Hong Gyeong-rae's Rebellion was a peasant revolt that occurred between 31 January and 29 May 1812 in Joseon. It was led by Hong Gyeong-rae and the yangban of Pyeongan Province, who were unhappy with a tax regime based on government-administered high-interest loans. Impoverished farmers joined them following a year of exceptionally poor harvest, when they were forced nonetheless to contribute to a "grain fund". It is also called the Gwanseo Peasant War.
The rebellion was initially quite successful. At its height, the rebels controlled most of the area north of the Cheongcheon River, including the town of Jeongju, which was fortified to withstand invasions from Manchuria (then part of Qing China). Whenever the rebels took over a district, they distributed government grain to the people.
However, the rebels suffered defeats in the battles of Pine Grove and Four Pine Field, which caused them to withdraw to Jeongju. There, they came under siege by government forces. The rebellion was put down a few months later, on 29 May, when the government forces breached the town wall with a gunpowder charge. Hong Gyeong-rae was killed in the fighting. Other rebel leaders were also killed in battle or executed. Thousands of people caught up in the uprising, including boys as young as 10, who were also executed.
Although it failed, Hong Gyeong-rae's rebellion may have provided momentum for other popular armed uprisings in different parts of Korea seeking a more just society. The culmination of these was the Donghak Rebellion in 1894, centered in southern province of Jeolla.
Background
Sunjo ascended the throne at a young age, Queen Dowager Jeongsun, the second queen of King Yeongjo, ruled as queen regent, which allowed her to wield power over state affairs. Despite King Sunjo's efforts to reform politics, the fundamental principles of government deteriorated. The state examination became disordered, and corruption in the government personnel administration prevailed, resulting in disorder in society and riots among the people.
Factors of discontent
Many social, political, economic, and intellectual factors potentially led to the rebellion. Among those considered by Sun Joo Kim, author of a treatise on this topic, include: Poverty and discontent among the farmers in Pyongan Province. These were brought on by the naturally low fertility of soils in the area compared to those in the southern part of Korea, poor weather conditions at the time, which led to partial crop failure, and high-interest rates on loans extracted despite the poor harvest. Particularly high de facto tax rates for more well-off landowners. These took the form of grain funds and monetary loans, which had to be paid back at high-interest. Cross-border trade policies and taxes on imported goods from China negatively impacted Pyeongan merchants. Signs and prophetic works, particularly the Jeonggamnok, foretold that the Joseon (Yi) dynasty would fall and be replaced by a new, more just dynasty. Rivalries among the yangban were triggered by government policies to encourage or force movements of yangban from the south to Pyongan Province to better integrate it into the Joseon political fabric. However, this policy stoked tensions between the established yangban organizations and the newly arrived yangban. Discrimination against high-level civil service examination passers from Pyongan Province at the Joseon court.
Sun Joo Kim favored this last cause (Discrimination against those from Pyongan Province) as the primary cause. She noted key evidence for this conclusion was the manifesto posted by the rebels in the early stage of the rebellion, which begins:
Another scholar of the rebellion, Anders Karlsson, disagreed with this assessment and offered counterarguments. He considered that the manifesto, written in classical Chinese, would have been incomprehensible to the predominately uneducated army or even most of its leaders. He suggested that perhaps its primary purpose was to legitimize the rebellion and seek the support of those members of the educated elite that had not already joined the rebels. His work emphasized the importance of the ideologies espoused in the prophetic works. However, in the end, he concludes that the relative importance of the various potential causes remains.
Basic arguments for the revolution
Hong Gyeong-rae (a geomancer) travelled extensively to find and create support for the rebellion, seeking for geomantically auspicious sites and to fully understand the discontent and to spread a revolutionary ideology. He relied on two basic arguments to gain supporters for the revolution: