Blaming the Victim: Reconsidering Queen Chinsŏng and the Decline of Silla

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 동국대학교 동국역사문화연구소
· 수록지 정보 : 동국사학 / 69호 / 603 ~ 649페이지
· 저자명 : McBride, Richard D., II

초록

Both the Confucian-oriented Samguk sagi 三國史記 (History of the Three Kingdoms), completed by Kim Pusik 金富軾 (1075–1151) in 1145, and the Buddhist-inspired Samguk yusa 三國遺事 (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), begun by Iryŏn 一然 (1206–1289) and further emended by later editors, remember Silla queen Chinsŏng 眞聖 (r. 887–897) as an immoral and licentious ruler, due to her affair with her married senior grandee Kim Wihong 金魏弘 (d. 888) and other depraved activities reminiscent of Tang empress Wu Zetian 武則天 (r. 690–705). Her short ten-year-reign was marked by famine and marred by three uprisings: the revolts of Wŏnjong 元宗 and Aeno 哀奴 (889); Kyŏn Hwŏn 甄萱 (d. 936), the founder of Later Paekche 後百濟 (892); and the red-trouser bandits 赤袴賊 (896). Her reputed conduct and these rebellions serve as evidence of her unfitness for rule and Silla’s loss of the mandate of Heaven. Her contemporary, the unfulfilled scholar-official Ch’oe Ch’iwŏn 崔致遠 (855–d. after 908), however, remembers her as a benevolent ruler devoid of avarice in an official communiqué with Tang China. This paper seeks to portray Chinsŏng sympathetically by analyzing her complex relationship with Wihong and the extenuating circumstances surrounding the three uprisings that helped usher in the decline of Silla. Rather than being a man-eater, Chinsŏng was more likely dominated by her paramour Wihong, who, at fifteen years her senior, functions somewhat like her regent. In addition, the revolts were less likely the result of her misrule and more likely the fruition of endemic poor government stemming from the dominance of Silla society by the true-bone nobility.

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