THE IDEAL OF STRONG ROYAL AUTHORITY AND A NATION FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE

IN THE THIRD month of 1776 at the age of twenty-five, Jeongjo succeeded to the crown as the twenty-second king of the Joseon Dynasty. In that year, the thirteen British colonies in North America declared independence and set about forming a new nation; in Scotland, Adam Smith (1723–1790) published The Wealth of Nations, and in China, the culture of the Qing Dynasty (1616–1912) flourished as the reign of Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1795) entered its forty-second year. The Korean Peninsula also witnessed its part in the global flowering of eighteenth-century civilization. During the twenty-four years of King Jeongjo’s reign, royal power was the strongest it had ever been throughout the Joseon Dynasty, and Korean culture reached the peak of its long history thus far, conventionally estimated as five thousand years.

Jeongjo had received special royal training as a prince growing up under the love and protection of his grandfather, King Yeongjo (r. 1724–1776), the longest reigning ruler of Joseon. While this was fortunate for Jeongjo, a deep indelible sorrow lay buried beneath this fortune. Jeongjo’s father, Crown Prince Sado (1735–1762), had died a miserable death eight days after being locked up by his father in a rice chest as punishment for alleged treason in the midst of political conflict with the Byeokpa branch of the Noron faction. At his death, Crown Prince Sado was twenty-eight years old and his son, Jeongjo, was only eleven.