THE SADAEBU RULING elite who helped Yi Sŏnggye found the new dynasty in 1392 resolutely promoted Confucian ideology while relentlessly striving to root out Buddhist ideology. This introduced an overwhelming moral emphasis in the conduct of state and human affairs. From the time of the military coup in 1170, poets, with few exceptions, were sadaebu (sa – sŏnbi, scholar; taebu – administrator; hence sadaebu – scholar-administrator), a pattern that was maintained until the eighteenth century. For the sadaebu elite, anything that smacked of passion was frowned upon. Soon poetry began to display the symptoms of a profound dissociation of sensibility from which it suffered for a long time. One hundred and fifty years into the new dynasty, prominent thinkers like Yi T’oegye regarded passion as vulgar. T’oegye associated passion with hŭng, the buzz of excitement that accompanies the apprehension of beauty, and hŭng, he felt, lowered the barriers of control essential in the life of a wise man. Children, in T’oegye's view, should not be exposed to the vagaries of hŭng. The wonderful Koryŏ kayo, replete with pristine hŭng, were subjected to the nip of the censor's scissors; and to this day, musicians playing Chosŏn dynasty court music wear deadpan faces. The effects of the dissociation of sensibility experienced in Chosŏn society were enormous. The new orthodoxy inculcated a way of life that eschewed passion. Reason was the supreme faculty; imagination (also feeling and sensation) was suspect. The emergence of a rigid moralism was inevitable. It affected every aspect of life, and continues to do so to the present day. The only way to obviate this uncompromising moralism was through a life of inner illumination, as practised by literati like Sŏ Kŏjŏng, who refused to be stifled by the strictures of Neo-Confucianism.

A tradition doesn't establish itself in a day. The roots of Confucian ideology were already in place in Koryŏ , and the process by which Chŏng Tojŏn's ideology imbedded itself in Korean yangban consciousness was presumably slow. History provides innumerable examples of people and events that do not observe strict Confucian norms.