The King Who Avenged His Mother and Burned His Kingdom
The Magic from the East
A special kind of magic reaches us today from East Asia. Series that fill our screens, songs our young people sing without understanding a single word, and a cuisine that has won lovers and devotees in our cities. Yet behind this modern glow stands an ancient civilisation that was not born yesterday, but built itself over long centuries of kingdoms, dynasties, learning and writing.
The Korean peninsula knew the kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Then came the Goryeo dynasty, which ruled from 918 to 1392, and from whose name Europeans derived the word Korea. Then rose the Joseon dynasty, which reigned from 1392 to 1897, with its capital at Hanyang, today's Seoul. An independent state, ruled by a king and run by a Confucian bureaucracy that revered education, tradition and morality, bound to China by close diplomatic and cultural ties.
Under King Sejong, this civilisation created its own alphabet, Hangul, putting writing within reach of ordinary people rather than leaving it the privilege of an elite. That achievement alone says a great deal about the mind of this nation.
What came later is well known: Korea became an empire in 1897, fell under Japanese colonisation from 1910 to 1945, and after the Second World War was divided into two states, North and South.
Between the Screen and History
In 2025 Netflix released Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, featuring a king named Yi Heon, a fictional character inspired by a real king, Yeonsangun. The chef who travels back in time from the twenty first century to his court, and the love story that grows between them, are the work of screenwriters, not of history. Had the real Yeonsangun known that generations would one day remember him as a romantic lover tasting dishes, he might have laughed for a long time, or ordered someone punished, which came more easily to him.
So let us leave the kitchen for a moment and enter the palace.
A Young Man on the Throne
In 1494, while Europe was entering the age of great discoveries and Portuguese ships were seeking a route to India, an eighteen year old was taking the throne of Korea, succeeding his father, King Seongjong.
His name was Yi Yung. Born in 1476, he became the tenth king of the Joseon dynasty. He inherited a relatively stable kingdom, with a central administration and a broad class of scholars and officials. He had almost everything, except peace with his past.
The Buried Secret
His mother, Queen Yun, had been accused of misconduct inside the palace. She was stripped of her royal title, then forced to take poison by order of her own husband, King Seongjong. The truth was hidden from her son for many years, as if palaces could keep a secret forever.
After he took the throne, he learned the truth. From that moment began a confrontation between a king who wanted to restore his mother's honour and statesmen, some of whom had taken part in condemning her or had defended the royal decision.
The First Season of Reckoning
In 1498 the kingdom saw its first great purge. Scholars were executed and others exiled. This was not only the story of a mother and a son; it was also a struggle between court factions and rival Confucian schools. And so, in a state built on reverence for scholars, the scholar became the man with the most reason to be careful.
When Not Even the Dead Were Safe
Then came 1504, and the circle widened. Arrests and punishments followed, and neither senior ministers nor their families were safe. Even some officials who had already left this world did not escape: their remains were exhumed and symbolically punished. In that kingdom, it seems, death was not enough to close the file.
Korean sources indicate that about 230 officials and members of their families were affected by that campaign.
A King at Play, a Kingdom in Pain
At the same time, court spending on feasts, hunting and entertainment grew. Property was confiscated and houses demolished to enlarge the royal hunting grounds, so the people had to make way not only for the king but for his game as well. Every critical voice was stifled, while the kingdom groaned under fiscal burdens and natural disasters.
Here lies the irony: a king with almost absolute power, losing day after day the trust of those through whom he was supposed to govern.
The Coup and the Exile
In 1506 a group of senior officials moved against Yeonsangun, deposed him, and placed his half brother on the throne as King Jungjong.
The deposed king was not killed. He was exiled to an island near Ganghwa, and about two months later he died there, not yet thirty. He was never given the temple name granted to the kings of Joseon; official memory kept him as a deposed prince, bearing the title gun. Twelve years on the throne, and five centuries of bad reputation.
A Word for Fairness
Still, if we weigh this matter on the scales of justice, we must note something important: much of what we know about Yeonsangun reached us through records written after his fall, that is, by the pens of the victors. That is why historians also study the politics behind those accounts. History, like a court, does not rest on the testimony of one side alone.
The Question That Remains
The story of Yeonsangun stands as witness to a question that has followed kings and empires through the ages: what happens when absolute power becomes a tool for a ruler's personal score settling?
In the Korea of that time, the answer was a coup, an exile, an early death, and a story still told five centuries later. Netflix chose to serve us the dish sweetened with a love story. Fair enough. Some historical dishes are too bitter to be served as they are.
Peter Germanos
Sources: Encyclopedia of Korean History, National Institute of Korean History (contents.history.go.kr); Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, Academy of Korean Studies.
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