earticle

영어

There were many heated debates about the posthumous promotion of princess jungwon to Wonjong, the punishment of princess Insung and the capital punishment of Gangbin, a wife of the crown princess Sohyun, during King Injo’s reign. Injo succeeded to carry out his purpose against the strong opposition of many of his subjects. Injo thought that a king played an important role in eliminating ‘bungdang’, political strife, which impinged upon the authority of a king and weakened the country. He told that bungdang was worse than the war or helping the enemy, so he was very antagonistic toward bungdang. He had always doubts about bungdang among the bureaucracy. Thus, his servants feared that they would be misunderstood by the king, and they got inactive in dealing various national affairs. As a result, Injo managed to eliminate the vice of bungdang, and could charge forward with political issues at his pleasure. Nonetheless, it was inevitable that he could not remove bungdang completely from the political stage. The truth was that Injo was adamant about eliminating bungdang, then his subjects just contained themselves from playing bungdang activities. In this light, I insist, the popular view must be corrected that bungdang played a role in creating checks and balances in the political scene during Injo’s reign.