Life
After a long search, the future Cheoljong was found on Ganghwa Island where his family had fled to hide from oppression.
When the envoys (dispatched in order to seek for the future king) arrived on Ganghwa Island, they found the remaining clan of the Yi's barely surviving in wretched poverty. In 1849, at the age of 18, Yi Byeon/Seong (the future Cheoljong), the 3rd son of Prince Jeon-gye (great-grandson of King Yeongjo), was proclaimed King, amidst obvious degradation and poverty. Though from the start of the Joseon Dynasty Korean kings had given top priority to the education of their sons, Cheoljong could not even read a single word on the notice delivering congratulations to him on his elevation to the royal throne.
For the Andong Kims, Cheoljong was an excellent choice. His illiteracy made him manipulatable and vulnerable to their control. Proof of this was that even though Cheoljong ruled the country for 13 years, until his very last days he had not yet learned how to move with dignity or how to wear royal clothes, so that in even the most luxurious of robes he still looked like a fisherman.
As part of the Andong Kim's manipulation of Cheoljong, in 1851, the clan married Cheoljong to Kim Mun-geun, daughter of a member of the clan, known posthumously as Queen Cheol-in.
Read more about this topic: Cheoljong Of Joseon
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We realize that we are laggards from the past century, still living in what Marx kindly calls ‘the idiocy of rural life,’ and we know that our rural life is like that of the past, not like that of much of the present.”
—For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell,
By what was done and wrought
In season, and so brought
To light: her measures are, how well
Each syllab’e answered, and was formed how fair;
These make the lines of life, and that’s her air.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)