* Joseon-Gyeongguk-Jeon (조선경국전 朝鮮經國典) : Joseon’s first constitutional law written by Jung Do-Jeon in 1394, published in 1395.
Why did he think prime minister should manage everything instead of King? Because king is hereditary, but prime minister is not. King’s position is hereditary so the qualities of a king can be random, like either clever or foolish, either violent or weak. However prime minister is chosen by the king over the other candidates who have already proved their qualities several times by passing the state exam, by experiencing various state affairs, by gaining colleagues’ support. Even if a king is incompetent, it is not easy to replace him. However, the prime minister in charge of the politics can be replaced easily if common people suffer from his politics. For the sake of the people, he thought, it would be better to appoint more easily replaceable authorities in charge of politics. That’s his basic logic.
Then, what’s the difference between Goryeo‘s Dodang system and Jung Do-Jeon’s prime minister-centric system? Well, quite different. Most of all, Joseon’s king should be a competent Confucian scholar himself. It is well-known fact that Joseon’s kings should study, work, discuss nonstop for over 20 hours a day. Moreover, unlike Goryeo’s hereditary nobility, Joseon’s ruling class are more like the meritocracy. If 3 generations of your family have failed to pass the state exam, your whole family will be degraded from nobles to commoners. Therefore, every nobles fanatically forced their sons to study hard in order to survive. That’s one of the reasons why the enthusiasm for education in Korea is really that high up to these days.
As Yi Bang-Won killed Jung Do-Jeon in 1398, Yi Bang-Won’s absolute monarchy seems to have defeated Jung Do-Jeon’s constitutional monarchy. However, Yi Bang-Won kept Jung Do-Jeon’s reforms intact for the most part, and Jung Do-Jeon’s Sadaebu-centric ideology had permeated and flourished even though his name had been a taboo for about 500 years. Most of all, Joseon’s politics gradually slanted to minister-centric politics while monarchs were losing power as time went by. Even Kangxi Emperor (강희제 康熙帝 1654~1722) of Qing Dynasty, one the greatest emperors in the history of China, met Joseon’s envoy and told him “Do you know your country’s biggest problem? Your king is too weak and the ministers are too powerful.” So, the final winner is Jung Do-Jeon after all.
However, there were flaws in his system. His good purpose had gradually tarnished and the system was degenerated into factional strifes among Sadaebu ministers. Jung Do-Jeon created a verification system to use the doubt and envy of Sadaebu, but as Cho-Young of Hwasadan told Bang-Won, Sadaebu also have a habit of creating “factions”. Jung Do-Jeon couldn’t imagine his check and balance system would cause extreme factional strifes which went as far as to exterminate the opposition party for trivial matters. The consumptive partisan brawls for hundreds of years had led to the collapse of Joseon dynasty.
Post time 3-2-2016 10:20 AM
变色卡
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