Bracing for Disorder: The Red Turbans and Chosŏn-Ming Relations

Abstract A millenarian movement that arose in response to natural disasters and Mongol misrule in China, the Red Turbans challenged the Mongol Yuan dynasty by 1351 and eventually pushed it to collapse. Amid their rebellion, the Red Turbans repeatedly attacked Korea and once even looted the Korean capital for several months from 1361 to 1362. This article argues that the invasions of the Red Turbans instilled a deep-seated fear of continental disorder among early Chosŏn policymakers. While existing scholarly works on Sino-Korean relations of this period often focus on aspects of ideology, culture, and institutions, they have yet to investigate this aspect of the Korean foreign policy outlook. From its founding through the next two centuries, the Chosŏn court consistently braced for signs of war, rebellion, and even natural disasters in China that could result in something of a repeat of the Red Turbans. Perhaps what the Koreans of early Chosŏn feared the most was not a strong China, which they believed they could engage or even manage with rhetoric and ritual, but a weak China, which could devolve into uncontrollable chaos that could quickly spread across the Yalu River.