Wang Kon: Ten Injunctions

About the Author

There are essentially two candidates for authorship. One is T’aejo (Wang Kon), who, according to the Ten Injunctions, dictated the contents to Pak Surhui. However, if Breuker is correct and the Ten Injunctions, were actually authored during the reign of Hyonjong (Wang Sun), it is likely that several officials wrote the document. During the Liao invasion, fire destroyed many important historical records housed in the capital. Several officials were given the task of collecting what remained and interviewing elderly people in order to restore as much of the lost history as they could. Breuker argues that the destruction of the historical records provided an opportunity for several high officials, loyal to Hyonjong and hoping to strengthen his legitimacy in the wake of the devastating Liao invasion, to write the Ten Injunctions, which they then claimed to have been the work of T’aejo. It is likely the case that the Ten Injunctions were written by Ch’oe Chean, who had “discovered” the document, and Hwang Churyang, both of whom were a part of the effort to recompile the lost history. They were probably supervised by Ch’oe Hang, a high official and respected scholar at whose house the Ten Injunctions were found, and Kim Shimon who was assistant supervisor of the history project. These four men were closely connected with each other and with Hyonjong and shared ideas that found their way into the Ten Injunctions.

After the Ten Injunctions were “rediscovered,” they were published as part of the biography of a deceased official so that the government officials would become familiar with and be influenced by them. Because Hyonjong was quite young and because some of the officials had served previous kings, it is likely that the policies recommended by the injunctions represent not only those favored by Hyonjong himself but the officials’ own ideas as well. By making it seem as if their own policies were really those of T’aejo, the king and his officials were able to gain support for them and strengthen Hyonjong’s legitimacy.