Wang Kon: Ten Injunctions

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Historians are uncertain about when the Ten Injunctions were written. Explain how our contemporary understanding of the motivations behind the Ten Injunctions would differ depending on when the document was written. What implications does this difference have for the study of ancient history in general?
• 2.: What influence did China and Chinese history and religion have on the development of Korea?
• 3.: Throughout world history, similar documents have arisen out of social and political turmoil, questions about the legitimacy of a monarch or ruling family, or revolt. Locate a similar document—the New Year’s Day Taika Reform Edict, the Constitutions of Clarendon, the Athenian Constitution, or the Reform Edict of Urukagina, for example—and explain how the two documents arose from comparable contexts.
• 4.: Why do you suppose that syncretism, or the blending of native religious beliefs with those of a new religion from outside, succeeded in medieval Korea when it failed utterly in Africa—as discussed in Diplomatic Correspondence between Muhammad al-Kanami and Muhammad Bello?
• 5.: While the Ten Injunctions seem to have succeeded in the short term, in the longer term they failed to produce the desired effects. Why? What factors might have motivated departure from the Ten Injunctions?