civil nobility tended to become Confucianist and to side against the church and the military.  The inevitable outburst was delayed but also rendered more disastrous when it came by the action of the Mongols who, as in China, were patrons of Buddhism.  The Yuan dynasty invaded Korea, placed regents in the principal towns and forced the Korean princes to marry Mongol wives.  It was from Korea that Khubilai despatched his expeditions against Japan, and in revenge the Japanese harried the Korean coast throughout the fourteenth century.  But so long as the Yuan dynasty lasted the Korean Court which had become Mongol remained faithful to it and to Buddhism; when it was ousted by the Ming, a similar movement soon followed in Korea.  The Mongolized dynasty of Korye was deposed and another, which professed to trace its lineage back to Silla, mounted the throne and gave the country the name of Chosen.

This revolution was mainly the work of the Confucianist party in the nobility and it was not unnatural that patriots and reformers should see in Buddhism nothing but the religion of the corrupt old regime of the Mongols.  During the next century and a half a series of restrictive measures, sometimes amounting to persecution, were applied to it.  Two kings who dared to build monasteries and favour bonzes were deposed.  Statues were melted down, Buddhist learning was forbidden:  marriages and burials were performed according to the rules of Chu-hsi.  About the beginning of the sixteenth century (the date is variously given as 1472 and 1512 and perhaps there was more than one edict) the monasteries in the capital and all cities were closed and this is why Korean monasteries are all in the country and often in almost inaccessible mountains.  It is only since the Japanese occupation that temples have been built in towns.

At first the results of the revolution were beneficial.  The great families were compelled to discharge their body-guards whose collisions had been a frequent cause of bloodshed.  The public finances and military forces were put into order.  Printing with moveable type and a phonetic alphabet were brought into use and vernacular literature began to flourish.  But in time the Confucian literati formed a sort of corporation and became as troublesome as the bonzes had been.  The aristocracy split into two hostile camps and Korean politics became again a confused struggle between families and districts in which progress and even public order became impossible.  For a moment, however, there was a national cause.  This was when Hideyoshi invaded Korea in 1592 as part of his attack on China.  The people rose against the Japanese troops and, thanks to the death of Hideyoshi rather than to their own valour, got rid of them.  It is said that in this struggle the bonzes took part as soldiers fighting under their abbots and that the treaty of peace was negotiated by a Korean and a Japanese monk.[899]