Records of homosexuality in premodern Korea

This post is a compilation and summary of accounts from premodern Korea, defined here as largely pre-20th century, recording homosexual, gender-ambiguous/non-conforming, and otherwise queer experiences. It will begin with a summation of premodern Korean terms on homosexuality, then discuss specific accounts of homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender nonconformity that we might today read as queer or LGBTQA, including the context of times and life history where available. Classist bias is heavy in the historical record and many of the detailed personal contexts tend to be available for members of the ruling class such as kings, but contexts for other individual personages or classes of persons can be gleaned through the terminology used, descriptions of social customs, and the rare instances where same-gender love between working-class people, primarily of women, touched on the perceived dignity and rights of men in the ruling classes.

I am greatly indebted in the preparation of this write-up to Professor Kang Moon-jong’s Studies on the traditional era homosexuality, published in the journal Yeongju Eomun Vol. 30 (June 2015), especially for alerting me to the existence of Yi Gyubo’s Poem Prompted by the 50 Verses Sent by Enlightened Gongong to young Master Bak and some of the events and writings from the Joseon era. The section on terminology also follows both the format of his paper and draws directly from his summation of the terms, with some modifications and additions. Where I was unable to independently confirm a primary or secondary source cited by Professor Kang but rather rely on the paper itself, I have cited it as “Kang (2015)” or “via Kang (2015).”

Content warnings for this write-up include sexual violence, age gap/possible underage relationships, corporeal punishment and other violence against queer people, general political violence including murder, death from coerced labor, cisnormativity, sexism/patriarchy, etc.

Premodern Korean terminology on homosexuality

The most common word for homosexuality in premodern Korea was daeshik 對食 (“eat together”). Originating from the Han Dynasty of China, this referred to palace servants including maids and eunuchs entering into marriage-like committed relationships with each other. In premodern Korea the word came to mean homosexuality in general between men and women alike, though its original meaning of love in the specific setting of court was also preserved. A related though rarer and more limited term is gyobung 交朋 (“making friends”), a term that is listed to this day in the dictionary as a traditional term for female homosexuality, though it has faded from everyday use.

Other common terms included namchong 男寵 (“favor of men”) and the related one of namsaek 男色 (“sex with men”), which referred exclusively to male homosexuality.¹ Yongyang 龍陽 (“dragon sunlight”) was a related term referring to the title given to a king’s favored male lover from the ancient Wei Dynasty of China, and can be seen especially in the History of Goryeo regarding favors given by kings to male lovers.

There are also terms relating to rape of men by men, gyegan 鷄姦 (“chicken fornication?”), also of Chinese origin. Other terms relating to this crime that has seen some use in premodern Korea are bukchung 北衝 (“northern/hind stabbing”) and namgan 男奸 (“male fornication”) which seem to refer primarily to anal rape.

There are also the Korean terms biyeokjil 비역질 for sex between men and baendaejil 밴대질 for sex between women, but the latter is of uncertain origin and there is no existing premodern record using the term.

Overall, then, the leading terms for homosexuality in premodern Korean societies include daeshik (women and men), namchong (men), namsaek (men), biyeokjil (men), and in some specific circumstances, yongyang for men in court. These terms show widespread awareness of homosexual activity in premodern Korea, with differentiation for specific social contexts.

Sources: Kang (2015), Naver Dictionary entry on gyobung, various History of Goryeo articles (see sections on the kings of Goryeo)

King Hyegong of Shilla (8th century): A woman born in a man’s body

The reign of King Hyegong, the 36th king of the ancient Korean kingdom of Shilla, was marked by strife and chaos ever since taking the throne at the age of eight, with power struggles and rebellions compounded by catastrophic natural disasters. The king was eventually slain in the political turmoil, and the end of this monarch’s reign marks the close of the Middle Period of Shilla and the start of its Final Period.

It is said that King Gyeongdeok, Hyegong’s father, badly wanted a son, having set aside his first queen for the lack of a son and wedded a second queen. The story goes that King Gyeongdeok asked a spiritual man, Pyohun, to petition the Jade Emperor in Heaven for a royal son. Pyohun, after meeting with the Jade Emperor, gave word from on high that there was a daughter for the king but no son. King Gyeongdeok, persistent in his goal, asked that the daughter be exchanged for a son. The Jade Emperor warned that it was possible, but the change would endanger the kingdom. Gyeongdeok was unwavering, and indeed his wife gave birth to a male-assigned baby.

It was said that the future King Hyegong’s unnatural birth that switched a girl into a boy caused disturbing portents, with intense thunder and lightning storms and 16 Buddhist temples being struck by lightning. The young prince enjoyed girls’ amusements and adornments from a young age, causing people to comment on the child’s lack of fitness as a future king. Some say the allegations of the prince’s birth and femininity are a commentary on King Hyegong’s ineffectual reign.

King Hyegong, along with regent and mother Queen Dowager Manwol, made many attempts from early in the young king’s reign to reinforce the failing power of the monarchy, including reforms to ancestral rites and inspecting the regions. However, it was not enough to turn the tides of the increasing disorder from the father King Gyeongdeok’s time. Hyegong was said to be a soft and undisciplined king who was enamored of music and women, and was ultimately slain by high-ranking nobility at the age of 22.

Source: HistoryNet entry

King Mokjong of Goryeo (10th century): The childless king with a known male lover

The seventh king of the medieval Korean kingdom of Goryeo and son of Gyeongjong the fifth king, Mokjong was known for his talent from a young age and for wise and beneficient policies a king, such as diplomatic efforts that promoted peace and establishment of bureaucratic and military systems for the still-new kingdom. His reign, however, was marred by his failure to control the arbitrary abuses of power by his mother Queen Dowager Heonae. In the end the confusion caused by the Queen Dowager’s attempts to take power with her lover Kim Chi-yang led to a rebellion, and Mokjong was assassinated at the age of 28.

Mokjong had a queen and a concubine but was known to be uninterested in women and had no children, something that he expressed concern for. He named his nephew (the son of his mother’s late sister) First Prince Daeryang as his heir, and Prince Daeryang went on to be King Hyeonjong after him.

Mokjong had a lover, Yu Haeng-gan, a beautiful man who gained the king’s favor and rose to high office on that basis in a relationship referred to as yongyang. Yu Haeng-gan was said to be a power-hungry and arrogant man of little ability or wisdom who leaned on the king’s favor to exercise power and prestige beyond his station and talents. Yu Haeng-gan was opposed to Mokjong making Prince Daeryang the royal heir, so much that Mokjong made the preparations a secret from his lover. There is speculation that Yu Chungjeong, another man that Yu Haeng-gan introduced to the king, was also a royal lover, but unlike with Yu Haeng-gan there is no direct record of a sexual relationship between Mokjong and Yu Chungjeong. Yu Haeng-gan was also killed during the rebellion that ended Mokjong’s reign, while there is no record of Yu Chungjeong’s death though he was recorded as being by Mokjong’s side when the king was expelled from the palace prior to his death.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, Mokjong’s entries in the History of Goryeo, Yu Haeng-gan’s entry in the book of lowly flatterers

Gonggong the Enlightened (13th century): The monk unmoved by feminine temptations falls for a lovely youth

Gonggong 空空 was the name taken by Great Yuga Master Gyeongjo, who was a monk in the Yuga tradition of Buddhism (originating from an order of monks who cultivated yoga practice) and rose to the rank of Threefold Great Master. A free spirit who loved the companionship of boys, he was also known as the Poet Monk for his aptitude with verse and the King of Dharma for his deep knowledge of Buddhist doctrine. His fame reached as far as Song in China, and he was gifted a staff, lacquered begging bowls, and prayer beads along with a poem by an esteemed monk. He was friends with fellow literary talents of his day, and some of his religious poetry survives today.

The story of the love between Gonggong and a bright young man with the surname Bak is told in verse by Gonggong’s friend Yi Gyubo, a celebrated poet and essayist in 12th and 13th century Korea. Yi Gyubo wrote the poem, 次韻空空上人贈朴少年五十韻 (Poem Prompted by the 50 Verses Sent by Enlightened Gongong to young Master Bak), in response to verse written by Gonggong for his young lover. The original that Yi was responding to did not survive, but this reply poem is clear enough on the nature of the relationship.

After an opening that discusses the yin and yang principles of the universe and the crucial role of marriage and romantic love, Yi discusses his friend Gonggong’s indifference to women:

Instead, Yi says, Gonggong chose a simple life in spiritual retreat:

Yet one man, the young Master Bak, captures the great spiritual master’s heart:

Yi vividly describes the feelings induced by this young man in his esteemed friend:

The emotional intimacy and longing as well as the strong desire in the relationship are made clear in the poem:

The qualities of the young man Bak are praised in the poem as well, as a fitting match for the learned and accomplished Gonggong:

The poem is unambiguous about the nature of the relationship, that there were not only emotional and intellectual but also sexual exchange as well. The term daeshik, with the explicit reference to the Book of Han, leaves no question that this was a male homosexual relationship, given its usage in Korea and given that neither man was a maidservant or eunuch.

Sources: Gyeongjo’s Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, The Latter Collection of Lord Yi in the Eastern Lands Vol. 9 (東國李相國後集 第九卷), The Latter Collection of Lord Yi in the Eastern Lands Vol. 11, Records (東國李相國後集 第十一卷 記)

King Chungseon of Goryeo (13th-14th centuries): The king with many concubines and a male lover

The 26th King of Goryeo, King Chungseon was the eldest son of King Chungryeol and Princess Supreme Jeguk, Borjigin Qutlugh Kelmysh daughter of Kubilai Khan. Born after Goryeo’s capitulation to the Mongol Chinese Empire of Yuan, Chungseon was the product of his father Chungryeol’s strategic marriage to a Mongol princess to strengthen the royal family. Chungseon himself would go on to marry a Mongol Princess, Princess Supreme Gyeguk, Borjigin Budashiri great-granddaughter of Kubilai Khan.

Despite these efforts, King Chungseon’s reign was never stable. He was ousted and called to the Yuan court in favor of his father Chungryeol a mere eight months into his reign, and returned to the throne in Goryeo after Chungryeol’s death. This kind of instability would be a feature of Goryeo kingship during the period of Yuan interference, intensified by the ties of blood and marriage. Only three months into his return as Goryeo’s king he went back to the the Yuan court where he ruled from afar despite repeated requests from Goryeo to return, and would exercise heavy influence even after passing the throne onto his son King Chungsuk. An active player in the Yuan Imperial Court, a collector of books and a promoter of scholarly exchange between Yuan and Goryeo, Chungseon was awarded princehood by Külüg Khan after helping the latter come to power, and was also exiled to Tibet in his later years during power struggles in the court before he returned and died in Yuan at the age of 50.

Chungseon had six queen consorts, ranging from his chief consort Princess Gyeguk, his second queen who was a Mongol woman not from the Imperial family, and four ethnic Korean queens. He also had sexual relations with unnamed female servants, two of whom he is on record as gifting to his followers. One of his mistresses was formerly his father Chungryeol’s Royal Concubine Sukchang from the house of Kim. Lady Kim was said to have been vain and extravagant, intervening in affairs of state and throwing a party during the mourning period for her own mother.

In addition to having many women Chungseon is described as “greatly enjoying male love (多愛男色)” and his favors, using the phrase the favors of yongyang (龍陽之寵), were given to Won Chung, a young man of no particular personal distinction from a high-ranking family. Won Chung was called at age 18 by Chungseon to office greeting guests and managing the household. At this point Chungseon was a prince-in-exile residing in Dàdū (modern-day Beijing), ousted from the Goryeo throne and in between his two reigns as King, though he was now in high favor with the Yuan court and would shortly be returning for his second reign. Chungseon’s favor was such that he gave Won Chung the royal surname of Wang and changed his name to Wang Ju.

However when Chungseon, two years into his return as King of Goryeo, tried to award Won Chung/Wang Ju even higher office, the man demurred saying he was neither experienced nor capable enough (he was not yet 20 at this time). Angered, Chungseon took Won Chung’s royal name away and demoted him. The two men reconciled later on when Won Chung greeted Chungseon on his return from Yuan, coming all the way out to Goryeo’s northern frontier of the Amnok River to meet him and treating him with care and courtesy the same as ever. He eventually rose to the high office he had refused earlier and had the king’s trust.

When Chungseon spoke to his son Chungsuk about Won Chung it was with praise, saying the man had served the royal family through generations and had ties through marriage, making him incomparable to other vassals. Chungseon also told Won Chung to serve the king with loyalty forever. Won Chung would go on to serve Chungseon’s son Chungsuk and grandson Chunghye, rising to high office and going on diplomatic missions. He was said to be restrained and diligent, taciturn, and a good administrator though he had little learning, and had three sons.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, Yi Neung-gan’s entry in Biographies of Vassals, Royal Concubine Sukchang’s Encyclopedia of Korea Culture entry, Won Chung’s Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, Won Chung’s entry in Biographies of Vassals, entry in the Compact History of Goryeo about Won Chung turning down high office

King Gongmin of Goryeo (14th century): No woman but his wife, crossdressing, male lovers

The 31st King of Goryeo, he was a grandson of King Chungseon and functionally the last recognized king of Goryeo. It should be noted that many scholars express skepticism on the accuracy of accounts on King Gongmin; the legitimacy of his heirs, or lack thereof, had a direct impact on that of the next dynasty, Joseon, which was when the History of Goryeo was compiled. Nevertheless, there is no indication that these records were manufactured out of whole cloth, though readers should certainly be aware of biases from political agendas. The necessity for such caution arguably holds true for all historical records.

Gongmin is widely known and admired in Korean history for breaking Goryeo away from the Yuan Empire’s interference as Yuan’s power waned. He took back territory conquered by Yuan, and ceased the use of the Mongol empire’s calendar and customs. Internally, he purged pro-Yuan elements in court and resettled the balance of power by weakening the political control of the military leadership and nurturing a new generation of Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. The latter, ironically, would be some of the main forces behind the founding of Joseon which would replace Goryeo.

The fall of Yuan and the turmoil in the Goryeo power structure, however, caused external and internal chaos that undermined any attempts to rule. He had to flee the palace when hundreds of thousands of Red Turban rebels who had rose up against Yuan invaded Goryeo. He survived internal rebellions and assassination attempts, and the purges and punishments he handed down as he grew increasingly suspicious only isolated him farther.

The queen who supported him unconditionally throughout his anti-Yuan independence policy and internal turmoil was the Mongol Princess Supreme Noguk of Yuan, born Borjigin Budashiri. Like every king in his line since his great-grandfather Chungryeol he wedded a Yuan Princess for political backing, but the history is very clear that King Gongmin and his wife were deeply in love—and the historians were not always approving about it. Their love is the stuff of legend in Korean history, such as the time the Princess Supreme sat before the doors to her husband’s room to protect him from rebel assassins, a courage praised down the ages well into the Joseon era. There is also a charming anecdote that Gongmin, an artist who disliked horseback riding and was the only king of Goryeo who did not hunt, practiced riding with the Princess at her behest during their displacement from court.

The fatal flaw in their love from a patriarchal perspective was Princess Noguk’s infertility. This couple had no children 15 years into their marriage, which was a source of instability and concern for the dynasty. By itself this bad luck could generally be remedied by royal polygamy, but according to the History of Goryeo he never much enjoyed intimacy with women and his visits to Princess Noguk were very rare. The Princess reluctantly and sorrowfully acquiesced to the king marrying a second queen 10 years into the childless marriage, but it appears he was not intimate with the other lady at all.

When the Princess finally fell pregnant with the couple’s long-awaited child, such was Gongmin’s desire for a safe birth that he pardoned prisoners and had temples and shrines across the kingdom pray for her. Unfortunately she died during a difficult birth, and the baby died with her. It was a catastrophe in an already unstable reign, often seen as the beginning of the end for the king both personally and politically.

The loss of a strong political backing from his marriage to the Princess led Gongmin to take drastic measures to carry on his reforms, the foremost of which was appointing Shin Don, a former monk with no noble background or bureaucratic qualification, to head those reforms. Shin Don is called both a bold reformer who put brakes on the nobility’s abuse of power and mistreatment of the people, and an illegitimate despot who himself abused the power given to him by an increasingly unstable king. It was Gongmin himself who eventually turned on Shin Don by arresting and executing him on charges of treachery against the throne, and the reforms ultimately failed.

According to the framing of the History of Goryeo, which as seen in the caveat above may be biased for the political agenda of justifying the next dynasty, Gongmin’s “excessive” grief for his beloved queen also contributed to the fall of his kingdom. He started wasteful construction projects for her shrine, the size of which was an enormous drain on the already embattled kingdom’s resources. The work itself caused the deaths of workers and suffering for the populace from the literally monumental effort to carry the materials from afar and build the edifice. He would take meals in front of her portrait, speaking to her as though to a living wife, and his continued refusal to be intimate with his other wives meant he had no heir. When asked by his mother eight years after the Princess’s death why he did not frequent his queen consorts’ chambers, he replied weeping that there were none like the Princess, which his mother reprimanded as shameful and excessive grief.

According to the records he was not, however, adverse to intimacy with men. The History of Goryeo records King Gongmin gathering young men from good families around him as his personal bodyguard, the Jajewi, on whom he bestowed numerous favors. Some see this as analogous to the decade Gongmin himself spent as a young prince at Yuan court as an imperial bodyguard and hostage. He also had a male lover, Kim Heung-gyeong, who received the king’s yongyang favor and high office. He was also placed in charge of the Jajewi.

The History of Goryeo records the Jajewi doing “wanton and filthy” deeds for the king’s favor, which included sex with the king but was not described in the refined language of yongyang or even namsaek, perhaps because the sex acts with the men in question were not considered befitting a high-ranking man’s dignity. This allegedly consisted of the king putting on women’s cosmetics, ordering the young men of the Jajewi to have sex with a young servant girl while he watched from the next room, and then having the men do “wanton deeds unto him as to a woman.” This seems to imply being a recipient of penetration (i.e. a bottom), considered in many cultures to be shameful and submissive for a man of dominant status where being the penetrator of a man was acceptable.

According to the record, Gongmin also planned to resolve the problem of begetting an heir by having these young bodyguards to rape his queens, something the ladies resisted threatening suicide but one of them relented when Gongmin threatened her at swordpoint. These actions became the king’s downfall when she fell pregnant from the rapes by Hong Ryun, a leading member of the Jajewi. Gongmin, on being told by a eunuch Choi Mansaeng about the pregnancy, announced that he would have Hong Ryun killed—and then, inexplicably, told Choi Mansaeng that he would be killed as well for knowing this. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Choi Mansaeng and Hong Ryun later burst into Gongmin’s bedchamber where the king was in drunken slumber and stabbed him to death.

Though Gongmin did have a son, or said he did, there were so many doubts cast on the boy’s birth that he never gained legitimacy and was ultimately executed by the rising coalition of soldiers and scholars who would ultimately bring down Goryeo and found the new kingdom of Joseon. Gongmin never mentioned the boy until a few years after his birth, claiming he had made a royal visit to the late Shin Don’s home where he lay with a female servant of Shin Don, Banya, who later gave birth to a boy. After Shin Don’s execution Gongmin brought the boy to the palace to be raised as a prince and be his heir, but even taking his story at face value the boy Wu had no right to be the king’s heir because he was born outside recognized marriage or concubinage. As it were, many doubted Wu’s paternity and both Wu and his son Chang were later executed, and were called Shin Wu and Shin Chang as descendants of Shin Don rather than the royal surname of Wang.

Though we might not be able to take all of the History of Goryeo at face value especially at the end of the dynasty, by the History’s framing King Gongmin’s favors and immoral acts with men, together with an aversion to physical intimacy with women, perhaps compounded by what was viewed as an unusual and shameful level of affection for an infertile—and later dead—queen, contributed to the instability and fall of his kingdom. It should be noted that a king having male lovers was not in itself problematic or unusual in the eyes of the history writers, but rather the shameful nature of some of these sexual acts together with the attempt to adulterate the royal line through cuckoldry.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, Princess Supreme Noguk’s Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry, King Gongmin’s section of the History of Goryeo, History of Goryeo description of the Jajewi’s sexual misdeeds, History of Goryeo describing Kim Heung-gyeong as the king’s lover

Sossang and Danji (15th century): Enslaved women in a known sexual relationship

Sossang and Danji were servants in the palace of the Joseon dynasty in its early years. Sossang was a servant of the palace, meaning she was indentured to the state, while Danji was a private servant in the household of one of the Crown Prince’s royal concubines.

According to the record, Sossang and Danji were in love and sometimes slept together, leaving no doubt that the relationship was sexual in nature. The Crown Princess Consort at the time from the house of Bong, when later interrogated by her father-in-law the king, described how Sossang and Danji not only slept together at night but also embraced neck to neck and sucked each others’ tongues because they were “always loving and joyful (常時愛好)” with each other, in what may be the only surviving description of consenting erotic activity between women from premodern Korea.

Neither Sossang nor Danji had full freedom to marry of their own volition as enslaved persons, though enslavers might give their blessings or at least tolerate male-female unions involving the persons they had enslaved. Nevertheless, it seemed these two had some space to have a relationship with each other which, if technically illegitimate, was at least a known phenomenon and one that was not particularly more stringently punished than male-female adultery, as discussed below.

Such female homosexual relationships and the women in them were almost never recorded, and the reason we know these two particular women’s names and their relationship is because the aforementioned Crown Princess Consort Bong developed a sexual interest in Sossang and, per Sossang’s accusation, raped the servant “in form similar to a man lying with a woman.” The Crown Princess also stalked and spied on Sossang and Danji to keep them apart, and jealously kept the fearful Sossang by her side.

This coerced sexual relationship between the Princess Consort and Sossang became known to the palace, and as it was adultery by the Princess Consort against her husband the Crown Prince, it was viewed as a violation of the royal family’s dignity and integrity and ultimately became the reason for the Princess’s expulsion from her position. The King considered the adultery with Sossang too shameful to publicly state as a reason for the expulsion, however, and named the Princess’s other misdeeds instead, such as jealousy of her husband’s concubines, peering at people outside through the servants’ outhouse walls, and improper handling of royal property.

The king who made this decision, Sejong, professed a particular hatred for such illegitimate assignations between female servants, enslaved women and others, and discussed how he would have them corporeally punished by 70 blows to the buttocks and 100 more on repeat offenses. Given that these punishments used large wooden paddles, such beatings could result in not only injury but disability and even death. Believing that Heaven had guided his heart to hate the practice of female homosexuality, he boasted of reducing this custom with such strict measures. However, this was certainly not the last instance of recorded female homosexuality in the Joseon palace, as later discussed.

Depiction of the punitive beating gonjang. Image source

For context, it does not appear that female homosexuality was a particularly greater crime than illicit male-female sex. In the Great Laws of Ming (大明律), the criminal code of the Chinese Ming dynasty that became the basis of Joseon criminal law, the basic punishment for illegitimate sex between a man and woman who were not married to each other was 80 blows for both the man and woman, or 90 blows for a married woman.

Of course, it is doubtful that the law was enforced for unmarried men and women who had consenting sex, for both lack of social stigma for such activities and limitations in state resources. However, Sejong’s own prohibition of relationships between palace servants was not a blanket ban on female homosexuality throughout the land of Joseon either, but rather took place in the specific context of the palace which was at the center and source of the kingdom’s Confucian rule, where even unmarried servants were held to a standard of conduct befitting the dignity of the royal household.

Sources: Description of the Sossang incident, female palace servants and male attendants punished and enslaved for adultery and theft

Yi Seon (15th century): A nobleman’s male “concubine” and cuckoldry

Also during the time of Sejong, a nobleman named Yi Seon was given high office and put in charge of Joseon’s military. The record of his promotion states three main points against Yi Seon’s character that made him unfit for office, in this order:

1. He is small-minded, stubborn, strange-tempered, arrogant, and is neither capable himself nor trusting of colleagues and subordinates, and thus almost always ruins the work wherever he goes.

2. He has a handsome male slave who he keeps in a room as he would a wife or concubine, who is indeed known in the neighborhood as Lord Yi’s concubine. This slave even goes willfully into the marital bedroom and sleeps with Yi Seon’s wife, with the noise audible from the outside, something Yi Seon neither prohibits nor minds.

3. He has his servants go around digging under the walls of his neighbors, causing the neighbors to move away when the walls cave, and he promptly incorporates these lands as fields attached to his own compound. He also incorporated a formerly communal well by putting a human corpse next to it and then walling it around when people stopped coming.

The perceived sexual inappropriateness of allowing his male lover to commit adultery with his wife, it seems, was considered to be equivalent with other character flaws of incompetence and avarice in one of the highest officials in the land. This was not considered a criminal offense, however, (though the handling of property may well have constituted a crime if laws were properly enforced) nor even a disqualification given that Yi Seon continued to serve in high office.

Source: Allegations of Yi Seon’s poor character

Lady Bak (15th century): Manufactured allegations of affairs with maidservants

A lady from the house Bak, the wife of Prince Je-an of the royal family, was alleged to have been in affairs with three maidservants. Lady Bak herself maintained her innocence, saying that it was the maidservants who tried to seduce her, forcibly kissed her, and touched her breasts without her consent.

Under interrogation a maidservant confessed that the prince’s nurse was behind it, trying to frame Lady Bak so the prince could remarry his former wife. In the end, despite the lady’s proven innocence, Prince Je-an convinced his kinsman King Seongjong to let him divorce Lady Bak and remarry his divorced wife Lady Kim. Though this is not a case of consensual homosexual activity between women, it shows that female homosexuality was a known practice and was potentially marriage-ending and incriminating much like adultery with a man.

Sources: Kang Moon-jong (2015), Allegations against Lady Bak

Palace attendants (15th-18th centuries): Complaints and alleged punishments of female homosexuality

Photograph from 1906 at the royal palace. Image source

Palace attendants (內人, naïn) and senior ladies (尙宮, sanggung) were a different class of women from the enslaved women who served at the palace, though in a broad sense they might all be called palace attendants (宮女 gungnyeo, 宮人 gung-in). In the narrow sense, palace attendants were not menial laborers of the palace but professional assistants, craftswomen, and cooks who had their own maidservants. The attendants were taught to read and write Hangul, and served the royals close by or were in charge of the royals’ food, clothing, and decorations. The sanggung, meanwhile, were the senior management who gave orders to the naïn. The term “attendants,” for the purpose of this section, refers to this narrow sense of more elite palace workers, and will include the sanggung because they were promoted from the ranks of naïn.

Attendants were born from a range of different classes, from enslaved to nobility. Their special functions in the palace set them apart with certain significant benefits such as higher wages than most women of the time could command, social status, and a degree of leisure. These privileges also entailed many restrictions, a major one being that they could not leave the palace except on special occasions, when expelled, or when sick or close to death. Another was that they were forbidden to marry as they were technically sexually committed and available to the king, though this remained theoretical for almost all of these women and in practice it meant enforced celibacy. Adultery with men was punishable by death, for instance.

There are seeming allegations of adultery with women as well, that is between each other or with outside women, though the references are not entirely clear and an oft-cited example does not appear to be about homosexuality at all. That is, though it was alleged by some modern commentators that the reference in late 15th-century records to attendants sharing friendship (gyobung) with each other meant female homosexuality, punishable by being branded with the words “illegal friendship (違法交朋), an examination of the primary record does not indicate anything sexual about these illegal friendships and the punishment for them but rather factionism/partisanship and breach of palace security.

Gyobung has been used elsewhere in the records in a political sense referring to “factions of friends (朋堂)” meaning partisanship that was widely decried as a source of political disorder and corruption. The complaint about palace attendants’ gyobung, furthermore, was about attendants forming factions and leaking palace secrets, and from my reading there was no sexual content to these accusations.² Nevertheless, given the listing of gyobung as a term for female homosexuality and leaving open the possibility that I may have missed some nuances and references as a non-expert researcher, I am mentioning these passages and linking to the online database entry so others may judge for themselves.

A somewhat likelier reference to female homosexuality by palace attendants is a complaint from the 18th century that attendants were consorting with crafty Buddhist nuns and lowborn widows and calling it daeshik. Daeshik, as discussed above in the terminology section, means sharing meals together, in this context visits by friends from outside the palace, and was also a widespread term in premodern Korea for homosexuality.

In full context this complaint may also refer to the need for order and secrecy in the palace, as the immediately preceding passage discusses corruption and the leakage of palace secrets. The use of the term daeshik is nevertheless suggestive, and may have been a veiled reference to the entwined problems of corruption, security breaches, and sexual inappropriateness in the palace. This may have been as close to a reference as propriety allowed in open court. This is in contrast to the passages involving Princess Consort Bong’s rape of the maidservant Sossang, which recorded consultations made in secret between Sejong and his closest advisors because the matter was so sensitive. Certainly, given how widespread the use of “daeshik” was, it is unlikely that a classically educated audience of courtiers were ignorant of the innuendo.

It is further worth noting that the crafty nuns and lowborn widows referenced in the complaint are female counterparts to the “common ruffians and unseemly monks” referenced by Yi Gyu-gyeong while discussing male homosexuality, see next section. In this way, the daeshik custom between palace attendants presents a window into female homosexuality in other sections of society as well, where despite the kingdom’s repressive mores the people were subject to far less direct control in sexual matters.

As also noted in the section on Sossang and Danji, prohibitions and penalties were not unique to female homosexuality in a palace setting, with prohibitions against adultery with men being at least as heavy. In fact by the time of King Yeongjo, when the above complaint was made, the laws had become considerably stricter for palace attendants who consorted with outside men, a crime made punishable by beheading both the man and woman in Yeongjo’s time as opposed to corporeal punishment for sexual activity with women mentioned in Sejong’s time three hundred years before. There is no evidence of a ban on homosexuality, male or female, for the general populace.

Via Kang (2015), a number of scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries delved into the history of and terms for homosexuality, such as the origin and meaning of terms such as daeshik and namchong. Of these, Yi Hakgyu explained the meaning of daeshik as a part of palace affairs and mentioned that it was quite popular at the time, providing farther record of daeshik as a continuing practice in the Joseon dynasty.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry on palace attendants, complaint of attendants’ partisanship and disclosure of palace secrets, branding punishment for “illegal friendship”, complaint of palace attendants’ inappropriate behavior with outside women, reference to adultery between palace attendants and men being punishable by death

Ruffians and monks (18th-19th centuries): Practitioners of male homosexuality

Yi Gyugyeong was an 18th to 19th century scholar whose greatest single work is the Oju Yeonmun Jangjeon San-go (五洲衍文長箋散稿), an encyclopedic compilation of over 1,400 entries comprising knowledge from around the world on a plethora of subjects from history and antiquity to science and agriculture. Homosexuality was one of the many subjects Yi Gyugyeong wrote about, and in exploring the history of namchong with examples from China and Japan, he ends the article on a note critical of homosexuality. “Who says this is a beautiful custom to be shared across the world? In our eastern land [Joseon], it is merely taught and learned among common ruffians and unseemly monks at temples.”

This offhand disapproving comment provides a window into the classes of men who were thought to engage in male homosexuality. Together with the above-discussed complaints of “crafty nuns and lowborn widows” as purveyors of daeshik, it may be indicative of the intertwining of class and position with sexual inappropriateness such as homosexuality: The unpropertied, unmarrigeable, and monastic outside the strict Confucian order built on the ideal of a propertied male-headed household.

Given the long and widespread practice of homosexuality in Korea, however, Yi Gyugyeong’s claim of its confinement to certain defined and despised classes seems more based on ideal than fact. Kings during the Goryeo dynasty were in open homosexual relationships, and a leading literary talent of the day wrote in praise of homosexual love. Even in the early Joseon period there were high-ranking officials in open homosexual relationships, and there are persistent records of working-class women engaging in female homosexuality in the royal palace of Joseon.

Conclusions

Records from premodern Korea going back over 1,000 years attest to the existence of people who did not conform to strict ideas of cisnormativity and heteronormativity. While the existence of homosexual, bisexual, and gender non-conforming people is a constant, there have been different understandings of attitudes toward their proclivities, from a gender inversion by Heaven to refined courtly love to social disorder and adultery against the King. Queer people have always been here and are no Western invention, and understandings of our existence will always be contextual and dynamic. One constant seems to be that the open existence of queer people outside of narrow constraints is construed as a threat to prevailing orders of patriarchy and property, or outside or parallel to such dominant order. This may be the ultimate subsersive promise of queerness. If queerness can threaten and dismantle kingdoms, what are the other possibilities?