朝鮮 後期 明 遺民 우대책과 濟南 王氏의 관직진출

Abstract

This paper analyzes the bureaucratic advancement of the Chenam Wang, a Ming descent group which had migrated to Chosŏn from China after the fall of the Ming. The group belonged to the “middle people” (chungin) class in Chosŏn society while a few other Ming descent groups with more prestigious family backgrounds boasted membership in aristocracy (yangban). As Chosŏn monarchs promoted Ming loyalism during the eighteenth century in an effort to consolidate royal power and to elevate the status of Chosŏn as the legitimate inheritor of the Chinese civilization, they actively recruited members of the Ming descent groups into the military officialdom. This paper examines closely the bureaucratic vicissitude of the Chenam Wang from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, using the bureaucratic success of the Chenam Wang as a barometer of the degree to which monarchs’ efforts to promote Ming loyalism were made. This study demonstrates that the members of the Chenam Wang made significant progress in their bureaucratic advancement during the eighteenth century due to active royal sponsorship of their careers. A number of the Chenam Wang members acquired high-level offices during this period, such as the second rank, albeit largely honorary, positions. During the same period, Chosŏn monarchs appointed the members of a few other Ming descent groups with more prestigious pedigree to offices reserved for the aristocracy, trying to elevate them to yangban class. Although the royal patronage toward the Chenam Wang differed in degree from that toward these yangban Ming families, the bureaucratic success of the Chenam Wang during the eighteenth century was still remarkable. Their official fortune, however, experienced a downturn from the early- to mid-nineteenth century as a series of weak monarchs ascended the throne and their patronage of the Ming descent groups substantially diminished. The number of the Chenam Wang members who obtained bureaucratic or military offices increased during this period as their members consistently occupied the offices of Taebodan Guard and Chinese Brigade created in 1790 and monopolized by some Ming descent groups including the Chenam Wang. These posts, however, were relatively insignificant offices, and, for many of the members, the only posts they assumed. Some managed to move higher in the bureaucracy, but hardly above the offices at the middle level. It was during the reign of King Kojong in the late nineteenth century that the careers of the Chenam Wang suddenly flourished again, as the ruler re-emphasized Ming loyalism in an age of accelerated foreign and domestic crises. Some members attained powerful military offices at the rank of third and even above. The Chenam Wang even produced a civil examination graduate in this period who acquired the degree by receiving the royal favor of “directly advancing to the palace examination” during a literary test for the Ming loyalist ritual attendees.