Hong Gyeong-nae Rebellion
Hong Gyeong-nae rose against discrimination toward Pyeongan Province and in-law clan rule; the rebels swept the north but were crushed after holding Jeongju for four months.
Original painter unknown, but kept at Gyujanggak at Seoul National University · Public domain · Source
Exploitation worsened under in-law clan rule, and men of Pyeongan were all but barred from high office, even as trade with Qing and mining enriched the province’s merchants and wealthy farmers. Hong Gyeong-nae, a yangban of fallen fortunes, spent nearly a decade preparing a rising with U Gun-chik, Kim Sa-yong, Yi Hui-jeo and others.
The rebels rose at Dabokdong in Gasan on the 18th day of the 12th month, 1811, joined by poor peasants, miners and small traders. Within ten days they held Gasan, Gwaksan, Jeongju, Seoncheon and other counties north of the Cheongcheon River, but after defeat at Songnim they fell back on Jeongju fortress. They held out four months until, on the 19th day of the 4th month, 1812, government troops tunnelled under the wall and blew it up with gunpowder. Hong was killed and some 1,900 captives were executed.
Though it failed, the rising opened an era of peasant revolts that led to the uprisings of 1862.
