Korean Studies, 27. 1

okch’aek during the rituals in the Ancestral Shrines—for which the imperial sys-
tem of seven shrines had been adopted instead of the ritually required five of
the vassal state.
It now becomes very difficult not to conclude that the Kory0 ruler was
considered to be the ruler of an independent realm. The dual system of royal
and imperial characteristics is indicative of this fact, but it is the ruler’s role as
a mediator between Heaven and earth that settles the question definitively. In
an edict issued in 993 on the ancestral shrines of his forefathers, S0ngjong said
as much himself: 
I have heard that the father of the ruler is Heaven, his mother Earth, his elder
brother the sun and his elder sister the moon. Therefore, he officiates rituals at the
appropriate times, emulates his ancestors’ piety and honors his parents. The Son of
Heaven honors seven Ancestral Shrines, the feudal lords five. He commemorates his
ancestors’ achievements and virtue. The ancestral tablets are lined up at the left and
the right with the founding ancestor in the middle. Formidable piety moves the spirits
and the epitome of virtue moves Heaven and Earth.
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This passage is rather ambiguous, because it is not immediately clear how
many ancestral shrines the Kory0 ruler honored with his rituals. Other passages
inform us that there were seven, which makes it possible to reinterpret the above
passage as pertaining to the Kory0 ruler, whose father is Heaven. The Kory0
ruler was a son of Heaven and he ruled as such. In matters of legitimacy and
state administration, Confucian ideology constituted the essential ideology and
this is reflected in the strong Confucian contents of this concept of rule in Kory0. 
The Kory0sa is clear on the clothes of the Kory0 ruler: his are the three
imperial colors, one of which he wore when he performed the ritual of heaven-
worship. This was a crucial task to be performed by the one person capable of
doing so, the Son of Heaven, and since it is clear that the Kory0 ruler did not
r e m c o e . b r e u k e r :
Kory0 as an Independent Realm 
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intend to usurp the mediating privileges of the Chinese Son of Heaven,
60
we
must conclude that the Kory0 ruler, king or emperor, fully functioned as the Son
of Heaven in his own territory.
61
The distinction between king and emperor was not an essential element
of Kory0 identity. The relative significance of the difference between king and
emperor is indicated by the fact that one emperor could invest another one. The
self-designation as Son of Heaven, however, was of paramount importance. Con-
comitant to this conclusion is that this was not a wild assertion by nativist zealots,
but the logical outcome of orthodox Confucian ideology and orthodox Confu-
cian clothing fashion in the context of Kory0.