Political Tool of “Immoral Rituals” and Resilience of Buddhism in Chosŏn Korea

Abstract

Confucians in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) employed the notion of “immoral rituals” as a tool to control Buddhist and shamanic rituals in a selective manner. In Confucian terms, immoral rituals specified those that were dedicated to “ghosts or deities who do not deserve worship”, and, in most cases, they referred to non-Confucian prayer rituals. Buddhist prayer rituals (and shamanic rituals) were largely subject to control by Confucian state officials. Through the Confucian prism of immoral rituals, this article explores the question of which aspects of Buddhist rituals were denounced by the Confucian critics and which goals the Confucians tried to achieve by wielding the tool of immoral rituals against Buddhism. Based on an analysis of four episodes in which Buddhist prayer rituals were denounced as immoral rituals, the article suggests that the Confucians tried to construct a new collective identity of distinction and privilege, to keep in check the royal family and, by extension, the sovereign, to control the female body, and, in collaboration with the king, to suppress people’s discontent with governance. In this process, Buddhism—caught in the politics of immoral rituals, as this article suggests—nevertheless remained vibrant by conducting prayer rituals in the social margins. And for their part, Confucians benefited by continuing to exploit the notion of immoral rituals up to the end of the dynasty. The trajectory of immoral rituals reflected how Buddhism functioned and evolved in Chosŏn Korea.

1. Introduction

In Chosŏn Korea, some aspects of Buddhist and shamanic practices were subject to denouncement for being ŭmsa (淫祀) or “immoral rituals” and even punished and suppressed. Those most critical were government officials, Confucian intellectuals, and sometimes kings. Given that all of them wielded power and influence in one manner or another, based on Confucian ideas and values, we can group them as Confucians.

The notion of immoral rituals was applied to those associated with Buddhism and shamanism in a malleable and even arbitrary manner.1 When it came to Buddhism, Confucians did not strictly deem Sŏn meditational practices, doctrinal studies, well-established annual festivals, ceremonies, and public rituals conducted at Buddhist temples immoral rituals. Confucians were selective in applying the notion of immoral rituals with keen attention to Buddhist rituals associated with female patrons (including those in the royal family) as well as to religious activities that intersected with shamanism. In other cases, according to their needs, Confucians rejected Buddhism in its entirety by alluding to immoral rituals, particularly in the early decades of the new dynasty. Thus, the category of immoral rituals was capricious.

In Confucian terms, immoral rituals referred to those dedicated to “ghosts or deities who do not deserve worship”, and along that line, Confucian texts emphasized that good fortune should be sought through the cultivation of Confucian virtues, not through non-Confucian prayer rituals. When they denounced immoral rituals, Confucian polemicists always cited the words of Confucius or Mencius stated in the related lines found in the Shujing (Book of Documents) and the Liji (Book of Rituals). The issue was how one could have access to supernatural fortune or divine grace, and regarding this matter, Confucians stressed the expediency of Confucian virtues, which resonated with the realm of supernatural beings and principles of Heaven. In highlighting Confucian virtues, Confucian critics of immoral rituals tended to direct their attacks on shamanic rituals more than anything else.2 Nevertheless, Confucians made it clear that “longevity and good fortune depend on Heaven, not on the Buddha”, and thus Buddhist prayer rituals belonged to the category of immoral rituals.3

In particular, Buddhist rituals that intersected with shamanism, whether through ritual performers or in terms of ideas or divinities, were most vulnerable to Confucian attacks. Confucian critics found it easy to direct their attacks on the gray zone of Buddhist-shamanic syncretic practices for achieving their goals in ritual life. Indeed, the ritual practices, which Buddhists or semi-Buddhists employed for their livelihood in Chosŏn society, often lacked a clear-cut distinction from shamanic practices. All of this helped Confucians to exploit the notion of immoral rituals in a broad definition and application of the term.

To be sure, Buddhist rituals exposed to Confucian attacks were far from representing Chosŏn Buddhism in its entirety but still constituted a part of Buddhist culture with multilayered modes of practice. Specifically, then, which aspects of Buddhist (and shamanic) rituals did the Confucian critics denounce as immoral rituals over time? In doing so, what did they achieve or try to achieve? Amid the Confucian attacks on immoral rituals, how did Buddhism survive? In this article, I pursue answers to these questions on immoral rituals, which often intersected with shamanic practices, through a range of episodes. It is not the intention of this paper to discuss the overall features of Buddhist culture that evolved in Chosŏn Korea.

In examining the immoral rituals, which the Confucians chose for attacks, whether they belonged to Buddhism or to the gray zone of Buddhism and shamanism, I pay attention to four groups of episodes and examine them one by one. The first group involves the denouncement as immoral rituals of Buddhism, which the Confucian officials and intellectuals highlighted as part of the process of constructing their new collective identity in the early decades of the Chosŏn dynasty. The second group features Buddhist rituals patronized by female members of the royal family. The third group includes Buddhist (and shamanic) rituals in which female patrons outside the royal family were involved. The fourth group concerns some obscure ritual activities that public authorities (including the kings) targeted in relation to plots of rebellion or treason. Although not connected to each other, these four groups of episodes share a commonality in that they all tell stories of Confucian attacks in one manner or another.

Given that the key question is on what Confucian critics tried to achieve by suppressing immoral rituals through policy debates, law, and legal measures, related court or official records will be the object of analysis. Information on immoral rituals is found in various sources, including Confucian treatises, literary works/anthologies (munjip 文集), local gazetteers, and diaries.4 These sources belonged to the private realm and, thus, had no direct bearing on debates and policy-making processes at the court. On the other hand, it should be noted that there was no single case in which the voices of Buddhist monks in defense of Confucian attacks on immoral rituals were heard at the court. Buddhist apologetics directed to Confucian attacks on Buddhism, if any, were mostly directed to doctrinal interpretation, not to the government’s policy on immoral rituals.5

Based on an analysis of Confucian attacks on immoral rituals, I suggest that Buddhism kept itself vibrant through prayer rituals in which female patrons played a key role despite the pitfalls of immoral rituals into which Confucian critics tried to drag them, and that, often, these rituals were not clearly distinguished from shamanic practices. In addition, I suggest that Buddhist prayer rituals, often obscure and located in social margins, remained vulnerable to the political whims of social control. By attacking immoral rituals, Confucians were able to increase and strengthen their power and influence. Thus, the presence of such immoral rituals in society, paradoxically, was beneficial to Confucians.

2. Buddhism and Confucian Claim to Distinctive Status

The Confucian scholars and officials of the new regime distinguished their dynasty from the previous Koryŏ dynasty (918-1392) by securing their own space of exclusive privilege, sometimes in confrontation with the sovereign. In contrast, kings tried to embrace all segments of society while not greatly antagonizing the new group of officials and intellectuals who were needed for governance. One avenue that the Confucian scholars and officials followed to distinguish their status was to depreciate Buddhism, which had been dominant throughout the Koryŏ dynasty.

In 1392, when the new dynasty was established, Inspector General Nam Chae and other officials urged King T’aejo (r. 1392–1398) to ban Buddhism because of its “immoral rituals”, saying that “the way of the ghosts was supposed to give fortune to good people and misfortune to evil people, so how would it be beneficial to conduct [Buddhist] rituals without cultivating [Confucian] virtues?”6 To these officials, Buddhism involved immoral rituals that the lowly and ignorant people embraced in search of fortune from ghostly beings through prayer worship. About two months later, other court officials stressed that the previous Koryŏ dynasty had collapsed because of its disorderly indulgence in immoral rituals.7 In this way, the new dynasty of Chosŏn was demarcated from that of Koryŏ, which was closely associated with Buddhism.

In 1412, officials in the Office of Censor General jointly urged King T’aejong (r. 1401–1418) that Buddhism be denounced and that, in its stead, each component of society be placed and function in an appropriate station within the hierarchical order of Confucian rituals: the Son of Heaven to perform worship of Heaven and Earth; the king to perform worship of mountains and rivers; great officials to conduct worship at five ritual halls; and all others to serve ancestors through rituals.8 It was one of the ongoing debates at the court on the should-be mode of rituals in the new dynasty that would eventually be codified into the Manuel of the Five State Rites (Kukcho oryeŭi 國朝五禮儀) in 1474 under the guidance of Confucian (more precisely, Neo-Confucian) ideas, values, and ritual practices.9

In particular, regarding the worship of dead spirits, officials complained that people still conducted seven–seven rituals, which referred to a series of postmortem Buddhist rituals, when someone in the family died, even installed a Buddhist image on the altar for the deceased, and invited Buddhist monks for the ritual ceremony and that, in doing so, men and women spent day and night together and wasted valuable resources. The officials in the Office of Censor General made sure that all of these immoral rituals of Buddhism be replaced with Confucian ones.10

From the outset, the court officials and Confucian intellectuals were firm that their new dynasty, in which they were privileged, should be clearly distinguished from the previous dynasty in terms of ritual life and that Buddhist and shamanic rituals be denigrated as immoral.11 However, kings were not easily swayed by the Confucian push for exclusive privilege and sometimes showed some sympathy for the old customs of Buddhist and shamanic rituals. In 1426, King Sejong (r. 1418–1450) countered, arguing that Buddhist and shamanic rituals constituted the “old and deep-rooted customs of society” that were not to be erased easily.12 As far as he was concerned, Buddhists and shamans were also people under his rule.

As time progressed, Confucianism gradually occupied the top echelon in death-related rituals and ancestor worship. In contrast, Buddhist (and shamanic) rituals for ancestral spirits that still lingered were further downgraded as kings gradually bowed to the incessant pressure of the Confucian scholars and officials. In 1478, King Sŏngjong (r. 1469–1494) instructed his officials to ban people from depending on Buddhists (and shamans) when they paid homage to their ancestral spirits, saying that Buddhist (and shamanic) rituals were none other than immoral rituals and thus should be suppressed.13 But that did not mean that King Sŏngjong’s instructions were implemented.

When pressured by Confucian officials and intellectuals, kings often agreed that all rituals regarding ancestral spirits except Confucian rituals be banned; however, as long as some rituals of Buddhism and shamanism were still kept within the ritual system of the dynasty, it was almost impossible to fully convert people’s ritual lives to Confucianism. For example, rituals devoted to a group of major mountains were still officially conducted by a shaman under the emblem of kukmudang 國巫堂. That term referred to “national shaman” or “national altars”, but in either case, shamanism still played an official role (Chongsŏng Ch’oe 2022, pp. 116–17). In times of famine or epidemic, the government also mobilized shamans for prayer rituals to bring rain or cure diseases.14 Similarly, in dealing with the grudging spirits of those who met unnatural deaths and were feared to cause epidemics and misfortunes, the government still hosted a Buddhist ritual called “ritual of water and land” (suryukchae 水陸齋).15

Despite continuous efforts to Confucianize family rituals, Buddhism and shamanism remained strong across wide-ranging segments of society. It was an uphill battle to get rid of immoral rituals that were deeply ingrained in death rituals and ancestor worship grounded in Buddhist and shamanic traditions. In 1492, some court officials reminded King Sŏngjong that, in Kyŏngsang Province, “[people] still play music and drink wine in the name of pleasing deities” in immoral rituals.16 No matter how much local religious customs were denigrated, people throughout the country rarely abandoned them.17

Nevertheless, for Confucians, the notion of immoral rituals remained useful in constructing their distinctive collective identity. Such an identity was stressed whenever they pressured the king to ban immoral rituals. By the 1470s, those who performed such rituals were expelled from the capital, and nobody was allowed to solicit or patronize rituals offered by Buddhists and shamans in the capital.18 In this way, rituals were organized into a hierarchy in which Confucian rituals dominated the center of the country, and all other rituals were relegated to the periphery. In constructing this order, the tool of immoral ritual was aptly exploited.

To be sure, Buddhism in Late Chosŏn was far less subject to outright attack by both the state and Confucian officials as it was incorporated into the taxation system that included military service, corvée, and tribute payments. During the Imjin War (1592–1598), many Buddhist monks fought against the Japanese invaders, delivered or produced grain for military forces, and were mobilized to repair and construct fortresses. The government found it more useful and practical to exploit Buddhist monks as an extra source of free service and income than to denigrate or marginalize them in a confrontational manner.19 On their part, Buddhist monks also made efforts to bring themselves and their religion closer to Confucian values and rituals, particularly in the areas of funerals, ancestor worship, and social didactics of the value of filiality.20 The assimilation of Buddhism into Confucianism, which also helped Confucians become receptive to Buddhism to one degree or another, proved to work as a shield of protection against Confucian attacks.

Nevertheless, it does not mean that Confucians abandoned their claim to ritual hegemony. To the end of the Chosŏn dynasty, Confucians continued to wield the cultural yardstick of immoral ritual at their convenience in search of distinctive collective status and privilege and even applied it to distinguish their country from others. When needed, Buddhism was called back. One such example involved Qing China, which Confucians regarded as a country of barbarous Jurchen customs (associated with Buddhism, among others) to which they were nevertheless forced to present tribute. A sense of humiliation ran deep in the minds of Confucians in the Chosŏn dynasty, who lacked political or military means for overturning the superior status of the Jurchens stationed in Beijing.

In 1738, Chief State Counselor Yi Kwangzwa (1674–1740) revealed to King Yŏngjo (r. 1724–1776) what he had observed and heard in Qing China as an envoy to Beijing:

Shamanism is so rampant that one can find worship halls and temples everywhere; Daoism and Buddhism are all over the place as seen in as many as seventy-two halls of ‘immoral rituals’ in Guizhou; and there are even halls for worshiping Yang Guifei and An Lushan.

21

As a way of elevating the Chosŏn dynasty’s cultural superiority over the cultural standards of Qing China, on which Confucians looked down, the notion of immoral rituals was the perfect tool. In the late Chosŏn period, discourses such as those that Yi circulated were never in shortage. The key purveyors of such discourses were envoys who frequented Beijing in order to deliver memorials and tributes to the Qing emperor.22 In this way, the notion of immoral rituals was useful beyond the confines of the Chosŏn dynasty’s territory.

3. Buddhism and Royal Family Under Attack

Confucian scholars and officials criticized immoral rituals on the grounds of Confucian teachings that good fortune was dependent on good behavior, not on an appeal to ghosts and deities who were incomprehensible and thus delusional.23 They insisted that Confucianism—of which they claimed to have a better grasp than any other members of society—should be the guide for self-cultivation. They stood firm against Buddhism (and shamanism) in which, they argued, the royal family was “mired” in a delusional search for grace.24

King Sejong admitted, though, that the vulgar customs of the Koryŏ dynasty remained strong despite the efforts to ban them:

Regardless of high and low, people compete to revere ‘immoral rituals’, regard shamans highly, waste valuables and grain, and go to the house of a shaman and feed ghosts amid music when someone in the family dies, or visit a Buddhist temple and conduct a ritual of prayer for good fortune.

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King Sejong was concerned that people were prone to be lavish on occasions of immoral rituals and, as a result, would face hardships when harvests were poor. Court officials claimed that “ignorant people do not know how to save, so they waste even a few bushels of grain they harvest for immoral rituals and Buddhist worship”.26 Rituals that included Buddhist prayer rituals were denounced in terms of ignorance, indulgence, and wastefulness.

Interestingly, however, female members of the royal family patronized a range of rituals for the well-being of ancestral kings, the incumbent king, the crown prince, and other key members outside Confucian ritual care. In particular, when it came to ancestral spirits and the world beyond death, Confucian rituals were poorly developed to deal with anxiety. In comparison, Buddhism had a long tradition of ritual care for dead spirits and the other world with its sophisticated teachings of, and ritual measures for, postmortem judgment, afterlife, transmigration, salvation, paradise, and hell. By extension, Buddhist prayer rituals were attractive to those who wished for good health, the birth of heirs, and longevity.

Royal family members who could afford such rituals and host them in the royal palace away from public gaze did not shy away from what Confucian critics denounced as immoral rituals. Kings usually turned a blind eye to such religious activities focused on their own well-being. The royal family maintained a Buddhist hall called Naewŏndang 內願堂 within the palace complex, and some of the female companions of the deceased king devoted their time to Buddhist prayer rituals for his posthumous well-being at a nunnery called Chŏngŏpwŏn 淨業院 and often donated Buddhist paintings or images to Buddhist votive temples in the country.27 As far as Confucian scholars and officials were concerned, royal Buddhism was a hub of immoral rituals that should be purged.

A tug-of-war between Confucian officials and the royal family over these rituals often led to disputes over rituals in villages beyond the confines of the royal family. In 1456, King Sejo said that, in addition to Buddhist temples in the country, there were many halls of ghosts and that offering royal incense and eulogies at those halls would not be discarded easily. He argued that these non-Confucian religious rituals were the customs of the country, even suggesting that female shamans could provide healing to those suffering from a disease.28 It was an argument against the theory of immoral rituals with which Confucian critics tried to keep the royal family and, by extension, sovereign power in check.

Kings remained sympathetic to Buddhist rituals that the female members of the royal family patronized. Their sympathy was rooted in the fact that such patronage of Buddhist rituals was initiated by their mothers, wives, and concubines who devoted themselves to the well-being of the royal lineage. In 1489, Kim Chŏn in the Office of Censor General and others insisted that King Sŏngjong refrain from helping to repair the Buddhist temple Wŏn’gaksa, but he refused, saying that “this temple was established during the era of the previous king, and the repair was according to my mother’s wishes, not my own”.29

Kings also supported prayer rituals conducted at Buddhist halls, called chaegung 齋宮 or nŭngch’im 陵寢, which were established near royal tombs. These halls were taken care of by Buddhist monks in residence who conducted prayer rituals and guarded the tombs.30 Some yangban families often followed suit even though, in theory, the practice was not sanctioned by Confucians (Deuchler 2015, pp. 192–93). In 1496, King Yŏnsan (r. 1494–1506) wanted to erect a Buddhist prayer hall at the gravesite of his disgraced mother with the suggestion that it could be taken care of by the Royal Treasury. With this suggestion, he implied that the prayer hall would be private for the royal family and thus not in conflict with public affairs. Nevertheless, some officials warned that prayer activities at Buddhist halls were immoral rituals.31

In 1508, Ch’oi Suksaeng (1457–1520) urged King Chungjong (r. 1506–1544) to keep the royal family away from prayer rituals other than Confucian ones, saying that people, both high and low, were praying to ghosts and exhausting their properties. Ch’oi implied that people would continue to indulge in prayer rituals unless the royal family stayed away from them.32 He had in mind Buddhist and shamanic rituals patronized by King Chungjong’s mother. Confucian critics, whether incumbent officials or not, maintained that “rituals dedicated to ghosts who do not deserve worship are none other than immoral rituals, and according to [Confucian] scriptures such immoral rituals had no way of bringing divine blessing”.33 In particular, regarding Buddhist prayer rituals for ancestor worship, known as kisinjae 忌晨齋, which the royal family conducted, officials continued to claim that they would not only spoil the Confucian way but also disgrace royal ancestral spirits.34 But nothing much changed in the popularity of immoral rituals despite continued protests by Confucian officials and intellectuals.

About half a century later, in 1566, some Confucians in Kaesŏng, the capital of the previous Koryŏ dynasty, took bold actions. They destroyed shamanic worship halls set up on the slopes of Mount Song’ak, along with all ghostly images enshrined in those halls.35 Mount Song’ak was also long known as a place of Buddhist prayer rituals for the royal family.36 It was a renowned space in which Buddhist and shamanic prayer rituals intersected. King Myŏngjong (r. 1545–1567), outraged by the actions of those Confucians in Kaesŏng, ordered the authorities to arrest them and put them in prison for interrogation. The incident revealed unequivocally that a tug-of-war between Confucians and the royal family (and the sovereign) over immoral rituals was ongoing. The target to which Kaesŏng Confucians directed their criticism, if not overtly, was none other than what King Myŏngjong’s mother, Queen Munjŏng (1501–1565), had left behind. She had been an enthusiastic Buddhist patron.37 Once she died, Confucians in Kaesŏng erupted in protest.

The story has it that, in order to pray for the birth of a son (and royal successor) to King Myŏngjong, sonless after having lost his only son, Sunhoe, in 1563, his mother (Queen Munjŏng) sponsored a range of prayer rituals held on Mount Song’ak. She was also actively engaged in Buddhist prayer rituals elsewhere, most famously in her effort to rebuild the Hoeamsa temple in Yangju (C. Kim 2019, pp. 158–60). Mount Song’ak was popular as a place of prayer and worship and attracted shamans, Buddhists, and other petty ritualists, and as a result, it prospered with all kinds of prayer halls set up on its slopes.38 Queen Munjŏng sent gold and silver along with cloth to prayer ritualists at Mount Song’ak. Her brother Yun Wŏnhyŏng, who wielded power at the court, and other royal family members and court ladies followed suit in support of her endeavor.39

Because of this support, Confucians in Kaesŏng, led by Chang Po, took action to remove immoral rituals from their town. They burned the prayer halls and destroyed divine images housed in them as if erasing Queen Munjŏng’s ritual efforts.40 King Myŏngjong tried to punish the Kaesŏng Confucians but to no avail because of a concerted protest staged by court officials and Confucians who denounced immoral rituals connected to the royal family. Confucians further argued that Mount Song’ak was infested with immoral behavior involving men and women who indiscriminately intermingled in the name of prayer activities. Shamans were their main target, but they were a pretext for defeating Buddhism, which enjoyed a resurgence under the protection of Queen Munjŏng. King Myŏngjong was able to salvage the Hoeamsa temple, but years after his death, it was destroyed by arson.41

Some kings, including Kwanghae (r. 1608–1623), were overtly supportive of, and indulged in, prayer rituals vulnerable to the criticism of being immoral rituals. In 1609, court officials and Confucian intellectuals demanded that King Kwanghae expel two performers of immoral rituals whom the king allowed to stay at the royal palace: one was a diviner, the other a defrocked Buddhist monk. But the king refused to do so.42 People on the street could hear drums and gongs coming from the royal palace and ridiculed that, “once turning into a ghost after death, one will be able to eat food cooked in the royal kitchen to one’s satisfaction”.43

To the end of the Chosŏn dynasty, the royal family never completely dispensed with Buddhist prayer rituals, though its patronage fluctuated and sometimes lost vigour (Chongsŏng Ch’oe 2022, pp. 120–21; C. Kim 2019, p. 89; Pak 1996, pp. 360–63). Similarly, the general populace never dispensed with them. They were more attracted to Buddhist rituals in search of healing, fortune, and well-being in the late Chosŏn period (Hŏ 2001, pp. 495–97). All of this speaks to the persistence of immoral rituals, which the Confucians condemned in order to make themselves distinctive while keeping the royal family and, by extension, the sovereign power in check. In this way, throughout the Chosŏn period, immoral rituals remained a site of politics in which Confucians and the king vied to maintain a delicate balance of power, whether in compromise or in confrontation.

4. Buddhism and Control of Female Body

Confucian critics paid attention to the fact that immoral rituals were patronized by women in general beyond the confines of the royal family. The critics did not like it and thus tried to ban female patrons from the arena of immoral rituals. In 1412, court officials raised concerns that men and women casually mingled and spent day and night together when Buddhist rituals were held at Buddhist temples.44 As far as these Confucian officials were concerned, men and women who gathered together for religious activities constituted immoral behavior. For them, it ran against the Confucian principle that demarcation and separation between men and women be strictly maintained in public spaces.

In 1429, Censor Yu Maengmun memorialized to King Sejong that immoral rituals were occasions of lascivious pleasure tainted with alcohol and fornication to which men and women, including those belonging to the families of officials, were lured. He urged the king to ban such activities. Yu argued that immoral rituals not only caused people to exhaust their wealth but also encouraged them to satiate their lust without constraint.45 When criticizing the royal family’s patronage of Buddhist rituals, court officials also stressed potential immoral behavior in which women might be involved. In 1451, court officials were not happy about the Buddhist prayer rituals that some members of the royal family conducted at Yongmunsa temple and Taejaam hermitage, which were distant from the palace. In urging King Munjong (r. 1450–1452) to keep the royal family away from Buddhist rituals, officials reminded him that women should not be allowed to visit temples, whether they were wives or princesses, as long as they belonged to the extended royal family.46

When pressured, kings agreed that immoral rituals, including Buddhist prayer rituals, were arenas of lust in which women could lose their chastity. In 1456, King Sejo said that “women of good families”, which referred to the class of yangban families, might lose their chastity by mingling with men at immoral rituals and festive gatherings, although chastity eventually would depend on women no matter where they were. Nevertheless, King Sejo, who did not like the self-aggrandizing pomposity of the Confucians, was reluctant to ban immoral rituals entirely.47 The following year, court officials continued to pressure him: “Immoral rituals are not banned, so women often partake in [immoral rituals] with drums and string [instruments] in their hands or by beating drums [themselves], and they even dance”.48 About ten years later, still during the era of King Sejo, it was found that the widow of a yangban man named O Sŏngjŏng had intercourse with three Buddhist monks while frequenting Buddhist temples to pray for her husband’s posthumous well-being, conceived babies, and secretly gave birth to two babies.49 It was a sensational incident that Confucians used to castigate the immoral rituals of Buddhism in conjunction with the Confucian value of female chastity.

In denouncing Buddhist rituals in association with women, Confucian critics focused on the female body and subjugated it to the Confucian value of chastity. The value of female chastity, tied to the moral health of society, constituted a part of Confucian cultural politics that Confucians maneuvered with full force. It was a process of marginalizing women in association with Buddhist rituals, which were also being marginalized. Neither women nor Buddhist monks had an effective tool that would empower them to counter this process of double marginalization that focused on the female body and, thus, coerced the sexual subordination of females.50 In general, women lacked a voice in Chosŏn society when it came to political power, and they were exploitable in silence at the whims of male-dominated Confucians. In all of this, the notion of immoral rituals was a convenient tool.

The attack on such rituals in the name of protecting the female body exhibited a series of criticisms of ritual activities that thrived on Mount Kŭmsŏng in Naju of Chŏlla Province. The attack lasted almost three decades at the turn of the fifteenth century. Mount Kŭmsŏng was a popular site of prayer rituals that attracted shamans and petty Buddhist monks. These ritualists competed to invoke, through prayer rituals, supernatural help for their patrons who sought ways of curing disease, bringing good fortune, preventing misfortune, or making sure of the well-being of loved ones in the next world.

Securing well-being through divine grace or supernatural help constituted the kernel of prayer rituals of all kinds. In particular, when it came to the well-being of deceased loved ones, prayer was almost the only avenue available. Confucian ancestral rites were occasions for offering gratitude or homage to ancestral spirits, not acts of invoking divine help for their well-being in the next world. Confucianism was far from embracing the intervention of deities or supernatural beings in human affairs and instead promoted virtue and moral propriety. In addition, women who were gradually subordinated to the patriarchal or male-centered ritual system of Confucianism were deprived of religious subjectivity and freedom. Therefore, their inclination to engage in religious activities, which were not grounded in Confucianism, was regarded as detrimental to the norm of Confucian society.

In 1471, amid the disputes over prayer rituals on Mount Kŭmsŏng, Inspector General Han Ch’ihyŏng (1434–1502) memorialized to King Sŏngjong that sajang 社長, which referred to Buddhist nuns, lured women with notions of karma and fortune/misfortune to make a living and, in particular, deluded yangban women and spoiled the good customs of society.51 Han meant that women should be barred from Buddhism or Buddhist temples even though they were mediated by Buddhist nuns. Two years later, Sŏ Kŏjŏng (1420–1488), a newly appointed inspector general, presented a similar memorial to King Sŏngjong on how to separate women from Buddhist rituals, even stressing that Buddhist nuns should also be banned from visiting Buddhist temples. Sŏ’s argument was that Buddhist nuns often were involved in affairs with monks and that their unacceptable behavior could contaminate women attracted to their prayer halls, commonly called sadang 社堂.52

Along the line of argument that immoral rituals were hotbeds of female moral decay, in 1478, court officials continued to urge King Sŏngjong that prayer activities on Mount Kŭmsŏng should not be allowed:

People in Chŏlla are duped to believe that in the year they do not personally offer a worship ritual on Mount Kŭmsŏng, they would surely suffer from disease… Once they arrive on the mountain, men and women mingle together and turn lascivious, so some people lose their wives or daughters, and others who want to marry off their daughters first take them to prayer halls and stay there, saying that their daughters should marry the mountain god first and then can marry.

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The officials further argued that those women who stayed on Mount Kŭmsŏng for immoral rituals should be regarded as having already lost their chastity, and thus, their family heads should be punished for violation of the law. However, King Sŏngjong refused to take action.

In 1479, Censor General Sŏng Hyŏn (1439–1504) listed four Buddhist monks who had committed lustful behavior or committed fornication with lay women under the guise of prayer rituals and argued that women should be banned from contact with Buddhist monks. The women, whom Sŏng mentioned, included the concubine of a yangban man, the wife of a high official, nuns, the sister of a yangban man, and even the wife of a man belonging to the royal lineage.54 The female body was the locus of anti-Buddhist criticism that rendered Buddhist ritual activities immoral and incompatible with Confucian values.

The wrangling over immoral rituals on Mount Kŭmsŏng between King Sŏngjong and the court officials continued. In 1487, the officials again warned that “on Mount Kŭmsŏng, in addition to an official prayer hall set up for the government’s ritual worship, there are five or six more private halls, and a crowd of yangban women from nearby villages gather around and stay [there], so [some men] even lose their wives”.55 By “losing” the wives, the officials again meant that these women would lose their chastity by being involved with nonmarital partners. Concerns about female chastity in association with immoral rituals on Mount Kŭmsŏng did not dissipate easily.

In 1491, the governor of Chŏlla Kim Kŭkkŏm (1439–1499) joined the denouncement of prayer rituals held at Mount Kŭmsŏng, reporting to King Sŏngjong that what Buddhist monks and shamans were conducting constituted immoral rituals and therefore should be banned as heterodoxy.56 The officials did not distinguish Buddhist rituals from shamanic rituals and simply treated both as immoral. In other places as well, it was reported that women were easily attracted to Buddhist rituals and that they, nuns, and monks would spend nights together and engage in ritual activities in front of the golden images of paradise and hell.57 Confucians continued to request that women be banned from Buddhist rituals, which would only ruin their chastity.

What the Confucian critics of immoral rituals were really concerned about was the chastity of yangban women who were of the same class, not women who belonged to the class of commoners or slaves. As a way of guarding yangban female chastity, Confucians insisted that women, in general, be kept away from immoral rituals, which included Buddhist ones. Interestingly, however, the vigor with which Confucians attacked, through the female body in the gray zone of Buddhist and shamanic rituals, gradually diminished in the mid-sixteenth century. Confucian critics employed the rhetoric of female chastity less and less when they attacked Buddhism or its immoral rituals in the late Chosŏn period. Buddhism, as a tool to promote the value of female chastity, was losing its efficacy.

In Late Chosŏn, women who belonged to the ruled class were relatively free from the ethical norms of chastity, which the ruling class promoted. Instead, these women had a sense of sexual autonomy when they were not bound to marital relations, as some literary works indicated. Novels and long poetic verses known as changsijo 長時調portrayed that some women even openly expressed their erotic desires, enjoyed casual encounters with illicit male partners, including Buddhist monks, and strove for sexual freedom (Hwang 1994, pp. 330–34; Chang 1983, pp. 239–40, 243–50). It is also found that some reform-minded Confucian scholars raised some critical voices against the value of female chastity that advocated extreme practices.58

To be sure, uniform behavior was hardly expected, no matter how hard Confucians tried to Confucianize society. Many women in Late Chosŏn showed an ongoing interest in Buddhist rituals—a trend that spoke their inner religious minds socially. Nevertheless, as scholars in the field suggest, the Confucian value of female chastity applied to yangban women was firmly cemented and maintained through other effective and systematic means such as education, legal measures, primogeniture, and campaigns of exaltation.59

5. Buddhism and Suppression of Alternative Outlook

In the late Chosŏn period, both court officials and Confucian intellectuals and kings found that the punishment of certain religious ideas and activities by labeling them as immoral rituals was useful in suppressing people’s subversive religious activities that alluded to their discontent with kingly governance. The punishment was usually framed as a means to forestall social unrest, rebellion, or even treason. In 1606, authorities arrested four Buddhist monks who had conducted a water and land ritual outside the Ch’angŭi Gate in Kyŏngsŏng. They also arrested one Buddhist monk/fundraiser and six donors. All of them were jailed, and the paraphernalia used for the ritual was confiscated and destroyed. Why did the authorities take such dramatic action? The rationale was that the immoral rituals instilled suspicious ideas in the minds of the people.60 Court officials warned that such gatherings were increasing.

In the same year, officials in the Office of Inspector General informed King Sŏnjo (r. 1567–1608) that,

recently men and women inside and outside the capital alike call themselves sajang (female Buddhists) or kŏsa (male Buddhists) in order to evade corvée and wander around and delude people… When they erect halls in the local area, they first cut a tree and write letters on the white panel. Then, upon the rumor, people, both old and young, gather around from afar and nearby like clouds, and their number soon reaches tens of thousands.

61

These officials again warned that it might be a sign that people’s minds were unsettled. Chosŏn society, which had undergone the devastation of the Imjin War (1592–1598), was indeed unsettled in many respects.

Amid the conflicts with the Jurchens in the 1620s and later, a sense of instability prevailed in the society, particularly in the northwestern provinces of Korea. In 1629, Yi Ch’unggyŏng and his companions in Hwanghae Province conducted a series of rituals designed to create solidarity and began to move toward the capital. The rituals that they conducted included what they called a “ritual of military general”, a “ritual for military victory” (known as tukche 纛祭), and rituals involving the offering of a horse to heavenly deities and drinking blood from the slain horse together for unity.62 All of these rituals, whether mimicries of some public rituals or improvised ones, were obscure and uncanny, but authorities denounced them as immoral rituals and condemned them as preludes to a rebellious plot.

In 1657, when King Hyojong (r. 1649–1659) tried to regulate the disorderly mushrooming of local Confucian academies, some court officials argued that what should be curbed instead was Buddhism, arguing “there are many Buddhist temples and halls all over the place, and there are so many [Buddhist monks and nuns] who gather people, who abandon their fathers and disregard the king, and spend time in idleness and only seize food of good people”.63 Against the backdrop of ongoing criticism that linked immoral rituals to social instability, in 1670 Hoeyang Magistrate Im Kyu (1620–1687) in Kangwŏn Province flogged to death a shaman in Yŏngdong with the accusation that he had “beguiled [the people] with delusive words”.64 King Hyŏnjong (r. 1659–1674) agreed with Censor Sim Yu (1620–1688), who suggested that shamans and by extension petty Buddhists could provoke a rebellion like the one that diviners and yellow turbans had once caused in the Eastern Han.

Six years later, in 1676, Buddhist monk Ch’ŏgyŏng was executed at the age of twenty-five for the crime of spreading a “delusive book and delusive word” that alluded to attempted rebellion or treason (Chongsŏng Ch’oe 2013, p. 239). Ch’ŏgyŏng, born to the family of a local clerk, lost his parents and survived by begging in Kangwŏn Province for some years. Later, he became a Buddhist monk and attracted attention with his unusual rituals that delivered miraculous healing. As his reputation spread, followers began to revere him as a “living Buddha” (Kr. saengbul 生佛) who could create a new world. Some followers even said that “[Ch’ŏgyŏng’s] front appearance is like a living Buddha, and his rear appearance is like a prince” (Chongsŏng Ch’oe 2013, pp. 78–79, 138–42). Eventually, Ch’ŏgyŏng was arrested and accused of having presumed to be a reincarnation of the short-lived fourth son of Prince Sohyŏn (1612–1645). It was not clear whether his followers believed Ch’ŏgyŏng to have been that reincarnation, but as far as King Sukchong (r. 1674–1720) and his officials were concerned, the link to the tragic royal prince echoed the image of a living Buddha who could create a new world or dynasty.

In 1687, the shaman Yi Haeju was exiled to a remote island with the accusation that she installed for worship an image representing the monk Ch’ŏgyŏng, who had been executed more than a decade earlier, and worshiped him along with another prince who had been executed amid power struggles at King Sukchong’s court.65 Similarly, in the following year, the government executed Buddhist monk Yŏhwan, his wife-cum-shaman Wŏnhyang, and their followers, who were accused of spreading the word about the advent of a new world guided by Maitreya, a Buddhist god.66 Furthermore, with the belief that the capital Kyŏngsŏng would soon be wiped out by a huge flood, Yŏhwan and his wife and their followers, who conducted immoral rituals together, moved close to the capital.67 As far as King Sukchong and his officials were concerned, this constituted treason. Eleven culprits were put to death in the cruelest manner.

A similar episode of a living Buddha occurred again in 1691 in Hwanghae Province. A few shamans—shaman Aejin, her husband, Cho Idal, and shaman Ch’a Ch’unggŏl—and their followers, unified together through some obscure prayer rituals for healing, worshiped a living Buddha enshrined in a Buddhist hall on Mount Suyang. They believed that the living Buddha was a reincarnation of a son of Admiral Chŏng Ik (1579–1655), active in the mid-1650s. Based on their belief in the salvific grace of the living Buddha, they were accused of having circulated a vision of a new capital that would replace the current capital, Kyŏngsŏng. Local authorities reported that what these shamans and their followers had conducted together were immoral rituals. With the report, King Sukchong and his court officials determined that their rituals constituted a denial of the dynasty and thus warranted execution by beheading.68 Again, it was an incident that involved an intersection between Buddhism and shamanism in which immoral rituals, Confucians charged, thrived.69

The Yi Yŏngch’ang incident in 1698 had a similar storyline involving immoral rituals later punished for plotting a rebellion. Realizing that authorities often linked some ritual activities with plotting a rebellion, some people tried to defeat their rivals or enemies with secret and often deceptive reports to the government regarding suspicious rituals (Han 2022, p. 91). The link between immoral rituals and plotting rebellion or treason proved to be a convenient preamble to suppressing hopes for a new world by which people enduring suffering could be affected.

Things did not change much in the eighteenth century and thereafter when it came to the political use of immoral rituals associated with some marginal segments of Buddhism. It means that worship activities, which could be accused as being immoral rituals punishable with the rationale of political crime, continued to occur. The Imjin War and the following Jurchen invasions remained indelible disasters, and a series of massive famines that hit the country hard in the latter half of the seventeenth century brought unprecedented suffering to the people. Yet, the government proved to be of little use when it came to the protection of people’s lives. It was not surprising that some people were attracted to the ideas of salvation or a new era hinted at by Maitreya, living Buddhas, or other deities (Ko 2000, p. 95). All this was an expression of discontent with the system of governance.

In 1739, King Yŏngjo personally examined a few people, including a Buddhist monk named Sŏngjing, and accused him of plotting a rebellion. The accused included people who indulged in immoral rituals, according to authorities. One of them, Yang Yŏngnan, claimed the interrogation report, confessed that “my parents are so prone to worship ghosts that my two elder brothers are all possessed by ghostly demons and, as a result, are mentally sick”.70 All of the accused were exiled to remote places.

Accusations linking immoral rituals with rebellion sometimes puzzled authorities when they were presented with counterarguments. In 1786, Yi Yongbŏm in Kapsan of Hamgyŏng Province was arrested on the charge that he had conducted a suspicious ritual in which he had offered a eulogy to deities written in Hangŭl. The deities, argued the accuser, were invoked to help create a new world that would replace the current dynasty; Yi countered that he simply sought divine grace by appealing to heavenly deities.71 Yi was freed.

Depending on the whims of authorities, the verdict on immoral rituals could result in either dismissal of the charges or punishment of the individuals, and in that sense, the notion of immoral rituals that kept Buddhist rituals on the radar was a convenient tool of social control. Buddhist or semi-Buddhist rituals that survived at social margins could easily fall prey to such control. By striking at the weak fronts located in the social margins, Confucians and their kings strove to control the country in a cost-effective manner.

6. Conclusions

The denouncement of “immoral rituals” was a useful tool that Confucian officials, intellectuals, and kings could wield, sometimes jointly and sometimes in conflict, for their particular and separate purposes. Buddhist rituals often caught in these politics were relegated to the margins of society. Buddhists and semi-Buddhists survived by attracting patrons to what they could offer at the periphery, and such efforts at survival helped Confucian critics in the center to make their status more distinctive as well as promote Confucian dominance in ritual life. The social margins into which Buddhist prayer rituals—often intersected with shamanic rituals—were relegated presented hardships but offered opportunities for survival to Buddhists and semi-Buddhists.

No matter how Confucian critics exploited the tool of immoral rituals and tried to keep Buddhism in check, at least two trends were visible. One was that Buddhism weathered the Confucian attack and remained resilient, especially in the late Chosŏn period, thanks to its ritual services, which catered to the religious needs of an expanding base of patrons. Buddhism was equipped with ritual resources that Confucianism could not easily supplant on matters related to the next world (C. Kim 2019, p. 42; Yongtae Kim 2015, pp. 146–49; Sung-Eun T. Kim 2019, pp. 223–34). The other trend was that, nevertheless, Confucian officials and intellectuals rarely stopped exploiting the tool of immoral rituals. For Confucian critics, Buddhism remained useful, or was needed, in keeping and elevating their distinctive status. It was a paradox that persisted to the end of the dynasty.

In this sense, Buddhism was a storehouse of political resources that Confucian officials and intellectuals, including kings, could exploit for influence, prestige, and dominance. The label of immoral rituals, which entailed denouncement and punishment, constituted a male-centered strategy of Confucian aggrandizement. Despite the stigma assigned to these rituals, from which Buddhism was not entirely free, Buddhist ritualists remained resilient, more so in the late Chosŏn period, while suffering the increasing burden of corvée and a range of taxes.72

In sum, Confucians juxtaposed the notion of immoral rituals in which Buddhism was implicated with their own ways of ritual life and, thereby, endeavored to consolidate their status in a delicate balance with the sovereign power. They employed the tool of immoral rituals to check the royal family, which patronized Buddhism and, by extension, the sovereign power in one way or another throughout the Chosŏn period. In comparison, the tool in association with Buddhist temples was employed to control the female body at least by the end of the sixteenth century. Yet the tool, which targeted wishes for a new world, often of a Buddhist nature, worked to keep people’s discontent with the dynasty in check from the seventeenth century onward. The trajectory of the notion of immoral rituals as a multipurpose tool showed how Buddhist ritual culture evolved in Chosŏn Korea.