Gyorin (lit. "neighborly relations") was a neo-Confucian term developed in Joseon Korea. The term was intended to identify and characterize a diplomatic policy which establishes and maintains amicable relations with neighboring states. It was construed and understood in tandem with a corollary term, which was the sadae or "serving the great" policy towards Imperial China.^[1]

Confucian learning contributed in the formation of gyorin and sadae as ritual, conceptual and normative frameworks for construing interactions and political decision-making.^[2]

The rationale expressed by gyorin was applied to a multi-national foreign policy.^[3] Scholarly writing about the Joseon dynasty has tended to focus on diplomatic relations with China and Japan, but the intermediary nature of gyorin contacts—for example, Joseon-Ryukyuan diplomatic and trading contacts—were important as well.^[4] Envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom were received by Taejo of Joseon in 1392, 1394 and 1397. Siam sent an envoy to Taejo's court in 1393.^[5]

The long-term, strategic gyorin policy played out in bilateral diplomacy and trade dealings with the Jurchen tribes, Japan, the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Siam, and others.^[6] Over time, diplomatic and trade policies were perceived by Joseon's partners as the traditional door through which trends in neo-Confucian philosophical principles were recognized.^[7]

The Joseon kingdom made every effort to maintain a friendly bilateral relationship with China for reasons having to do with both realpolitik and a more idealist Confucian worldview wherein China was seen as the center of a Confucian moral universe.^[8] Joseon diplomacy was no less aware and sensitive to realpolitik in the implementation of gyorin policy.

The unique nature of gyorin bilateral diplomatic exchanges evolved from a conceptual framework developed by the Chinese. Gradually, the theoretical models would be modified, mirroring the evolution of a unique relationship.^[9]

• Joseon diplomacy
• Neo-Confucianism

• Goodrich, Luther Carrington and Zhaoying Fang. (1976). Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. I; Dictionary of Ming biography, 1368-1644 (明代名人傳), Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-03801-0; ISBN 978-0-231-03833-1; OCLC 1622199
• Kang, Etsuko Hae-jin. (1997). Diplomacy and Ideology in Japanese-Korean Relations: from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Basingstoke, Hampshire; Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-17370-8; OCLC 243874305
• Kang, Jae-eun and Suzanne Lee. (2006). The Land of Scholars : Two Thousand Years of Korean Confucianism. Paramus, New Jersey: Homa & Sekey Books. ISBN 978-1-931907-37-8; OCLC 60931394
• Kim, Chun-gil. (2005). The history of Korea. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-33296-8; ISBN 978-0-313-03853-2; OCLC 217866287
• Mansourov, Alexandre Y. "Will Flowers Bloom without Fragrance? Korean-Chinese Relations," Harvard Asia Quarterly (Spring 2009).
• Oh Youngkyo. "State of Research on the Late Period of the Choson Dynasty," Yonsei University.
• Steben, Barry D. "The Transmission of Neo-Confucianism to the Ryukyu (Liuqiu) Islands and Its Historical Significance: Ritual and Rectification of Names in a Bipolar Authority Field," National University of Singapore.
• Toby, Ronald P. (1991). State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1951-3