The Sarim faction in the 16th century lived up to its belief that a reign of peace can be fulfilled by the control of individual daily lives, whereof doings cannot be explained with a simple concept named ``reformation`` but had been grounded on an id...
The Sarim faction in the 16th century lived up to its belief that a reign of peace can be fulfilled by the control of individual daily lives, whereof doings cannot be explained with a simple concept named ``reformation`` but had been grounded on an ideological mutation since the 16th century. The author has made an attempt to identify the motives of Oryun-Sijo from the historical context. The tentative conclusions are as in the following: First, Neo-Confucian Philosophy, pursued by Confucian scholars who were belonging to the Sarim faction in the 16th century, was remarkably different from Neo-Confucianism conditioned as an official study in previous time. Their new ideology was named ``the Learning of Way`` or ``the Learning of Mind`` or ``the Learning of Li.`` The then people rejected it due to its heterogeneity or were skeptical about its feasibility. Considering that all the Oryun-Sijo writers were the Sarim faction and literature is inseparable from writers` thoughts, it can be presumed that the appearance of Oryun-Sijo might be closely connected to Neo-Confucian Philosophy whereto they adhered. Second, the Theory of Transforming the Temperament, a factor of Neo-Confucian Philosophy, i.e., a theory that human nature can be restored by the change of temperament, functioned as the theoretical rationale of reformation means they carried forward aggressively, which implies that human nature can be changed through efforts and training. Such thinking has relation to the political rise of the Sarim faction in the 16th century as well as to the reformation means carried out on a first-ever scale and way. Third, the Sarim faction in the 16th century tried to fulfill the principle of Sohak by controlling intimate and microscopic behavioral patterns such as eating, working, sleeping, etc. rather than macroscopic factors such as laws and systems. The appearance of Oryun-Sijo was based on such an aim. They regarded the music of the time as vulgar and as a hindrance to the change of temperament, and thus needed to move it ahead in a direction they wanted to see. As a result, all the popular songs were modified with their intention for a long time. In the process, Oryun-Sijo was produced. In order to effectively rein the everyday realm for which the order of Sohak stands, it is necessary to repeat the lyrics within the spatiotemporal region of everyday life, which was why Sijo was selected to be the principal genre of Oryun in the 16th century instead of Kyungkichega.