Red Certificate of Choe Gwang-jiThis red certificate was issued by a king in 1389 to Choi Gwang-ji from Buan after he passed the higher civil service examination during the Goryeo Dynasty. It was designated as Treasure No. 2062 on April 23, 2020.
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Location68-9, Seokdong-gil Buan-eup, Buan-gun, Jeollabuk-do
- CategoryCultural Heritage / Tangible Cultural Heritage
- Korean「최광지 홍패」
- Chinese崔匡之紅牌
- FieldHistory / Premodern
- Contents TypeTextual Data / Documents
- Current Location68-9, Seokdong-gil Buan-eup, Buan-gun, Jeollabuk-do
- Definition
- A letter confirming the issuance of a certificate to Choe Gwang-ji in Buan in 1389 according to a royal order to certify his success in a state examination for the recruitment of government officials.
- Summary
- Choe Gwang-ji was born in Buan in Jeolla-do province. His father was Choe Dam, his grandfather Choe Eul-in, and his great-grandfather Choe Yong-bong. According to ancient records, Choe Gwang-ji’s father passed the state examination held by the Ministry of Rites (Yebusi) in the last years of the Goryeo dynasty, and served in the government of the newly founded Joseon dynasty as the Director of Learning (Jehak) at the Academy of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon). Choe Gwang-ji, along with his brothers Ghoe Jik-ji, Choe Deuk-ji and Choe Deok-ji, also passed the Yebusi and Mungwa state examinations. Furthermore, Choe Gwang-ji’s son, Choe Saeng-myeong, became one of Buan’s most eminent Neo-Confucian scholars during the early days of the Joseon dynasty. According to the Genealogy of the Jeonju Choe Clan published in 1805 by the city administration of Jeonju, Choe Gwang-ji “left behind no records about the dates of his birth and death or his public services, but his Red Certificate is known to have been preserved.” The certificate was discovered in 2015 together with various documents dating from the Joseon dynasty which had been stored at Yujeoram, an annex of the family shrine of the Songaegong branch of the clan.
In 2015, An Seung-jun, then head of the ancient document research section at the library (Jangseogak) of the Academy of Korean Studies, happened to visit Yujeoram (Shrine of Jeonju Choe Clam) where he came across the Red Certificate of Choe Gwang-ji. His visit was followed by a thorough on-site inspection by the library team and the discovery of the certificate, and its subsequent presentation at a special exhibition, Examination Certificate, Wisdom for the Management of the State, held at the library in 2015. As one of only seven Red Certificates of Goryeo discovered so far, the document was designated as Treasure No. 2062 on April 23, 2020. This type of certificate was called a Hongpae (Red Certificate) because the statement concerning the examination result was written on paper dyed red with safflower seeds.
- Background to Issuance of the Certificate
- The Red Certificate of Choe Gwang-ji is a document issued by King Gongyang (r. 1389-1392) of Goryeo in 1389 to certify that its recipient, then a state academy student (Seonggyun Saengwon), had passed the state examination held by the Ministry of Rites (Yebu) in the ninth month of 1389.
- Forms
- Square, 64 x 64 centimeters
- Composition / Content
- The certificate bears a statement written in Chinese in three vertical lines, of which the first, partly lost due to damage, contains characters which appear to signify “Royal Edict”; the second contains the statement “Seonggyungwan student Choe Gwang-ji has passed the third class of the examination in third place”; and the third contains the date, i.e. “Ninth month of the 22nd Hongmu Year”. The third line is also stamped with a red seal bearing the inscription “Seal of the King of Goryeo”. The civil part (Mungwa) of Goryeo’s state examination consisted of three categories, Second Class (Eulgwa), Third Class (Byeonggwa), and Jinsa Class (Dongjinsa), where “Third Place in the Third Class” actually meant the sixth place among all candidates who sat the same examination. The royal seal of Goryeo stamped on the certificate was actually the state seal awarded to King Gongmin (1351-1374) in 1370 by the Hongwu Emperor who founded the Ming dynasty after the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. Although the seal was returned to the Ming court one year after the foundation of Joseon in 1392, it was used on some documents issued in the early Joseon period. However, the Red Certificate of Choe Gwang-ji is the only official document of Goryeo bearing the seal of the king of Goryeo to have been found to date.
- Historical Significance
- As of July 2020, there were only six extant Red Certificates issued by the Goryeo dynasty, whose recipients were Jang Yang-su (dated 1205), U Tak (1290), Jang Gye (1305), Yi Ja-su (1330), Yang I-si (1355) and Yang Su-saeng (1376). However, the recent discovery of the certificate issued to Choe Gwang-ji has boosted that figure to seven. This invaluable artifact is uniquely different from the other six certificates in that it is the only one to have been issued by the Goryeo court under the king’s direct order, as the others were issued by the individual government office concerned based on the royal edict. It is also significant that Choe’s certificate is the only Goryeo document discovered to date that bears the “Seal of the King of Goryeo”, thus providing concrete evidence of the period of use of the “royal edict” format that was widely used during the late Goryeo to early Joseon period. It is also the only surviving evidence to support the record in The History of Goryeo (Goryeosa, 1451) that the term “royal edict” began to be used for state examination certificates from 1276. The close connection between Choe’s certificate and the document system of early Joseon makes it a very rare and valuable historical material.