P5∼20 The King’s Reason: Yi Song-gye and the Centralization of Power in early Choson Christopher L. Lovins ∗ Abstract This paper examines the founder of Chosŏn, Yi Sŏng-gye. Contrary to the usual depiction of him as a Confucian revolutionary, the author’s research has uncovered a leader that, though deeply committed to Buddhism on a personal level, possessed a real- istic outlook that lead to the establishment of Neo-Confucianism as the official ideology of his new dynasty. This paper discusses the political expediency of Neo-Confucianism for centralizing power under Yi Sŏng-gye’s new government. It concludes that the founder’s support of Neo-Confucian stemmed from practical rather than ideological considerations, thus shedding new light on the conventional conception of Yi Sŏng-gye. I. Introduction Yi Sŏng-gye (Chinese: Lĭ Chéngguì 李成桂) was born on 5 November 1335 and died 27 June 1408. Yet he had an indelible impact on Korean society which persists to this day, for it was he who declared Neo-Confucianism (Korean: Chu-ja-hak 朱子學; Chinese: Lĭxué 理學) the state ideology of the peninsular kingdom. This momentous event altered the course of Korean history. English-language research into the estab- lishment of Chosŏn (Chinese: CháoxiƗn 朝鮮) has dealt almost exclusively with Neo- Confucian ideology and the scholar-officials (Korean: sadaebu; Chinese: shìdàifu 士 大夫) who espoused it. Yi Sŏng-gye himself has been relegated to a minor position in the story of the origins of his own dynasty, allotted at most a few pages per work in the major literature. This article attempts to redress that imbalance, to focus attention on the dynastic founder whose pragmatic motivation diverged from that of the Neo-Confucian ∗ Correspondence to Christopher Lovins, Korean Studies, Graduate School of International Studies, Korea University, Sungbuk-gu, Anam-dong 5-ga, Seoul, Korea, 136-701; e-mail: christopher_lovins@ yahoo.co. uk; Tel/Fax: 02-362-7660. This paper uses the McCune-Reischauer system for Korean, the official pinyin system for Mandarin Chinese, and the Hepburn system for Japanese. Exceptions are made for preference regarding one’s own name. Important Chinese and Korean names will include Chinese characters and Ro- manization in both Korean and Chinese the first time they appear in the main text. To avoid reader confu- sion relating to Yi Sŏng-gye’s many titles (different titles covering the period before his reign, the reign it- self, his period of retirement, etc.), the author refers to him only by his birth name. The author wishes to thank the Korea Foundation for its financial support and Professor Doowon Suh of Korea University for his suggestions and encouragement. Without them, this paper could never have come to fruition. P51∼65