Making peace with the barbarians: Neo-Confucianism and the pro-peace argument in 17th-century Korea
| Author | Sungmoon Kim |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885120963966 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Making peace with the
barbarians:
Neo-Confucianism and
the pro-peace argument
in 17th-century Korea
Sungmoon Kim
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;Yonsei University
Seoul, South Korea
Abstract
This article investigates the Neo-Confucian discourse on war, premised on the
“Chinese versus barbarian” binary, and its impact on the Neo-Confucian scholar-offi-
cials of 17th-century Chos
on Korea. It shows that Korean Neo-Confucians suffered
invasions from the Jurchens, who they regarded as “barbarians,” and that the political
debate on how to respond to the “barbarians” drove the advocates of the pro-peace
argument to reimagine Chos
on’s statehood. The article consists of three parts. First, it
reconstructs the philosophical foundations of the mainstream Neo-Confucian dis-
course on the war with the “barbarians” with reference to Zhu Xi. Second, it discusses
the strong impact of the Neo-Confucian paradigm of war on the orthodox Korean
Neo-Confucians of the 17th century. Third, it examines how Ch’oe My
ong-kil, one of
the rare champions of the pro-peace argument at the time, justified making peace with
the Jurchens through the judicious use of “the expedient.”
Keywords
Ch’oi My
ong-kil, expedient, Korea, Neo-Confucianism, Zhu Xi
Corresponding author:
Sungmoon Kim, Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Email: sungmkim@cityu.edu.hk
European Journal of Political Theory
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120963966
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2023, Vol. 22(1) 117–140
Confucianism is generally understood as one of the oldest ethical and religious
traditions in the world, which produced highly sophisticated theories of just war
(Lo and Twiss, 2015). It is now firmly established that ancient Confucian philos-
ophers such as Mencius and Xunzi not only developed the idea of a “righteous
war,” which distinguishes a morally justifiable war from an immoral one, but also
advanced detailed discussions of the moral purposes of war, justified conduct in
war, and post-war procedures. Some historians of Chinese philosophy even go
beyond the investigation of pre-Qin thinkers’ political thought by examining the
Confucian discourse of just war developed during the early Han period, by focus-
ing on, among other texts, the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn
Annals (Chunqiu Gongyan Zhuan 春秋公羊傳), which analyzes various types of
military conflict and warfare that happened during the Spring and Autumn
period from a Confucian moral perspective, thereby offering more detailed
accounts of how early Confucians understood various wars and military aggres-
sions perpetrated during one of the most turbulent periods of Chinese history
(Queen, 2017; Yu, 2010).
Within the Anglophone scholarship, however, little attention has been given to
the development of just war discourse during the later imperial period, especially
after the rise of Neo-Confucianism. Even among those who have given rare atten-
tion to the Neo-Confucian discourse on just war, the interest is generally limited to
Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) argument for war in the context of the Jin 金-Song 宋con-
flict during the 12th century, often without articulating the deeper Neo-Confucian
philosophical foundation of his account of war, which at first glance appears to be
flatly ethnocentric.
1
However, it is crucial to understand the philosophical foun-
dation of Zhu Xi’s theory of just war in making sense of the post-Song moral
and political discourse of war both in China and especially in Chos
on Korea
(1392–1910), the only dynasty in human history which was self-consciously and
rigorously founded on the version of Neo-Confucianism developed by Zhu Xi. His
idea of just war provided for the later Neo-Confucians a moral standard by which
to justify or evaluate a particular war, or, even more generally, the military con-
flicts between the suzerain Chinese state and its vassal states and between Han
China and other ethnic groups.
In this article, I investigate how the moral framework constructed by Zhu Xi
with regard to war affected his Neo-Confucian followers in Chos
on during the
17th century when they confronted the Jurchens’ invasions of 1627 and 1636, both
of which devastated Korean society, causing countless deaths and even greater
enslavement by the dynasties that the Jurchens established: the Later Jin (1616–
1636) and the Qing (1636–1912). As ardent followers of Zhu Xi and Song Neo-
Confucianism, Korean Neo-Confucian scholar-officials largely took a staunch
pro-war stance against those they had long considered “northern barbarians,”
the target of zheng 征in principle, which according to the Confucian moral dis-
course refers to punitive expedition of the morally inferior by the morally superior
in the morally hierarchical interstate order. Of special interest is how some of the
Chos
on scholar-officials, despite their full commitment to Neo-Confucianism,
European Journal of Political Theory 22(1)118
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