Grand Prince Anpyeong

Biography

In 1447 Grand Prince Anpyeong commissioned the painter An Gyeon to paint a picture based on his own dream, in which he had visited a land of peach blossoms. The result was the scroll “Mongyudowondo”, in English “Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land”. Here the prince appears as patron and inspirer, and it seems to me that of all the circumstances of his life this is the most important.

He was born in 1418, the year his father came to the throne. The exact date varies: 18 or 27 October. He was the third son of King Sejong and Queen Soheon, and a younger brother of the future kings Munjong and Sejo. His personal name was Yi Yong, his courtesy name Cheongji, and his pen names Biheodang, Nanggan Geosa and Maejukheon. In 1428, at the age of ten, he received the title Grand Prince Anpyeong. In 1430 he entered Sungkyunkwan, the highest Confucian academy, together with other princes. In 1431 he was made the adoptive grandson of his uncle, Prince Seongnyeong, who had died childless. As he grew up, he went hunting with warriors, but he was more often surrounded by men of letters. He kept company with the painter An Gyeon and the scholar Park Paeng-nyeon; with his participation scrolls were made in which text and image formed a single whole, a genre especially characteristic of Sejong’s reign. His handwriting is linked to the manner of the Chinese calligrapher Zhao Mengfu: free and natural, yet firm in the structure of its strokes. In 1450, under King Munjong, a bronze printing type, the Gyeongoja, was cast at his initiative on the basis of his handwriting; after his death the type was melted down, so very few specimens survive.

Under Munjong the prince became more prominent at court and meddled in politics. When the child king Danjong came to the throne, he found himself opposed to the faction of his elder brother Prince Suyang, the future King Sejo.

In 1453 the prince lost his younger son and his wife; he did not attend his wife’s funeral. The chronicles report that the couple had not seen each other for seven or eight years.

In the autumn of 1453 Suyang removed his opponents in a coup known as the Gyeyu Coup. Stripped of power, Anpyeong was exiled in the tenth lunar month to the island of Ganghwado and then transferred to Gyodongdo. There, on the eighteenth day of the same month, he was executed; the charge was plotting a coup together with Kim Jong-seo and Hwangbo In. In the modern calendar this is 18 or 27 November 1453. His elder son Yi U-jik was exiled to the island of Jindo and later executed; the prince’s second wife was made a government slave. His property was confiscated, his name was struck from the genealogical registers, and he was reduced to the status of a commoner. His library of manuscripts and paintings was burned. His grave is lost.

Most of his surviving writing consists of inscriptions on stone steles: on the stele of Sejong’s tomb at Yeoju, and on the grave markers of Shim On and Prince Imyeong. His only surviving autograph, the scroll “Soweon Hwagaecheop”, was designated a National Treasure of Korea but was stolen in January 2001 and has not been found.

The prince was rehabilitated under King Sukjong, and in 1747, under Yeongjo, his former titles were restored. His line was continued by descendants of Prince Geumseong.