Joseon Korea, 1600–1660

In 1600 Seonjo ruled a kingdom two years out of the Japanese invasions of 1592–98, from which Ming armies had saved it. His heir was a concubine's second son, whom Ming refused to confirm because he was not the eldest. In 1602 Seonjo took a second queen, and the succession reopened.

Gwanghae had been named crown prince when the Japanese invaded and had led a branch court in the field while his father's court retreated. That record was his strength; his birth and an elder full brother, Prince Imhae, were his weakness. Early in 1608 the dying Seonjo issued a decree passing him the throne, and Yu Yeong-gyeong hid it.

Queen Inmok married Seonjo in 1602 and in 1606 bore him Grand Prince Yeongchang, his only son by a queen. When Seonjo died in March 1608 she, as queen dowager, issued the decree in the Korean script that made Gwanghae king.

Yeongchang held the rank of grand prince, given to a queen's son, which Gwanghae, a concubine's son, did not. The infant led no faction, but officials gathered round the claim his birth created.

Yu Yeong-gyeong, chief state councillor and leader of the Lesser Northerners, backed the infant Yeongchang. When the ailing Seonjo moved to hand power to Gwanghae, Yu resisted and hid the decree. Gwanghae's accession ended him: he was ordered to die in 1608.

Jeong In-hong, the leading disciple of the scholar Jo Sik, had raised a militia against the Japanese in 1592 and led the Greater Northerners from his home at Hapcheon. He denounced Yu for blocking Gwanghae; Seonjo ordered him and his pupil Yi I-cheom into exile, and the king's death in 1608 cancelled the order.

Yi I-cheom, Jeong's pupil and the Greater Northerners' organiser at court, was sentenced to exile at Gapsan for the attack on Yu. Gwanghae's accession brought him back, and he turned to removing the new king's rivals, beginning with Yu and the Lesser Northerners.

Ryu Seong-ryong had directed the government through the war. In 1598 Northerner impeachments, Jeong In-hong's among them, stripped him of office; restored in 1600, he refused every summons and at his home near Andong wrote the Jingbirok, finished in 1604, an account of the war meant to keep its mistakes from recurring. He died in 1607.

Samyeong, the monk Yujeong, had commanded monk soldiers in the war. In 1604 Seonjo sent him to Japan with a royal letter; with Tsushima's help he met Tokugawa Ieyasu at Fushimi, and in 1605 he came home with Koreans who had been carried off in the invasions.

Sō Yoshitoshi, lord of Tsushima, had led troops in the invasions; now he brokered the peace. When Joseon demanded a formal letter from the shogun and the men who had desecrated its royal tombs, he sent a forged letter and a group of criminals. The Giyu agreement of 1609 reopened trade through Tsushima, on tighter terms than before.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had sent no troops to Korea, took power in Japan in 1600, was shogun from 1603 to 1605 and kept control after he stepped down. He had opened approaches to Joseon in 1600 by freeing prisoners at Tsushima, and he received Samyeong at Fushimi.

Gwanghae became king in March 1608. His reign began with killings: Yu Yeong-gyeong was made to die and the Lesser Northerners were driven out. Ming again questioned his succession, pointing to an elder brother still alive; the minister Yi Deok-hyeong went to Beijing to argue his case.

Prince Imhae, Seonjo's eldest son, had been passed over in 1592 for his violence. Accused after the accession of raising private troops, he was confined on Jindo, then moved to Gyodong Island, and in 1609 he was strangled there after refusing poison.

Yi I-cheom took first place in the 1608 re-examination and climbed quickly. His faction pressed the cases against Yu and Imhae and was rewarded as merit subjects; supervising the examinations, he brought in followers, among them the writer Heo Gyun.

Yi Won-ik, a Southerner who had served Seonjo through the war, was made chief state councillor. In 1608 he set up the Seonhye office and began the Daedong reform in Gyeonggi: tribute owed in local goods was replaced by a levy of rice assessed on land. It was the start of a reform that took a century to cover the country.

Heo Jun, the chief royal physician, had been compiling a medical encyclopaedia on Seonjo's orders since 1596. Blamed for the king's death in 1608, he was dismissed and sent out of the capital; Gwanghae restored him in 1609. He finished the Donguibogam in 1610, and it was printed in 1613.

Park Eung-seo was one of seven sons of noblemen by concubines, barred from office, who called themselves the Seven Friends of the River. In 1613 they robbed and killed a silver merchant at the Joryeong pass. Interrogated by Yi I-cheom's side, they confessed to a plot to put Yeongchang on the throne.

The confession named Kim Je-nam, Queen Inmok's father, as head of the plot. He was made to take poison in 1613 and his sons were executed. The Greater Northerners took over the government; Yi I-cheom became minister of rites.

Yi Deok-hyeong, chief state councillor, had gone to Ming for help in the Japanese war. He opposed the moves against Yeongchang and the queen dowager, was impeached by the Greater Northerners and stripped of office, and died in October 1613. Yi I-cheom was his distant kinsman.

Shin Heum, writer and minister, was one of the seven officials Seonjo had charged with Yeongchang's care. In the 1613 case that charge was held against him, and he was dismissed and exiled. Injo would bring him back to the highest offices.

Jeong On, a pupil of Jeong In-hong, demanded the punishment of Jeong Hang, the Ganghwa magistrate held responsible for Yeongchang's death, and condemned the plan to depose the dowager. Gwanghae had him interrogated and confined under guard on Jeju.

Kim Sang-heon, a Westerner, had denounced Jeong In-hong for attacking the revered scholars Yi Hwang and Yi Eon-jeok and was demoted to magistrate of Gwangju. In 1617–18 he opposed deposing the dowager; under Injo he returned to court.

Yi Hang-bok, left state councillor in 1613, opposed the killings of Imhae and Yeongchang. When the court moved to depose Queen Inmok he protested, was stripped of office and exiled north, and died at Bukcheong in 1618. Jeong Chung-sin, the young officer he had educated, went with him into exile.

Heo Gyun, writer and official, had been close to the Seven Friends. To save himself he attached himself to Yi I-cheom and from 1617 pushed for deposing the dowager harder than Yi himself. That set him against the chief state councillor Gi Ja-heon; Gi's son accused Heo of plotting rebellion, and he was executed in 1618. He is traditionally credited with The Tale of Hong Gildong.

Yeongchang, seven years old, was stripped of rank and sent to Ganghwa Island, where he died in 1614. One record says the magistrate overheated his room and cut off his food; a later one says he was poisoned.

In 1615 Prince Neungchang, Seonjo's grandson and the adopted heir of Prince Sinseong, was named as the choice of plotters led by his adoptive uncle Sin Gyeong-hui. Sin was executed; Neungchang was confined on Gyodong and hanged himself. His elder brother was Prince Neungyang.

In 1618 Queen Inmok was stripped of her title as dowager and shut in the Western Palace. Gwanghae's opponents summed up his reign as deposing the mother and killing the younger brother; she was his mother by law, though younger than he.

Yi Su-gwang had gone three times to Beijing as an envoy, meeting envoys from Annam, Ryukyu and Siam; from the 1611 mission he brought back Matteo Ricci's The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. After the 1613 purge he left office, and in 1614 he finished the Jibong yuseol, an encyclopaedia that described foreign lands and the Catholic faith.

Nurhaci, a Jurchen chief, proclaimed himself khan of Later Jin at Hetu Ala in 1616. In 1618 he declared war on Ming and took Fushun; in 1619 he destroyed the Ming armies sent against him, and in 1621 he took Shenyang and Liaoyang, and Ming lost Liaodong.

The Wanli Emperor's government called on Joseon to repay Ming's rescue in the Japanese war and send troops against Nurhaci. Gwanghae pleaded that his army was not ready, but the demand prevailed.

Liu Ting, who had fought the Japanese in Korea in the 1590s, led the eastern column of the four-pronged advance on Hetu Ala in 1619, with the Korean army under his command. His column was the weakest, without heavy guns; near the Jin capital it was destroyed, and Liu was killed.

After Liaodong fell in 1621, Mao Wenlong, a Ming officer, fled to the Korean coast with stragglers and refugees. In 1622 Gwanghae let him base himself on Gado, an island off Cheolsan; from there he raided Jin lands, and Joseon had to help feed his garrison.

Gang Hong-rip, a civil official, was named commander-in-chief in 1618; he declined, pleading illness, and Gwanghae insisted. With more than ten thousand men he joined Liu Ting's column. At Fucha in April 1619 Jurchen cavalry routed the Koreans, and Gang surrendered with the survivors; he stayed in Later Jin hands for eight years.

Kim Eung-ha, a frontier officer, commanded the left camp at Fucha. A head wind blew the smoke of his own guns back on his men, the cavalry broke in, and he kept shooting from beside a willow tree until he was speared. He was honoured as a model of loyalty; Gang, who surrendered, was not.

After the defeat Gwanghae dealt with Nurhaci on his own and kept Joseon out of the war. His enemies would later count this among his crimes.

Park Seung-jong had recommended Kim Eung-ha for his first posts. He rose to chief state councillor, the rival of Yi I-cheom inside Gwanghae's government; his granddaughter was the crown prince's wife. When the coup came in 1623 he took poison with his son.

Kim Gae-si, a palace lady who had served Seonjo and then Gwanghae, became one of the most powerful figures at Gwanghae's court, said to wield a minister's power. After the coup she was beheaded; the victors' records blame her for much of the reign's corruption.

Shin Gyeong-jin, son of the general Sin Rip who fell fighting the Japanese in 1592, had lost his brother Sin Gyeong-hui in the 1615 case that killed Neungchang, whom his sister had raised. In 1620 he and Kim Ryu began to plan a coup; their candidate was Neungchang's elder brother, Prince Neungyang.

Kim Ryu's father had died beside Shin's at Tangeumdae in 1592. Driven from office for opposing the dowager's deposition, he became the coup's commander; on the night of 11 April 1623 he arrived late and Yi Gwal led the troops in. Afterwards he ran the new government's military affairs.

Yi Gwi, a pupil of the scholars Yi I and Seong Hon, had been exiled in 1616 and freed in 1619. He joined the plot that Shin Gyeong-jin and Gu Goeng, kinsmen of Neungyang, had begun, brought his sons in, and was enrolled as a first-rank merit subject.

Choe Myeong-gil, who had left office in 1617 over the plan to depose the dowager, joined the plot with his elder brother and became a first-rank merit subject. The man who would argue for peace with the Manchus came from inside the coalition that took power in Ming's name.

Yi I-cheom fled south with his family, was caught near Gwangju and beheaded with his sons. Jeong In-hong, in his late eighties, was beheaded too, against the custom that a former state councillor or a man over eighty was not beheaded, and the Greater Northerners were finished.

Prince Neungyang, Seonjo's grandson, marched with the coup troops. About two thousand men broke through a city gate, and palace troops won over in advance opened Changdeok Palace. Gwanghae fled over the wall and was caught. Queen Inmok held back the royal seal while Neungyang waited on her, then handed it over and named him king: Injo.

Gwanghae was reduced to a prince and sent to Ganghwa Island, later to Jeju, where he died in 1641. The charges against him were that he had killed a brother, deposed a mother and turned from Ming to the Jurchens.

Lady Han, married to Neungyang since 1610, became queen. Her father, Han Jun-gyeom, was one of the seven ministers Seonjo had charged with Yeongchang's care and had been exiled under Gwanghae. Her sons Sohyeon and Bongrim stood next in line.

Yi Won-ik, who had opposed deposing the dowager, was recalled as chief state councillor, a Southerner at the head of a Westerner government. He persuaded Queen Inmok and the merit subjects, who wanted Gwanghae dead, to spare him.

Jo Ik, demoted under Gwanghae for attacking Jeong In-hong, proposed in 1623 extending the Daedong levy to Gangwon, Chungcheong and Jeolla. It was tried in all three, but within a year only Gangwon kept it.

Yi Gwal had led the troops in on the night of the coup but was ranked a second-class merit subject and posted north as deputy commander. Early in 1624 informers accused him, his son and others of treason; when officers came to take his son to the capital, he killed them and marched south with about twelve thousand men, among them a hundred surrendered Japanese.

Han Myeong-nyeon, a militia leader in the Japanese war and then magistrate of Guseong, had been named in the same accusation; Yi Gwal's men freed him on the road. He joined the march. After the defeat, he and Yi Gwal were killed by their own officers at Icheon.

Jang Man, commander-in-chief in the north, was Yi Gwal's superior. When the rebels took the capital, his army and Im Gyeong-eop held the ridge of Gilmajae; Yi Gwal attacked it two days after entering the city and was beaten. Jang Man was made a first-rank merit subject.

Jeong Chung-sin, born to a slave mother, had been educated by Yi Hang-bok. In 1624 he and Nam Yi-heung were beaten by the rebels at Hwangju; after Yi Gwal entered the capital they joined Jang Man's pursuit and scattered the rebel army.

Yi Seo, who had brought troops from Jangdan to the coup, was impeached for halting his pursuit of the rebels but soon restored. Given the new Capital Defence Command, he proposed rebuilding the old mountain fortress of Namhansanseong as a shield for the capital, and Injo put him in charge.

Gakseong, a Buddhist abbot, was made superintendent of monk soldiers for the eight provinces and led monks in rebuilding Namhansanseong, a work of about three years. Monks had fought in the Japanese war; now they built the king's refuge.

Prince Heungan, Seonjo's tenth son and Injo's uncle, was set on the throne when the rebels took the capital, the first time in the dynasty that rebels had held it. Injo had fled to Gongju. After the defeat Heungan was killed without trial by Shim Gi-won.

Prince Inseong, Seonjo's seventh son, had backed the case against Yeongchang. Late in 1624 a plot was reported to make Gwanghae retired king and Inseong king. Injo found no sign of his part, but under months of pressure from officials exiled him in 1625, then freed him late in 1626.

Injo's eldest son was named crown prince in 1625, steadying a succession the rebels had just challenged with a rival king. Two years later the next invasion would send him south while his father held Ganghwa.

When Yi Gwal rose, Kim Ryu urged Injo to execute the political prisoners in the capital's jail, among them the former chief state councillor Gi Ja-heon, in case they joined the rebels. Yi Gwi objected; some forty were killed in one night, and Kim Ryu escorted the king to Gongju.

Han Yun, Han Myeong-nyeon's son, escaped with his brother Han Taek to Later Jin and came under Gang Hong-rip, the captive general. He told the Jin that Injo's throne was illegitimate and Joseon weak.

Nurhaci died in 1626 and his son Hong Taiji became khan. Joseon fed Mao Wenlong's island garrison and recognised only Ming, and Han Yun told him the kingdom was weak. Hong Taiji gave out that he came to avenge the deposed Gwanghae, and in early 1627 he sent an army.

Amin, Nurhaci's nephew and one of the four senior beile, led about thirty thousand men across the frozen Yalu, with orders to strike Mao Wenlong as well; Mao fled out to sea. Amin wanted to push on to the capital, but the other princes made peace without him, and in anger he let his troops plunder Pyongyang for three days.

Nam Yi-heung, who had fought Yi Gwal under Jang Man, held Anju against the invaders. When his arms ran out and the walls were falling, he set the fortress on fire and died with his officers.

Behind the Jin advance, Jeong Bong-su gathered scattered soldiers into a militia and held the Yonggol mountain fortress at Cheolsan, beating off the enemy and freeing several thousand captives. He was made magistrate of Cheolsan.

Kim Jang-saeng, eighty years old and the leading teacher of ritual learning among the Westerners, was appointed to rally Chungcheong and Jeolla. He collected grain, arms and volunteers, brought them to the crown prince at Gongju, went with him to Jeonju, and opposed the peace.

Injo took his court to Ganghwa Island, and Crown Prince Sohyeon went south to Jeonju with Shin Heum, now left state councillor. In April Joseon swore an oath to Later Jin as its younger brother, while keeping its tie with Ming.

Choe Myeong-gil argued that peace was unavoidable: a kingdom that could not make itself strong must know how to be weak. Yi Gwi also argued for a settlement and was impeached for it; the court made peace.

Gang Hong-rip, eight years a captive, had come south with the invaders, and he worked behind the scenes for the peace. He came home when it was made; the court talked of executing him, but Injo restored his rank, and he died that September.

Yu Hyo-rip, a cousin of Gwanghae's queen and a royal secretary under him, had been exiled to Jecheon after the coup. He gathered men who would not accept the new regime, spread a prophecy that the capital would move to Gyeryong, and planned to make Gwanghae retired king and Prince Inseong king. Informers exposed it early in 1628; he and some fifty others were executed.

Named again as the plotters' king, Inseong was sent to Jindo. Officials, the royal kinsmen and Queen Inmok herself pressed for his death, and Injo ordered him to take his own life; he died in June 1628.

Yuan Chonghuan, who had beaten Nurhaci at Ningyuan, was given charge of the whole north-eastern front. In July 1629 he lured Mao Wenlong to a review near Lüshun and executed him, then split Mao's command among his officers. Yuan himself was arrested months later and executed in Beijing in 1630.

Chen Jisheng, Mao's deputy, took the eastern half of the Gado garrison, and Liu Xingzhi the western. When Liu's brother was reported killed fighting the Jin, Chen suspected the death was faked to cover a defection.

Liu Xingzhi, a Liaodong officer who had once served the Jin and come back to Ming, used his brother's funeral rites in 1630 to kill Chen and about a hundred others, and took over the island while secretly dealing with Hong Taiji. Injo sent Yi Seo with a force against him and Im Gyeong-eop to watch his troops.

In 1631 Liu Xingzhi mutinied again and slaughtered the household of the Gado officer Shen Shikui; Shen's men killed him in a night attack. When the island's commander, Huang Long, fell defending Lüshun against Kong Youde and the Jin in 1633, Shen took over the island command.

Kong Youde, one of Mao Wenlong's officers, would not serve Yuan and went to Dengzhou under the governor Sun Yuanhua, whose troops were training with Portuguese cannon. Sent to relieve a fortress Hong Taiji was besieging in 1631, his hungry men mutinied at Wuqiao, and early in 1632 they seized Dengzhou.

Geng Zhongming, another of Mao's officers, served in Dengzhou and helped Kong take it. With Ming armies closing in, in 1633 the two fled by sea, fighting Ming and Korean ships on the way, and landed in Liaodong with some fourteen thousand followers.

Hong Taiji welcomed Kong and Geng, left them their troops and took their Dengzhou artillery; in 1633 they helped him take Lüshun. He sent Inggūldai to make Joseon supply grain for their men, and Injo, after refusing, gave way.

Jeong Du-won had supplied grain to Mao Wenlong's garrison in 1624. Sent to Ming as an envoy in 1630, he called on Sun Yuanhua at Dengzhou and came home in 1631 with a telescope, a small field gun, a treatise on cannon and books on astronomy and European customs.

João Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit who had spent decades in Japan as an interpreter, had come north with Portuguese gunners to serve Ming. At Dengzhou he gave Jeong Du-won his telescope and wrote him a letter on astronomy. When Kong Youde's mutineers took the city he escaped by jumping from the walls; he died at Macao about 1633.

Im Gyeong-eop, who had held Gilmajae against Yi Gwal, had watched Liu Xingzhi's troops in 1630. In 1633 he became frontier commander north of the Cheongcheon River and rebuilt the Baengma mountain fortress near Uiju.

Inggūldai, known in Korea as Yonggoldae, was a Manchu general sent again and again to Joseon. In the spring of 1636 he came with Mafuta to ask Joseon to join the Manchu and Mongol princes in hailing Hong Taiji as emperor; Injo would not receive them. After the war he carried off the hostages and, later, invested Injo anew as king.

In May 1636 Hong Taiji proclaimed himself emperor of the Qing. In January 1637 his army crossed the Yalu, rode past the northern fortresses and cut the road to Ganghwa within days. After forty-seven days Injo came down from Namhansanseong and knelt before him at Samjeondo.

Dorgon, Hong Taiji's half-brother, crossed to Ganghwa Island in February 1637 with troops landed by boat; the defence collapsed, and Princess Kang, Prince Bongrim and others of the royal family were captured. The fall of Ganghwa decided Injo to surrender.

Na Deok-heon and Yi Hwak, Joseon's envoys at Shenyang, were present when Hong Taiji took the title of emperor in 1636 and refused to bow. Their refusal was Joseon's: it would not turn from younger brother into vassal.

When the Qing reached the capital, Choe Myeong-gil rode out to their commander and kept him talking while Injo reached Namhansanseong. Inside the fortress he drafted the letter of submission.

Kim Sang-heon, minister of rites, tore up the draft and wept. Choe gathered the pieces: the court needed a man to tear it up, he said, and a man like himself as well. When the surrender was settled Kim refused food and tried to hang himself.

Hong Ik-han, a former deputy magistrate of Pyongyang, had argued against any submission to the Qing. Handed over to the Qing as a leader of the war party, he was taken to Shenyang and executed.

Yun Jip, a counsellor in the Office of Special Advisers, had demanded that the advocates of peace be punished. Surrendered to the Qing with Hong Ik-han, he was tortured and executed at Shenyang.

O Dal-je, an associate counsellor, shared their fate; the three became the Three Scholars, remembered for refusing submission. Hong Taiji himself later honoured their constancy.

Im Gyeong-eop, now magistrate of Uiju, waited at the Baengma fortress to block the road, but the Qing cavalry rode round it and on to the capital.

Kim Ja-jeom, a veteran of the 1623 coup, was commander-in-chief of the field armies. Beaten at Tosan, he held some twenty thousand men at Yangpyeong while the relief columns from the provinces were beaten one by one. After the war he was exiled to an island; he was back in office by 1640.

Yu Rim, army commander of Pyeongan, marched to relieve the king with the governor Hong Myeong-gu. At Gimhwa the governor's force was destroyed, but Yu's musketeers beat off the Qing from the heights; by the time he could move on, Injo had surrendered.

Gakseong raised some three thousand monk soldiers and marched for Namhansanseong with the Jeolla army, but turned back, weeping, when he heard that the king had surrendered.

Yi Seo, who had rebuilt Namhansanseong, went into it with Injo and took charge of its defence. He fell ill during the siege and died inside the fortress.

Kim Ryu, chief state councillor and supreme military commissioner, advised Injo daily in the fortress and in the end supported submission. His son Kim Gyeong-jing had been given charge of Ganghwa.

Kim Gyeong-jing, inspector of Ganghwa, quarrelled with the island's naval commander and waved away warnings: the water was frozen, he said, so how could the enemy come? When the Qing landed he fled by boat. Injo first only exiled him, then, under pressure from the court, had him take poison.

Kim Sang-yong, Kim Sang-heon's elder brother and a former right state councillor, had escorted the royal family to Ganghwa. When the island fell he set fire to gunpowder in a gate tower and died in the blast.

The surrender ended Joseon's relations with Ming, gave up the king's two eldest sons as hostages, and bound Joseon to send troops whenever the Qing asked, with fifty warships for the attack on Gado.

Sohyeon, Princess Kang, Prince Bongrim and his wife were taken to Shenyang. The crown prince became the go-between of the two courts, handling Qing demands for troops, grain and the return of captives; he learned Mongolian, and his household farmed land with Korean captives and sold the grain, which his father's court resented.

Lady Jang, Bongrim's wife, shared the hostage household. Her mother was Kim Sang-yong's daughter; in 1641, at Shenyang, she gave birth to the future King Hyeonjong.

Yi Gyeong-seok, chief royal secretary, was ordered to write the inscription for the monument the Qing required at Samjeondo, praising the emperor; it was set up in 1639. In 1641 he went to Shenyang as Sohyeon's tutor and was briefly jailed by the Qing.

Choe Myeong-gil, chief state councillor, kept a secret line to Ming: he gave the monk Dokbo a letter for the Ming commander Hong Chengchou, and Im Gyeong-eop found him a ship. When the contact came out in 1642, Choe said that he and Im alone were responsible, and the Qing held him in the North Hall prison at Shenyang.

Kim Sang-heon memorialised in 1639 against sending troops to help the Qing against Ming. In December 1640 the Qing had him taken to Shenyang, and he spent years in their prisons. In the North Hall he lay near Choe, and the two old enemies made peace.

Dokbo, a Korean Buddhist monk, had come from Hong Chengchou's camp to gather news. He carried Choe's letter to the Ming and came back with their reply in the autumn of 1641; Qing men saw the ship, and the court paid heavily to quiet them.

In 1637 the Qing, with Korean troops and ships, attacked Gado. Shen Shikui held it with heavy cannon until Kong Youde's men landed on one side to draw the garrison while the main force came ashore behind it. Shen refused to surrender and was beheaded, and Ming withdrew what was left of its forces in Korea.

Hong Chengchou, Ming's supreme commander on the Liaodong front, had answered Choe through Dokbo. Beaten at Songshan, he surrendered to the Qing in 1642 and became one of the architects of their conquest; he told them of the monk's missions.

Under the surrender terms Im Gyeong-eop served in the Korean force sent against Gado in 1637, and in 1640 he led the Korean fleet the Qing demanded against the Ming at Jinzhou; Korean accounts say he secretly warned the Ming both times. Exposed in 1642 for the Dokbo affair, he escaped from Qing custody.

Yi Wan, an officer Yi Seo had recommended, sailed as Im's deputy in 1640 and, by Korean accounts, wrecked his own ships and reported storm damage to keep out of the fighting.

Yu Rim was sent again with Korean troops when the Qing called for help against Ming in 1641, and was reprimanded by the Qing for holding back.

Jeong Myeong-su, a Korean captured with Gang Hong-rip's army in 1619, rose in Manchu service as an interpreter. Speaking for the Qing, he dominated their dealings with the hostage court and the Joseon government, demanding offices and bribes.

Jeong Noe-gyeong, a tutor in Sohyeon's household, tried to bring Jeong Myeong-su down by having a Manchu accuse him of stealing tribute goods. The evidence had been removed; the case turned on Jeong Noe-gyeong, and the Qing executed him in 1639.

Hong Taiji died in September 1643. His five-year-old son Fulin became the Shunzhi Emperor, with Dorgon and Jirgalang as regents; from 1644 Dorgon held the power.

In 1644, after rebels took Beijing, Dorgon joined the Ming general Wu Sangui, routed the rebels at the Shanhai Pass and entered the capital. That autumn Sohyeon followed the Qing court to Beijing.

Li Zicheng, a rebel leader who had proclaimed his own Shun dynasty at Xi'an in February 1644, captured Beijing in April. He held the city only a few weeks: Wu Sangui and Dorgon beat him at the Shanhai Pass.

The Chongzhen Emperor, who had reigned since 1627 and had sent Yuan Chonghuan to his death, took his own life as Beijing fell. Ming loyalists fought on in the south, but the court Joseon had served as its sovereign was gone.

Sohyeon spent about seventy days in Beijing that autumn. He came to know Adam Schall, the German Jesuit, who gave him books on Western science and on the Christian faith. Early in 1645 the Qing let him go home.

Adam Schall had worked on the Ming calendar reform in Beijing and stayed on to serve the new Qing court, which put him in charge of its observatory. His calendar would reach Joseon by another road.

Shim Gi-won, a first-rank merit subject of 1623 and now left state councillor, had lost Injo's favour by killing Prince Heungan without trial in 1624. In 1644 he was accused of plotting to make Prince Hoeun king and was executed with his followers. Whether the plot was real is uncertain; his rival Kim Ja-jeom is suspected of building the case.

Kim Ryu dealt quickly with Shim Gi-won's case, and in April 1644 Injo made him chief state councillor again and enrolled him as a first-rank merit subject.

Kim Ja-jeom had returned to office in 1640, and his grandson married Hyomyeong, Injo's daughter by his favourite consort Lady Jo, which tied him to the palace. Shim's fall removed his strongest rival.

Sohyeon came home early in 1645 to a cold welcome and was dead within three months, at thirty-three. The court record describes a body black all over and bleeding from every opening; modern scholars also argue for pneumonia. Injo buried him in haste, with a reduced funeral.

Injo passed over Sohyeon's sons and made Bongrim crown prince, against ministers who favoured the eldest grandson and over Bongrim's own plea to be spared.

Lady Jo, Injo's favourite consort, had spoken against Sohyeon and his wife to the king for years. Her daughter was married to Kim Ja-jeom's grandson, binding her to the most powerful minister.

In 1646 poison was found in Injo's food. Injo blamed Princess Kang, overrode his ministers and Bongrim, who urged caution, and had her stripped of rank and made to take poison; many suspected Lady Jo had framed her. Her mother and brothers were executed; her three sons were sent to Jeju, where two died.

Kim Ja-jeom, now at the head of the government, was Lady Jo's ally and is said to have helped frame Princess Kang. He also pressed the case against Im Gyeong-eop.

Kim Ryu, chief state councillor again since 1645, opposed putting Princess Kang to death; Injo's anger cost him his post in 1646. He died two years later.

Kim Yuk, head of the Royal Astronomical Office, argued that Kang had no reason to poison the king and that there was no proof, and was dismissed. That year he went to Beijing as an envoy and studied the new Qing calendar.

Im Gyeong-eop had escaped in a monk's disguise, reached Ming and served it until Beijing fell; then the Qing caught him. When rumours tied him to Shim Gi-won's plot, Injo asked for him back, and in 1646 he died under interrogation in the capital, a death Kim Ja-jeom pushed for.

Injo died in June 1649 and Bongrim became king as Hyojong, eight years a hostage and bent on revenge against the Qing. He called to court the scholars of Kim Jang-saeng's school, who had kept away from Injo's merit-subject government.

Queen Dowager Jaui, Injo's second queen since 1638, had been pushed aside by Lady Jo. In 1651 her niece, the wife of Lady Jo's son Prince Sungseon, complained of a maid; questioned by Jaui, the maid revealed that Lady Jo had hired shamans to curse her.

Lady Jo was made to take poison at the end of 1651. Her daughter lost her rank, and her son-in-law, Kim Ja-jeom's grandson, was executed with Kim's sons.

Prince Sungseon, Injo's son by Lady Jo and Hyojong's half-brother, was exiled to Gyodong with his younger brother in 1652, charged with a part in the plot.

Kim Jip, Kim Jang-saeng's son and heir to his teaching, was summoned with Kim Sang-heon and made minister of personnel. He led the scholars who had kept their distance from Injo's merit subjects, and he opposed Kim Yuk's tax reform.

Song Si-yeol, a pupil of Kim Jang-saeng and Kim Jip and once Bongrim's tutor, was recalled in 1649 and urged the king to drive out the barbarians and repay Ming.

Song Jun-gil, Song Si-yeol's kinsman and fellow pupil, came to court with the same group. Kim Ja-jeom had urged their recall, but they shunned him as the man they believed had framed Princess Kang.

Impeached by the censors, Kim Ja-jeom was banished in 1650, first to Hongcheon, then to Gwangyang, amid reports that he had used an interpreter to warn the Qing of the king's war plans. In 1651 the curse case reached him; his son confessed to treason, and he was executed.

When Qing envoys came in 1650 to look into the reports of war preparations, Yi Gyeong-seok, chief state councillor, took the blame on himself and was confined at the Baengma fortress.

Kim Yuk was made right state councillor in 1649 on Hyojong's promise to adopt the Daedong reform, and he fought Kim Jip and the scholars over it. In 1651 the levy was extended to Chungcheong, and he had copper coins minted.

Jo Ik, who had proposed the 1623 extension and was now left state councillor, was one of the few ministers who backed Kim Yuk in the court debate.

Yi Si-bang, Yi Gwi's son, directed the Chungcheong reform as minister of revenue. His family's marriage ties to Kim Ja-jeom cost him office after the 1651 case.

Yi Wan, commander of the Royal Guards, enlarged them to about twenty thousand men and the levy that kept them, the core of Hyojong's plan for a northern expedition. No campaign against the Qing was ever launched.

In 1654 the Qing asked for a hundred musketeers against the Russians. Byeon Geup led 152 across the Tumen to Ningguta and down the Songhua with the Qing forces, and at Hutong that summer the allies drove the Cossacks off.

In 1658 Shin Ryu led about two hundred musketeers to join Sarhuda's fleet. On 10 July, a few miles below the mouth of the Songhua, the fleet destroyed the Russian flotilla and its commander was killed. Shin's diary of the campaign survives.

Sarhuda, a Manchu veteran who had fought in the 1636 invasion of Korea, commanded the garrison at Ningguta from 1652, after a Qing attack on the Cossack fort of Achansk had failed. He built a river fleet and called on Korean musketeers.

Onufriy Stepanov led the Cossacks on the Amur after Yerofey Khabarov. His men plundered the river peoples and beat local Qing troops; he survived the 1654 fight but was killed when his eleven boats met Sarhuda's fleet in 1658.

Kim Yuk had pressed since 1645 for the Shixian calendar that Schall had made for the Qing, and Joseon adopted it in 1653. In 1657 he submitted a plan to extend the Daedong levy to Jeolla; he died in 1658, the year its coastal districts adopted it.

Jan Janse Weltevree, a Dutch sailor captured in 1627, had served in the Military Training Command under the name Pak Yeon and fought in 1636. When a Dutch ship was wrecked on Jeju in 1653, the court sent him to interpret.

Hendrick Hamel, bookkeeper of the wrecked Sperwer, and his shipmates were brought to the capital and put in the army; after two of them begged a passing Qing envoy for help, the king sent the group to Jeolla. Hamel escaped to Japan in 1666 and wrote the first Western account of Korea.

In 1654 Kim Hong-uk, governor of Hwanghae, petitioned to clear Princess Kang's name and free her surviving son. Hyojong, whose own claim to the throne was bound up with her fall, had him interrogated, and he was beaten to death.

Shin Ga-gwi, the royal physician, was treating Hyojong with acupuncture in June 1659 when a needle started a bleeding that could not be stopped; the king, thirty-nine, died that day. Shin was hanged under the next king.

Hyeonjong, born to Bongrim and Lady Jang in the Shenyang hostage quarters, became king. Sohyeon's youngest son, freed in 1656 and made Prince Gyeongan shortly before Hyojong's death, was still alive.

Queen Dowager Jaui was Hyojong's stepmother, and the question was how long she should mourn him: three years, as for an eldest son, or one year, as for a younger son.

Song Si-yeol, who was directing the king's funeral, answered one year: Hyojong was not Injo's eldest son, and the same rites bound kings and scholars alike.

Jeong Tae-hwa, chief state councillor, and the ministers adopted the one-year rite, resting it on the dynasty's own code of rites. A year earlier he had proposed carrying the Daedong levy into coastal Jeolla.

Yun Hyu, an independent scholar, argued that a queen's second son who inherited the throne counted as the eldest, and that a king made even his mother his subject: three years.

In 1660 Heo Mok memorialised for three years: Hyojong had carried the royal line, and only a concubine's son who reigned could be mourned as a lesser son. The court kept one year.

Yun Seon-do, the poet who had tutored Bongrim, wrote that the one-year rite left the true line with Sohyeon and that Song deserved death for it. His memorial was burned and he was exiled to Samsu; the Westerners kept power, and the one-year rite stood.