‘Palace literature’ is a name given to a group of three Korean works: Kyech’uk ilgi, ‘diary of the year of the Black Ox (1613)’, which is an account of the sufferings of Queen Inmok and her little son Prince Yŏngch’ang at the hands of his half-brother, Kwanghae-gun; Inhyŏn Wanghu chŏn, ‘the history of Queen Inhyŏn’, which describes the trials of Queen Inhyŏn at the end of the seventeenth century; and Hanjung nok, ‘records made in distress,’ an autobiographical record by Lady Hong, wife of Crown Prince Sado, ‘the coffin king’, who was killed by his father, King Yŏngjo, in 1762. All three tell tales of tragedy within the palace, and all three are written in the Korean vernacular script. Beyond these basic similarities they are very different. Kyech’uk ilgi has all the marks of description by an eyewitness without much literary ability. Hanjung nok is also a memoir. Inhyŏn Wanghu chŏn is a deliberate artistic creation, based on history, but written in a fluent and elegant style with enough skill for it to be classed as an historical novel.
It describes the life and virtues of Queen Inhyŏn, a woman of the Yŏhŭng Min clan. In 1681, when she was fourteen, she married nineteen-year-old King Sukchong after the death of his first wife. Korean kings always married commoners, and the queens’ families naturally gained political power. The Min family belonged to the sŏin, or ‘western’ faction, which came into ascendancy shortly before this marriage, displacing the namin or ‘southern’ party which had controlled affairs since Sukchong became king in 1764. Eight years after her marriage, during the summer of 1689, the childless queen was deposed. The ostensible reason was her childlessness, but the woman who replaced her, the concubine Chang Hŭibin, represented the namin. Song Si-yŏl, the learned old leader of the sŏin and one of Korea’s sages, was among those executed during the crisis.
In the spring of 1694, in the dispute over the appointment of the crown prince, Chang Hŭibin was deposed in her turn and Queen Min was reinstated. At the same time the sŏin, who had taken advantage of the king’s remorse for his treatment of Queen Min, returned to political power, though they were no longer a united party. The namin never regained power. The same story was the subject of Sa-ssi namjŏng ki, an allegorical criticism of the king’s treatment of Queen Min written by Kim Man-jung, author of Kuunmong.
The novel, however, makes virtually no reference to the political background of the palace drama and King Sukchong’s marriage problems. It concentrates on the fate and virtues of Queen Min, working the materials into a unified plot describing her marriage, her fall and her reinstatement. The story of her fall is expanded by a detailed account of the sufferings of Pak T’ae-bo, one of the statesmen who presumed to defend her when she was deposed. Both he and the queen are presented as moral exemplars. This approach fitted well with the moral requirements of Confucian thought, but it did not mean that the political significance of the events was underrated by the author. Confucianism makes little or no distinction between ethics and politics. Political enemies were not castigated and fought because their policies were politically unwise or mistaken but because (although no Confucian would have recognized the distinction) the men themselves were held to be immoral. By omitting reference to the political implications of the story the author of lnhyŏn Wanghu chŏn was able to impose literary unity on his work; but he had no thought of depriving his book of the political dimension. For him, Queen Inhyŏn’s virtues vindicated the sŏin politically.
It is impossible to say who the author was. Because the book has been classified as ‘palace literature’ it has often been assumed that, like the other two works in that category, it must have been written by one of the palace women. Professor Pak Yo-sun, in a recent study of the work (1972) has shown that there are no good reasons for asserting female authorship. On the contrary there are indications that the original author was probably a man.
Professor Pak has classified the texts of the book into four groups: 1) short texts containing only the story of Queen lnhyŏn and Chang Hŭibin, typical of which is Min Chungjŏn tŏkhaeng nok, ‘record of the virtues of Queen Min,’ commonly called the Ilsa text because it was collected by Pang Chong-hyŏn (1905-52) whose pen name was Ilsa; 2) a text amplified by the addition of the details of Pak T’ae-bo’s torture; Min Chungjŏn chŏn, ‘story of Queen Min’, known as the Namae text from the pen name of its collector, An Ch’un-gŭn (b. 1926); 3) a text lacking the details of the Pak T’ae-bo story, but with an appendix about the reign of Kings Kyŏngjong (1720-24) and Yŏngjo (1724-76), called Inhyŏn Sŏngmo Min-ssi tŏkhaeng nok, ‘record of the virtues of Inhyŏn, Queen Min’, usually referred to as the Karam text from the pen-name of Yi Pyŏng-gi (1891-1968) who collected it and published it in 1948; and 4) Inhyŏn Wanghu sŏngdŏk hyŏnhaeng nok, an expanded text nearly twice as long as the others, now kept in the National Library in Seoul. Professor Pak believes that the Ilsa text is the oldest, and was composed soon after Queen Inhyŏn’s death, though all surviving manuscripts are of recent date; that the Namae and Karam texts represent a subsequent expansion of the original text; and that the text in the National Library is a late expansion of the Karam text, which is certainly not earlier than the end of the eighteenth century. The proliferation of texts suggests that the work was widely read both inside and outside the palace. The events described in the story have achieved the status of folk tales and were certainly well-known and often recounted. Since the namin never regained power there was no reason why the story should be suppressed.
The abbreviated title Inhyŏn Wanghu chŏn is a modern one, made by scholars for convenience. This translation is based on both Ilsa and Karam texts, with constant reference to the slightly modernized version of the National Library text that was published by Hŭimang Ch’ulp’an-sa in 1965. Professor Kim Chong-un has divided his translation into five sections, following the logic of the story. The manuscripts have no chapter divisions.
The story requires very little elucidation for the modern western reader. The exaggerated virtuousness of Queen Inhyŏn re-echoes the determined propriety of some of the female protagonists of Kuunmong, and it must be remembered that such constancy to the point of obstinacy was genuinely admired during the Yi dynasty. The contrasted exaggeration of Chang Hŭibin’s behavior, though emphasized for political and artistic purposes, may well contain little by way of caricature. The sober annals of the court of Queen Victoria of England describe characters with comparable obsessiveness and violence. Chang’s recourse to shamanism is entirely credible, and so is the king’s reaction. The author’s efforts to show the king in a favorable light are a readily-understood convention.
A few details deserve comment.
Seoul was divided into small neighborhoods, many of which had rustic village names. Some of these names survive today. The suffixes -dong or -kol mean ‘hollow’ or ‘valley’; in the countryside they mean ‘village’ or ‘hamlet’, but in Seoul and other cities they mean something rather smaller than a ward. ŏŭi-dong, Queen Inhyŏn’s childhood home, was north of Chongno near the fifth intersection; An’guk-tong is still so called. Aeo-ri was outside the ‘New Gate’, the present Ahyŏn.
The palace was divided into ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ parts. The inner palace was the province of the women, in effect the royal harem, where in theory no adult male but the king could enter. The outer palace was where the king spent his daytime official hours, with the queen and other palace women in attendance when specifically commanded. The king’s nights and his leisure were thus spent in entirely female company—a fact which complicated his emotional life and enhanced the role of women in politics.
The names by which the kings and queens are now known, such as Sukchong, Inhyŏn, Kyŏngjong, and Yŏngjo, are posthumous. During their lifetime they were referred to by their titles and various honorific epithets. In this translation, however, the posthumous titles are used, because this anachronism is a help to the reader of the English text.