DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHOSON 63Hereditary Factionalism after 1575
In the next generation, the effects of political dispute were brought to an even
greater evil when a contest over appointment to a key post in the Ministry of
Personnel led to a split between two groups of men, known as Easterners and
Westerners from the location of their homes in the capital. Officials had been
prone to form personal bonds based on blood ties, marriage alliances, school-
boy friendships, and master-disciple relations, but the divisions that had been
created by this pattern had not led to the pcrmanent transmission of those con-
nections, let alonc names and symbols attached to interpersonal groups. That
situation changed drastically after 1575 because the Easterners and Westerners,
and the factions that stemmed from them through a number of schisms that
occurred within their ranks, ushered in an hereditary factionalism that contin-
ued to the end of the dynasty.
Many officials thought that factionalism itself was the equivalent of a Con-
fucian moral sin since every individual official was supposed to owe supreme
loyalty to the king, and the organization of a group signified the elevation of the
interests of the faction and its members over those of the king. Thc main defense
of factionalism, first voiced by Ou-yang Hsiu of the Sung dynasty, was that some
factions were, indced, legitimate because they represented the forces of good
who toiled in the king's true interest and performed a public service by doing
battle against the factions of evil that sought to obstruct the king's will.^2
Thc moral justification for the legitimacy of "good" as opposed to "bad" fac-
tions appeared rather transparent as members of cach faction perceived their own
to represent the forces of goodness, and all factions displayed by their actions
thcir intent to secure exclusive access to political powcr and the elimination of
their rivals, with the help of the reigning monarch.
King Sonjo (r. 1567-1608) was discomfited by the disruption caused by the
struggle between the Easterner and Westerner factions, but he not only failed to
stop it, he encouraged its perpetuation by switching his support from one group
to another almost on whim. His legacy to subsequent generations was that the
hereditary factions became involved in the problems associated with the royal
succession. When K wanghaegun (r. 1608-23) came to thc throne, he was sup-
ported by members of the Great Northerner faction (an Easterner splinter fac-
tion), which used its position to eliminate its Westcrner rivals, and they in turn
were removed by the coup d'etat led by the Westerners, who deposed Kwang-
haegun and placed Injo on the throne in 1623. After a hiatus of relative quies-
ccnce, factional rivalry emerged once again after 1659 in a dispute ostensibly
over the mourning ritual for a deceased king.
Yu Hyongw6n, who lived through thc di flicult times of factional strife, found
it politically and morally impossible for him either to blame the king for the
misfortune, or even to raise the issue since mentjon of it might constitute indict-
ment of the present king's factional favorites. Yu H yongwon could not havc helped
but realize that factionalism was a pox on the body politic, but he avoided the