Examined in this article, is how the “Ten Criminal Deeds” concept was imported into Joseon, and what kind of social order was established as the result. The concept of “Ten Criminal Deeds” usually referred to ten of the most serious and offensive criminal charges of all time. For example, the act of threatening state security, commitments of cold-blooded murder, and actions that would undermine the very foundation of Confucian morality, in terms of interactions between king and the vassals, between father and son, and between spouses and close relatives. These “Ten Criminal Deeds” were included in Dang’ryul So’eui(唐律疏議) which had served as the backbone of premodern East Asian penal system for a long time, and were also included in Dae’Myeong-ryul(大明律), the Ming dynasty law code which was consulted as the Main penal system by Joseon as well. Naturally the “Ten Criminal Deeds”concept was also included in Joseon penal practices.
In Dae’Myeong-ryul, the “Ten Criminal Deeds” are listed before all else,placing an emphasis upon the fact that these particular deeds were above forgiveness, and the following instructions dictated that the persons who committed these crimes should receive substantial penalties and disadvantages. First, persons who were charged with crimes from the category of “Eight Discussions(Pal’eui, 八議)” were granted with respectful treatment during the criminal investigation and penalty-weighing procedures, yet persons who committed “Ten Criminal Deeds” were not. Second, it was a general tradition not to execute a person between the vernal equinox and the autumnal equinox,but execution of persons who committed “Ten Criminal Deeds” within the aforementioned period and subsequently sentenced to death, did not wait the passing of the autumnal equinox and just swiftly proceeded. Third, “Ten Criminal Deeds” were the first in line of crimes of which the offenders were never to be pardoned, even when a grand clemency was ordered by the King himself.
In the 15th century, the high-ranking Joseon governmental officials as well considered the “Ten Criminal Deeds” as the most serious and heinous crimes of all time, and created institutions to counteract such crimes. In case two of the three ‘disadvantage’ instructions inside Dae’Myeong-ryul concerning the “Ten Criminal Deeds” offenders, which were the respectful treatments for the “Pal’eui” offenders and execution scheduling practices, Joseon accepted essential elements of them and only changed the details slightly to reflect Joseon conditions.
Yet in Joseon, the crimes that were not to be pardoned by a clemency order were different from their counterparts in China. In Joseon, there were more clemency orders that listed crimes which the Joseon government itself designated not to be pardoned in any case, than clemency orders that listed crimes designated not to be pardoned by Dae’Myeong-ryul. Examination of the Joseon-specific, ‘not-to-be-pardoned’ crimes that bordered upon “Ten Criminal Deeds” reveals that a formation of another legal paradigm concerning crimes against family members or relatives was indeed in process. The leaders of the Josoen government in the early half period of the dynasty embraced the social order dictated in Dae’Myeong-ryul, which was based upon the concept of Confucian morality that defined the appropriate relationships to be honored between parents & children and between spouses or relatives, yet at the same time, they were also developing another separate morality system to define such same relationships.