current capital of North Korea, so much further to the northwest. And scholars think that Myeongchung also represented this sort of, this tension between Koreans who were more nativist, who wanted a more assertive, independent foreign policy, and Koreans who wanted closer ties with China. And this is important because this is a tension that will persist, one could argue, in later periods in Korean history as well.

• 13:42Greg Jenner?

  And in terms of faith at this time, are they, are the Koreans Confucians? Are they, what's their faith, Buddhism?

• 13:47Speaker 04

  In the Goryeo period, you could say it was much more pluralistic. You had these like kind of nativist geomancers like Myeongchung, but he was also a Buddhist monk.

• 13:57Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 13:58Speaker 04

  So he had this kind of pluralistic, more eclectic strain of ideas just flowing through Korea. He had Confucians, who could also be patrons of Buddhist temples and so forth. But in the Chosun period, which we'll talk about later, is more Confucian in a sense.

• 14:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So, so Magic Myeongchung, you know, he's not quite Magic Mike because actually it all sort of falls apart for him, it doesn't really work out. So he doesn't really succeed. So the Goryeo dynasty continues. And the man sent to defeat him is called Kimbushik?

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Kimbushik, that's right.

• 14:34Greg Jenner?

  And is this a mission Kim possible? You know, is this a kind of, is he gonna just swoop in and just crush him? How do you, how do you defeat a magic geomancer?

• 14:40Speaker 04

  So Kimbushik seems to be, at least according to the records, some of which he wrote himself, so this is not a bias. He's a sort of classic Confucian bureaucrat from this, but also a member of these kind of aristocratic families from the southeast. So he certainly had influence, he certainly had money, and these sort of broader networks and influences and the wealth that could raise a large army and crush this rebellion in the northwest. In the aftermath, Kimbushik will help to restructure Goryeo's governance, make it more centralized around a ruler and his close ministers, trying to follow this more sort of classic Chinese-style Confucian bureaucracy. He also compiled the histories of the three kingdoms, and this is where the bias comes in.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  A lot of what we know about these periods in Korean history come also from Kimbushik's own writing, which tends to make his part of Korea in the southeast look very good and make himself look really good.

• 15:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  That's not, he's not the first person in history to do that.

• 15:41Greg Jenner?

  No, Julius Caesar did the same, but sure. So the pen is mightier than the sword. But actually, get yourself a man who can do both, Erica, because, you know, he's got the pen and the sword.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  He's doing it all.

• 15:52Greg Jenner?

  Do we consider Kimbushik to be a king in his own right? Or is he, is he kind of reforming on behalf of the Goryeo kings?

• 15:57Speaker 04

  On behalf of the Goryeo kings.

• 15:59Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  So that's sort of a classic kind of Confucian sage, Confucian official. He's not taking power, but advising the king.

• 16:06Greg Jenner?

  And one of the men that Kimbushik writes about in his lovely book is called Kim Yoo shin. And there's something quite special about him and his birth. Do you know what that could be?

• 16:19Speaker 05

  His birth?

• 16:19Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  The mom ate the placenta. She was like, really, really, like, new agey back then.

• 16:27Greg Jenner?

  I mean, she may, she may have done, I don't know, that's not in my script. The thing that is quite unusual, the gestation period was a little bit longer than the average nine months, 20 months.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 16:38Greg Jenner?

  Which feels more elephant than human.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:42Greg Jenner?

  What? I mean, John, that feels odd, strange. I mean, obviously, this is a semi-magical mythical hero, is it? Can we, can we sort of assume that this is someone with powers?

• 16:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I mean, this is part of his sort of superhero origin story in a sense, yeah, yeah.

• 17:01Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so he's, he's kind of half mortal, half god? Is that kind of the thing?

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Well, just kind of, in a sense, it follows this sort of geometric tradition, right? This guy was fated to be a great general.

• 17:13Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Even his birth was unusual. You know, even his pre-birth, like, it was unusual.

• 17:20Greg Jenner?

  Yes, he was cooking for 20 months until they made sure he was absolutely right.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  See, I would, I would take it a different way. Like, I would, I would see if someone was in the womb for 20 months, like, weak baby, needed, needed more of mama's juice. If baby was out in one month, strong, I'm like, now that's a god, I'm following him in a battle.

• 17:38Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  That's how I see it, but maybe that's, that's my opinion.

• 17:41Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, more like xenomorph in Alien, like, they sort of immediately come out three, three hours later. Okay, so he's in the womb for 20 months, he comes out, he's this heroic superhero warrior. And talking of warriors, by the 1170s or so, Korea is under military rule.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:57Greg Jenner?

  And, you know, these days, we're used to the BTS army of super fans. But what are we talking about military rule? What does that mean? How is it different to the Goryeo before?

• 18:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it was an interesting situation in the 12th century. So some of the listeners may be familiar with the history of Korea's neighbor, Japan, and its sort of age of the samurai and the sort of warlordism that's endemic throughout pre-modern Japanese history. And in some ways, for this brief period from the 1170s to the early 13th century, during these several decades, Korea may have been going through an interestingly similar pattern. So basically, a general named Che Chum-hun, he established himself and his descendants, all military men, as sort of de facto military rulers, sort of following a pattern you see again in medieval Japanese history.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  And these Korean generals basically tried to keep the civil administration and the king under their thumb. So sort of trying to undoing their reforms, some of the reforms that Kim Buxik had done. So basically, you see the pattern, there's a lot of tension, a lot of infighting. You know, you first had these battles between geomancers and Confucians, and now you have military men coming in to try to assert themselves. And it's very interesting, because if the the Che family had stayed in power, Korean history probably would have been very different, maybe more similar to patterns in Japanese history. If not for a world historical turning point that would emerge in the 13th century.

• 19:30Greg Jenner?

  There's a sort of if there, isn't there? The what if could have been, but the what if is that the arrival of a terrifying threat coming over the horizon. I've seen plenty of Korean horror movies, and usually it's, you know, witch, ghost, demon, goblin. This time around, it's something much more scary. Do you know what it would be?

• 19:46Speaker 05

  A man.

• 19:47Greg Jenner?

  Not just any man, it's a terrifying man, but the name, what is it? It's the Mongol Khan, right?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 19:55Greg Jenner?

  So the Mongols are coming.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:57Greg Jenner?

  Do you know anything about the Mongols?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  A little bit, not really, I don't know, just like wife tales that my mom would tell. Where if like I like see somebody who was randomly Irish, who looked sort of like Asian, who I thought was half Asian like me, my mom would be like, no, that's Khan. I go way back.

• 20:15Greg Jenner?

  He did have a lot of kids, Genghis Khan, didn't he? Genghis Khan had, you know, supposedly, you know, there's millions of people descended from him. So we're talking here, of course, about Genghis Khan, better known as Genghis Khan. We did an episode about him, look it up, it's a lot of fun. It's not Genghis Khan who comes over the mountain, is it, as one of his descendants?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  That's right. So the Mongols under Genghis Khan, of course, they first break out of the step and launch invasions of northern China and other parts of Asia. The conquest of Korea took quite a while, multiple generations of Khans.

• 20:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  And partly because Korea was kind of the sideshow, they were more interested in conquering China, Iran, and these places. So the Mongols first entered Korean territory during attacks on Kitan, Manchurian rebels who had fled into Korea. And initially, in 1218, 1219 or so, the Mongols asked Koryo to join them and supply them with troops and grain. So there were, there was a temporary alliance at that time. The temporary, the being key word there.

• 21:18Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so we have a business proposal on the table. Is it sort of a threat but not a threat, or is it more of a kind of, are both sides getting something out of this?

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Initially, that was the idea, but this is where the Che military family, they didn't want to do this. And so over the next few decades, there's multiple destructive Mongol campaigns, largely due to these military men trying to assert themselves, assert their independence, and rejecting some of these Mongol proposals. And basically, the Che military family and their allies, they would be the Koreans would fight hardest against the Mongols. And they basically eventually get wiped out, which is rather convenient, actually, for the Korean kings and some of the civil officials, one could argue.

• 22:01Greg Jenner?

  Because the Korean kings had been under the thumb of the, of these sort of walled families.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Have you guys seen Bugs Life? This is like the exact scene, as Bugs Life. Yeah, where they even give, the bugs give grains.

• 22:12Greg Jenner?

  That's true. I think this is what Hollywood does, it feeds us Asian history without telling us it's Asian history.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  I think Bugs Life is a great example of this sort of tributary framework, right? Or at least how we, it's actually a good example, I think, yeah.

• 22:25Greg Jenner?

  We've done an episode on the Mongols before, on Genghis Khan. Typically, these alliances don't last, the kind of the superpower just wins. Is it a hassle being vassal? Are you forced to hand things over, you know, to the Koryo kings? Are they independent? Do they have freedom? Or is it kind of that the Mongols are in charge?

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Right, so, once the Mongols complete their conquest of Korea in 1270, and the Korean king becomes vassalized.

• 22:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  The sort of tacit agreement that you mentioned earlier continues. The Koreans would send troops and grain, but also some more controversial things as well. Koreans were also obligated to send young men to serve as eunuchs in the Mongol capital. So you're sending basically your son off to China, and you know what's going to happen to him, unfortunately.

• 23:15Greg Jenner?

  Sure, when you say serve as a eunuch, first day on the job is an operation, presumably.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Okay. And women were also sent, young women would be sent to serve as courtesans in the Mongol court. You do have these Korean records, Korean scholars talking about families hiding their sons, hiding their daughters, when they found out the Mongol troops were coming to collect the tribute.

• 23:37Greg Jenner?

  That's pretty, yeah, that couldn't be fun at all.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  No.

• 23:40Greg Jenner?

  They're still Koryo kings, but they're not powerful.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Right, so that, what the Koreans got in exchange is, the Mongols aren't going to come back and ravage the country, and the Korean kings got to stay in power. But even the Korean kings, they had to spend their childhoods in the Mongol capital, which is, was called Daedu at the time, but it's actually present day Beijing. So Koryo kings grew up in the Mongol court, they would later often marry Mongol princesses. So you have this sort of kind of half Korean, half Mongolian nobility and monarchy by the 14th century. And some, and Korean scholars would also go to Mongol China, to what's called Yuan China, and take the civil examinations there, and even serve in the Mongol court.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  One really famous example is a man named Yi Seh, who was born in the early 14th century, who passed the civil exams in Mongol China and came back and set up a school where he trained, came back to Korea and set up a school where he trained Korean elites in Chinese philosophy.

• 24:43Greg Jenner?

  And it gets a little bit more confusing, because then we get the Red Turban rebels, who are Chinese rebels?

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you're, you're referring to Red Turban rebels, and these are, these are representative of various rebel groups that emerged in the mid 14th century, as the Mongol Empire's falling apart. So we're not going to go into that, why it fell apart, that's another, that's another long story. But some of these rebels, they weren't just flying Mongols, they also took the, they took the opportunity to invade Korea.

• 25:13Greg Jenner?

  Sure, why not?

• 25:15Speaker 04

  So this adds to a lot of the chaos going on on the Korean peninsula, you have the Mongol Empire falling apart, and various tensions, political tensions are reemerging in the Korean peninsula as the Mongol Empire declines.

• 25:30Greg Jenner?

  Gotcha. Okay, so they're, they're sort of confusing the issue a little bit, and we do get a political assassination, King Kongming.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Right, so Kongming is a really interesting figure, he's really representative of these generations of Koryo kings who had spent their childhoods in the Mongol capital, and they came back to Korea with a Mongol princess, whom they supposedly were deeply in love, and it's very, and he had some ambitions to sort of reform the Korda dynasty, centralize it, even some argue, some historians argue he had plans to abolish slavery, although none of this would come to fruition, because he would be assassinated in 1374, yeah.

• 26:12Greg Jenner?

  And he's replaced by a king who's quite young, do you want to guess how young?

• 26:16Speaker 05

  I'm going to say nine years old.

• 26:19Greg Jenner?

  I mean, pretty close, he's 10, yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 26:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. How do you feel about 10-year-olds being in power? Would the world be better or worse if we just handed all, you know, all control to a 10-year-old?

• 26:29Speaker 05

  I feel like, let's try it, because what's happening now with these old fogies, I don't think is working, so it's like, why not?

• 26:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, we've had the gerontocracy, let's have the kids, give the kids a chance.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  I feel like, you know that phrase, it was like, oh, you don't learn hate, right? So a child would probably be a little bit nicer, but let's see about this 10-year-old king, what he's about to do.

• 26:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, John, who is this 10-year-old boy? Does he have power, or is he just a puppet?

• 26:55Speaker 04

  Sadly, he was just a puppet. Well, and it's, again, it's this tumultuous time, you know, this ambitious leader had just been killed, and a 10-year-old boy was a lot more palatable to a lot of the nobility.

• 27:09Greg Jenner?

  So what's his name, this 10-year-old?

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Oh, King Woo.

• 27:11Greg Jenner?

  Woo, okay. And so he's just a puppet, so who's pulling the puppet strings? Who's the real Svengali here?

• 27:18Speaker 04

  So you have this, again, this is a lot of political intrigue going on. Real power is held by a man named Yi Inim, leader of another clan. So essentially, you could just see a lot of political intrigue ongoing as the Mongol Empire declines, and Korea is trying to decide what to do as this massive continental empire falls apart.

• 27:42Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so what happens next then? If the Mongol Empire is collapsing, the Yuan dynasty is coming to an end, does Korea get its independence back? Do we still have this sort of, these puppet kings, or do we get an assertion of someone who's, who's going to reclaim power?

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Yes, a man does step in at this time, a general, a man named Yi Songge, whose father, also a military man, had served the Mongols, actually. So Yi Songge was a general who, with the support of other generals, overthrew the now adult King Woo in 1388.

• 28:19Greg Jenner?

  He'd aged out.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  He's aged out, yeah. And replaced, replaced him with the king's nine-year-old son. I see a pattern here, yes. One year later, Yi Songge would just replace this kid with a distant relative.

• 28:35Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Named Konyang, so.

• 28:37Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  Has there ever been a baby?

• 28:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, we've had babies in Scottish history, we've had babies in English history, but Henry VI was a baby in English history.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  Becoming king? That I don't know, yeah.

• 28:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, okay, eight years old, nine years old is the youngest we'll go so far.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  At least for Korda period.

• 28:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay, good, all right. Is he a king, or is he not a king?

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Not yet.

• 28:58Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  But in 1392, he removed King Konyang.

• 29:03Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  And he made himself king.

• 29:07Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay. When you say removed, is that sort of a polite term for kill him?

• 29:12Speaker 04

  Exiled and probably quietly murdered.

• 29:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 29:17Speaker 01

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• 29:46Greg Jenner?

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• 30:04Speaker 06

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• 30:26Greg Jenner?

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• 31:09Greg Jenner?

  So our new king, John, what's he called?

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, so he's known in records as King Taejoon. That's his monarchical name. He renames this new state, this new dynasty, Chosun.

• 31:23Greg Jenner?

  So this is the end of the Koryo dynasty?

• 31:25Speaker 04

  This is the end of the Koryo dynasty now. Right, the old descendants of Wanggon are now hunted down, killed.

• 31:33Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  King Taejoon would move the capital from Kaesong to Hanjang, also called Hansang, which is basically present day Seoul, present day Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

• 31:46Greg Jenner?

  So it was in the northern peninsula and it moves to the southern peninsula?

• 31:49Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 31:50Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Seoul is still the capital because of this move, because of this decision?

• 31:55Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 31:56Greg Jenner?

  Okay, that's fascinating.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:58Greg Jenner?

  What period are we in here? I mean, the 1300s?

• 32:00Speaker 04

  So this is like around the 1390s.

• 32:01Greg Jenner?

  Okay, great, okay. So this is the beginning of the Chosun dynasty, and we've got a brand new capital city in the south of the peninsula.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:08Greg Jenner?

  And what do we get in terms of society? Do we still have these kind of elite warlords running around, doing their own thing? You know, the elites are called the Yangban, right? Is that correct?

• 32:18Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 32:19Greg Jenner?

  Tell us about them. Are they powerful still?

• 32:21Speaker 04

  One could say that the Chosun period is sort of a culmination of the reforms that we talked about earlier, starting with Kim Buxik, for the victory of these sort of more Confucian minded, more synodic reformers, or Koreans who were more fond of aspects of Chinese civilization and wanted to turn Korea into this sort of Confucian utopia. They establish a, again, a country very much based upon this sort of Chinese model, with the king at the center of government and advised by members of the Korean aristocracy, known as the Yangban. So the Yangban dominate not just politics, but much of the economy and society throughout the Chosun dynasty.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  There's a lot of debate whether, to what extent did the nature of the aristocracy change between the Koryo and Chosun periods? We're not going to go into that today. But yeah, essentially, you see a revamping of the country into this very centralized order with a seven member state council that reviewed matters, gave advice to the king, instructed bureaucrats and supervised officials. And the government was reworked into six government ministries, personnel, taxation, rites and rituals, military affairs, punishments, and public works.

• 33:38Greg Jenner?

  Wow. This ministry of punishments, that feels quite scary.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:44Greg Jenner?

  Which of those six would you want to run, Erica? You know, you've got personnel, taxation, rites and religion, military affairs, punishments and public works. Which minister would you be?

• 33:54Speaker 05

  I think I'd pick taxation. It'd be nice to be on the other side of that for once. Go on people's door and be like, hey, cough it up.

• 34:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Pay out, I mean, how does taxation work? Are the, is everyone taxed, you know, peasants all the way up to the elites?

• 34:09Speaker 04

  In theory, you're supposed to. There's a land taxed and so forth, but elites found various ways to get out of the land tax.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  Wow, so like modern.

• 34:18Greg Jenner?

  A tailor's old as time, right?

• 34:20Speaker 04

  There was also, everyone was supposed to serve in the military, but elites got out of that.

• 34:26Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  And even non-elites would pay a special tax to get out of military service. Which became a major source of revenue, actually, for the government.

• 34:34Greg Jenner?

  Sure, right. So Erica will be in charge of taxation, that's good. I guess I'm in charge of punishments, so you know, I'll be lenient for now. But can you talk to us about the society, the wider structure of society? You mentioned earlier enslavement and enslaved class. What's the demography of Korea at this point? How many people or what level of the society is enslaved or is peasant class?

• 34:59Speaker 04

  Right, so of course, these percentages, you know, they vary greatly depending upon region and time period. We see, and it depends on the documentation we have, we could look at some census registers from the mid 17th century, you have areas of Korea where 30% of the population, or at least is slave.

• 35:18Greg Jenner?

  Wow, okay.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  But that doesn't mean the whole population was, right? But yeah, it could be as high as 30% in certain regions and certain areas. So slavery is a very curious aspect of Korean history. It's the only East Asian country where you see a continuous slave system, not only emerge, but also continue from the medieval into the early modern period, all the way to the end of the 19th century.

• 35:45Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  You have slavery in Japanese and Chinese history as well, but not as sustained in the same sort of institutional continuity. This is an inherited status. You could be enslaved as punishment for crimes. For most slaves in the Chosun period, they inherited that status from their parents. So either their mom or their dad was a slave, so they were a slave.

• 36:06Greg Jenner?

  Right. I suppose we perhaps know more about the transatlantic slave trade. That's a thing perhaps we studied at school or we've heard more about. Is this exactly the same in terms of the legal conditions, but also is there a racial element to it? Is there, are there people who are of a class that is considered to be enslaved? Or is it more just politics and economics?

• 36:28Speaker 04

  More the latter. There's no ethnic element to Korean slavery. It's Koreans enslaving Koreans.

• 36:33Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  But the legal conditions regarding slavery were not consistent throughout the dynasty. In the latter half of the Chosun dynasty, you see a lot of cases of slaves like suing Yangban, you know, they could take Yangban to court over offenses and so forth.

• 36:47Greg Jenner?

  So the elite, they could take the elites to court? Which is interesting, right? So they have, they've got legal representation, which we wouldn't have had over in, for example, the transatlantic slave trade in America.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. So it's a very different context. So Korea was a society that valued kinship networks. And also Confucian philosophy really emphasizes, really prioritizes relationship between parent and child, between kinship, between people of the same family. So you can imagine the tensions that emerged in a society like Korea where you had aristocrats and slaves living together on same estates, and they could be related to each other in some senses, right? A really instructive story is, very instructive or bittersweet account, in the mid 16th century,

• 37:40Speaker 04

  there was a scholar named Yoo Hee Chun. He's an official in the royal court, a very high level official. And he had four daughters with an enslaved woman. So he had been traveling around the country with his administrative duties, and during these duties, he had lived with, I guess you could say, a concubine, a slave concubine. But he didn't own her, she was owned by someone else. And with this slave concubine, he had four daughters. It seems like he kept in touch with those daughters because when each of them got old enough to be of marriageable age, he spent a considerable amount of money and political capital to free each of them.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  He traded a horse to free the first two daughters, paid money and also bribed some officials to free the third and fourth. All this took him several years. And this made it possible for the daughters to marry another free person. You were a lot more attractive marriageable candidate if you were free rather than a slave, because then their children would be born free.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Was that quite rare, like to be, become free at that time, like?

• 38:49Speaker 04

  No, there were many ways slaves could gain their freedom. They could buy their freedom, especially in the latter half of the Chosun dynasty, you see this happen more often. They could donate like a bunch of grain to a government granary and get even like, you know, some military title as well, along with their freedom. You could also run away.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  Right, okay.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  You could, yeah. Slaves technically had to wear these ID tags, actually, called hopin, that they hung around their necks. So that was one way of trying to keep track of them. But you see many cases of runaway slaves throughout the Chosun dynasty and slave catchers hired to try to find them.

• 39:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. It's a really interesting dynamic, isn't it? The idea of a father having to liberate his daughters one by one because they were owned by someone else is really, it's tragic, it's sad, but it's also kind of, it's different to how we understand the histories of enslavement perhaps. But we should, we should move on. We're a comedy show and this is sad, but let's talk about sort of happier things. Erica, what do you imagine life was like for women in this society? We're in the Chosun dynasty now.

• 39:53Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, what history has shown me is life for women is always pretty shit, no matter what. But I don't know, I'm going to guess that it was okay based off of the question.

• 40:06Greg Jenner?

  You may not be, I mean, I'll turn to John because I think probably there's a variation, right? Presumably, there is, plenty of women would be enslaved, but there'd be elite women too?

• 40:15Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right. I know you said you wanted to go on to happier things, but life for women in the Chosun dynasty was, of course, in many ways, if you consider what a patriarchal agrarian bureaucracy would look like.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  Life for women was not great. Of course, all this changes over time. But the expectations for women, especially elite women, was to be so virtuous and remain chaste before marriage. If their husband died, widows, especially elite Yangban widows, were expected to be chaste and not remarry.

• 40:50Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  They were expected to, you know, the stereotypes you see in the documents are, you know, possess delicate features, have domestic skills like weaving and cooking, be obedient and so forth. That's what we see, at least according to the writings of male Yangban.

• 41:05Greg Jenner?

  Okay. And divorce law? Is there any law that allows divorce for women or?

• 41:10Speaker 04

  Very limited. Technically, again, this really depends upon the era. But we have some documents that say that a woman could technically get divorced if a husband was away from home for a long time or abused her physically. But again, this is all very difficult, even if it was legally sanctioned. Socially, it would not have been.

• 41:29Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So there are only two reasons a woman is allowed to leave her husband. But there were seven reasons a man could leave his wife.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  Right?

• 41:37Greg Jenner?

  Which, you know, that feels sort of on the nose. Do you want to guess what some of those reasons would be?

• 41:43Speaker 05

  I bet it says like, oh, she sneezed weird. Get rid of her.

• 41:50Greg Jenner?

  John, can you talk us through the official reasons a man can divorce his wife?

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Well, so some of the things we see in some documents, again, we don't know how much these were followed up upon, was disobeying one's parents or disobeying his parents. So disobeying your in-laws.

• 42:06Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  That was a big no-no. Failing to produce a male heir, adultery.

• 42:12Greg Jenner?

  So, okay, so if a woman had two daughters, she could be divorced for that?

• 42:16Speaker 04

  From my understanding is that they would not have divorced if it was a Yangban male, in particular, a man of means, he would have just taken a concubine of some sort.

• 42:25Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  Adultery, jealousy toward other women in the household, like the concubine that got taken to have the male heir, serious disease, stealing and talking too much.

• 42:40Speaker 05

  Wow. Women be talking. Ain't that always the way it goes?

• 42:47Greg Jenner?

  And I feel like also like jealousy towards another woman, if you were cheating on her with the concubine, that feels like a legitimate emotion.

• 42:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, 100%.

• 42:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, okay. I mean, luckily, talking too much is no longer a divorceable thing because obviously I'm a podcast. It's all I do is talk too much. So luckily, my wife has not left me yet. But let's turn maybe to happier things. I'm not sure. Let's talk to art and culture. So you enjoyed K-pop when you were younger, growing up. I like Korean movies. What sort of culture is being produced, do you think, at this time in the Chosun Dynasty? They haven't got movies yet and they haven't really got K-pop.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  I would guess a lot of like artwork, probably.

• 43:27Greg Jenner?

  What kind of art are you imagining? Are you thinking paintings?

• 43:29Speaker 05

  I'm thinking paintings.

• 43:30Greg Jenner?

  Paintings, okay. What about storytelling?

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Oh, I didn't consider that that would be an art.

• 43:35Greg Jenner?

  I think that's an art form.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  I do stand up. I should consider it an art form.

• 43:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, is there storytelling? Is there comedy in the 15th, 16th centuries?

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Certainly. You know, a lot of satire of Yangban elites, very common, very popular amongst commoners and slaves, as you can imagine.

• 43:52Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  And poetry, of course, was very important. Carved ceramic wares, so definitely write about that. Celadon wares in particular, a very famous Korean art form.

• 44:04Greg Jenner?

  So this is what vases, bowls, that kind of traditional, what we'd imagine is ceramics that are ceremonial or are they functional?

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Both.

• 44:14Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  But also architecture and how that's also something that is quite interesting about the Chosun Dynasty is most buildings are made from wood.

• 44:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  It's connected to the timber industry and the very distinctive forestry policies of the Chosun Dynasty.

• 44:28Greg Jenner?

  You're an environmental historian. That's your bag. So, you know, go off. Give us, you know, give us a little.

• 44:34Speaker 04

  I don't want to take too much time.

• 44:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  How much more? Another podcast for this one. But Koreans tend to use pine, actually, for most shipbuilding and construction. So this led the government to actually focus a lot of energy on protecting pine forests throughout the Korean peninsula. So essentially, it's one of the longest continuous forestry systems in global history where the government is basically creating a system of protected forests along the Korean coasts, protecting them all the way from the 14th to the 19th centuries to create a sustainable timber supply for shipbuilding, construction and so forth.

• 45:11Greg Jenner?

  And so how do they defend those forests? Like, what are the punishments if someone were to go and chop down a lovely pine tree?

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Well, that's where the Ministry of Punishments comes in, right? Well, it's, well, technically, people could be imprisoned. They could even be exiled for these things. But a lot of people would just pay bribes to the warden and so forth to try to get away with it. Yeah, these were, in theory, strictly regulated forests.

• 45:39Greg Jenner?

  And these Korean homes that are timber-built, are they single-story? Is it, you know, are we looking at, is it similar to Japanese architecture or is it different?

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Ooh, that's beyond my pay grade.

• 45:49Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so much.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  I'm not an architectural historian. But I can't say about the Japanese case. But in the Korean case, yeah, one-story buildings generally.

• 46:00Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, lovely. Okay. Because Koreans are famous for having the underfloor heating, right?

• 46:04Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 46:04Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, which is an amazing technology. Is that from this period or was that from a later period?

• 46:09Speaker 04

  That system of underfloor heating, ondol, that becomes more prevalent from the 18th and 19th centuries onward. Depends upon one's interpretation of what's going on in these documents. But it's a very wasteful way of heating your home as well, especially in a pre-modern society.

• 46:25Speaker 05

  So how was it done?

• 46:27Speaker 04

  You just get a lot of wood into this, I guess you would call it.

• 46:31Greg Jenner?

  Are you allowed the wood? Ministry of Punishments, surely it's going to come for you.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  That's the other part, right? People are just going to these forests, gathering as much wood and branches as possible. And you basically burn it up in a, I don't know the right term for it, but you burn it up under the, basically under the house, under the building, and little flues bring the heat from that big fire into your home.

• 46:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, into every room, right?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  Every room.

• 46:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, which is why it's such an amazing technology. This is medieval underfloor heating. It's lovely.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 47:02Greg Jenner?

  I've seen. It's very smart. Erica, have you ever heard of Hungul? The script of Hungul, how Korean is written?

• 47:07Speaker 05

  I mean, I feel like I've seen it out in the world. Yeah.

• 47:11Greg Jenner?

  It's very specific. It's very distinctive, isn't it?

• 47:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know. I can tell when I see Korean because I always see like the circles like that.

• 47:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, that's it. It's so immediately distinctively different to what we might see as Chinese characters. The traditional story is that there's a great king who comes along and goes, all right, lads, I've got an idea. I've invented a script. This king is Sejong? Sejong the Great?

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Sejong the Great, yeah.

• 47:38Greg Jenner?

  Is this a myth? Is he real? I mean, he's a real king, but is he the pioneer of this new script?

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, he is considered this great sage king, maybe kind of like Alfred in a sense. And that is a narrative that people are often told in Korea. Certainly Koreans encountered alphabetic phonetic scripts during the Mongol era.

• 48:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  Things like Pogspah, which is a Tibetan script used by the Mongols to transcribe their own documents. But Koreans definitely encountered these sort of scripts and perhaps, perhaps got the initial inspiration for turning the Korean language into a phonetic alphabet. But certainly, we have to give credit to Sejong and his scholars for creating, which is a very unique and distinctive phonetic alphabet, the only phonetic alphabet native to East Asia and a system of 14 consonants and 10 vowels that perfectly encapsulates the Korean language.

• 48:43Speaker 04

  And before Koreans were transcribing documents, Korean sounds with Chinese characters, Chinese characters that roughly approximated Korean sounds, that's very difficult. And so the Hungarian alphabet greatly simplified the ways Koreans could read. It standardized readings of Chinese characters. And Sejong supposedly wanted to raise the level of popular education.

• 49:10Greg Jenner?

  So Hungul is a phonetic alphabet. Does that mean it's the equivalent to the Western alphabet that, you know, where things are spelled out with letters?

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Right, and with vowels and consonants that can be interchanged and exchanged to create sounds. Rather than, say, in Japanese where you have specific syllabary, it's not separate vowels and consonants, but rather makes, say, sound like ka or ga together with one character.

• 49:38Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Whereas Korean is like in Latin.

• 49:41Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, we have 26 letters in the Latin alphabet and in the Korean equivalent, it's 24.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  That's, ooh, 14 consonants, 10 vowels. Ah, that should be right. My math is right there, yeah.

• 49:54Greg Jenner?

  And the Koreans also, they got there way early than Gutenberg with the printing press. In Europe, we're like Gutenberg invented it. Korea was like two, three centuries ahead. They had movable type, they had metal typeface, they were printing. They didn't have the kind of the same industrial print, but they were printing. So they were.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 50:13Greg Jenner?

  It's amazing, isn't it? There's all these things that we think of as European inventions.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you guys be doing that.

• 50:18Greg Jenner?

  I know. So this is a very cultured king, Sejong the Great. So can we say this is a kind of Korean Golden Age? We're into the 1400s now. Is this where Korea reaches its peak culturally post-Mongol?

• 50:32Speaker 04

  Sejong certainly thought so.

• 50:35Greg Jenner?

  A true historian's answer.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  It's hard to say. One could say this is sort of a sort of post-Mongols, Sejong Renaissance. What's more important is that Korea is achieving now in 15 into the 16th centuries a level of political and social stability that's very different from the turmoil that we talked about earlier of the Kordio period.

• 50:54Greg Jenner?

  Right, so we haven't got warlords, we haven't got invaders, there's no Red Turban rebels, there's no Mongols running around. We've got a powerful king and his bureaucracy and his elite Yangban and everything is sort of fine. Until it's not, because by the end of our story, Erica, it all goes a little wrong. Do you know what happens in the 1590s?

• 51:15Speaker 05

  Sounds like something bad about happened.

• 51:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it did hype it up a bit, didn't it?

• 51:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, a boogeyman of sorts is about to come down.

• 51:22Greg Jenner?

  It's not quite a boogeyman, it's a different invasion. It's not the Mongols invading this time, it's a different culture invading. This time it's Japan, right? We, in the 1590s, in England, that's the reign of the late Tudors, Elizabethans. In the 1590s, the Japanese invade the Korean mainland. You know, this is the early Edo period of Japan. What happens to the Korean Chosun Dynasty?

• 51:44Speaker 04

  It survives.

• 51:46Greg Jenner?

  Because they keep going to the 19th century, right?

• 51:47Speaker 04

  It does, but the wars are absolutely devastating. And these are, you know, samurai armies armed with European gunpowder weapons. And they tear through the Korean peninsula in a rapid invasion. The Chinese helped out, help out the Koreans. They intervene and with Chinese help, the Koreans are eventually able to beat back the Japanese, but at huge cost, devastating the Korean peninsula. Between 10 to 15% of the Korean population may have been killed or displaced. Like, it's always hard to tell with pretty modern sources, but it was an absolutely devastating war.

• 52:28Greg Jenner?

  So this is kind of scorched earth tactics. This is brutal, they're burning the field, they're burning the towns.

• 52:34Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 52:35Greg Jenner?

  It's really horrific.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  Would that have been the first time they would have, like, encountered guns?

• 52:40Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, good question.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a good question. Not the first time.

• 52:43Greg Jenner?

  The Mongols had gunpowder, right?

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Right. Not the first time they would have encountered gunpowder weapons, but certainly just sort of European-style, small firearms, arcobuses and so forth. That is, that was a surprise to the Koreans, how effective Japanese tactics were with these weapons.

• 53:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, because how would Korea normally fight? How would wars normally be fought? Would you have soldiers with swords, soldiers on horseback, archers? Is that the standard Korean army? Or is there firearm technology in Korea at this point?

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Oh, definitely Koreans were using firearms as well. But certainly, once they saw how effective the Japanese were with them, they used similar tactics. They were sort of men in a row in this kind of early modern European style, firing volleys.

• 53:26Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so the Koreans adapted and they defeated the Japanese? Or was there a peace treaty? How does this end our episode?

• 53:33Speaker 04

  It ends when the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, when he, he dies.

• 53:39Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:40Greg Jenner?

  Helpful.

• 53:42Speaker 04

  The man who started the invasion dies.

• 53:44Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  That helps end the war.

• 53:46Greg Jenner?

  Great, that's a nice way to end our episode, really. It was all going so terribly wrong and then he dies and it stops. That's amazing. So that's, that's the end of our medieval Korea period. But the Chosun continued to the 19th century.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 53:59Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so it's been quite a wild ride, Erica. We've covered seven centuries together. Was anything there surprised you?

• 54:07Speaker 05

  I feel like, I, all of it, all of it. Because I have, I had no clue about Korean history. So all of it was surprising to me because I just had no idea.

• 54:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  I didn't know that the printer, print was first there. That's new to me.

• 54:23Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Yeah, the Chinese and Koreans were printing way before the Europeans.

• 54:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. The myth about how Korean people came to be about a bear. Never heard that in my life. Well, that was surprising to me.

• 54:36Greg Jenner?

  It's a good story, that one.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I liked it, it's quite sweet.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  The magic of garlic and wormwood, right?

• 54:42Greg Jenner?

  It feels like it could be a children's animation, it's lovely. The Nuance Window!

• 54:51Greg Jenner?

  Well, it is time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Erica and I sit quietly in our dark cave, eating our garlic for two minutes, while John tells us something we need to know about medieval Korea. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr. Lee.

• 55:06Speaker 04

  I'll just sort of summarize or tie together some of the points we talked about. On the geopolitical side and the domestic side. On the geopolitical side, quickly, the Mongol era was a key turning point in Korean history. It more firmly ensconces Korea in this sort of synitic cultural and geopolitical order. So ironically, it is the Mongols, these steppe nomads, who would strengthen these ties between Korea and China, and bring Korea into this wider Eurasian sphere. So it's important to note also that, in a sense, the Chosun Dynasty would benefit from these cultural and diplomatic ties to late imperial Chinese dynasties. The Yangban elite identified themselves as part of this broader synitic order,

• 55:50Speaker 04

  sort of like how, you know, some medieval European elites may have felt ties to a classical sort of Greek or Roman civilization. Ties to China, as you've seen, also ensured security. Korea remained at peace with this much larger neighbor. And it got also decisive assistance during the Japanese invasions. Two things I want to mention on the domestic side. Regarding gender and women in Korean history, I highly recommend a couple of books that elaborate upon some of my points, some of my very sparse points. It's very complicated. Women may seem oppressed during the Chosun period, but they left so many records themselves and, you know, letters to their daughters, letters amongst themselves, their own diaries,

• 56:35Speaker 04

  that looking at what women actually wrote during the Chosun period gives an excellent window into their own lives and how they navigated these sort of seemingly oppressive patriarchal forces. So books by, say, Chizu Kim, Cheolwon Kim, Ksenia, Chesenova. These are all like scholars writing in English, have written excellent books on women during the Chosun Dynasty. And again, just want to say, the longevity of slavery itself is quite strange in Korean history. And the Chosun Dynasty itself is very strange. How did this highly stratified agrarian bureaucracy, marked by seemingly oppressive institutions, last so long? The simplest explanation I can give is that

• 57:17Speaker 04

  the Chosun Dynasty was able to build this stable centralized order, quite different from the tumult of the Cordial Period. And as oppressive as the dynasty may seem, Koreans from multiple generations tied that chosen order to notions of stability and security and prestige and governance. That would all change in the 19th century, but that's another story, yeah.

• 57:39Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, thank you so much, John. Fascinating, really interesting to hear that women's lives are so well-reported in the historical record. That's quite.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wouldn't expect, but I guess, like, they were, it was their own writing, you said?

• 57:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this one scholar, Chizu Kim, looked at like women's petitions, petitions that women wrote to the court, to the Ministry of Punishments, and to magistrates and so forth, you know, when they, when they had some sort of grievance, if they were robbed or assaulted and so forth. And some of these could even be read by the king. They could reach the court. And Yangban women would often write letters to each other in Hangul or in classical Chinese. They'd write to their daughters as well. We have all these documents still available.

• 58:22Greg Jenner?

  It's wonderful, isn't it? It's a lovely resource that we don't usually get that much of in medieval Europe. You know, we do have women's letters and so on, but they're often elite. You know, they're often the kind of the rich, rich, rich. But that's wonderful.

• 58:35Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know now?

• 58:40Greg Jenner?

  Okay, well, it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Erica, to see how much she has learned. Now, Erica, we've covered seven centuries and neither of us knew much about Korean history beforehand. So I will be pretty lenient with my marking, I promise. How are you with quizzes usually?

• 58:58Speaker 05

  I don't know, it's been a while since I've done one. Actually, that's not true, I did one for a bachelorette party, but it was about the person who I know very well.

• 59:05Greg Jenner?

  Sure, yeah, okay.

• 59:07Speaker 05

  So we'll see.

• 59:08Greg Jenner?

  Okay, I've got 10 questions for you, Erica. Here we go. Question one, what is the cave-related origin myth of the Korean people?

• 59:16Speaker 05

  The name of it or what?

• 59:17Greg Jenner?

  Well, just tell me the story.

• 59:19Speaker 05

  Well, there was a god and a tiger and a bear begged him, saying, "Please make me human." He said, "Under one condition, if you eat all this garlic for, I think it was 20 days."

• 59:34Greg Jenner?

  100 days.

• 59:35Speaker 05

  100 days, all right, I'm more easy on them, 100 days. Then I'll make, I'll make you human. And the tiger, weak, weak sauce for that tiger, so he couldn't cut it. But the bear did and the bear became human. And then they had a baby after that with the god, I think.

• 59:55Greg Jenner?

  That's a wonderful story, well done, excellent. We should get you to narrate the children's story version. Question two, can you name the ruling dynasty that founded in 918 by Hongkong?

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  I think I made a note for this one.

• 1:00:07Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it does give its name to the Korean people.

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  Oh, Corio?

• 1:00:12Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, absolutely, the Corio, that's it, very good. Question three, what was unusual about the conception of legendary hero warrior Kim Yoo Shin? How long was he in the womb for?

• 1:00:23Speaker 05

  Twenty months.

• 1:00:23Greg Jenner?

  It was twenty months, very good. Question four. The Myeongchang Rebellion was led in the early 12th century by what type of magical guy?

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  A geomancy?

• 1:00:32Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it was. He's a geomancer slash Buddhist monk. But it didn't really help him out, did it? Because he still died. Question five. Which nomadic warrior tribe invaded Korea in the 13th century?

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  The Khan?

• 1:00:45Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Mongols. Yeah, very good. The Khan's, yeah, very good. Question six. In 1388, Yi Song-eun led a coup against King Gong-yang and the coreo, founding a new ruling dynasty which ran until the 19th century. What was it called?

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  Ooh, I don't know. Is that the nine-year-old one?

• 1:01:04Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's a long-running dynasty. It begins with cho.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  Cho, cho, cho. I don't know.

• 1:01:11Greg Jenner?

  The Cho-son Dynasty. Okay, we didn't get that one, okay. Question seven. The Cho-son Dynasty also moved Korea's capital to which city where it still is?

• 1:01:19Speaker 05

  Seoul.

• 1:01:19Greg Jenner?

  It is. And originally it was Hanyang, I think. Question eight. Up to what percentage of the Korean population were enslaved during some points of the Cho-son Dynasty?

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Thirty percent.

• 1:01:30Greg Jenner?

  It was thirty percent in, I think you said 16th century, John, was it?

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  Again, it really depends.

• 1:01:35Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  It could be thirty percent in parts of the 16th century.

• 1:01:39Greg Jenner?

  Fascinating, well done. Question nine. Can you name one reason a woman would be allowed to divorce her husband during the early Cho-son Dynasty?

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  Oh, man, I remember all the one about the guys being...

• 1:01:49Greg Jenner?

  Give me one of those then, go on, yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  Women talking too much.

• 1:01:53Greg Jenner?

  Very good, yeah, absolutely, good. And for the women, of course, physical abuse or if he was away for too long. And this for nine out of 10. Which great king in the 1400s sponsored the invention of the Hungul writing script? Do you remember his name?

• 1:02:07Speaker 05

  Did I write it down?

• 1:02:08Greg Jenner?

  It begins with S.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  C. Jung.

• 1:02:10Greg Jenner?

  Yes, C. Jung the Great, well done. Nine out of 10, Erica. That's pretty good.

• 1:02:15Speaker 05

  I'll take that.

• 1:02:15Greg Jenner?

  Pretty good. Well done, John, excellent teacher. And listener, if you want more East Asian history, we've got episodes on Edo, Japan, on Tang Dynasty, China, and for more marauding Mongols, we did an episode on Genghis Khan, of course. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we have the fantastic Dr John Lee from University of Durham. Thank you, John.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:02:51Greg Jenner?

  It's lovely having you in. And in comedy corner, we have the excellent Erica Eler. Thank you, Erica.

• 1:02:56Speaker 05

  Thanks so much.

• 1:02:57Greg Jenner?

  It's lovely having you and see you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we uncover another legendary origin of another very real civilisation. But for now, I'm off to go and join my daughter in watching K-pop Demon Hunters for the 3,000th time. Bye.

• 1:03:14Greg Jenner?

  You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was written and produced by Dr Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and series producer, Dr Emma Nagouse. The research was by Orelli Anne Perrin. The studio and edit producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Gill Huggett.

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