Feeling Power in Early Chosŏn Korea: Popular Grievances, Royal Rage, and the Problem of Human Sentiments

This article asks why human emotions and expressions of sentiment became the central issues in the academic and political discourse of sixteenth-century Korea and examines their diverse connotations in political usage. The kings of the early Chosŏn period (1392–1910) tried to curb the increasing political power of scholar-officials through the petition system, which would reveal their malfeasances. The excessive flow of grievances through the petition system from the people to the court, however, became a political problem. Moreover, the royal rage at scholar-officials exacerbated court politics starting in the sixteenth century. In response, Confucian literati developed the king’s control of anger as an academic subject and utilized it as a political tool. The male elites’ cultivation of personal feelings and the emotional expression of non-elites and women in public space inadvertently became the social markers of status difference and gender hierarchy. In this context, non-elites and women could certainly step up politically by raising their voices through the petition system. However, they had to step down culturally because they could speak only when laying bare their raw feelings, uncultured by Confucian norms, in public.