excellent paper on Sejong's life

[ajk]

I had cited this briefly once before, but now that the series is over....There’s an excellent paper on Sejong that I found on the Internet. It’s a great piece of work for anyone to read who isn’t a Korean history expert. It’s called “The Cultural Work of Sejong the Great” and is located here:

www.koreasociety.org/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=349&Itemid=35

It runs twelve pages, so not at all overwhelming, and it provides a great overview of Sejong’s life, including some stories and accomplishments that the series didn’t cover. It was written by a Columbia U. professor of Korean studies. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who watched the series. In fact, I printed a copy and am keeping it permanently.

One of the things you realize from reading the paper is how historically accurate the series was. As we’ve seen, you just never know about these series, but I’m glad that so much of what we watched was faithful to, or at least not in conflict with, the historical knowledge about Sejong’s life. There is, however, one big and surprising exception. (At least it was a surprise to me; certainly it isn’t a surprise to our history expert members.) In the first part of the series, crown prince Yangnyeong was portrayed as overaggressive to the point of being out of control, which ultimately was what got him kicked out. But the paper tells us that Yangnyeong “had been criticized for this weakness of will and indecisive character”! And that his weakness is most likely what doomed him. So that’s one big liberty that the series took.

Anyway, I thought I’d give the paper its own thread while the series is still fresh in our minds. Hope everyone who reads it finds it as useful as I did.

[MTR]

Thats great what a find .
On Yangnyeong i read he was not very smart and was overtly fond of the demon grog and palace women .
several times his brothers tried to cover up his massive blunders and breaches of protocol .
He clearly had no interest in being Crown Prince but he had to convince Taejong that he was not up to it .
I think he was smarter than we give him credit for in the end he got his way he got kicked out but stayed on the payroll free to enjoy life on Joseon's tab .
I wonder what happened to him .

[jojo]

Thanks for the link ajk! I willl definitely check it out... but later. We just finished episode 55 here in Phila. and I don't want to get spoiled. [all of the other new posts look very tempting!!]

[ajk]

Here’s some news—I tracked down and e-mailed the paper’s author and he answered me. He was glad to hear that people are finding his paper useful. He also said that he felt the history of Sejong’s life isn’t taught properly in Korean schools, because they overemphasize the Hangul invention at the expense of the other great things he achieved. That was part of his motivation for writing the paper. Pretty interesting, coming from a Korean Studies professor.

He also mentioned that he’s watched historical dramas and that his favorite of the ones he’s seen is “Tears of the Dragon.” He said that its production quality wasn’t quite as high as the more recent series, but the story was particularly fascinating. I’ve heard good things about that series from people here in the forum, and would like to see it myself because Taejong was such a great character GKS and “Tears” is about him. If there’s ever a serious effort made to get KBS to rerun any of the historical dramas, “Tears” would be a good candidate. Especially with an endorsement like that.

[MTR]

I Think Tears was an SBS Drama ,could be wrong and that was followed by King And Queen which was about Taejong and Sejong .

[MTR]

AKJ maybe the Prof could dig up stuff on Chun Chu for us .

[Candylover]

AJK, Thanks for the good article. I also printed a copy, read it and will keep it permanently.

Tears of the Dragon was an excellent KBS drama which started the era or boom of historical dramas in Korea more than 10 years ago. Here is one of the best scenes from the series.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPGVsXVRlT4

-VIDEO SUMMARY
King Taejong Yi Bang-Won - who was the fourth son of King Taejo, the founder of the dynasty - killed his two younger brothers born to his step mother Queen Kang in order to ascent to the throne. Therefore, the abdicated king Taejo who had lost his lovely two sons and had to see the despair and death of his young wife got furious and cursed his fourth son. He even shot an arrow at King Taejong at a court party, but in vain.
Now when the abdicated King Taejo is very old and in deep sorrow, his devilish son Taejong and Queen Minn(played by the same actress!) come to comfort him. Taejong delivers some words of comfort and begins to dance to comfort his father. Taejo shouts out, "What are you doing?" but soon he begin to reflect on the past - the death of his two sons, his young wife's cry and curse toward Taejong, the missed arrow, a Buddhist monk saying that life is an empty dream.... He finally begins to drop tears and says to his son "Stop! Now I've forgot everything"; Taejong drops on his knees and begin to weep saying "Please enjoy longevity. Please don't leave me." The father embrace his son.

[ajk]

Thanks, candylover, for the clip and the translation. Interesting to see what one of those earlier series looked like.

Coincidentally, I traded another e-mail with Prof. Ledyard and he had a bit more to say about prince Yangnyeong. He said that there was some degree of speculation in his assessment of Yangnyeong's demise but that the notion of his being as aggressive as GKS portrayed him didn't have any basis in fact that he was aware of. And he specifically mentioned Yangnyeong's portrayal in "Tears"--as being "constantly hounded by his father and unhappy with the high degree of control and expectation imposed on him" (prof's words). He also mentioned that Yangnyeong always had a good relationship with his brother! So obviously the series took some license with his character.