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PoliticsMarch 1619(Lunar)

Gwanghaegun’s Neutral Diplomacy

At Ming request Joseon sent an army under Gang Hong-rip against the Later Jin; when the Ming were routed at Sarhu, Gang surrendered, and Gwanghaegun kept Joseon neutral between Ming and Jurchens.

As Nurhaci’s Later Jin grew, the Ming invoked their help in the Imjin War and demanded troops (1618). Gwanghaegun sent some 10,000 men under Gang Hong-rip, reportedly telling him to act as circumstances required. When the Ming collapsed at Sarhu in 1619, Gang surrendered and told the Jurchens that Joseon had marched only under compulsion.

Gwanghaegun worked to rebuild after the war: he applied the Daedong law in Gyeonggi (1608), resurveyed land and households, had the Dongui bogam completed and restored the archives of the dynastic annals, and reopened relations with Japan by the Giyu treaty (1609). But his neutrality, and the killing of Prince Yeongchang and confinement of Queen Dowager Inmok, gave the Westerners their justification for the 1623 coup.

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States and rulers at the time
Joseon · reinforcements — Gwanghaegun
Ming · requested aid — Wanli Emperor
Later Jin · belligerent — Nurhaci
Places
Sarhu

People

  • Gwanghaegun1575 – 1641

    monarch · Fifteenth king of Joseon who began the Daedong law and balanced Ming and the Later Jin; deposed in 1623

  • Gang Hong-rip1560 – 1627

    commander · Commander of the Joseon army sent at Ming request against the Later Jin in 1619, who surrendered to the Jurchens after the defeat at Sarhu

Before and after

Earlier
1616 Nurhaci Founds the Later Jin
Later
1623 Seungjeongwon Ilgi (Diaries of the Royal Secretariat)

Themes that include this event

  • Factional Politics in Joseon1498 – 1863

    From the literati purges to in-law government — how Sarim factions moved from coexistence and checks to purges and one-faction rule, then through Tangpyeong to the dominance of a few clans

  • Ming, Qing and Edo Japan1500 – 1800

    The age when the Ming, shaken by northern raiders, southern pirates and the silver economy, fell to Li Zicheng’s rebels, and the Manchu Qing reached its greatest extent and prosperity under Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong — as Japan was unified out of the Warring States into the Edo shogunate’s bakuhan order and closed country, and Joseon, after two great wars, met its neighbours through embassies to Edo and the Northern Learning