Book Review: The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong
An interesting, first-hand glimpse into the 18th century Joseon royal court by one of history’s most underrated women
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong is a unique piece of writing, written by a woman who was an underrated political operative at a time of rising political influence for women in Joseon. The work is comprised of four memoirs, all dedicated to different people serving a prescribed political purpose. Many of the ideas expressed by Lady Hyegyong were well-ahead of her time.
Lady Hyegyong was born in Hanyang (modern-day Seoul) in 1735, the third child of a noble, but frugal family. Her paternal family, coming from the Andong Hong clan, had been influential in Joseon politics for generations. Though generations removed from the royal bloodline, Lady Hyegyong is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of King Seonjo, the 14th ruler of Joseon.
In 1744, at the tender age of nine-years-old, a royal edict was issued requiring noble families to submit eligible daughters to the royal court for consideration of the Crown Prince Sado, the 2nd son of King Yeongjo, Joseon’s 21st ruler. Though the young Lady Hyegyong did not want to be sent to the palace, the family’s duty as loyal subjects of the king left them with little choice in the matter.
Lady Hyegyong was ultimately chosen, having won over the royal family early in the lengthy selection process. It is said that the king himself told Lady Hyegyong, during the second of three screenings, that he had greeted her as a “beautiful daughter-in-law”.
A royal wedding took place in 1744, with Lady Hyegyong now needing to take her place away from her parents at the palace. Her father, a court official who enjoyed King Yeongjo’s trust, acted in several different capacities during this time and benefitted from seeing his daughter, the nation’s Crown Princess, often.
Though destined for the power and prestige of the Joseon crown, Lady Hyegyong would never serve Joseon as Queen in her own right. Her husband had exhibited strange behaviours beginning in 1745, and traumas from his life (the deaths of his royal grandmother and of the Queen) had deteriorated his mental state to violent extents. Lady Hyegyong was abused by her husband; but Prince Sado’s worst impulses, which included murder and random beheadings, were reserved for other ladies-in-waiting, eunuchs, families of government officials and even his sisters.
The Incident of 1762
Lady Hyegyong makes many references in her memoirs to the death of her husband in 1762, and this was political intrigue of the highest magnitude at that time.
Prince Sado’s behaviour could no longer be tolerated by the Joseon court, and his crimes were worthy of execution. The laws of Joseon; however, complicated the matter, and King Yeongjo, considered one of Joseon’s most competent and devout Confucian rulers, was bound by royal convention.
The laws forbid the desecration of the body of any member of the royal family, which made eliminating the Crown Prince a more complex political decision. One added dynamic was that Joseon, much like China at the time, followed the principles of collective punishment. In essence, for the king to condemn Sado as a common criminal, Sado’s immediate family (wife and children) would also need to suffer the same fate. This was a non-starter not only because of King Yeongjo’s special affection for Lady Hyegyong, but it would have also endangered the royal line of succession because it would have necessitated the execution of Prince Yi San, Sado’s son and the only other male heir eligible for the throne.
The solution was to strip Prince Sado and his family of their royal titles, and Lady Hyegyong took her son and left the palace for her parents’ home as commoners. Prince Sado, meanwhile, was instructed by his father, King Yeongjo, to climb into a wooden rice chest. Sado would remain in the rice chest, placed in the courtyard of the palace. On July 12, 1762, after eight days without food or water under the hot summer Sun, Prince Sado was dead.
King Yeongjo felt regret over this decision almost immediately after Prince Sado’s death, and posthumously restored his position as the Crown Prince. Lady Hyegyong and Prince Yi San subsequently returned to the palace, with their royal titles reinstated.
Sado’s son, Yi San, was soon after acclaimed as the new Crown Prince, and upon Yeongjo’s death in 1776, took his seat on the Joseon throne as King Jeongjo.
Structure of Lady Hyegyong’s Memoir
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, is known in Korean as “Han-jung-nok” (literally, “Records Written in Silence”). Its four volumes tell a tale of all facets of Lady Hyegyong’s life and details her thoughts and ideas which have been of interest to historians studying that era.
There are many reasons why the publication of Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs constitute a groundbreaking source of information into the lengthy tapestry of Korean history. First, Lady Hyegyong’s work is a first-hand account of one of the more politically-charged times in Joseon history. Second, the notion that she was not only a woman, but a woman of status, only strengthened the use of Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and encouraged more women to pick up the brush.
The most significant reason, particularly for scholars and historians of the Joseon Dynasty, lies in the notion that Lady Hyegyong, as a Crown Princess and a lady of the court, had no formal public or political role. Interest in her memoirs stems from the notion that the events she describes are not the official meetings on the governance of the state, which are logged in the annals, but rather of the political intrigue that’s conducted behind-the-scenes. She describes tales of political cliques and factional scheming that all takes place far from the king’s watchful eye, and is therefore considered one of Joseon’s foremost unfiltered and uncensored primary historical sources.
The memoirs contain four volumes written over a ten-year period, from 1795 to 1805.
The first volume was written in 1795, when Lady Hyegyong enjoyed considerable influence over the Joseon court. It is the only volume of her memoirs written while her son, King Jeongjo, was alive.
Lady Hyegyong’s life at court was a turbulent one. Upon arrival, she was destined to be Queen alongside her husband. Upon Prince Sado’s death in 1762, she remained at court but her position was of a lesser-royal. Any talk of Prince Sado or his death was banned by royal decree, until 1776 when King Jeongjo ascended to the throne. In the first statement made to his government officials upon his ascension, he boldly stated: “I am the son of the late Prince Sado.” Jeongjo’s rise to power bestowed Lady Hyegyong with the influence of a dowager queen or, in more modern terms, a queen mother.
The 1795 volume is dedicated to her nephew, who became the head of her noble house within the Andong Hong clan. It details her life as a whole and is written as a vigourous defence of her actions immediately after her husband’s death. Some at court at the time had been calling for Lady Hyegyong and her son to kill themselves in keeping with the tenets of filial piety expressed by Confucianism, as well as the principles of collective punishment.
The second volume, written in 1801, is unique in its purpose as it is written in much the same fashion as a plea or “memorial” written by a political figure to the court. Pleas to the king usually were meant to air a grievance or to offer a counter-argument to a decision made by the government.
In 1801, Lady Hyegyong sets out to posthumously restore honour to her uncle and brother, who were both executed. It is a protest piece which exposes the corruption and factionalism of the court, especially with respect to the execution of her brother, whose was accused of illegally converting to Catholicism. She believed that her brother’s accusers, notable among them Queen Jeongsun, ruling as regent for the 11-year-old King Sunjo, were using the campaign against Catholic converts as a convenient means to eliminate Lady Hyegyong’s family. This persecution came to be known as the Sinyu Persecution of 1801, which ended after the executions of more than 300 Catholics.
The final two volumes, written in 1802 and 1805, are dedicated to King Sunjo, the ruler of Joseon during this period and Lady Hyegyong’s grandson. Sunjo, though ascending to the throne in 1800, was still a child and the country was governed by Queen Jeongsun, King Yeongjo’s second wife. She voluntarily handed over power to Sunjo in 1804, and died in 1805. Queen Jeongsun and Lady Hyegyong, while enjoying a cordial relationship in their early years, were intense rivals.
The Memoir of 1802 speaks of her son’s life as a man bearing the pain of his father’s execution. It’s intent is to express in Sunjo the importance of filial piety and provide a lifetime of examples of it in practice. King Jeongjo made it his mission to restore honour to his father and Lady Hyegyong, and had designed a plan of action that was to take place in 1804, presumably during the year of the young Sunjo’s coming of age. With Jeongjo’s early death in 1800, this memoir served as a plea for Sunjo to follow through on his father’s plans to restore honour to Prince Sado and Lady Hyegyong.
The final memoir, written in 1805, seeks to set the record straight about Prince Sado’s execution. It is considered the most famous of the four volumes for some of the sensational details Lady Hyegyong provides of her husband’s mental illness. It is an important first-hand account of these events, and one of the few that survived the years. King Yeongjo had all official records of the events leading up to Prince Sado’s 1762 execution burned, and as such, Lady Hyegyong’s account becomes critically important for historians studying this era in Korea.
The absence of any official records also led to a number of rumours and conspiracy theories about why Prince Sado was really executed. Lady Hyegyong, who had displayed in all of her previous works a filial duty to her husband, writes as a credible custodian of the history of these events.
Key Takeaways
One of the difficulties in going through the book, despite having an interest and a personal connection with the setting the events take place in, is understanding the who’s who of the era. For the reader with no knowledge of Joseon history, this is a complex read.
However, the English translation of Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs were completed by JaHyun Kim Haboush (1940–2011) who provides a number of appendices in the book, complete with family trees of the relevant protagonists. Haboush is an expert on Korean history and the world’s foremost scholar on Joseon history, and she attempts to ease the reader into the memoirs by providing an insightful introduction to the life and surroundings of Lady Hyegyong.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading through it, particularly that sensational Memoir of 1805. It’s clear through the words of Lady Hyegyong that this was an emotional re-examination of Prince Sado’s illness and death. The entire text is a captivating glimpse into 18th century Korea, and the thoughts that prevailed among society’s upper echelons at that time.
The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong had, for me personally, four major takeaways that make this book a must-read.
The importance of filial piety at that time, expressed in the relationships Lady Hyegyong had with her father and husband, is a central theme that recurs throughout. She has inspired her royal descendants, molding the behaviour of her son King Jeongjo especially. Though filial piety would have evolved nowadays to a more general respect for one’s elders, the devotion Lady Hyegyong has, toward her father in particular, is refreshing. While obedience and affection toward her abusive husband is something that would now be universally condemned, she successfully articulates the importance of this Confucian virtue to an audience even hundreds of years after the events in the memoirs took place.
Another highlight was the role of women during this turbulent time in Joseon, and in particular, Lady Hyegyong’s influence over the royal court. There is no question that Lady Hyegyong is a tragic figure, but her skill as an astute political actor cannot be overstated. Her political maneuvering may be overshadowed by other imposing women of the era (ie. Jeongsun, Joseon’s queen regent from 1800 to 1804), but she managed to keep herself and her son alive during a time of great uncertainty about their futures. Her influence is particularly potent during the later years of her son’s reign, and while she may have had no public role in governance of the nation, she was clearly involved in the discussions that would sway kings into correct decision-making.
It is not surprising that many of the ideas and personal beliefs Lady Hyegyong expressed throughout her memoirs were ahead of her time. One of particular interest was in the Memoir of 1802, when she speaks of her husband’s execution:
As my late father said on several occasions, it was clearly an illness [on the part of Prince Sado], but though it was an illness, the safety of His Majesty and the dynasty itself were sustained by a mere breath. There was no way, despite his unfathomable sorrow and pain, for His Majesty to avoid that decision. As for Prince Sado, he could have been blamed only if he possessed his senses. As he grew more afflicted, he lost his true nature; he was unaware of what he was doing. What must be regretted is that he became ill; it had absolutely no bearing on his virtue. (Lady Hyegyong, Memoir of 1802)
What she is describing is a legal principle of “non compos mentis” — the idea that a criminal act may be defended if the perpetrator claims to be “not of sound mind”. Mental illness is a taboo subject even today in Korea, and the idea that an accused can be found not criminally responsible for mental health reasons was virtually unheard of in the Joseon era. Such an idea would likely be considered extreme. It demonstrates the extent to which Lady Hyegyong was an educated, virtuous and enlightened woman.
The final highlight doesn’t come direct from the book, but in the sentiment the memoirs leave with a reader. By the end of The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, there is a certain foreshadowing of chaos to come. Lady Hyegyong’s family no longer enjoyed political prestige toward the end of her life, and there this ominous dark cloud that seems to befall Joseon, in direct relation with the persecution of Lady Hyegyong’s family. Anyone familiar with the history of Joseon in the decades that followed would see a connection as well: the search for a king in rags, struggles with the royal line of succession, regents unwilling to relinquish power, the Japanese invasions, the annexation of Korea and the end of the Joseon kingdom.
Overall, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong provides a direct historical account of events in the Joseon royal court at a time of heightened political intrigue. The fluidity of her prose makes her credible and her comportment throughout a life of trial makes her virtuous — a low-key heroine that has every reader’s support and attention. Though her ill-fated marriage took away any hope of a Joseon coronation, Lady Hyegyong has achieved these heights in the hearts of those who know her story.
