 Chŏson Korea was completely devastated by the Japanese invasion during the Imjin War (1592–1598), the largest conflict of the sixteenth-century world, involving almost half a million combatants from Korea, Japan, and China, and also by the Manchu-Qing invasions (1627 &amp; 1637). As a result, the classical Korean Neo-Confucianism in its original form began disintegrating. This was shown by a renewed, now more positive interest in the nature of the heart/mind from the perspective of the Yangming Learning, e.g., by Chŏng Chedu 鄭齊斗 (1649–1736). We also see the activities of some Korean women Confucians philosophers, e.g., Im Yunjidang 任允摯堂 (1721–1793) and Kang Chŏngildang 姜靜一堂 (1772–1832) (Ivanhoe &amp; Wang forthcoming). But, more prominently, in the eighteenth century, a group of philosophers more perceptive about the socio-political reality in Korea began rejecting the metaphysically oriented framework which the Four-Seven Debate presupposed, and supplied instead highly naturalistic principles of cosmology and Sage Learning in what is called “Practical Learning (實學)” today. These philosophers include Yu Hyŏngwon 柳馨遠 (1622–1673) and Yi Ik 李瀷 (1681–1763) inter alia. Among them were also members of the school called “Northern Learning” (Pukhakpa 北學派) with an intense interest in the new ideas and technology from Qing China. These scholars included Hong Taeyong 洪大容 (1731–1783: pen name: Tamhŏn 湛軒), Pak Chiwon 朴趾源 (1737–1805), and Pak Cheka 朴齊家 (1750–1850). All these were reformist thinkers who aspired to renovate what they viewed as outdated ideas and forms of life of the scholars and society of their times. In particular, Practical Learning scholars shared a general emphasis on utility and the enhancement of the well-being of the human experience.