The portrait of Kim Yuk shows the senior Korean official standing under a giant pine tree.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Political careers

The political careers of many Korean emissaries, Kim and Nam included, straddled two Chinese feudal dynasties, those of the Ming and Qing.

"The transition was in no way smooth," says Fan, the history professor. "For years the Ming Empire was at war with the Manchu, a nomadic group from northern China that later conquered all of China and set up their own empire known as Qing. There was fierce debate at the Korean court as to which side to support. But one thing seemed clear: siding with Qing was a pragmatic decision and siding with Ming was a moral one. At one stage, Korean soldiers were fighting Manchu troops alongside the Ming army."

Yet when the dust settled, the Korean kings had no choice but to be practical. Korea was still a vassal state of China under Qing, but certain things changed.

"The once strong emotional, cultural and spiritual ties once between China and Korea became tenuous," Fan says. "The Manchu rulers, members of a culturally less-sophisticated ethnic minority group, did not engender in the Koreans the same sense of admiration as their Ming predecessors once had."

Envoys were still sent to Beijing by the Korean court, but under different names. Earlier they had been called chao tian shi, or emissaries to the heavenly kingdom; during the Qing era they were reduced to yan xing shi, meaning emissaries to Beijing.

Reflecting on the phenomenon, Fan says: "Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of Ming, called Korea bu zheng zhi guo, a country that his empire would never try to lay her hands on. It was a drastic change of policy from the one adopted by the Mongols, whose rule Zhu had helped end. Under Mongol rule, Korea was taken as a Chinese prefecture. No wonder kings of Korea were grateful toward Ming."