You're Dead to Me - Medieval Korea: from the Goryeo to Joseon periods

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Korea by Dr John Lee and comedian Erika Ehler to learn all about the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties. Nowadays, Korean culture has a global reach and international fanbase – but what about the country's medieval history? During the period known in Europe as the Middle Ages, the ancient kingdoms of Korea were unified, and the resulting polity ruled in turn by two dynasties, the Goryeo and the Joseon. This episode explores this period in Korea’s history, from the foundation of the Goryeo state in 918, through the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century and the coup that brought the Joseon dynasty to power, to the Japanese invasions of the 1590s. Along the way, we take in a foundation myth involving a garlic-eating bear, look at the position of women and enslaved people in Joseon society, explore the architectural styles of the period, and tell the story of Sejong the Great and the creation of Hangul. If you’re a fan of Korean culture, palace coups and political intrigue, and the everyday details of life in the past, you’ll love our episode on medieval Korea. If you want more East Asian history, listen to our episodes on Edo Japan and Tang Dynasty China. And for more on the Mongols, check out our episode on Genghis Khan. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Auréliane Perrin Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Studio and Edit Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Series Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids,

and plenty of other things that don't rhyme. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me with a Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are mastering our hungul

and watching out for marauding Mongols as we march back through the centuries to learn all about medieval Korea. And to help us sort out our choreo from our Chosan dynasties, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, he's assistant professor of East Asian History at the University of Durham.

He's a historian of early modern East Asia, especially the Korean Peninsula, with a particular research focus on environmental history. It's Dr. John Lee. Welcome, John. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. Pleasure to have you in. And in Comedy Corner, she's an Emmy-nominated writer and comedian. Maybe you've watched one of the many hilarious shows she's written for, including Late Night Mash, never mind the Buzzcocks or Cunk on Life. Or maybe you've seen her guesting on Frankie Boyle's New World Order or comedians giving lectures, or you've seen her live on tour as a stand-up.

It's Erica Ela. Welcome, Erica. Hello. Welcome to the show. Happy to be here. We're delighted to have you in. It is your first time on the podcast, so I am contractually obliged to ask you, do you like history? I will say I liked history when my hot history teacher taught it to me.

Oh, no. Okay. So there's a crush involved. There was a crush involved. Okay. But it did get me interested. I got really good marks back here. Okay, hot teacher, that's good.

But history now, are you still, you still into history now, or are you sort of, is that a faded time for you? I see it's a bit faded, It's one of those things where I don't actively seek it out, but whenever somebody tells me something, I do find it really interesting. My dad's like a real history nerd,

and sometimes when we're on road trip, that's his way of connecting with his daughter. It's an interesting choice. It doesn't always work, but I do find it. I do find it enlightening. Like, it's fun to learn. It's very strong dad energy to do history. And, I mean, I've heard that when you were younger,

a bit of a K-pop fan. Yeah, when I was in high school. Yeah. It was very popular in my eye school. In fact, it started like a drama on prom. because this one girl wanted only K-pop songs. It wasn't me out, to be clear. I'm a little bit more.

But yeah, and it was super popular. Yeah. I mean, it's huge. I mean, it's huge, right? Absolutely massive. So you know a little bit about the modern sort of K-pop culture? Do you know anything about the history of Korea, medieval career, in fact? Not at all.

Not at all. Ditto. So, what do you know? This is called the So What Do You Know? This is why I have a go at guessing what you are. our lovely listener or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject. Now, nowadays, Korean culture, of course, is a global sensation.

So maybe you love Korean masterpiece movies like Parasite or you're tuning into your K-dramas like Squid Game or Crash Landing on New. Perhaps you've, well, you've adored K-pop. Perhaps you caught BTS on their record-breaking tour or saw them at the World Cup final. Maybe you've got a bias or a bias wrecker. You can't stop thinking about it.

Maybe you've just, you know, obsessed with Korean skincare, or K-pop demon hunters, It's my daughter's favorite film. But when it comes to medieval Korea, maybe you know a little bit about the historical K-dramas, but I'm not sure there's much more beyond that, certainly not for me. So perhaps the history is less familiar.

So what do we need to know about medieval Korea? How does it measure up to the plot of Alchemy of Souls? And what does a garlic-eating bear have to do with anything? Let's find out. Right, John, I've said this episode is about medieval Korea. Medieval's sort of a European concept. we go Romans to Renaissance in European history, does the same apply to Korea and can we identify our medieval period? Right. So the era roughly contemporaneous with the European

Middle Ages, that would be the Khoril and Chosun eras in Korean history. So Kordioling from 918 and Chosun lasting all the way from 1392 to 1910. So one of the longest regimes of the late medieval early modern world. And these dinosaurs are the last. And these dinosaurs are the These rule pretty much the Korean Peninsula. So that's roughly comprising North and South Korea today. And just to give you a sense of size, the Korean Peninsula is roughly the size of Great Britain. Oh, great. Yeah, roughly. Okay. Kind of a bit smaller. Today would be looking at a period from the establishment of Kordial rule in 1918 to the 1590s, an important decade when you see these sort of failed Japanese invasions that lead to a lot of changes in Korean society. So 918 to the 1590. So that's the equivalent of Alfred the Great to Queen Elizabeth I first. It's quite a lot of history by British, you know, if your comparisons there. For the Korean people, where do we begin our origin myth?

Do you know the origin story of the Korean people? Have you ever encountered it? I can't say I have. No. Do you want to have a guess? The origin of Korean people? Like a myth. A myth?

How they came about. Yeah. I assume a God is involved. I would guess. Yeah. A God is involved. Maybe if I, with the knowledge I know about Cape. pop that there was a boot camp of them all trying to be like, we're like, right, going to make you

these beautiful people with clear skin. Then there's like, that's Koreans. Amazing. So they're all learning choreography. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I love that. I think God involved is an interesting, it's not far off, but I mean, we have to say it involves

lions and tigers and bears, oh my, not the lions. It involves tigers and bears. How does this story begin? What does it tell us about the beginning? Well, so this common origin myth that you still see if you open like a primary school history textbook today in North or South Korea involves a starts with a god, so you're right on that, name Huanung, who went to live among humans on a mountain, coined a legend. This is Tebeksan, probably referring to Pekdu San, which is a mountain on the sort of present-day North Korean-Chinese border.

And on that mountain there was a bear and a tiger living in a cave and they prayed to this God to make them, to turn them into humans. And so the God answered their prayers, but with a contest. So this is the book camp here. So he gave them warm wood and 20 pieces of garlic and said, if you can just eat this, and not see sunlight for 100 days, their wish should be granted. He would turn them into a human. The tiger failed.

He couldn't take it after. I just left. But the bear was patient and succeeded, and the god turned the bear into a woman. And they had a child, and this child was named Tanjun, who would rule supposedly for 1,500 years or a huge long period of time.

and his descendants are, according to this myth, the founders of Korea's ancient kingdoms. Wow. Yeah. So they're in a cave with garlic and wormwood, you said? What's wormwood? Okay, the Korean term would probably be a souk, which could be wormwood or mugwort,

so a type of herb, an edible herb. Okay, lovely, garlic and herbs. Not so bad. Yeah. So Erica is 100 days of darkness and constant garlic breath worth it to be a human? Is being a human that good? I don't know if our experience is that good, but I like garlic, though.

Okay. Okay. I mean, I feel like a bear in a cave. That's easy. Bears living caves. Yeah. Poor tiger. Also, I thought tigers would be stronger.

So, okay, so we have our origin myth, but when does Korea emerge as a single kingdom? Because as I understand from ancient Korean history, there are quite a lot of disparate ancient kingdoms, but we're into the medieval period. So when do we get our foundational Korean kingdom? Or don't we? Well, yeah, there's various sort of ancient kingdoms that are pointed out in the archaeological record. But if we look at the written documentary evidence, by the third or fourth century common era, you have three kingdoms firmly established on the Korean Peninsula, known as Gogh, Bechse and Scylla. And then in the 10th century, a warlord named Wangon would unify the Korean peninsula. and establish the first ruler of the Kordio dynasty,

which starts a sort of medieval narrative in 9-18. Right. So this kingdom consisted again of the Korean Peninsula, plus a chunk of Manchuria as well, with the Amnok River forming the boundary with Chinese dynasties. Yeah, Manchuria is northeast China, right? So that's quite a large stretch of land. That's right.

So the earlier kingdom I mentioned, Koglio actually controlled a huge chunk of Manchuria back in, again, a much earlier period. Okay, so the Koryo dynasty, is that where we get the word Koreo from? That's right. Yeah, and is that where we get the word Korea from? That's right. That's helpful. Okay, good.

So presumably the reason that K-pop bands are so good at Koryo is because they're named after Korya. It's within them. It's natural. It's in the name. The clue's there. It's very helpful. We have our first Korean king, Wangong, was it? Wangong, yes.

Yeah, great. So he's sort of the first warlord who controls this landmass, which is very, very helpful. But we're already jumping ahead because we're into now the 12th century. And we get a serious rebellion against the choreo rule. Erica, can you guess the profession of the man who leads this rebellion? He's not a sort of king. He's got another hobby. I'm going to say cook.

Oh, nice. Just because. I have a feeling. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like Korean food is very good. If someone's a leader, maybe that's where it came from. I would certainly follow a good cook into battle. Yeah.

You know, you know that you're going to get a really good meal out of it. It's not a cook. The phrase is a geomancer. A geomancer. That's right. That's right. So we have no idea about this man's cooking skills, but Neil Chung was his name. A geomancerer.

Which means what? Sorser? In a sense, it's like a diviner, a sort of a master of this kind of East Asia. some would call it a sort of pseudoscience of in Chinese feng shui in Korean Pungsu. Finding fortunate places to build your house or bury your ancestors. And in a sense, yeah, you could say a sort of expert fortune teller and diviner. That's pretty handy.

I mean, pretty handy as a leader. Yeah, so he's like doing a vibe check everywhere to make sure that it's, yeah, all good. Yeah, it's a good place for battle. Yeah, vibe check? Yeah, we're going to win. That's really amazing. I mean, Gio, I suppose, is what we get the word earth from. So the idea of the earth, geo, he's looking, he's places and he feels something is a positive

place to be or, you know, does that mean he's sort of got fortune-telling skills as well? He knows what's coming. Pretty handy. Does that mean, therefore, that he wins? You know, does it, is it Miu-Chong, his name, Miochong? Miu-chong, that's right. Does he win this rebellion? He does not.

Ah, okay. Unfortunately, well, he should have seen the other. I was about to make the same joke. Sorry, I'm going to say. He must have told his followers something else. But essentially, he tried to move the Korean capital from the Kordiok capital of Khezong, which is in close to the current DMZ that separates South and North Korea, on the North Korean side presently.

Right. He wanted to move the capital to Pyongyang, the current capital of North Korea, so much further to the northwest. And scholars think that Milcheng also represented this sort of, this tension between Koreans who were more nativist who wanted a more assertive, independent foreign policy, and Koreans who wanted closer ties with China.

And this is important because this is the tension that will persist, one could argue, in later periods in Korean history as well. And in terms of faith at this time, are the Koreans confusions? Are they, what's their faith, Buddhism? In the Kordial period, you could say it was much more pluralistic.

You had these like kind of nativist chieomancers, like Milcheng, but he was also a Buddhist monk. So he had this kind of pluralistic, more eclectic strain of ideas just flowing through Korea. He had Confucians who could also be patrons of Buddhist temples and so forth. But in the Chosen period, which we'll talk about later, is more Confucian, in a sense. Okay. Yeah. So Magic Mioyang, you know, he's not quite Magic Mike, because actually it all sort of falls apart for him.

It doesn't really work out. so he doesn't really succeed so the Coriol dynasty continues and the man sent to defeat him is called Kim Pushik Kim Buschik, that's right and is this a mission Kim possible is this kind of is he going to just swoop in

and just crush him? How do you defeat a magic geomancer? So Kim Pushik seems to be at least according to the records some of which he wrote himself so this is a rather biased he's a sort of classic Confucian bureaucrat from this all but also

a member of these kind of aristocratic families from the southeast. So he certainly had influence, he certainly had money and these sort of broader networks and influences and the wealth that could raise a large army and crush this rebellion in the northwest. In the aftermath,

Kimbushik will help to restructure Kordio's governance, make it more centralized around a ruler and his close ministers, trying to follow this more sort of classic Chinese-style Confucian bureaucracy. He also compiled the histories of the three kingdoms,

and this is where the bias comes in. A lot of what we know about these periods in Korean history come also from Kimbushik's own writing, which tends to make his part of Korea in the Southeast look very good and make himself look really good. Yeah. That's not... He's not the

first person in history to do that. No, Julius Caesar did the same, but he's sure. So the pen is mightier than the sword, but actually get yourself a man who can do both, Erica, because, you know, he's got the pen and the sword. He's doing it all. Do we consider Kim Pushik to be a king in his own right, or is he kind of reforming on behalf of the Gorial Kings? On behalf of the Cordial Kings. So that's sort of a classic kind of Confucian sage, Confucian official.

He's not taking power, but advising the king. And one of the men that Kim Pushik writes about in his lovely book is called Kim Yushin. And there's something quite special about him and his birth. Do you know what that could be? His birth. Yeah. The mom ate the placenta. She was like really, really, like, new agey back then.

I mean, she may have done, I don't know, that's not in my script. The thing that is quite unusual, the gestation period was a little bit longer than the average nine months, 20 months. Oh. Which feels more elephant than human. Yeah. What? I mean, John, that feels odd, strange.

I mean, obviously this is a semi-magical, mythical hero. Is it? Can we sort of assume that this is someone with powers? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is part of his sort of superhero origin story in a sense. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So he's kind of half-mortal, half-god. Is that kind of the thing? Well, just kind of, in a sense it follows a sort of geometric tradition, right? This guy was fated to be a great general. Sure. Even his birth was unusual. You know, even his pre-birth, I could say, was unusual.

Yes, he was cooking for 20 months. until they made sure he was absolutely right. See, I would take it a different way. Like, I would see if someone was in the womb for 20 months, like, weak baby, needed more of mama's juice. If baby was out in one month strong, I'm like, now that's a god. I'm following him in a battle.

Okay. That's how I see it, but maybe that's my opinion. Yeah, more like xenomorphine alien. They sort of immediately come out three hours later. Okay, so he's in the womb for 20 months. He comes out. He's this heroic superhero warrior. and talking of warriors, by the 1170s or so,

Korea is under military rule. And these days we're used to the BTS army of superfans. But what are we talking about military rule? What does that mean? How is it different to the choreo before? Yeah, so it was an interesting situation in the 12th century. So some of the listeners may be familiar with the history of Korea's neighbor, Japan, and its sort of age of the samurai and the sort of warlordism

that's sort of endemic throughout pre-modern Japanese. history. And in some ways, for this brief period, from the 1170s to the early 13th century during these several decades, Korea may have been going through an interestingly similar pattern. So basically, a general name Chechung Hun, he established himself and his descendants, all military men, as sort of de facto military rulers, sort of following a pattern you see again in medieval Japanese history. And these Korean generals basically tried to keep the civil administration and the king under their thumb. So sort of trying to undoing their reforms, some of the reforms that Kim Bushik had done.

So basically, you see the pedig. There's a lot of tension, a lot of infighting. You know, you first had these battles between geomancers and Confucians. And now you have military men coming in to Jeffrey trying to assert themselves. And it's very interesting because if the, the Chet family had stayed in power, Korean history, probably would have been very different, maybe more similar to patterns in Japanese history, if not for a world historical turning point that would emerge in the 13th century. There's a sort of if there, isn't it? The what if could have been. But the what if is that the

arrival of a terrifying threat coming over the horizon, I've seen plenty of Korean horror movies and usually it's, you know, witch, ghost, demon, goblin. This time around, it's something much more scary. Do you know what it would be? A man. Not just any man. is a terrifying man, but the name, what is it, it's the Mongol Khan, right? That's right. So the Mongols are coming. Right. Do you know anything about the Mongols? A little bit. Not really. I don't know. Just like wife tales that my mom would today. Or if like I'd like see somebody who was randomly Irish who looked sort of like Asian who I thought was half Asian like me, my mom would be like, no, no, that's Khan.

I go way back. He did have a lot of kids getting his guy. You know, supposedly, you know, there's millions of people descended from him. So we're talking here, of course, about Chingis Khan, better known as Genghis Khan. We did an episode about him. Look it up. It's a lot of fun. It's not Chingis Khan who comes over the mountain.

Is it as one of his descendants? That's right. So the Mongols under Chinggis Khan, of course, they first break out of the step and launch invasions of northern China and other parts of Asia. The conquest of Korea took quite a while, multiple generations of Khans. Yeah, partly because Korea was kind of the side show. They were more interested in conquering China, Iran, and these places. So the Mongols first inter-Korean territory during attacks on Qitan, Manchurian rebels who had fled into Korea.

And initially, in 1218, 1219 or so, the Mongols asked Kordio to join them and supply them with troops and grain. So there was a temporary alliance at that time. The temporary, they being key word there. Yeah, so we have a business proposal on the table. Is it sort of a threat but not a threat, or is it more of a kind of both sides getting something out of this? Initially, that was the idea. But this is where the Tread military family, and they didn't want to do this. And so over the next few decades, there's multiple destructive Mongol campaigns large due to these military men trying to assert themselves, assert the independence of rejecting some of these Mongol proposals.

and basically the Tread military family and their allies, they would be the Koreans would fight hardest against the Mongols. And they basically eventually get wiped out, which is rather convenient, actually, for the Korean kings and some of the civil officials, one could argue. Because the Korean kings had been under the thumb of these sort of warlord families. Have you guys seen Bugs Life? This is like the exact same plot as Bugs Life.

Yeah, where the bugs give grains. That's true. I think this is what Hollywood does, feeds us Asian history without telling us its Asian history. I think Bogus Life is a great example of this sort of tributary framework, right? Or at least how we, it's actually a good example, I think, yeah. We've done an episode on the Mongols before, Al-Nhingyas Khan. Typically, these alliances don't last.

The kind of the superpower just wins. Is it a hassle being at vassal? Are you forced to hand things over, you know, do the Goryo kings, are they independent? Do they have freedom? Or is it kind of that the Mongols are in charge? Right. So once the Mongols complete their conquest of Korea in 1270, and the Korean king becomes vassalized, the sort of tacit agreement that you mentioned earlier continues. The Koreans would send troops and grain, but also some more controversial things as well. Koreans were also obligate to send young men to serve as eunuchs in the Mongol capital.

So you're sending basically your son off to China and you know what's going to happen to him, unfortunately. Sure. When you say serve as a eunuch, first day on the job is an operation, Brazil. Okay. And women were also sent, young women would be sent to serve as courtesans in the Mongol courts. You do have these Korean records, Korean scholars talking about families hiding their sons, hiding their daughters, when they found out the Mongol troops were coming to collect the tribute. Yeah, that's pretty, yeah, that can be fun at all. No. They're still Corio Kings, but they're not powerful. Right. So what the Koreans got in exchange is the Mongols aren't going to come back and ravage the country. And the Korean kings got to stay in power. But even the Korean kings, they had to spend their childhoods in the Mongol capital, which was called Daidu at the time.

But it's actually present-day Beijing. So Kordi kings grew up in the Mongol court. They would later often marry Mongol princesses. So you have this sort of kind of half-Korean, half-Mongolian nobility. and monarchy by the 14th century. And Korean scholars would also go to Mongol China to what's called Yuan China and take the civil examinations there and you can serve in the Mongol court. One really famous example is a man named Yise Hek, who was born in the early 14th century, who passed the civil exams in Mongol China and came back and set up a school where he came back to Korea and set up a school where he trained Korean elites.

in Chinese philosophy. And it gets a little bit more confusing because then we get the red turban rebels who are Chinese rebels? Yeah, so you're referring to red turban rebels and these are representatives of various rebel groups that emerge in the mid-14th century as the Mongol Empire is falling apart.

So we're not going to go into that why it fell apart. That's a long story. But some of these rebels, they weren't just fine Mongols. they also took the opportunity to invade Korea. Sure, why not? So this adds to a lot of the chaos going on on the Korean Peninsula. You have the Mongol Empire falling apart,

and various tensions, political tensions, are re-emerging in the Korean Peninsula as the Mongol Empire declines. Gotcha. Okay, so they're sort of confusing the issue a little bit, and we do get a political assassination, King Kongming. Right. So Kongmin is a really interesting figure. he's really representative of these generations of Koyo kings who had spent their childhoods in the Mongol capital.

And they came back to Korea with the Mongol princess, whom they supposedly were deeply in love them. And he had some ambitions to sort of reform the Qaeda dynasty, centralize it, even some argue, some stories argue he had plans to abolish slavery, although none of this would come to fruition because he would be a sound. fascinated in 1374, yeah. And he's replaced by a king who's quite young. Do you want to guess how young? I'm going to say nine years old. I'm pretty close. He's 10, yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah. How do you feel about 10-year-olds being in power? Would the world be better or worse if we just handed all control to a 10-year-old? I feel like, let's try it because what's happening now with these old fogies I don't think is working. So it's like, why not? Yeah, we've had the gerontocracy. Let's have the kids. Give the kids a chance.

I feel like, you know that phrase was like, oh, you don't learn hate, right? So a child would probably be a little bit nicer. But let's see about this 10-year-old king what he's about to do. John, who is this 10-year-old boy? Does he have power? Or is he just a puppet? Oh, sadly, he was just a puppet. Well, and again, it's this tumultuous time.

You just this ambitious leader had just been killed. And a 10-year-old boy was a lot more palatable. to love the nobility. So what's his name, this 10-year-old? Oh, King Wu. Okay. And so he's just a puppet. So who's pulling the puppet strings?

Who's the real Fingali here? So you have this, again, this is a lot of political intrigue going on. Real power is held by a man named Iinim, leader of another clan. So essentially, you can just see a lot of political intrigue ongoing as the Mongol Empire declines in Korea is trying to decide what to do as this. massive continental empire falls apart. Okay, so what happens next then? If the Mongol Empire is collapsing, the Yuan dynasty is coming to an end, does Korea get its independence back?

Do we still have this sort of these puppet kings, or do we get an assertion of someone who's going to reclaim power? Yes, a man does step in at this time, a general. A man named Yiseng Ge, whose father, also a military man, had served the Mongols actually. So Yisenkhe was a general who, with the support of other generals, over through the now-adult King Wu in 1388. He'd aged out.

He'd aged out, yeah. And replaced him with the king's nine-year-old son. Hey, see a pattern here, yes. One year later, Y-Song-Gay would just replace this kid with a distant relative. Right. named Kongyak. Has there ever been a baby? Yeah.

We've had babies in Scottish history. We've had babies in English history, but Henry VI's a baby in English history. Becoming king? That I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Eight years old, nine years old is the youngest will go so far.

At least for a quarter period. Okay, good. All right. Is he a king or is he not a king? Not yet. Okay. But in 1392, he removed King Kongyang.

Yeah. And he, made himself king. Right, okay. When you say removed, is that sort of a polite term for Kellen? Exiled and probably quietly murdered. Okay. In 1872, the Mari Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic.

Every person on board was gone, and none of them were ever seen again. Every Monday on Hidden History, Dr. Harini Bhatt takes an unexplained event from history, just like that one, reads the evidence like a case file, and tells you what she thinks happened. No hedging. Start with the Mary Celeste episode for a look at one of history's most enduring maritime enigmas.

Follow hidden history with Dr. Harini Bhatt wherever you get your podcasts. So on new king, John, what's he called? Yeah, so he's known in records as King Tejjo. That's his monarchical name. He renames this new state, this new dynasty, Chozon. So this is the end of the choreo.

The end of the Kordia dynasty now. Okay. Right. The old descendants of Wang Gun are now hunted down, killed. Right. King Tejou would move the capital from Geelong to Hanyang, also called Han Song, which is basically present-day Seoul, present-day Seoul, the capital of South Korea. So it was in the northern peninsula and it moves to the southern peninsula? Yes, exactly.

So Seoul is still the capital because of this move, because of this move, because of the capital. decision. Exactly. Okay, that's fascinating. Right. What period are we in here? I mean, the 1300s? So this is like around the 1390s. Okay, great. Okay. So this is the beginning of the Chuzon dynasty and we've got a brand new capital city in the south of the peninsula. Right. And what do we get in terms of society? Do we still have these kind of elite warlords running around doing their own thing? You know, the elites are called the Yangban, right? Is that correct? Tell us about them.

Are they powerful still? one could say that the tourism period is sort of a culmination of the reforms that we talked about earlier starting with

Kim Pishit for the victory of these sort of more Confucian-minded more synitic reformers or Koreans who were more fond of aspects

of Chinese civilization and wanted to turn Korea into this sort of Confucian utopia. They established again a country very much based upon this sort of Chinese model

or the king at the center of government and advised by members of the Korean aristocracy, known as the Yangban. So the Yangban dominate not just politics, but much of the economy and society throughout the Chosen dynasty. There's a lot of debate whether to what extent did the nature of the aristocracy change between the Kordia and Chosun periods. We're not going to go into that today. But essentially, you see the revamping of the country into this very centralized order with a seven-year. member state council that reviewed matters, gave advice to the king, instructed bureaucrats and

supervised officials, and the government was reworked into six government ministries, personnel, taxation, rights and rituals, military affairs, punishments, and public works. Wow. Yeah. This ministry of punishments, that feels quite scary. Yeah. Which of those six would you want to run, Erica? You've got personnel, taxation, rights and religion, military affairs, punishments, and public works. Which minister would you be? I think I'd pick taxation. It'd be nice to be on the other side of that for once. Go on people's door and be like, hey, cough it up.

Yeah. Pay out. I mean, how does taxation work? Is everyone taxed peasants all the way up to the elites? In theory, you're supposed to. There's a land tax and so forth. But elites found various ways to get out of the land tax. So like modern.

A tailor is all this time, right? There was also everyone was supposed to serve in the military, but the elites got out of that. And even non-elites would pay a special tax to get out of military service. Which became a major source of revenue, actually, for the government. Sure, right. So Erica will be in charge of taxation. That's good. I guess I'm in charge of punishments, so I'll be lenient for now.

But can you talk to us about the society, the wider structure of society? You mentioned earlier enslavement and enslaved class. What's the demography of Korea at this point? How many people or what level of the society is enslaved or is peasant class? Right. So, of course, these percentages, you know, they vary greatly depending upon region and time period. Okay. We see, and it depends on the documentation we have.

We can look at some census registers from the mid-17th century. You have areas of Korea where 30% are the popular. or list as slave. Wow. Okay. But that doesn't mean the whole population was, right? But yeah, it could be as high as 30% in certain regions and certain areas. So slavery is a very curious aspect of Korean history. It's the only East Asian country where you see a continuous slave system not only emerge,

but also continue from the medieval into the early modern period all the way to the end of the 19th century. Wow. You have slavery in Japanese and Chinese history as well, but not as sustained in the same sort of institutional continuity. This is an inherited status. You could be enslaved as punishment for crimes. For most slaves in the chosen period, they inherited that status from their parents.

So either their mom or their dad was a slave, so they were a slave. Right. I suppose we perhaps know more about the transatlantic slave trade. That's a thing perhaps we studied at school or we've heard more about. Is this exactly the same in terms of the legal conditions, but also is there a racial element to it? Are there people who are of a class that is considered to be enslaved, or is it more just politics and economics? More the latter. There's no ethnic element to Korean slavery. It's Koreans enslaving Koreans. Right.

But the legal conditions regarding slavery were not consistent throughout the dynasty. In the latter half of the chosen dynasty, you see a lot of cases of slaves, like suing Yangban. And they could take Yangban to court over offenses and so forth. So they could take the elites to court, which is interesting, right? So they've got legal representation, which we wouldn't have had over in, for example, the transatlantic slave trade in America. Exactly, exactly. So it's a very different context.

So Korea was a society that valued kinship networks. And also Confucian philosophy really emphasizes, really prioritizes relationship between parent and child between kinship, between people of the same family. So you can imagine the tensions that emerged in a society like Korea where you had aristocrats and slaves living together on same estates and they could be related to each other in some senses, right? A really instructive story is very instructive sort of bittersweet account. In the mid-16th century, there was a scholar named U.S.

He was an official in the royal court, a very high-level official. And he had four daughters with an enslaved woman. So he had been traveling around the country with his administrative duties. And during these duties, he had lived with, I guess you could say, a concubine, a slave concubine. But he didn't own her. She was owned by someone else. And with this slave concubine, he had four daughters.

It seems like he kept in touch with those daughters because when each of them got old enough to be of marriageable age, he spent a considerable amount of money and political capital to free each of them. He traded a horse to free the first two daughters, paid money and also bribe some officials to free the third and fourth.

All this took him several years. And this made it possible for the daughters to marry another free person. You were a lot more attractive marriageable candidate if you were free rather than that slave. because then their children would be born free. Was that quite rare, like, to become free at that time? No.

There were many ways slaves could gain their freedom. They could buy their freedom, especially in the latter half of the Chiltern Dynasty. You see this happen more often. They could donate, like, a bunch of grain to a government granary and get even, like, some military title as well, along with their freedom. You could also run away. Right.

You could, yeah. Slaves technically had to wear these ID tags, actually, called Hopin that they hung around their necks. So that was one way of trying to keep track of them, but you see in many cases of runaway slaves throughout the Chosen Dynasty and slave catchers hired to try to find them. Yeah.

It's a really interesting dynamic, isn't it? The idea of a father having to liberate his daughters one by one because they were owned by someone else is really... Yeah. It's tragic, it's sad, but it's also kind of... It's different to how we understand the histories of enslavement perhaps. But we should move on. We're a comedy show, and this is sad.

Let's talk about sort of happier things. Erica, what do you imagine life was like for women in this society? We're in the Chosen dynasty now. Well, I mean, what history has shown me is life for women is always pretty shit no matter what. But I don't know. I'm going to guess that it was okay based on the question. You may not be, I mean, I'll turn to John because I think probably there's a variation, right? presumably there is plenty of women would be enslaved, but there'd be elite women too.

That's right. That's right. I know you said you wanted to go on to happier things, but life for women in the chosen dynasty was, of course, in many ways, if you consider what a patriarchal agrarian bureaucracy would look like, life for women was not great. Of course, all this changes over time. But the expectations for women, especially elite women, was to be so virtuous and remain chased before marriage if their husband died widows especially elite yangban widows were expected to be chased and not remarry um they were expected to you know there's stereotypes you see in the documents are you know possessed delicate features have domestic skills like weaving and cooking be obedient and so forth that's what we see at least according to the

writings of male yang ban okay and divorce law is there any law that allows divorce for women or? Very limited. Technically, again, this really depends upon the era, but we have some documents that say that a woman could technically get a divorce if a husband was away from home for a long time or abused her physically. But again, this is all very difficult, even if it was legally sanctioned. So socially, it would not have been.

Okay. So there are only two reasons a woman is allowed to leave her husband, but there were seven reasons a man could leave his wife. Right. Which, you know, that feels... Sort of on the nose. Do you want to guess what some of those reasons would be? I bet it says like, oh, she sneezed weird.

Like, get rid of her. John, can you talk us through the official reasons a man can divorce his wife? Well, so some of the things we see in some documents, again, we don't know how much these were followed up upon was disobeying one's parents. So disobeying his parents. So disobeying your in-laws.

Okay. That was a big no-no. Failing to produce a male. air, adultery. Okay, so if a woman had two daughters, she could be divorced for that. From my understanding is that they would not have divorced. If it was a Yangban male, in particular, a man of means,

he would have just taken a concubine. Right. Adultery, jealousy toward other women in the household, like the concubine that got taken to have the male heir. Serious disease, stealing, and talking too much. Wow. Women be talking. Ain't that always the way it goes.

And I feel like also like jealousy towards another woman if you were cheating on her with the concubine, that feels like a legitimate emotion. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, okay. I mean, you know, luckily talking too much is no longer a divorceable thing

because obviously I'm a podcast. It's all I do is talk too much. So luckily my wife has not left me yet. But let's turn maybe to have. happier things. I'm not sure. Let's talk to art and culture. So you enjoyed K-pop when you were younger growing up. I like Korean movies. What sort of culture is being produced do you think at this time in the Chosun dynasty? They haven't got movies yet and they haven't really got K-pop. I would guess a lot of like artwork, probably. What kind of art are you imagining? Are you thinking paintings?

I'm thinking paintings. Painting. Okay. What about storytelling? Oh, I didn't consider that that would be an art form. I think that's an art form. Yeah. I mean, I do stand up. I should consider it an art form. Yeah, is there storytelling, is there comedy in the 15th, 16th centuries? Certainly. In a lot of satire of young ban elites, very common. Really? Very popular amongst commoners and slaves, as you can imagine.

Sure. And poetry, of course, was very important. Carve ceramic wares, so definitely right about that. Celadon wears in particular. A very famous Korean art form. So this is what vases, bowls, that kind of traditional, what we imagine is ceramics that are ceremonial or are they functional?

Both. Okay. But also architecture and how that's also something that is quite interesting about the Chosen Dynasty as most buildings are made from wood. Yeah. It's connected to the timber industry and the very distinctive forestry policies of the Cholzone Dynasty.

So you're an environmental historian. That's your bag. So, you know, go off here. Give us a little... I don't want to take too much time. Yeah, yeah. How much more? By the day?

Another podcast for this one. But Koreans tend to use pine, actually, for most shipbuilding and construction. So this led the government to actually focus a lot of energy on protecting pine forests throughout the Korean Peninsula. So essentially, it's one of the longest continuous forestry systems in global history, where the government is basically creating a system of protected forests along the Korean coasts, protecting them all the way from the 14th to the 19th centuries to create a sustainable timber supply. for shipbuilding, construction, and so forth. And so how do they defend those forests?

What are the punishments if someone were to go and chop down a lovely pine tree? That's where the Ministry of Punishment comes in, right? Well, it's, well, technically people could be imprisoned. They could even be exiled for these things. Right. But a lot of people would just pay bribes to the warden and so forth, they try to get away with it. Sure.

Yeah. These were, in theory. strictly regulated forests. And these Korean homes that are timber built, are they single story? Is it, you know, are we looking at, is it similar to Japanese architecture or is it different?

Ooh, that's beyond my pay grade. Okay, so I'm not an architectural historian. But I can't say about the Japanese case, but in the Korean case, yeah, one-story buildings generally. Yeah, lovely. Okay. Because Koreans are famous for having the underfloor heating, right? That's right. Yeah, which is an amazing technology.

Is that from this piece, period? Was that from a late period? That system of underfloor heating, on the, that becomes more prevalent from the 18th and 19th centuries onward. Depends upon one's interpretation of what's going on in these documents. But it's a very wasteful way

of heating your home as well, especially in a pre-modern society. How was it done? You just get a lot of wood into this, I guess you would call it. Are you allowed the wood? Ministry of punishment, surely. That's the other part, right?

People are just going into these forests, gathering as much wood and branches as possible, and you basically burn it up in a, I don't know the right term for it, but you burn it up under the, basically under the house, under the building, and little flus bring the heat from that big fire into your home.

Yeah, it's every room, right? Every room. Yeah, which is why it's such an amazing technology. This is medieval underfloor heating. It's lovely. That's right. Hard seen. It's very smart.

Erica, have you ever heard of Hungel, the script of Hungal, how Korean is written. I mean, I feel like I've seen it out in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very specific. It's very distinctive, isn't it? Yeah, I know I can tell when I see Korean,

because I always see, like, the circles like that. Yeah, that's it. It's so immediately distinctively different to what we might see as Chinese characters. The traditional story is that there's a great king who comes along and goes, all right, lads, I've got an idea. I've invented a script.

This king is Sejong? Sejong the Great Sejong the Great, yeah. Is this a myth? Is he a real king? But is he the pioneer of this new script? Yeah, you know, he is considered this great sage king, maybe kind of like Alfred in a sense.

And that is a narrative that people are often told in Korea. Certainly Koreans encountered alphabetic phonetic scripts during the Mongol era. Yeah. Things like Pogspa, which is a Tibetan script. used by the Mongols to transcribe their own documents. But Koreans definitely encountered these sort of scripts and perhaps, perhaps got the initial inspiration for turning the Korean language into a phonetic alphabet. But certainly we have to give credit to Zhe Jong and his scholars for creating, which is a very unique and distinctive phonetic alphabet, the only phonetic alphabet native to East Asia.

and a system of 14 consonants and 10 vowels that perfectly encapsulates the Korean language. And before Koreans were transcribing documents, Korean sounds with Chinese characters, Chinese characters that roughly approximated Korean sounds. That's very difficult. And so the Hungary alphabet greatly simplify the ways Koreans could read.

It standardized readings of Chinese characters. And Sa Jung-yo supposedly wanted to raise a level of popular education. So Hangul is a phonetic alphabet. Is that mean it's the equivalent to the Western alphabet, where things are spelled out with letters? Right. And with vowels and consonants that can be interchanged and exchange to create sounds, rather than, say, in Japanese, where you have specific a syllabary,

it's not separate vowels and consonants, but rather make, say, sound like ka or ga, together with one character. Right, okay. Yeah. Whereas Korean, it's like in Latin. Yeah, we have 26 letters in the Latin alphabet, and in the Korean equivalent, it's 24. That's... Ooh, 14 consonants, 10 vowels.

That should be right, yeah. My mouth is right there, yeah. And the Koreans also, they got there way early than Gutenberg with the printing press. In Europe, we're like, Gutenberg invented it. Korea was like two, three centuries ahead. They had movable type, they had metal type face, they were printing. They didn't have the same industrial print, but they were printing. So they were...

Oh, wow. It's amazing, isn't it? There's all these things that we think of as European inventions. Yeah, but you guys be doing that. I know. So this is a very cultured king, said John the Great. So can we say this is a kind of Korean golden age? We're into the 1400s now.

Is this where Korea reaches its peak cultural? post-Mongol? He's certainly thought so. True historian's answer. It's hard to say, one could say this is sort of a post-Mongles Hegeonger Renaissance. What's more important is that Korea is achieving now

into the 16th centuries, a level of political and social stability, that's very different from the turmoil that we talked about earlier of the Kordial period. Right. So we haven't got warlords, we haven't got invaders, there's no red turban rebels, there's no Mongols running around. We've got a

powerful king and his bureaucracy and his elite Yangban and everything is sort of fine until it's not because by the end of our story Erica it will go a little wrong do you know what happens in the 1590s sounds like something bad about it happened yeah I did hype it up in yeah yeah a boogeyman of sorts is about to come down it's not quite a boogey man it's it's a different invade it's not the mongols invading this time it's a different culture invading this time it's Japan, right? In the 1590s, in England, that's the reign of the late Chudas, the Elizabethans, in the 1590s, the Japanese invade the Korean mainland.

This is the early Edo period of Japan. What happens to the Korean Chosun dynasty? It survives. Okay, yeah. Because they keep going to the 19th century, right? It does. But the wars are absolutely devastating. These are, you know, samurai armies armed with European gunpowder weapons.

and it tear through the Korean Peninsula in a rapid invasion. The Chinese helped out the Koreans. They intervene and with Chinese help, the Koreans are eventually able to beat back to Japanese, but a huge cost. A huge. And devastating the Korean peninsula between 10 to 15% of the Korean population may have been killed or displaced.

Like, it's always hard to tell with modern sources. But it was an absolutely devastating war. So this is kind of scorched earth tactics. This is brutal. They're burning the field. They're burning the towns. Exactly. It's really horrific.

Would that have been the first time they would have, like, encountered guns? Yeah. Good question. Oh, that's a good question. Not the first time they would encounter- Gunpowder, right? Right. Not the first time they would have encountered gunpowder weapons,

but certainly just sort of European-style small firearms, the arquebuses and so forth, that is, that was a surprise to the Koreans how effective Japanese tactics were with these weapons. Yeah, because how would Korea normally fight? How would wars normally be fought? Would you have soldiers with swords,

soldiers on horseback archers? Is that the standard Korean army? Or is there firearm technology in Korea at this point? Oh, definitely Koreans were using firearms as well. But certainly once they saw how affected the Japanese were with them, they used the similar tactics. Right. You're sort of men in a row in this kind of early modern European style

firing volleys. Okay. So the Koreans adapted and they defeated the Japanese or was there a peace treaty? How does this end our episode? It ends when the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideoshi

when he dies. Okay. Yeah. Helpful. The man who started the invasion dies. Yeah. That helps end the war. Great.

That's a nice way to end our episode, really. It was all going so terribly wrong and then he dies and it stops. That's amazing. So that's the end of our medieval Korea period, but the Chil-Song continued to the 19th century. That's right. Okay, so it's been quite a wild ride, Erica.

We've covered seven centuries together. Was anything there surprised you? I feel like all of it. All of it, because I had no clue about Korean history, so all of it was surprising to me because I just had no idea. Yeah. I didn't know that the printer, print, was first there. That's new to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Chinese and Korea. were printing way before the Europeans. Yeah. The myth about how Korean people came to be about a bear. Never heard that in my life.

That was surprising to me. It's a good story, that one. Yeah, I liked it. It's quite sweet. The magic of garlic and warmwood, right? It feels like it could be a children's animation, stuffily. The nuance window! Well, it is time now for the nuance window. This is where Erica and I sit quietly in our dark cave,

eating our garlic for two minutes, while John tells us something we need to know about medieval Korea. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr. Lee. I'll just sort of summarize or tie together some of the points we talked about on the geopolitical side and the domestic side. On the geopolitical side, quickly, the Mongol era was a key turning point in Korean history. It more firmly esconses Korea in this sort of synetic cultural and geopolitical order. So ironically, it is the Mongols, these step nomads who would strengthen these ties between Korea and China, bring

Korea into this wider Eurasian sphere. So it's important to note also that in a sense, the Chosen dynasty would benefit from these cultural and diplomatic ties to late imperial Chinese dynasties. The Yangban elite identified themselves as part of this

broader synetic order, sort of like how some medieval European elites may have felt ties to a classical sort of Greek or Roman civilization ties to China as you've seen also insured security Korea remained at peace with this much larger neighbor and it got also decisive assistance during the Japanese invasions. Two things I want to mention on the domestic side. Regarding gender and women in Korean history, I highly recommend a couple books that elaborate upon some of my points, my very sparse points.

It's very complicated. Women may seem oppressed during the chosen period, but they left so many records themselves and letters to their daughters, letters amongst themselves, their own diaries, that looking at what women actually wrote during the chosen period gives an excellent window into their own lives

and how they navigated these sort of seemingly oppressive patriarchal forces. So books by, say, Chisou Kim, Cheng Wen Kim, Kisena, Chesanova, these are all like scholars writing, in English, have written excellent books on women during the Chosen Dynasty. And again, just want to say the longevity of slavery itself is quite strange in Korean history. And the Chosen Dynasty itself is very strange. How did this highly stratified agrarian bureaucracy marked by seemingly oppressive institutions last so long?

The simplest explanation I can give is that the Chosen Dynasty was able to build this stable, centralized order, quite different from the tumult of the cordial period. And as oppressive as the dynasty may seem, Koreans were multiple generations tied that chosen order to notions of stability and security and prestige and governance. That would all change in the 19th century, but that's another story. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much. John. Fascinating. Really interesting to hear that women's lives are so well reported in the historical record. That's quite... Yeah, I wouldn't expect, but I guess it was their own writing, you said? Yeah, so there's one scholar Chizu Kim looked at like women's petitions, petitions that women wrote to the court, to the ministry of punishments and to magistrates and so forth. You know, when they had some sort of grievance if they were robbed or assaulted and so forth, then some of these could even be read by the king.

They can reach the court. And that Yangban women would often write letters to each other in hangu or in classical Chinese. They write to their daughters as well, we have all these documents. still available. It's wonderful, isn't it? Yeah. It's a lovely resource that we don't usually get

that much of in medieval Europe. You know, we do have women's letters and so on, but they're often elite. You know, they're often kind of the rich, rich, rich. But that's wonderful. So what do you know now? Okay, well, it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Erica

to see how much she has learned. Now, Erica, we've covered seven centuries and neither of us knew much about Korean history beforehand. So I will be pretty lenient with my marking. I promise. How are you with quizzes usually? I don't know. It's been a while since I've done one. Actually, that's not true. I did one for a bachelorette party, but it was about the person who I know very well.

So we'll see. Okay, I've got ten questions for you, Erica. Here we go. Question one. What is the cave-related origin myth of the Korean people? The name of it, or what? Which is tell me the story. Well, there was a god, and a tiger and a bear begged him. saying, please make me human, he said, under one condition, if you eat all this garlic for, I think it was 20 days, 100 days, all right, I'm more easy on them, 100 days, then I'll make

you human, and the tiger weak, weak sauce for that tiger, so you couldn't cut it, but the bear did, and the bear became human, and then they had a baby after that. That's a wonderful story. Well done. Excellent. We should get you to narrate the children's story. Question two. Can you name the ruling dynasty that founded in 918 by Wang Guan? I think I made a note for this one. Yeah. It does give its name to the Korean people. Oh, Corio? Yeah, absolutely. The Goriot. That's it. Very good. Question three. What was unusual about the conception of legendary hero warrior Kim Yushin? How long was he in the womb for?

20 months. It was 20 months, very good. Question four, the Miocong Rebellion was led in the early 12th century by what type of magical guy? A geomans. Yeah, he was. He was a geomancer slash Buddhist monk. But it didn't really help him out, did it?

Because he still died. Question five, which nomadic warrior tribe invaded Korea in the 13th century? The Khan's? Yeah, the monk. Yeah, Mongols. Yeah, very good. The Khan's, that's it. Very good.

Question six. In 1388, Yisongue led a coup against King Gongyang and the Corio founding a new ruling dynasty which ran until the 19th century what was it called? I don't know, is that the nine-year-old one? Yeah, it's a long-running dynasty

begins with Cho. Cho-Chuk, I don't know. The Choson dynasty, okay, we didn't get that one, okay. Question seven, the Chosan dynasty also moved Korea's capital to which city where it still is. Seoul.

It is, and originally was Hanyang, I think. Question eight. Up to what percentage of the Korean population were enslaved during some points of the Chosan dynasty? 30%. It was 30% in, I think you said, 16th century, John, I was here. Again, it really depends. Yeah, it could be 30% in parts of the 16th century. Fascinating.

Well done. Question nine, can you name one reason a woman would be allowed to divorce her husband during the early Choson dynasty? Oh, man. I remember all the one about the guys being able to. Give me one of those then. Go on, yeah. Women talking too much. Very good, yeah.

Absolutely. Good. And for the women, of course, physical abuse, or if he was, physical abuse or if he was away for too long. And this for 9 out of 10. Which Great King in the 1400 sponsored the invention of the Hungal writing script? Do you remember his name? Did I write it down?

It begins with S. C. John. Yes, John on the Great. Well done. Nine out of 10, Erica. I'll take that. I'll take that. Pretty good.

Well done, John. Excellent teacher. And listener, if you want more East Asian history, we've got episodes on Edo Japan, on Tong Dynasty China, and for more Marauding Mongols, we did an episode on Jenghis Khan, of course. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds

to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the fantastic Dr. John Lee from University of Durham. Thank you, John. Thank you.

Yeah. It's lovely having to be. you in. And in Comedy Corner, we had the excellent Erica Ela. Thank you, Erica. Thanks so much. It was lovely having you and see you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we uncover another legendary origin of another very real civilization. But for now, I'm off to go and join my daughter in watching K-pop Demon Hunters for the 3000 time. Bye! Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was written and produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and series producer, Dr. Emma Naguze. The research was

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