Jeong Dojeon

Jeong Dojeon was a prominent Korean scholar-official during the late Goryeo to the early Joseon periods. He served as the first Chief State Councillor of Joseon, from 1392 until 1398 when he was killed by the Joseon king Yi Bang-won. Jeong Dojeon was an adviser to the Joseon founder Yi Seong-gye and also the principal architect of the Joseon dynasty's policies, laying down the kingdom's ideological, institutional, and legal frameworks which would govern it for five centuries. He decided all policies from military affairs, diplomacy, and down to education, he laid down Joseon's political system and tax laws, replaced Buddhism with Confucianism as national religion, moved the capital from Kaesong to Hanyang (present-day Seoul), changed the kingdom's political system from feudalism to highly centralized bureaucracy, and wrote a code of laws that eventually became Joseon's constitution. He even decided the names of each palace, eight provinces, and districts in the capital. He also worked to free many slaves and reformed land policy. Jeong Dojeon was born from a noble family, the Bonghwa Jeong clan, in Yeongju in what is now South Korea. His family had emerged from commoner status some four generations before, and slowly climbed up the ladder of government service. His father was the first in the family to obtain a high post. His mother, however, was a slave, which made it difficult for him to gain political status. Jeong’s father died while he was still a young boy, and in spite of his high position, he left a poor household and almost no property for his heir. This experience of poverty during his childhood seems to have affected Jeong's thought. Despite his difficulties, he became a student of Yi Je-hyeon and along with other leading thinkers of the time, such as Jeong Mong-ju, his penetrating intelligence started to affect the Korean politics. Jeong Dojeon's ties with Yi Seong-gye and the foundation of Joseon were extremely close. He is said to have compared his relationship to Yi Seong-gye, to that between Zhang Liang and Emperor Gaozu of Han. He was a strong supporter and a close adviser to Taejo, who founded the Joseon dynasty. He also had a deep influence on Neo-Confucianism in Korea, and wrote a number of essays criticizing Buddhism. He argued that Buddhist practices were antisocial and avoided dealing with the actual world, and that the Buddhist doctrine was nihilistic, and that Buddhism led people to abandon respect for the norms of society and to neglect the importance of cultivating one's character through relationships within human society. Jeong died just six years after the foundation of Joseon, killed in 1398 by his political archenemy Yi Bang-won, Taejo's fifth son. Yi killed his two half-brothers (including the crown prince) as well as Jeong and his supporters in a coup that came to be known as the "First Strife of Princes", eventually becoming King Taejong, the third king of Joseon. Jeong was buried in Danyang, his hometown, and was posthumously honored with the title Munheon, meaning "civil and virtuous".