조선 태종은 왜 李茂를 죽였을까

Abstract

King Taejong of the Choseon dynasty, who had usurped the throne through a coup d'etat, was ever vigilant lest he lose control of the dynastic military power or independent political forces grow around some political leaders. In this connection he kept a close watch on Yi Mu (1355~Oct. 1409), who had long been concerned with military affairs, as one of the most likely prospects for such a leadership, along with Min Mu-gu and his brothers. When it was revealed that Yi had abused his right of personnel management, Taejong seized an opportunity to have him murdered. Yi Mu had been designated as one of the first grade “‘Jeong-sa’ and Jwa-myong’ Merit Subjects.” And he had served as a vice-premier and also as the head of the Privy Council, while holding the post of one of the supreme commanders in the army simultaneously. At the apogee of his official career, for instance, he was appointed vice-premier on July 1407, and two months later he accompanied the then Crown Prince of the Choseon dynasty on his trip to China, the purpose of which was to do homage to the Chinese emperor. Accusations against Yi Mu made by Taejong were largely two-fold: first, his allegiance to him was suspect; second, he had close ties to the rebellious Min Mu-gu and his brothers who were maternal uncles of the Crown Prince. Those two factors combine to render Yi, in the eyes of Taejong, guilty enough to deserve death penalty. The turning-point of Yi's lot was his decision to raise Yi Ji-seong’s government office and court rank on May 1409 without the throne's approval. On early July 1409 Taejong dismissed Yi Mu from the post of vice-premier. Before the end of the same month Taejong had occasion to highlight Yi’s guilt. When Taejong announced his intention to abdicate the throne the next month, he reaffirmed and consolidated government control of military power. On early September 1409 Taejong brought out again his suspicion that the Min brothers had sought to assassinate all of his sons except the Crown Prince. This incident gave birth to a major criminal case, in which Yi Mu was impeached by a censor for committing six types of crimes. Yi was subsequently imprisoned. On the first day of the next month Taejong personally supervised the inquiry into Yi’s crimes, which went through due process at least nominally. Yi was found guilty and was then exiled to a remote place two days later. Two days later again he was murdered on his way to the place of exile by assassins sent by the king. King Taejong had long made a point of precluding high-ranking officials from having a voice in military affairs by means of a series of reforms of government organizations. Such a measure was obviously designed to rule out the possibility of the emergence of independent political forces. From this point of view, the assassination of Yi Mu by Taejong is to be taken as a punishment inflicted upon a government official for a failure to direct his loyalty exclusively toward the king.