origin : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Yakyong
Jeong Yakyong / Jung Yak-Yong (5 August 1762 – 7 April 1836), often simply known as ‘Dasan’ (茶山, one of his ‘ho’ / pen-names meaning ‘the mountain of tea’), was born on the 16th day of the 6th lunar month, 1762, in Gwangju county, Gyeonggi province, and died there on the 22nd day of the 2nd lunar month, 1836. He was one of the greatest thinkers of the later Joseon period, wrote highly influential books about philosophy, science and theories of government, held significant administrative positions, was a close confident of King Jeongjo (ruled 1776-1800), and was noted as a poet. His philosophical position is often identified with the Silhak (practical learning) school, and his concerns are better seen as explorations of Neo-Confucian themes. He spent 18 years in exile in Gangjin, South Jeolla province, from 1801 until 1818, on account of his membership of the Southerners (Nam-in) faction, and also because of the Catholic faith of his elder brother. His clan originated in Naju, South Jeolla Province. At birth he was given the courtesy title (初字 choja) Gwi’nong (歸農), and later he was also known by the ja Miyong (美鏞) and Songbu (頌甫)美庸); among his ho (號, pen-names) were Saam (俟菴), Tagong (籜翁), Taesu (苔叟), Jahadoin (紫霞道人), Cheolmasanin (鐵馬山人), Dasan (茶山), Yeoyudang (與猶堂, the name of his house), and Mundo (文度, his name as a poet). Korean Catholics sometimes claim that he was baptized with the name John Baptist, but there is no documentary proof of this.
Family history[edit]
Dasan’s father was Jeong Jae-won (丁載遠, 1730–1792). His eldest brother Yak-hyeon (若鉉, 1751–1821) was the son of a first wife, while Jeong Yak-jong (若鍾, 1760–1801), Yak-jeon (若銓, 1758–1816), and Yakyong were the sons of their father’s second wife, Suk-in (淑人, 1730–1770) from the Haenam Yun 尹 family. There was one daughter from this second marriage. Four other daughters were later born of a third marriage.
Dasan’s father’s family traced their descent back to Jeong Ja-geup (丁子伋, 1423–1487) who in 1460 first took a government position under King Sejo. Eight further generations then followed his example. Jeong Si-yun (丁時潤, 1646–1713) and his second son Do-bok (道復, 1666–1720) were the last of the line, since the Southerners’ faction to which the family belonged lost power in 1694. Si-yun retired to a house in Mahyeon-ri to the east of Seoul (now known as Namyangju) in 1699, which was to be Dasan’s birthplace. His eldest son, Do-tae (道泰) lived there and was Dasan’s direct ancestor. The Southerners remained excluded from official positions until a brief period that began during the reign of King Jeongjo, when Dasan’s father was appointed magistrate of Jinju county, thanks to his strong links with the powerful Chae Je-gong (蔡濟恭, 1720–99), who rose until he was appointed third state councillor in 1788. In 1762, the execution of Crown Prince Sado by his father the king so shocked Jeong Jae-won that he withdrew from official life and returned to his home in Mahyeon-ri. This explains the courtesy name Gwi’nong (‘back to farming’) his father gave Dasan, who was born in the same year. As a result, Dasan grew up receiving intense intellectual training from his now unoccupied father.[1]
The source of Dasan’s intellectual interests can be traced to the influence of the great scholar Udam Jeong Si-han (愚潭 丁時翰, 1625–1707) of the same clan, who taught Jeong Si-yun briefly and was then the main teacher of Dasan’s ancestor Jeong Do-tae as well as his brother Do-je (1675–1729). One of the most significant thinkers in the next generation was the philosopher-scholar Seongho Yi Ik (星湖 李瀷, 1681–1763) and he saw Udam as the authentic heir of Toegye Yi Hwang (退溪 李滉, 1501–1570). Jeong Do-je transmitted the teachings of Udam to the next generations of the family and so they were passed to Dasan’s father and Dasan himself.
Similarly, Dasan’s mother was descended from the family of the famous Southerner scholar-poet Gosan Yun Seon-do (孤山 尹善道, 1587–1671). Yun’s great-grandson Gongjae Yun Du-seo (恭齋 尹斗緖, 1668–1715), well known for his skills as a painter, was Dasan’s maternal great-grandfather. He and his elder brother were close to Seongho Yi Ik and his brothers, and are credited with reviving the study of the Six Classics, as well as the thought of Toegye.[2]
Early life[edit]
By the age of 6, Dasan’s father was impressed by his powers of observation. By the age of 9 he had composed a small collection of poems. In 1776, Dasan was married to Hong Hwabo of the Pungsan Hong clan, the daughter of a royal secretary; in that year he moved to Seoul, where his father received an appointment in the Board of Taxation after the accession of King Jeongjo. When he was 15, Dasan was introduced to the writings of Seongho Yi Ik by one of his descendants, Yi Ga-Hwan (李家煥, 1742–1801) and his brother-in-law Yi Seung-hun (李承薰, 1756–1801) and he was deeply impressed, resolving to devote his life to similar studies. In 1783, Dasan passed the chinsagwa (literary licentiate examination), which allowed him to enter the Seonggyungwan (national Confucian academy).
In 1784 the king was deeply impressed by the “objectivity” of Dasan’s replies to a set of questions he had formulated. This was the start of an increasingly close relationship between the king and Dasan. After the promotion of Chae Je-gong in 1788, Dasan took top place in the daegwa (higher civil service exam) in 1789 and was offered a position in the Office of Royal Decrees, together with 5 other members of the Southerner faction. This alarmed members of the opposing ‘Old Doctrine’ faction, who soon realized the extent to which the Southerners were being influenced, not only by the Practical Learning introduced to China from Europe, but by Roman Catholicism itself.
In 1784, Yi Byeok (李蘗, 1754–1786), a scholar who had participated in meetings to study books about the Western (European) Learning, starting in 1777, talked with Dasan about the new religion for the first time in 1784 and gave him a book about it. Whatever his own response may have been, and there is no proof that he ever received baptism, Dasan’s immediate family was deeply involved in the origins of the Korean Catholic community. His older sister was married to Yi Seung-hun, the Korean who was first baptized as a Catholic in Beijing in 1784 and played a leading role in the early years of the Church’s growth. The oldest of Jeong Jae-won’s sons, Yak-hyeon, was married to a sister of Yi Byeok. Another daughter, from a third marriage, later married Hwang Sa-yeong (1775–1801), author of the notorious Silk Letter. Dasan’s older brother, Jeong Yak-jong (Augustinus) was the leader of the first Catholic community and one of the first victims of the purge launched against Southerners, but especially against Catholics, in 1801, after the sudden death of King Jeongjo.
In 1789, Yun Ji-chung, one of the first baptized and a cousin to Dasan on his mother’s side, had gone to Beijing and received confirmation. Rome had forbidden Catholics to perform ancestral rituals and this was now being strictly applied by the Portuguese Franciscan bishop of Beijing Alexandre de Gouvea. When his mother died in 1791, Yun therefore refused to perform the usual Confucian ceremonies; this became public knowledge, he was accused of impiety and was executed. Some Koreans who had at first been sympathetic, horrified by the Church’s rejection of hallowed traditions, turned away. Jeong Yakyong may well have been among them.[3]
Royal Service[edit]
Dasan was particularly interested in civil engineering and in 1792 the king, impressed by a pontoon bridge he had designed, asked him to design and supervise the construction of the walls for the Hwaseong Fortress (modern Suwon), which surrounded the palace where the king would live when he visited the new tomb he had constructed for his father. Dasan produced radically new techniques and structures, drawing on European, Chinese and Japanese sources. In 1794, after several promotions, the king appointed him as secret envoy to Gyeongi province, investigating reports of corruption.
Dasan’s most important task in 1795, the 60th anniversary of the birth of Crown Prince Sado, was to help the King decide on a new honorary title for his father. This was a fraught enterprise, the Prince’s supporters were members of what was called the Expediency subfaction while his main enemies were members of the Principle subfaction. The Southerners were strong supporters of the King’s wish to honor Sado highly and the King was more than grateful. However, he then found it prudent to send Dasan away from court for a time, appointing him to be superintendent of the post station at Geumjeong, South Pyeongan province.
Here, he provided clear proof of his rejection of Catholicism by doing everything possible to persuade the Catholics working there to renounce their faith, and in particular to perform ancestral rites. Almost certainly, it was the Catholics’ rejection of Confucian ritual that had turned him against them. In 1796, he was brought back to Seoul and promoted but his many enemies continued to accuse him of supporting the pro-western Catholics and he preferred to take up a position as county magistrate at Goksan in Hwanghae province.
In 1799 he even withdrew to his family home but was summoned back to Seoul by the king in 1800.[4]
Exile[edit]
In the summer of 1800, King Jeongjo died suddenly. The new king, King Sunjo, was still only a child of 11 and power fell into the hands of the widow of King Yeongjo, often known as Queen Dowager Kim or Queen Jeongsun. Her family belonged to the factions opposed to the reformist, often Catholic, Nam-in group and she had been completely powerless during Jeongjo’s reign. She at once launched an attack on the Catholics, who were denounced as traitors and enemies of the state. Jeong Yak-jong was the head of the Catholic community, he was one of the first to be arrested and executed, together with Yi Seung-hun, in the spring of 1801. His eldest son, Jeong Cheol-sang, died then too, executed a month after his father.
Since he was Jeong Yak-jong's younger brother, Jeong Yakyong was sent into exile for some months in Janggi fortress in what is now Pohang, having been found after interrogation with torture not to be a Catholic believer. That might have been that, but what brought Yakyong to Gangjin, where he was forced to spend eighteen years, was the event that served as the final nail in the coffin of the early Catholic community, the Silk Letter Incident. Hwang Sa-yeong, married to one of Dasan’s younger sisters, hid in a cave during the persecutions and in October 1801 he finished writing a long letter to the bishop of Beijing, giving a detailed account of the recent events, asking him to bring pressure on the Korean authorities to allow freedom of religion and, disastrously, begging him to ask the Western nations to send a large army to overthrow the Joseon dynasty so that Korea would be subject to China, where Catholicism was permitted. The man carrying this letter, written on a roll of silk wrapped round his body, was intercepted and the Korean authorities made full use of it to show that Catholics were by definition enemies of the state.
The persecution was intensified and if it had not been very clear that Jeong Yakyong and Jeong Yak-jeon were in no sense Catholic believers, they would surely have been executed. Instead they were sent into exile together, parting ways at Naju, from where Jeong Yak-jeon journeyed on to the island of Heuksando, Yakyong taking the Gangjin road. His exile began in the last days of 1801, on the 23rd day of the eleventh lunar month, the 28th of December in the solar calendar. On that day, he arrived in Gangjin, South Jeolla Province. The newly arrived exile had little or no money and no friends, he found shelter in the back room of a poor, rundown tavern kept by a widow, outside the East Gate of the walled township of Gangjin, and there he lived until 1805. He called his room “Sauijae” (room of four obligations: clear thinking, serious appearance, quiet talking, sincere actions).
By 1805, much had changed in Seoul. Dowager Queen Kim had died and the young king had come of age and quickly put an end to the violence against Catholics. Three hundred had been killed and many of the rest were exiled or scattered, or had stopped practicing. Jeong Yakyong was free to move about the Gangjin area and in the spring of 1805 he walked up the hill as far as Baeknyeon-sa Temple, where he met the Venerable Hyejang, the newly arrived monk in charge of the temple, who was about ten years younger than himself. They talked and it seems that Hyejang only realized who his visitor was as he was leaving. That night he forced him to stay with him and asked to learn the I Ching from him. They quickly became close companions.
Later the same year, Hyejang enabled Dasan to move out of the tavern and for nearly a year he lived in Boeun Sanbang, a small hermitage at the nearby Goseong-sa temple, which was under Hyejang’s control. Finally, in the spring of 1808 he was able to take up residence in a house belonging to a distant relative of his mother, on the slopes of a hill overlooking Gangjin and its bay. It was a simple house, with a thatched roof, but it was there that the exile spent the remaining ten years of his exile, until the autumn of 1818. This is the site now known as “Dasan Chodang.” The hill behind the house was known locally as Da-san (tea-mountain) and that was to become the name by which our exile is best known today, Dasan. Here he could teach students who lodged in a building close to his, forming a close-knit community, and he could write. In his study he accumulated a library of over a thousand books.[5]
During his exile he is said to have written 500 volumes. This needs qualifying, since one “work” might fill nearly 50 volumes of the standard size, but he certainly wrote a vast quantity, some 14,000 pages, mainly in order to set out clearly a fundamental reform program for governing the country correctly according to Confucian ideals. During the years of exile he concentrated first on the Book of Changes (Yi Ching), writing in 1805 the Chuyeoksajeon. A reflection on the Classic of Poetry followed in 1809. He wrote on politics, ethics, economy, natural sciences, medicine and music. After his return from exile, Dasan published his most important works: on jurisprudence Heumheumsinseo (1819); on linguistics Aeongakbi (1819); on diplomacy Sadekoryesanbo (1820); on the art of governing Mongminsimseo and on administration Gyeongsesiryeong (1822).
Dasan remained in exile in Gangjin until 1818, when he was allowed to return to his family home near Seoul. Attempts to bring him back into government service were blocked by factional politics. He used Yeoyudang as his final pen-name, it was the name of the family home where he lived quietly, near the Han River, until he died in 1836, on his sixtieth wedding anniversary. The main sources for his biography are the two versions of his own ‘epitaph,’ Jachan myojimyeong, and a chronological biography Saam seonsaeng yeonbo composed by his great-grandson Jeong Gyu-yeong using no longer extant records.[6]