Prelude to the Imohwasbyeon(Crown Prince Sado’s Tragic Death) : King Yeongjo’s Food Abstinence vs. Crown Prince Sado’s Gluttony

Eom, Soyeon (2024) “ Prelude to the Imohwasbyeon(Crown Prince Sado’s Tragic Death) : King Yeongjo’s Food Abstinence vs. Crown Prince Sado’s Gluttony ”, Perspectives in Korean Studies, 27(0) 351-382

http://dx.doi.org/10.33835/cghs.27.10

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ABSTRACT

This study examined the beginning of the Imohwabyeon [Crown Prince Sado’s Tragic Death, 1762(the 38th year of King Yeongjo’s reign)], based on the relevance between ‘personality-constitution-eating habits’, from the time of Crown Prince Sado’s childhood to the period up to 1749 (the 25th year of King Yeongjo’s reign) when King Yeongjo entrusted interim overseer of dynastic governance, attempted to explore from a complex perspective the deterioration and conflict between the two caused by the confrontation between King Yeongjo’s food abstinence and Crown Prince Sado’s gluttony. In Chapter 1, the situation in which King Yeongjo could not tolerate Crown Prince Sado, who had a different personality, constitution, appetite, and body type, and recognized Crown Prince Sado’s uncontrolled gluttony as a lack of qualifications and distrust of performance, so he condemned him as a ‘gluttonous glutton’ and a ‘fat man’ was examined. In Chapter 2, I looked into the political and power meaning of King Yeongjo’s food abstinence at the table. For him, it was a major political method of displaying the Neo-Confucian state of self-cultivation and the ‘politics of eating’ that reflected the Neo-Confucian study of kings. From this point, Crown Prince Sado amplified King Yeongjo’s anxiety and suspicion, that is ‘person who cannot control his appetite-person who cannot control himself-person who do not self-cultivation-person who do not meet the endowment of a king.’ Chapter 3 researched the background of King Yeongjo’s pursuit of the ‘Image of virtuous King and Teacher’ and how he believed that the gluttonous Crown Prince Sado did not follow this, so it led to the prelude to the Imohwabyeon. King Yeongjo objectified Crown Prince Sado, ‘an unfilial son who was greedy, blithesome, gluttonous, and neglected his studies’ and denied him as an entity that undermines the political order that it had worked hard to establish. Accordingly, Imohwabyeon can be said to be the tragic end of the ‘gluttonous glutton’ who was excluded from the strict and stubborn ‘table of power’ of the ‘food abstinent-virtuous King and Teacher’.