Ilsoo CHO

10.18399/acta.2025.28.2.001

Yi Sŏnggye Koryŏ Chosŏn genealogy legitimacy

The ancestral origins of Yi Sŏnggye, the founder of the Chosŏn dynasty, have long misled historians due to their mythologized depictions in the official histories. Japanese scholars have suspected that his ancestors might have been Jurchens in disguise. Numerous Korean scholars took offense to such overtures and reacted defensively, accepting the official narrative at face value. By focusing on the question of their ethnic identity, this article argues that these scholars have inadvertently overlooked that Yi Sŏnggye’s ancestors had served a family that rebelled against Koryŏ during the Mongol invasions and that Yi Sŏnggye’s father eventually double-crossed them and appropriated their wealth and position. This long history of ruthless opportunism became problematic when the new dynasty sought to inspire unconditional loyalty from its subjects. The dynasty thereby altered the accounts of Yi’s ancestors to obscure their involvement in the rebellious breakaway polity in the northeast, the Ssangsŏng Directorate-General (1258–1356).