신성용 申成用
Founder of the Goryeong Shin clan
| Era | 고려 고종 |
| Clan | 고령 신씨 |
Life & career
Sin Seong-yong (申成用) is the founding ancestor of the Goryeong Sin clan. His dates are unknown; he is said to have passed the civil examination under King Gojong (r. 1213-1259), the 23rd ruler of Goryeo, and to have held the post of Geomgyo Gungigam (檢校軍器監), an honorary title without active duties.
According to several regional encyclopedias of local culture, his forebears lived in Goryeong for generations and served as hojang, the heads of the county clerks, and Sin Seong-yong was the first of the family to pass the examination and enter central office; for this reason his descendants took Goryeong as their clan seat. Wikipedia states that he himself served as hojang. Because Goryeong was the heart of the ancient Daegaya kingdom, the Goryeong Sin Clan Association conjectures that he descended from Daegaya royalty, and some sources call the family descendants of a Silla noble house, but no records support these claims and they survive only as tradition. Although they share the surname 申, the Goryeong Sin are a lineage separate from the Pyeongsan Sin.
In the third generation there were two brothers, Sin In-jae and Sin In-gi, and the descendants of the younger formed the Sijung-gong branch. His fifth-generation descendant Sin Deok-rin, a late-Goryeo Minister of Rites and celebrated calligrapher, withdrew to Dumundong and then Gwangju when Goryeo fell. Sin Deok-rin's son Sin Po-si also retired to Dumundong before serving King Sejong as Third Minister of Works, and Sin Po-si's three sons Sin Jang, Sin Pyeong and Sin Je founded the three main branches, Amheon-gong, Jeongeun-gong and Gamchal-gong.
In the Joseon period the clan produced three state councillors, three chief scholars and many other officials, the most famous being Sin Suk-ju, who took part in the creation of Hunminjeongeum and was Sin Seong-yong's seventh-generation descendant. The clan numbered 129,718 people in the 2015 census, and clan villages of his descendants still stand in the clan seat of Goryeong, in places such as Unsan-ri, Unsu-myeon and Sachon-ri, Ugok-myeon.