Queen Sondok

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Queen Sondok

Queen Sondok was the first woman to become a queen in the Korean Silla kingdom in 632 A.D. Queen Ma-ya, Sondok's mother, did not bear any sons to become king, so King Chinpyong sent her to a convent in the mountains to become a nun. This brought a great deal of sadness to Sondok, she said, "The monastery has swallowed everyone I love." (7) After Queen Ma-ya was gone, King Chinpyong, who had reigned for fifty years, remarried a woman who also could not bear him a son (7). Since Sondok was the eldest daughter, Sondok became queen after the king died. She became the most famous queen of a Korean state.

Queen Sondok was born in Korea in 610 A.C.E. She ruled for fourteen years, holding the realm together against external and internal threats. During this period, women already had a certain degree of influence as advisers, queen dowagers, and regents. Throughout the kingdom, women were heads of families since matrilineal lines of descent existed alongside patrilineal lines. The Confucian model, which placed women in a subordinate position within the family, was not to have a major impact in Korea until the fifteenth century and most of people throughout the kingdom believed in Buddhism, Daoism, and Shamanism (6). During the Silla kingdom, women's status remained relatively high.

Early in her life Sondok had displayed an unusually quick mind. For example, when she was seven, her father received a gift from the Emperor of China. It was a beautiful painting of peonies, accompanied by a box of the flower's seeds. Sonduk commented that the flower was beautiful, but it was a pity, because it had no sweet perfume. Her father, brow knit in confusion, asked her how she could know that, since she had never se...

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(http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine7.html)

2. Still More Women Rulers

3. Women of Royalty - Sondok, Queen of Silla

(http://royalwomen.tripod.com/womenofroyalty/id17.html)

4. Muses – The Graces—Graeco-Roman

(http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/1582/muses.html)

5. Lee, Ki-baik -1984 ANew History of Korea Translated by Edward W.Wbner. Harvard

University Press, London.

(http://ko-m.hp.infoseek.co.jp/Miruk.htm)

6. Famous Koreans – Six Portraits by Mary Connor. Education about Asia, volume 6, number

2, Fall 2001.

(http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/connor.htm)

7. Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars, Korea, A.D. 595 (The Royal Diaries) by Sheri

Holman

8. The Influence of China on the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla

(http:// www.marymount.k12.ny.us/marynet/TeacherResources/SILK%

20Road/html/sillatang.htm)

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