Crown Prince Sado (사도세자, Sado-seja; birth name 이선, I Seon... or Yi Seon, or Lee Seon) (13 February 1735–12 July 1762) from The House of I was Crown Prince of Joseon from 1736–1762 and Regent of Joseon from 1749–1762. He was second only to Yeonsan-gun of Joseon on the list of "craziest Korean royals". Unlike Yeonsan, however, he's generally thought of with pity rather than disgust — a guy who goes around burning clothes because he thinks they're haunted is pretty obviously not a guy sane enough to be held responsible for his actions.
King Yeongjo of Joseon was in an unpleasant situation from 1728 to 1735. His only son, Crown Prince Hyojang, died at the age of only nine and left him without an heir. Luckily the threat of a Succession Crisis was averted in 1735 when his concubine Royal Noble Consort Yeong gave birth to another boy, I Seon. When the boy was only a year old he was invested as crown prince. When he was nine — yes, nine — he was married to (also nine-year-old) Lady Hyegyeong, who later wrote her autobiography and included details about her marriage.
When he was ten Seon suffered a severe illness. What the illness was is unknown, but it made him frequently lose consciousness. This may have caused brain damage or exacerbated an already-existing problem. Whatever the reason, Seon's mental health deteriorated in his teens and twenties.
Yeongjo decided he wanted to give Seon a chance to practice ruling the country while Yeongjo was still alive to keep an eye on things. So when Seon turned fourteen he was declared regent. The relationship between father and son may have already been tense, but this brought it nearly to breaking point. Yeongjo had spent years reducing the amount of factional fighting in his government. Unfortunately the factions took advantage of Seon's regency to start fighting again, and Seon got the blame for it. Yeongjo began to go out of his way to publicly humiliate Seon — when he felt the need to chastise his son he always ensured there was a large crowd present, and he refused to let Seon attend court events that as regent he should have attended.
Seon, unsurprisingly, began to experience severe anxiety around his father. This may not have caused his other issues, but it certainly didn't help. When he was seventeen he started hallucinating. When he was twenty-two he became violent and started beating his servants.note When he was twenty-three he developed an intense phobia of clothes; he apparently believed some of his clothes were haunted and burnt them to get rid of the ghosts. Seon also took a secondary consort without his father's permission and had a son with her. Yeongjo was furious when he found out, and Lady Hyegyeong had to help the woman escape the palace in disguise.
In 1757 things took a turn for the even worse when Seon killed a eunuch and carried the head around with him, forcing everyone to look at it. From then on he became increasingly violent, regularly killing palace staff when he was angry and raping ladies-in-waiting. He threatened his sister with a sword and threw a go board at Lady Hyegyeong. In 1761 he beat one of his concubines so badly she died of her injuries. A year later he had a fight with a court official and threatened to kill the official's son. He attempted to sneak into the palace to carry out his threat. He failed, but rumours started that he'd actually planned to kill Yeongjo.
Seon's mother Royal Noble Consort Yeong decided something had to be done. Yeongjo agreed with her. Unfortunately they chose the worst possible option. By the rules of the time a royal's body couldn't be defiled (which ruled out beheading), the king couldn't kill his son with his own hands (which ruled out any form of traditional execution), and if Seon was executed as a criminal then Lady Hyegyeong and their ten-year-old son would face death or banishment. Yeongjo came up with a solution and ordered Seon to climb into a rice chest. The chest was then locked and Seon was left to starve. He died eight days later.
Yeongjo gave him the posthumous title Crown Prince Sado (Sado meaning "thinking of with great sorrow"), then banned any mention of Seon for the rest of his life. Because of this Seon's son San, the future King Jeongjo, was officially referred to as the son of Crown Prince Hyojang (Seon's half-brother who died seven years before Seon was born). When he took the throne in 1776, however, San/Jeongjo publicly declared, "I am the son of Prince Sado." He posthumously declared Seon "King Gwanghyo" and gave him the temple name Jangjong. After the Korean Empire was founded in 1897, Seon was given another posthumous promotion to "Emperor Ui" and given the new temple name of Jangjo, indicating that in spite of his insanity his descendants still had a relatively positive opinion of him.note
I Seon, Crown Prince Sado appears in the following works:
- The Tragic Prince (1956)
- Mangbuseok (1963; also called "A Wife Turned to Stone")
- The Fatal Encounter (2014)
- The Throne (2015)
- The Red Queen (2004) by Margaret Drabble is partially about Sado's wife, and Sado himself is mentioned throughout.
- Sado-seja (2012) by Gim Gyeong-min.
- The Lady from Angukdong (1979)
- Oh, Heaven! (1988)
- Han Jung-rok (1988; also called The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong): Ninth instalment of 500 Years of the Joseon Dynasty, a collection of related series covering many historical figures.
- King of the Wind (1998; also called The Great King's Road)
- Lee San, Wind of the Palace (2007)
- Eight Days, Assassination Attempts Against King Jeongjo (2007)
- Warrior Baek Dong-soo (2011)
- Secret Door (2014)
- Crimson Moon (2015)
- The Red Sleeve (2021)
- King Jeongjo: A 2007 musical.
