Do Koreans even exist? part 5. Books
5. Books
We've been referencing books since the beginning of this series, so why all of a sudden name this post books?
It's primarily because after Shilla and Baekje, Stuff becomes much harder to use cleanly, particularly as we go north into Goguryeo.. It doesn't help that North Korea is the most isolated, bat-shit crazy fucking nation on earth, but it also doesn't help that in 2002 China launched the Northeast Project (东北工程; Dōngběi Gōngchéng), an official state-sponsored effort to reinterpret the history of its modern northeastern borderlands through the idea of a timeless “unified multiethnic Chinese state.”
Conveniently, that meant that ancient peoples and kingdoms occupying territory inside modern China could now be folded backward into Chinese national history.
Access to historical sites were suddenly denied.
Museum exhibits, site descriptions and even UNESCO heritage narratives became part of the argument.
A shit ton of academic papers pushing this view was published:
- Goguryeo: a regional regime of ancient China, ruled by an ethnic group belonging to the Chinese historical nation.
- Balhae: a local regime established by China's ancient ethnic minorities.
- Buyeo: part of the historical political development of China's northeast.
- Okjeo & Dongye: distinct polities, but their Ye/Maek populations incorporated into China's ancient ethnic history.
- Gojoseon: likewise pulled into the historical development of China's northeastern frontier.
Stuff. Politicized.
So to fill in the gaps, we have no choice but to rely on the records that were preserved. However, this results in their own specific set of problems. And we've dealt with many of them already.
- For Chinese books, Sino-centricity is the default, not the occasional faux-pas:
China is the center of the universe, everyone else are barbarians. - Even Korean records aren't neutral, filtered through Confucian political agendas, Sadae, and later Neo-Confucian assumptions:
How dare a small country like Korea have its own unique culture separate from great China? - Japanese records are even crazier, because they also have a point-of-view they want to push:
We are descended from gods and have an unbroken line since then + Don't ignore us just because we were on the periphery of East Asian politics - Many were written by people who had never been anywhere close to the people they were describing, often recycling reports through several layers of bureaucracy.
- The most important records were written by people hundreds of years after the fact, relying on "ancient records" and "myths" that no longer exist.
And there is one final problem.
Books do not preserve the past.
They preserve what states thought was worth writing down about the past.
Nobody wrote a biography of some farmer living beside the Hun River.
They wrote about:
Kings.
Wars.
Tribute.
Rebellions.
Envoys.
Barbarians who became troublesome enough to require a paragraph.
Which means that the moment these peoples finally become visible in Books is not necessarily the moment they appeared.
It may simply be the moment they became our problem.
---
Books on ancient Korea
Korean books:
Yugi 유기 (留記) [LOST]
[date written: probably late 4th century CE]
[author: unknown]
[what it was:] A lost Goguryeo history traditionally said to have contained 100 volumes. It probably gathered royal genealogy, founding traditions, myths and historical records accumulated during early Goguryeo. In 600 it was drastically condensed/reworked into the Sinjip.
[what it said about “Korea”:] We cannot read it anymore, which is the tragedy. It was probably one of the major indigenous Goguryeo sources behind later accounts of early Goguryeo, including traditions that eventually reached Korean histories.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Potentially contemporary and priceless, but lost. Everything we know about it is mediated through later writers.
Shinjib 신집 (新集) [LOST]
[date written: 600 CE]
[author: 이문진 (李文眞)]
[what it was:] A five-volume Goguryeo national history compiled by Taehak scholar Yi Mun-jin from the much larger Yugi. It was produced during King Yeongyang’s reign, just as Goguryeo was confronting reunified Sui China. Also completely lost.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Presumably Goguryeo’s own organized account of its origins, kings and past. If it survived, half of our arguments about early Goguryeo would probably disappear overnight.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Seogi 서기 (書記) [LOST]
[date written: 375 CE]
[author: 고흥 (高興)]
[what it was:] Baekje’s early official history, compiled under King Geunchogo. It is the earliest specifically dated Baekje historical compilation we know of. Lost.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Presumably Baekje royal history and the kingdom’s own understanding of itself during precisely the period when Baekje was becoming a major regional state.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Guksa 국사 (國史) [LOST]
[date written: 545 CE]
[author: 거칠부 (居柒夫) and others, commissioned by King Jinheung]
[what it was:] Silla’s official national history. Isabu reportedly argued that a state needed written history so the deeds and failures of kings and ministers could be preserved for posterity. Geochilbu headed the compilation. Lost.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Silla’s own account of its beginnings, rulers and expansion before it became the dominant peninsular kingdom. It was almost certainly one of the streams behind later Silla history.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Baekje-gi 백제삼서: 백제기·백제신찬·백제본기 (百濟記·百濟新撰·百濟本紀) [FRAGMENTS]
[date written: uncertain; material primarily concerning the 4th–6th centuries, all existed before 720]
[author: unknown; Baekje-derived authors/compilers]
[what it was:] Three lost Baekje historical works preserved only because the Nihon Shoki quotes them. Baekje-gi concentrates largely on the Hanseong period, Baekje Sinchan on the later Hanseong/Ungjin transition, and Baekje Bongi particularly on the 501–557 period. Scholars see both old Baekje material and later editing by Baekje-descended communities in Japan.
[what it said about “Korea”:] They preserve Baekje’s side of Baekje–Wa–Gaya relations, royal genealogy, diplomacy and warfare. Sometimes they directly disagree with the Japanese narrative surrounding the quotations, which makes them especially interesting.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
구삼국사 (舊三國史) [LOST]
[date written: early Goryeo, probably 10th–early 11th century]
[author: unknown]
[what it was:] A lost Korean history of the Three Kingdoms written before Kim Bu-sik. It appears to have been heavily used by later writers, especially the Samguk Sagi, Samguk Yusa and Yi Gyu-bo. It may have carried a stronger Goguryeo-successor orientation than Kim’s later history.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Apparently contained extensive Three Kingdoms narratives, including a detailed Dongmyeong/Jumong tradition. One of the most frustrating missing links in Korean historiography.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Samguksagi 삼국사기 (三國史記) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 1145 CE]
[author: 김부식 (金富軾) and an official compilation team]
[what it was:] The oldest surviving comprehensive Korean history of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Fifty volumes, compiled under royal commission using older Korean histories, Chinese dynastic histories, inscriptions and other records now lost. Kim explicitly complained that the older Gogi were crude and incomplete and wanted to reshape them into morally instructive history.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Almost everything. Royal chronologies, wars, diplomacy, offices, geography, biographies and the canonical political narratives of all three kingdoms. For huge stretches it is the only detailed Korean narrative that survives.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Poem of King Dongmyeong 동명왕편 (東明王篇) [PRESERVED]
[date written: late 12th century]
[author: 이규보 (李奎報)]
[what it was:] A long narrative poem about Jumong/Dongmyeong, explicitly based on the lost Old Samguksa. This is where we get the gloriously elaborate Haemosu–Yuhwa–Habaek story and much of the founder mythology you are using.
[what it said about “Korea”:] It presents Goguryeo’s founder as a divine, heroic ancestral figure and makes Goguryeo a source of Goryeo pride. It preserves a version of the myth that differs significantly from both Chinese accounts and the Samguk Sagi.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
As event history. As evidence of an older Goguryeo/Goryeo myth tradition, much more valuable.
Samgukyusa 삼국유사 (三國遺事) [PRESERVED]
[date written: c. 1281 CE]
[author: 일연 (一然)]
[what it was:] A monk’s collection of histories, legends, Buddhist stories, miracles, genealogies and traditions that the more sober Samguk Sagi often omitted.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Dangun, Gaya’s egg kings, Silla founding traditions, Buddhist transmission, strange births, supernatural events and alternate versions of Three Kingdoms history. If Kim Bu-sik preserves the government archive, Iryeon preserves much more of the cultural attic.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
Jaewangungi 제왕운기 (帝王韻紀) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 1287 CE]
[author: 이승휴 (李承休)]
[what it was:] A poetic history placing Chinese and Korean history beside one another, written under Mongol/Yuan domination.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Especially important for early Korean origin traditions, including Dangun and Gojoseon, and for the idea that Korean history possessed its own continuous legitimacy separate from China.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
⇒
One history book that survives (Samguksagi) written in 1145 CE by a dude that had every reason to be Sino-centric.
A collection of myths (Samgukyusa).
Two poems (Poem of King Dongmyeong, Jaewangungi).
Fragments quoted in a Japanese book (Baekje-gi).
See the problem?
---
Chinese books:
Guǎnzǐ 관자 (管子) [PRESERVED]
[date written: composite; material accumulated mainly during the Warring States period, received edition organized by Liu Xiang c. 26 BCE]
[author: many anonymous authors; traditionally attributed to Guan Zhong]
[what it was:] A huge collection of political, economic and philosophical texts associated with the state of Qi. The received book is much later than the historical Guan Zhong whose name it bears.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Contains what is often treated as the earliest surviving written reference to Joseon, describing it in a trade context involving valuable animal skins and distant Qi.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
Shānhǎijīng 산해경 (山海經) [PRESERVED]
[date written: composite, roughly late Warring States through early Han]
[author: unknown]
[what it was:] A bizarre mixture of geography, ethnography, mythology, monsters, mountains and distant peoples.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Mentions Joseon as a northeastern place. It matters primarily because it demonstrates that the name was circulating in Chinese geographical imagination long before Wiman Joseon.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
Zhànguócè 전국책 (戰國策) [PRESERVED]
[date written: Warring States materials; edited into surviving form by Liu Xiang in the 1st century BCE]
[author: multiple unknown authors; final editor Liu Xiang]
[what it was:] Political anecdotes, speeches and diplomatic schemes from the Warring States. It is not a straightforward chronicle and often values a good political story over boring chronology.
[what it said about “Korea”:] In describing Yan, it explicitly says: “to the east are Joseon and Liaodong.” That is enormously useful because it places Joseon inside the geopolitical map of the Warring States world.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Shǐjì 사기 (史記) [PRESERVED]
[date written: completed roughly 94 BCE]
[author: 사마천 (司馬遷), building on work begun by Sima Tan]
[what it was:] The foundational Chinese universal history. Sima Qian was alive and working at the Han court during the actual Han–Wiman Joseon war of 109–108 BCE.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Its Biography of Joseon describes Wiman, Ugeo, Han diplomacy, the invasion, the political collapse inside Joseon and Han’s establishment of commanderies. It is the single most important Chinese source for the destruction of Wiman Joseon.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Hànshū 한서 (漢書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: completed 111 CE]
[author: Ban Biao, Ban Gu, Ban Zhao and others]
[what it was:] The official history of Western Han, compiled under Eastern Han using imperial records.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Repeats and expands the Han view of Wiman Joseon, the conquest, commanderies and the northeastern frontier. Its geographical and administrative material is especially important for Lelang and Xuantu.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Wèilüè 위략 (魏略) [FRAGMENTS]
[date written: mid-3rd century CE]
[author: 어환 / Yu Huan (魚豢)]
[what it was:] A private history of Cao Wei. The book itself is lost, but substantial fragments survive because later historians quoted it.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Hugely important. It supplies material absent from the Shiji: Gojoseon kings Bu and Jun, conflict with Yan, Qin Kai’s attack, Wiman’s takeover, Jun’s flight south into Han territory, and additional information about Samhan.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Would probably be ★★★ if the actual book survived.
Sānguózhì 삼국지 (三國志) [PRESERVED]
[date written: c. 280s CE]
[author: 진수 / Chen Shou (陳壽); major annotations added by Pei Songzhi in 429]
[what it was:] The history of Cao Wei, Shu and Wu, written almost immediately after the Three Kingdoms period from earlier Wei and Wu official histories plus other records such as the Weilüe.
[what it said about “Korea”:] This is the mother lode for early Korea: Buyeo, Goguryeo, Okjeo, Ye/Dongye, Mahan, Jinhan, Byeonhan, Wa, their languages, political structures, laws, agriculture, burials, marriage, iron, tribute and relationships.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Hòu Hànshū 후한서 (後漢書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 445 CE]
[author: 범엽 / Fan Ye (范曄)]
[what it was:] History of Eastern Han, written more than two centuries later but based heavily on earlier Eastern Han histories and reports that mostly disappeared afterward.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Contains a dedicated Biographies of the Eastern Yi: Buyeo, Goguryeo, Okjeo, Ye and Han, including Goguryeo’s five groups, Buyeo connections, Dongmaeng, Xuantu, Okjeo subordination and much else.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Jìnshū 진서 (晉書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 648 CE]
[author: Fang Xuanling and a Tang imperial team]
[what it was:] Tang-era official history of Western/Eastern Jin and the Sixteen Kingdoms, compiled from dozens of earlier histories, many subsequently lost.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Essential for the chaotic 3rd–4th-century world around Goguryeo: Jin collapse, Liaodong politics, Xianbei powers, especially the Murong states, and the geopolitical environment in which Goguryeo expanded.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Sòngshū 송서 (宋書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: late 5th century, completed around 488–493]
[author: Shen Yue (沈約), building on earlier Liu Song court records]
[what it was:] Official history of Liu Song, 420–479, compiled very close to the events it describes.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Records fifth-century diplomacy and titles involving Goguryeo and Baekje, especially during the great expansion of Jangsu’s Goguryeo and Baekje’s southern diplomatic contacts.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Nán Qíshū 남제서 (南齊書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 537 CE]
[author: Xiao Zixian (蕭子顯)]
[what it was:] Official history of Southern Qi, 479–502, written by a grandson of that dynasty’s founder.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Particularly important for Baekje, preserving Baekje diplomatic memorials, military claims, titles for Baekje nobles, and the famous material suggesting Baekje activity against Northern Wei.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Wèishū 위서 (魏書) [PRESERVED with losses]
[date written: 551–554 CE]
[author: Wei Shou (魏收)]
[what it was:] Official history of Northern Wei and Eastern Wei, written shortly after the period.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Crucial for 5th–6th-century Goguryeo diplomacy and also preserves a Chinese version of the Jumong founder tradition, making it one of our important independent witnesses to how the story circulated outside Goguryeo.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Liángshū 양서 (梁書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 635 CE]
[author: Yao Silian (姚思廉), heavily based on the work of his father Yao Cha]
[what it was:] Tang compilation of Liang history built substantially from a near-contemporary manuscript that no longer survives independently.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Important descriptions of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla, including political organization, customs and origin traditions. Its Silla section preserves earlier claims about Jinhan and Silla’s emergence.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Zhōushū 주서 (周書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 636 CE]
[author: Linghu Defen (令狐德棻) and team]
[what it was:] Tang official history of Western Wei and Northern Zhou, ultimately grounded in Northern Zhou court materials.
[what it said about “Korea”:] One of the most useful sources for 6th-century Baekje and Goguryeo, including court structure, customs and those wonderful Baekje royal terms such as 어라하 and 건길지 that matter enormously for language reconstruction.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Suíshū 수서 (隋書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 636 CE]
[author: Tang imperial team led by Wei Zheng (魏徵)]
[what it was:] Official history of Sui, finished only eighteen years after Sui collapsed, using surviving Sui government material.
[what it said about “Korea”:] One of the foundational sources for late Goguryeo and especially the Sui–Goguryeo wars: diplomacy, campaigns, imperial reasoning, geography and Goguryeo institutions.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Jiù Tángshū 구당서 (舊唐書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 945 CE]
[author: official Later Jin compilation led by Liu Xu (劉昫)]
[what it was:] The older surviving official history of Tang, written centuries later but assembled from extensive Tang-era court chronicles and records.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Essential for the final century of Goguryeo, Baekje’s destruction, Tang intervention, Silla, the 668 conquest and the postwar settlement. It also preserves unusually detailed descriptions of late Goguryeo government.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Xīn Tángshū 신당서 (新唐書) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 1060 CE]
[author: Ouyang Xiu, Song Qi and a Song imperial team]
[what it was:] A Song-era rewrite of Tang history, using the older Tang history and additional materials.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Again covers Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla, Wa/Japan and later Balhae. Sometimes preserves details absent from the Old Book of Tang, but it is another editorial layer farther from the events.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
⇒
And I didn't even list every book. These are just the important ones. So if you wanted to research ancient Korean history, you had no choice. This is the equivlent of reading Roman books to find out about Celts and Germans. Yes they preserve something, but what exactly is it preserving?
---
Japanese books
Kojiki 고사기 (古事記) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 712 CE]
[author: Ō no Yasumaro, based partly on traditions associated with Hieda no Are]
[what it was:] Japan’s oldest surviving native compilation of imperial mythology and genealogy. It is overwhelmingly concerned with Japan rather than foreign history.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Contains scattered references to Silla, the peninsula and overseas peoples within Japanese royal/mythic traditions, but it is much less useful for Korean political history than the Nihon Shoki.
[historical accuracy: ★☆☆☆☆]
Nihon Shoki 일본서기 (日本書紀) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 720 CE]
[author: court compilation traditionally headed by Prince Toneri]
[what it was:] Japan’s first full official chronicle, deliberately constructed as an imperial history and completed in 720.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Enormously important for Baekje, Gaya, Silla and Goguryeo relations with Wa/Yamato. It preserves the lost Baekje Three Books, embassy records, wars, royal marriages and migration traditions. It also contains manipulated chronology and a very obvious Yamato-centered political agenda. Modern Japanese scholarship itself identifies places where editors shifted dates or reworked Baekje-derived material.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Fudoki 풍토기 (風土記) [PRESERVED]
[date written: ordered in 713 CE; surviving provincial compilations mostly 8th century]
[author: provincial officials, various]
[what it was:] Gazetteers ordered by the Japanese court describing local geography, products, place-name origins, legends and populations.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Occasionally preserves local memories of immigrant communities and cultural connections that never made it into the central imperial chronicle. More useful for migration and local identity than interstate political chronology.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
Shoku Nihongi 속일본기 (續日本紀) [PRESERVED]
[date written: 797 CE]
[author: Japanese court historiographical commission]
[what it was:] Official continuation of the Nihon Shoki, covering 697–791.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Technically after the Three Kingdoms, but extremely important for Silla and Balhae diplomacy, embassies, trade and Japan’s understanding of the post-Goguryeo world.
[historical accuracy: ★★★☆☆]
Shinsen Shōjiroku 신찬성씨록 (新撰姓氏録) [FRAGMENTS]
[date written: 815 CE]
[author: court commission including Prince Manda and Fujiwara no Otsugu]
[what it was:] An official genealogy of aristocratic clans in the Kinai region, completed in 815.
[what it said about “Korea”:] Records large numbers of Japanese lineages claiming ancestry from Baekje, Goguryeo, Silla, Gaya and Chinese immigrant families. It is enormously useful for demonstrating how deeply continental and peninsular migration was embedded in the Japanese elite, although genealogical claims obviously served status politics.
[historical accuracy: ★★☆☆☆]
⇒
Exactly the same issue as the Chinese books, but weirder. For most of ancient East Asian history, Japan was on the periphery, barely considered inside. So a lot of Japanese history is about proving that they deserve to be inside. And unfortunately, their records represent that. Which was great for nationalist fuckers during 1890-1945.
Gaya = ours
Baekje = ours
Shilla = ours
Goguryeo = vassals
Balhae = descendents of vassals
Therefore,
Korea = Japan (of course with Japan as the older brother)
---
So what are we left with?
I listed 34 books above, and not one of them would pass as authoritative history by today's standards. The highest rating I gave any of them was three stars.
More importantly, they did not survive equally. Of the twelve Korean works, only four, about 33%, survive intact. Three more exist only as fragments quoted by somebody else. Meanwhile, 16 of the 17 Chinese works, about 94%, survive, along with four of the five Japanese works, about 80%.
That imbalance matters. Ancient Korean history reaches us disproportionately through Chinese and Japanese eyes.
And yet, for all the problems, a surprisingly small shelf carries most of the story. Shiji and Hanshu for Gojoseon. Sanguozhi and Hou Hanshu for Buyeo, Goguryeo, Okjeo, Dongye and Samhan. Weishu, Suishu and the Tang histories for later Goguryeo. Nihon Shoki for Baekje, Gaya and Wa. And on the Korean side, above everything else, Samguk Sagi, supplemented by Samguk Yusa, the Poem of King Dongmyeong, and whatever fragments survived from books that disappeared.
None of them is The Book.
They copy one another. They contradict one another. They quote books we can no longer read. They preserve rumors, political agendas, diplomatic insults, court propaganda, myths, memories and occasionally some astonishingly precise facts.
These are the cards we're dealt.
You can't read what doesn't exist.
You take everything with a grain of salt.
You use whatever piece of Stuff as evidence.
You use things that books can't lie about: Words, Blood and Soil.
You rely on reason and logic...grab your balls...and take a leap of faith.
And here we are.
DNA is inconclusive.
Dead people don't speak.
Books lie.
Stuff is lost and is politically charged.
Thank God we still have Soil.
And the Soil occupied by Goguryeo and the other northern “Korean” states has a story every bit as rich as the soil itself.
- ה -
The Soil Goguryeo was planted in
Goguryeo brings back the Soil problem we faced with Balhae:
Can a state:
- born outside the Korean Peninsula,
- controlling a territory mostly outside the Korean Peninsula,
- with a population that included entire peoples academics today would define as non-Korean,
possibly be claimed as Korean?
Goguryeo also creates a unique problem for this Blog series. The word:
Liaoning.
Until now I've used Liaoning as a directional word that basically pointed to north.
But,
Goguryeo people lived in Liaoning.
They claimed much of Liaoning as territory.
They fought and bled for Liaoning. Many times over.
Its enemies associated Liaoning with them.
And as a state it identified itself with Liaoning.
So Liaoning as "broadly north" stops working.
It's too blunt of an instrument for our purposes from now on.
And it's far too narrow of a geographical scope to cover the story we're about to tell.
So, before jumping into Goguryeo, I decided to dedicate a section to specifically talk about this area. From this point on, I'm calling it the Songhua-Liao World.
- ה -
The Songhua-Liao World
Liaoning is not some timeless historical region. It is a relatively modern Chinese administrative province containing cities like Shenyang, Dalian, Dandong and Anshan. To its southwest sits Beijing, to its northwest sits Inner Mongolia.
And Liaoning itself is only one piece of a much larger connected landscape north of Korea. A place that had many names, the rather loaded term, Manchuria, being the most comfortable for English speakers.
If you start looking at it, it's a pretty amazing piece of land. Defined by great mountains and rivers, with massive grasslands over rich soil.
Starting in the southwest and moving around it:
The Yan Mountains (연산; 燕山) form the broken southwestern approaches between the northern Chinese plains and Liaodong: mostly rugged ridges around 400–1,000 meters, cut by narrow passes, with peaks rising above 2,000 meters.
Liaoxi (요서; 遼西) lies west of the Liao River (요하강; 遼河), and Liaodong (요동; 遼東) east of it.
The Greater Khingan Range (대흥안령; 大興安嶺) runs roughly southwest to northeast for more than 1,000 kilometers, a broad forested mountain wall generally around 1,100–1,500 meters, rising close to 2,000 meters in places. Its western side climbs gradually from the Mongolian plateau, while its eastern face drops much more sharply toward the Manchurian plains.
Between them lies an enormous system of plains and river basins.
And at its center sits the Northeast China Plain, one of the largest expanses of flat, fertile land in East Asia, famous today for its extraordinarily rich black soil.
This area is huge, covering roughly 790,000 km², depending on how you define its borders.
That's nearly eight South Koreas.
It encompasses parts of what are now Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and eastern Inner Mongolia.
But this isn't one uniform plain.
It is a gigantic system of rivers, wetlands, grasslands, forests and mountains.
And the rivers matter.
Starting from the west and going clockwise:
The Xilamulun River (시라무룬강; 西拉木倫河) cuts eastward out of the Greater Khingan through the dry grasslands around Chifeng, linking the Mongolian steppe to the West Liao basin. This was the ancestral cradle of the Khitan people, a world of open grass, river valleys, horses, felt yurts and seasonal movement, where wealth could literally walk away on four legs. Before they exploded eastward to conquer the basin and found the Liao Dynasty, the Khitans lived as highly mobile pastoralists, organizing themselves through clans, cavalry, herds and temporary camps pitched along these river corridors. Even their own founding myth belongs to this landscape: a male ancestor riding a white horse down the Laoha met a heavenly woman traveling up the Xilamulun, and their eight sons became the ancestors of the eight Khitan tribes. This was where the steppe met the basin, and eventually the people living there came pouring through the door.
Farther north, The Nen River (넨강; 嫩江) runs south for more than a thousand kilometers through the enormous gap between the Greater and Lesser Khingan, collecting the rivers pouring down from the mountains before eventually feeding the Songhua. This was not the dry steppe of the Xilamulun, but a vast world of grasslands, wet meadows, marshes, forests and river valleys, extraordinarily good country for horses and herds. The Nen became a natural highway through the northern basin, part of the roaming world of Xianbei, Shiwei and later Mongolic peoples who could move enormous distances following pasture and water, appearing out of the grasslands with horses, livestock and mounted warriors before disappearing back into them. Here, mobility was not merely how people travelled. It was how they lived.
The deep, freezing taiga of the far north was defined by the Amur River (흑룡강; 黑龍江), one of the great rivers of Asia, broad enough in places that the opposite bank seems impossibly far away and frozen solid through the worst months of winter. This was the world of the Black Water (Heishui) Mohe (흑수말갈; 黑水靺鞨), the fiercely independent northern Mohe from whose world the later Jurchens would emerge. Life here was built around the river and forest: fishing, especially the enormous seasonal runs of salmon, hunting, trapping, fur, pigs rooting around the settlements, and enough millet, wheat, soybeans and other agriculture to supplement what the taiga provided. These were not horsemen racing across an open steppe. They lived among dense forests, marshes and frozen river valleys, often in semi-subterranean pit-houses dug directly into the earth, using the ground itself as insulation against winters that could kill you simply for being outside too long.
To the east, the wild, swampy Ussuri River (우수리강; 烏蘇里江) wound through perhaps the most isolated fringe of this world, a maze of flooded forests, reed marshes, oxbow lakes and deep taiga running toward the Amur. This was not good country for enormous cavalry armies or sprawling grain cities. It belonged instead to forest-and-river peoples: Mohe, later Jurchen-related communities, and the ancestors of peoples such as the Nanai and Udege, living through fishing, hunting, trapping, gathering and pockets of agriculture. Villages clung to waterways because the rivers were the roads; boats moved people in summer, while frozen rivers and forest trails opened different routes in winter. Balhae eventually pushed forts and settlements into parts of this wilderness, but much of the Ussuri basin remained exactly what geography wanted it to be: a wet, forested eastern frontier that was extraordinarily easy to disappear into.
Into the Amur River flows the Songhua River (송화강; 松花江), perhaps the single most important river system in our entire story. Fed by rivers pouring out of the Changbai Mountains and sweeping across the enormous plains of Jilin and the Songnen basin, the Songhua created a world rich enough to support dense settlements, fields of millet, cattle, horses, hunting, fishing and eventually powerful states. This was the heartland of Buyeo, the wealthy northern kingdom from which Goguryeo and Baekje would later claim descent, with fortified towns and an unusually organized agrarian society sitting astride one of the great natural highways of Manchuria. Before Buyeo, the same river basin contained the Xituanshan world; after Buyeo came Goguryeo, Mohe, Balhae and eventually the Jurchens. The Liao River may have been the doorway into this world. The Songhua was where people actually lived.
Its tributary, the Mudan River (목단강; 牡丹江), winds north through a long valley enclosed by forested mountains before joining the Songhua. This was unusually valuable country: enough open, fertile land to farm and build cities, but surrounded by dense taiga and broken mountains that made the whole basin feel hidden from the outside world. Here Balhae planted its Supreme Capital, Sanggyeong Longquanfu (상경용천부; 上京龍泉府), an enormous rectangular imperial metropolis of palaces, walls, ceremonial avenues and gridded neighborhoods modeled on Tang Chang’an. The effect must have been surreal: travel through hundreds of kilometers of forest, river valley and mountain country, then suddenly emerge in front of a planned capital several kilometers across, built by the descendants of Goguryeo refugees and the Mohe populations they ruled. Balhae did not merely survive in the wilderness. It built an empire inside it.
To the south, cutting through the steep Changbai Mountains, run the Yalu/Amnok River (압록강; 鴨綠江) and farther east the Tumen/Duman River (두만강; 豆滿江), today forming most of the border between China and North Korea. The Yalu/Amnok in particular was the lifeline of Goguryeo: a deep river corridor winding through brutally mountainous country, connecting the interior of Manchuria to the Korean Peninsula while simultaneously making invasion a nightmare. Goguryeo learned to weaponize this landscape. Instead of relying only on vulnerable cities sitting naked on open plains, they covered the valleys and river approaches with stone mountain fortresses perched on cliffs, ridgelines and narrow passes, forcing invading armies to climb, funnel and bleed for every kilometer. The river below carried people, food, soldiers and supplies; the mountains above became walls. Goguryeo did not merely live in difficult terrain. It turned difficult terrain into a military system.
In the southwest, the Liao River (요하; 遼河) crawls through an enormous flat plain of grain fields, wetlands and seasonal marshes: a sedentary crucible wedged between the northern steppe, Liaodong mountains and the road to China. Whoever controlled this basin controlled one of the richest and easiest large-scale agricultural zones in the northeast, so naturally everyone fought over it. Early Gojoseon-associated populations occupied fortified settlements across this world and contested the region with Yan. Then Yan pushed east, followed by Qin and Han, bringing a very different kind of power onto the plain: walled commandery cities, rammed-earth defenses, government offices, markets, colonists, iron workshops and fields capable of feeding armies. Places like Xiangping, near modern Liaoyang, became permanent imperial administrative centers sitting directly on the frontier. The Liao basin was not merely farmland. It was where farmers, armies, bureaucracies and empires repeatedly smashed into one another.
The climate of this vast land is notoriously brutal: humid continental in the south, shifting toward subarctic conditions and deep taiga in the north. Summers can be hot, wet and explosively green, with the western and southern plains sometimes baking at 35–40°C (95–104°F) and occasionally even hotter. Winters swing just as violently in the opposite direction. Across the northern forests and upper Amur world, −30°C (−22°F) is ordinary winter weather, −40°C (−40°F) is entirely possible, and temperatures near −50°C (−58°F) have been recorded. At Mohe, near the northern edge of this world, the historical extreme has fallen to roughly −53°C (−63°F). Rivers freeze solid, snow locks mountain passes, and entire landscapes turn into hard white plains for months at a time. The farther north you go, the growing season collapses, agriculture becomes harder, and survival increasingly depends on forests, rivers, animals and mobility rather than fields alone.
Before modern drainage and intensive agriculture transformed it, much of the plain was a mixture of enormous wetlands, grasslands and forest-steppe. Around it rose heavily forested mountains.
So this wasn't empty wilderness.
And it wasn't simply an extension of China, Korea, Mongolia or Siberia.
It was its own enormous geographic world, filled with people who each lived and died in their own way adapting to whatever situation this vast land threw their way.
---
東方曰夷
And as for those people...some Chinese bureaucrat called them: "Barbarians to the East."
One of the ancient Chinese classics, the Liji (예기; 禮記), preserves the wonderfully crude geographical classification:
東方曰夷
(“Those to the east are called Yi.”)
South were the Man (蠻). West were the Rong (戎). North were the Di (狄). East were the Yi (夷).
That's it.
Not an ethnicity.
Not a language.
Not a country.
East of us. Those guys.
Later Chinese historians would turn this into the familiar category Dongyi (東夷), “Eastern Yi,” and devote entire sections of their histories to the peoples living beyond China's eastern and northeastern frontiers.
The Hou Hanshu (후한서; 後漢書), for example, actually begins its Biographies of the Eastern Yi by quoting that same line: “The east is called Yi.”
The problem is that Dongyi moved whenever the Chinese frontier moved.
As China moved east, yesterday's Yi became Chinese, and a new group of Yi appeared beyond them.
Yes, there were hunter-gatherers.
So was almost everybody else at some point.
Humans had already lived throughout this region for tens of thousands of years.
Then the climate changed.
People stayed longer in particular places.
They made pottery.
Cultivated plants.
Farmed millet.
Raised animals.
Built permanent settlements.
Accumulated wealth.
Fought over it.
Built fortifications.
Worked bronze.
Buried their dead.
And archaeologists, arriving several thousand years too late to ask any of these people what they called themselves, did the only thing they could.
They named their stuff.
Hence the glorious parade:
Xinglongwa
Zhaobaogou
Hongshan
Xiaoheyan
Lower Xiajiadian
Upper Xiajiadian
Pianpu
Xiaozhushan
Shuangtuozi
Xituanshan
Which sounds like you've developed a neurological disorder after reading too much Chinese archaeology.
My favorite is Pianpu, which I remembered as “Pee-Poo.”
Of particular interest to me are the Hongshan, the Pianpu, and the Xituanshan. For they might have had some significant impact on the development of Korea. Remember those names, we'll revisit them later.
But there is something important to understand before we go any further.
These are not "Peoples."
Hongshan is not an ethnicity.
Pianpu is not a tribe.
Xituanshan is not the name of a nation.
They are boxes archaeologists created because particular combinations of pottery, houses, graves, tools, foodways and settlement patterns repeatedly appear together in a particular place and time.
Most are named after whatever village, hill or archaeological site happened to give scholars the first recognizable pile of stuff.
The people themselves almost certainly had names.
We just don't know them.
---
What makes this world particularly interesting for us is its location.
Northeast of the Chinese heartland.
East of the Mongolian steppe.
South of the Amur.
North of Korea.
Just close enough for everyone to meet.
And so they gathered.
And mixed.
People speaking early forms of Sinitic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic, Koreanic, perhaps Turkic, whatever the Xianbei and Xiongnu spoke, and a myriad of other languages history simply forgot.
Some arrived.
Some left.
Some conquered.
Some were conquered.
Some probably sat in the same valley for a thousand years watching everybody else come and go.
Millet farming.
Permanent villages.
Pottery.
Wet-rice farming.
Mumun.
Bronze.
Dolmens.
Stone burial chambers.
Liaoning-style daggers.
Japonic.
Koreanic.
Everything that kept making us shout:
LIAONING!
is somewhere in this larger world.
But that does not mean the Songhua–Liao region was some magical birthplace of Koreans.
This isn't East Africa.
There was no single population sitting here one day that suddenly became Korean.
Quite the opposite.
This place was a crossroads.
Sinitic states pushed northeast.
Steppe peoples moved east and south.
Mongolic-speaking peoples expanded across the northern plains.
Tungusic-speaking peoples moved through the forests and river valleys.
Later, Jurchen and Manchu powers expanded southwest and south.
Japonic speakers appear to have moved toward Korea and eventually Japan.
Koreanic speakers somehow emerged from this same northeastern mess and moved south onto the peninsula.
And underneath all of them were probably people whose names and languages we will never know.
People who did not arrive dramatically enough to get a chapter in a Chinese history book.
People who simply lived there.
They hunted.
Fished.
Farmed millet.
Learned to grow rice.
Built houses.
Raised pigs and cattle.
Made pottery.
Buried their dead.
Copied useful things from their neighbors.
Invented their own shit.
Married strangers.
Fought strangers.
Became strangers.
And survived.
And two thousand years later, some Chinese dude sitting thousand of miles away finally looked northeast and started writing down names:
Ye.
Maek.
(confusingly) Yemaek.
Buyeo.
Goguryeo.
That doesn't mean those were the first people who lived there.
It means they were among the first whose names survived enough to be connected to Koreans.
- ה -
And there was China
For the first time in the entire series I need to talk about the history of others next to Korea.
Historically, Korean states have always been hyperfocused on what happened around them. If you're a small country surrounded by a billion people you don't have a choice. Especially if some of those people regularly rise up and invade your country.
A crap ton of Chinese, of every flavor imaginable.
The Xiongnu.
The Xianbei.
The Göktürks.
The Mongols.
The Japanese.
The Khitan.
The Jurchen-Manchu.
For most of Korean history, Korea had to be hyper-aware, but lacked the power to do anything about it.
The survival playbook was almost always the same:
Chinese dynasties devolve into chaos
→ Watch and send envoys.
A new northern tribe rises
→ Watch and send envoys (occasionally stand up, get slapped down).
A new Chinese dynasty emerges
→ Watch and send envoys.
But like Balhae, the kingdom that would eventually succeed it, Goguryeo was different. It represented a state that not only needed to be aware of East Asian geopolitics, but actually had the power to shape it.
And unlike Balhae, which mostly only had to deal with one unified Chinese dynasty (the Tang), Goguryeo faced a shit ton of different Chinese dynasties.
To understand Goguryeo, you have to understand the geopolitical meatgrinder operating just across the border.
A short history of China
(in relation to Korea)
This is not meant to be a deep historical overview of China. Our scope still remains singular:
Where do Koreans come from?
This breakout section exists solely to provide context to our "Korean" story.
A history of indisputable "Not-Us" constantly:
trading
sharing
teaching
invading
killing
writing
lying
subjugating
influencing
destroying
helping
allying
betraying
discriminating
accepting
elevating
denigrating
Koreans over millennia.
When China sneezes, Korea dies of the flu.
Before Yan pushed east into Liaoning, what we can reasonably call the Chinese political world was still centered much farther west and south, first around the Shang and Zhou heartlands of the Yellow River, and later among the competing states of the Eastern Zhou period. On its northeastern edge sat frontier polities such as Guzhu and, eventually, Yan around modern Beijing and Hebei.
Liaoning was a different world.
For thousands of years, Liaoxi and Liaodong had developed through their own succession of archaeological cultures: Xinglongwa, Hongshan, Xiaoheyan, Xiajiadian and others. By the Bronze Age the region contained fortified settlements, agricultural communities, pastoral peoples, local chiefs and increasingly complex political societies. Farther east, similar processes were unfolding across Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula.
We do not know what most of these people called themselves. Chinese records eventually give us names such as Shanrong, Donghu, Yemaek and Gojoseon, but those names appear only intermittently and cannot simply be mapped backward onto every archaeological culture.
Some of these societies may have been tribes. Others may have been confederations, chiefdoms, or early states. By the fourth century BCE, Gojoseon was clearly emerging in the written record as a significant northeastern polity.
What they were not, however, was politically part of the Shang, Zhou, or the other states we can reasonably call China.
There was trade. There was technological exchange. Objects, crops, bronze-working traditions and ideas crossed the frontier in both directions.
That changed around 300 BCE, when the State of Yan stopped merely living beside this northeastern world and began conquering its way into it.
│
The State of Yan (연나라; 燕國): to be discussed later in the Gojoseon section
~11C BCE - 222 BCE
Around ~300 BCE–222 BCE, Yan becomes the first Chinese state to directly project political and military power into Liaoning.
Neighboring Korean States: Gojoseon
│
The Qin Dynasty (진나라; 秦朝): to be discussed later in the Gojoseon section
221 BCE – 206 BCE
Qin destroys the remaining Yan state in Liaodong in 222 BCE, inherits Yan's territory, completes the unification of China in 221 BCE, and collapses in 206 BCE.
Neighboring Korean States: Gojoseon
│
The Han Dynasty (한나라; 漢朝)
202 BCE – 220 CE
Neighboring Korean States: Gojoseon (destroyed 108 BCE), early Buyeo, and emerging Goguryeo
To understand the scale of what the Han Dynasty was, look at what Chinese people call themselves today. They don't call themselves the "Qin" or the "Zhou." Over 90% of modern China identifies as "Han Chinese" (漢人). The writing system used across East Asia, including Korea’s Hanja, literally means "Han characters" (漢字). The Han Dynasty didn't just rule a territory; they forged the cultural, political, and ethnic identity of the Chinese civilization that still exists today.
But they didn't start from a position of absolute strength, they inherited the burning wreckage of the Qin Dynasty. The Qin had brutally unified China, built the first iterations of the Great Wall, and then immediately imploded in a catastrophic civil war. For its first few decades, the Han were just trying to survive and appease the massive Xiongnu nomadic confederation to the north. But by the time Emperor Wu (한무제; 漢武帝) took the throne, the Han had consolidated its wealth and transformed into an aggressive, expansionist superpower.
The Han Dynasty transformed Liaodong from a defensive border into a heavily militarized staging ground for imperial expansion. In 108 BCE, Emperor Wu launched a two-pronged invasion of Gojoseon: one army marched east from Liaodong while another crossed the Bohai from Qi. The invasion initially went badly, but after a prolonged siege and political fractures inside Gojoseon, Wanggeom fell in 108 BCE. This decisive victory pushed Chinese administrative control further east than ever before. Han planted four commanderies (한사군; 漢四郡) into the former Gojoseon world. But that control immediately began contracting: Jinbeon and Imdun were abolished by 82 BCE, and Xuantu was forced west around 75 BCE. Goguryeo subsequently expanded into precisely this retreating frontier.
The Han didn't just bring armies; they brought soft power. The longest-lasting commandery, Lelang (낭랑; Nangnang), became a massive trade hub pumping Chinese iron, writing, and luxury goods into the Korean peninsula. It was a cultural beachhead. But military control was expensive and the locals were incredibly hostile. By the time the Eastern Han restored order after a brief Chinese civil war, Goguryeo had evolved from a frontier nuisance into a predator, systematically raiding Han outposts to siphon off supplies, weapons, and population.
The different phases of Han:
Western Han (전한; 前漢)
202 BCE–9 CE
This is the imperial juggernaut. This is the Han of Emperor Wu that marched east, destroyed Gojoseon, and planted the Four Commanderies in Korea's backyard. But by the 1st century CE, the royal family had grown weak, and a highly ambitious government official named Wang Mang effectively stole the throne.
Xin (신나라; 新)
9–23 CE
Wang Mang declared his own new dynasty (Xin), tried to radically reform the entire Chinese economy, and utterly destroyed it. His 14-year reign was a catastrophic mess of peasant uprisings, famine, and civil war.
Because Wang Mang had to pull his military back to fight domestic rebellions, the northeastern border was left largely undefended. Goguryeo used this exact window of Chinese chaos to stop paying tribute, ignore Chinese authority, and begin aggressively raiding Han outposts.
Eastern Han (후한; 後漢)
25–220 CE
A member of the original Han royal family fought his way through the civil war, killed the usurpers, and restored the dynasty. They moved the capital further east (hence "Eastern" Han) and managed to stabilize the empire for another century. They reasserted control over the Korean commanderies, but Goguryeo was no longer a minor tribe, they had used the Xin intermission to consolidate power and were now a permanent, heavily armed predator on the border.
The Gongsun Warlords (요동 공손씨 정권; 遼東 公孫氏政權)
189 CE – 238 CE
Late Han / Early Three Kingdoms Period (후한 / 초기 삼국시대; 後漢 / 初期 三國時代)
Neighboring Korean States: Goguryeo and Buyeo
As the Han Dynasty collapsed, a local warlord family, the Gongsun (공선; 公孫) seized control of Liaodong. Operating out of Xiangping, modern Liaoyang, they functioned as an independent polity, playing Goguryeo, the nomadic tribes, and the rising Chinese states against each other until Sima Yi (사마의; 司馬懿) of Cao Wei led a brutal campaign to exterminate them.
For half a century, the Gongsun were an absolute menace to the Korean kingdoms. They weren't just guarding the border; they were actively projecting power eastward. To tighten their grip on the lucrative trade routes flowing into the southern Korean peninsula, they actually carved out a brand new commandery, Daifang (대방군; 帶方郡), right beneath the existing Lelang commandery.
They also repeatedly punched Goguryeo in the mouth. In the early 200s CE, the warlord Gongsun Kang launched a massive strike into Goguryeo, actively meddling in a royal succession dispute and hitting them so hard that he forced the Goguryeo court to abandon their capital and relocate to the highly defensible mountain fortress of Hwando.
So, in 238 CE, when the rising Chinese powerhouse of Cao Wei (조위; 曹魏) finally decided they were sick of the Gongsun family's rogue independence and sent the legendary general Sima Yi to wipe them out, Goguryeo saw an opportunity for payback. The Goguryeo king enthusiastically sent thousands of troops to help Sima Yi crush the Gongsun at Xiangping.
It was a highly successful military operation, but a catastrophic geopolitical blunder.
Goguryeo got their revenge, but by helping annihilate the Gongsun, they destroyed their own buffer state. Overnight, Goguryeo found itself sharing a direct border with Cao Wei, the most aggressive, heavily militarized superpower in East Asia. That mistake would nearly cost them their entire civilization just a few years later.
Cao Wei (조위;曹魏) and Western Jin (서진; 西晉)
220 CE – 316 CE
Period in China: Three Kingdoms and Western Jin Period (삼국 및 서진 시대; 三國 및 西晉 時代)
Neighboring Korean States: Goguryeo (Three Kingdoms of Korea period begins)
To understand the scale of the threat Goguryeo was dealing with, you have to realize exactly who Cao Wei was. This wasn't just a generic Chinese state, this was the empire built by Cao Cao (조조; 曹操) of Samgukjiyeonui (Romance of the Three Kingdoms; 三國志演義) fame.
Cao Wei was the undisputed heavyweight of the Three Kingdoms era. It controlled the wealthy, populous northern Chinese heartland and possessed the most formidable, battle-hardened military machine in East Asia. When Goguryeo sent troops to help wipe out the Gongsun warlords, the general they were assisting was Sima Yi (사마의), Cao Wei’s legendary chief strategist.
Once Wei stabilized their new border, they had zero tolerance for rogue neighbors. But Goguryeo miscalculated. Feeling confident after the Gongsun defeat, Goguryeo began raiding Wei outposts.
Wei's response was apocalyptic. In 244 CE, Wei general Guanqiu Jian (관구검; 毌丘儉) marched Cao Cao's veteran military machine into Goguryeo. He didn't just defeat them; he nearly wiped them off the map entirely. The Wei forces slaughtered the Goguryeo army, broke through their mountain defenses, and burned the capital of Hwando to the ground. The Goguryeo king was chased deep into the eastern wilderness of Okjeo, barely escaping with his life.
But Wei made a critical mistake: they didn't stay to occupy the harsh, mountainous territory. They packed up and went home. Goguryeo crawled out of the ashes, rebuilt its capital, and waited.
They didn't have to wait long, thanks to the Western Jin.
So, what exactly is the Western Jin, and why are they lumped in with Cao Wei? Because geographically, militarily, and institutionally, it was the exact same empire, just with a hostile corporate takeover. In 266 CE, Sima Yi’s grandson did to the Cao family exactly what the Cao family had done to the Han Dynasty: he stole the throne, purged the Cao royal family, and rebranded the empire as "Jin" (진).
The Western Jin briefly managed to unify all of China in 280 CE, but within a few decades, the Sima family tore itself apart in a catastrophic civil war known as the War of the Eight Princes (팔왕의 난; 八王之亂). This internal bleeding left northern China completely exposed.
As the Western Jin collapsed and a flood of northern nomads invaded, turning northern China into a chaotic bloodbath of warring tribes known as the Sixteen Kingdoms (오호십육국; 五胡十六國), Goguryeo made its move (we briefly talked about the Sisteen Kingdoms Period in our very first post of the series).
Under King Micheon (미천왕; 300–331 CE), Goguryeo unleashed its rebuilt military, swept west, and in 313 CE finally overran Lelang (낙랑군; 樂浪郡). The following year, Daifang fell as well. After four hundred years, Goguryeo had permanently wiped the last remnants of the Han commanderies from the map. The Chinese foothold on the Korean peninsula was dead.
But we get ahead ourselves. Nothing after Xin matters right now, we need to talk about Goguryeo's beginning.
We will return to China as the history of Goguryeo continues.
Goguryeo is the lead vocal and saxophone.
China is the underlying bass and drums.
- ה -
Goguryeo: ~c. 37 BCE-668 CE
Now we finally get to tell the story of Goguryeo.
The unapologetically kick-ass, take-no-prisoners Korean state.
And Goguryeo finally allows me to stop shouting, LIAONING!!!
Because Goguryeo is different.
Goguryeo did not merely come from the world north of the Korean Peninsula.
Goguryeo lived there.
At its height, it controlled the Yalu/Amnok basin, much of Liaodong and eastern Liaoning, southern Manchuria, northern Korea, and eventually the Han River basin. At its peak between c. 475-551 CE it controlled approximately 380,000 km² of territory. According to Tang records in c. 668, there were approximately 697,000 households (호; 戶), perhaps 3-3.5 million people, probably more.
The land we have spent this entire story treating as the place Korean ancestors may have come from suddenly becomes part of the political world of a state everyone comfortably calls Korean.
Which raises an awkward question that appeared when we talked about Balhae:
Where, exactly, does “Korea” start and end?
And so it happens.
The son of heaven, Haemosu (해모수),
and the daughter of the land and rivers, Yuhwa (유화),
fall in love, get married, and she gets pregnant.
and the daughter of the land and rivers, Yuhwa (유화),
fall in love, get married, and she gets pregnant.
The son of heaven has to return to the sky,
and the daughter of land and rivers is unable to follow him,
and she is taken into the protection of the King of Buyeo.
and the daughter of land and rivers is unable to follow him,
and she is taken into the protection of the King of Buyeo.
She lays an egg that emerges from her left armpit.
The egg hatches and the child is amazing.
He's so good at archery, he's named Jumong
(apparently "Jumong" means someone that's fucking good at archery).
..blah, blah, blah...
Jealousy. Intrigue. Some horse beating.
...blah, blah, blah...
Jumong can no longer stay in Buyeo.
...blah, blah, blah...
Jumong escapes with his best friends. Buyeo forces are hot on his heels.
They meet a river.
Fish and turtles rise up to form a bridge so Jumong can cross.
Jumong enters the rugged mountain country around Mt. Baekdu,
and reaches a valley surrounded by high mountains around Jolbon,
modern day Huanren Manchu Autonomous County,
probably Wunü Mountain City sitting at 820 meters above sea level.
Establishes something yet to be named.
But there are others already there.
...blah, blah, blah...
Magic. Fantastic feats.
The Biryu king capitulates.
Other kings join Jumong.
...blah, blah, blah....
Jumong establishes a state and calls it
Goguryeo.
The time is 37 BCE.
The traditional date of the founding of Goguryeo.
Just another founding myth? Yes.
A weird one? Yes.
Strangely specific? Also, Yes.
True? Of course not.
But, myths often carry memories that people have forgotten.
Buyeo.
Jumong.
Archery.
Horses.
Jolbon.
Biryu and a bunch of other valley kingdoms.
Goguryeo.
And an armpit (the left one).
Remember these things.
---
Not one. Not quite two.
We humans are a strange bunch.
We are born as individuals, but the moment we're born, we are dependent on others to survive.
The "others" have a names:
Mother.
Father.
Brothers and sisters.
Grandmothers and grandfathers.
Uncles and aunts.
Family. Clan. Tribe. State. Nation. People.
Us.
An ever expanding concentric circle of Us.
Defined only by the existence of Not-Us.
我 vs. 非我
Small Us when it suits us.
Bigger Us when it suits us.
Small Us in peace.
Bigger Us in conflict.
This is what being a human means.
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Ever expanding and contracting Us's depending on the situation.
The boundaries of Us are sometimes weak.
The boundaries of Us are sometimes strong.
The boundaries of Us are sometimes strong enough to make us forget the smaller Us's.
The boundaries of Us are sometimes so powerful that it defines I, through:
Soil.
Stuff.
Blood.
Words.
Books.
and obviously Myth wrapped up in Desinty.
And that was the world around Jolbon when Jumong arrived.
But of course this is not unique to Korea, or in Goguryeo's case, to the Greater Songhua-Liao World.
1. The 12 Tribes of Israel.
Reuben, Simeon. Levi. Judah. Dan. Naphtali. Gad. Asher. Issachar. Zebulon. Joseph. Benjamin. Plus Ephraim and Manasseh, which would make it 14, which apparently pissed some ancient scribes off so much that Ephraim and Manasseh became sons of Joseph.
The Tanakh, what Christians call the Old Testament, even disagree on the 12.
- Genesis 49 lists the "correct" 12.
- Numbers 1 & 26; Joshua 13-19 lists 12, but a different 12, saying that Joseph was now Ephraim and Manasseh.
- The oldest surviving text, The Song of Deborah (Judges 5), lists Machir and Gilead dropping Manasseh and Gad, and leaving out a bunch of other tribes, for a total of 10. Most notably, Judah is missing from Debra, ironic since Judah is where the word "Jew" comes from.
- Deuteronomy 33, forgets to mention Simeon.
- Ezekiel 48 counts 13.
And the way they governed before Saul? Judges. King, but not quite.
And when they fought others? Each tribe made their own decisions, with a lot of social shaming involved if they didn't.
And after Saul? Plenty of evidence of smaller Us's dynamically interacting with a larger, less defined Us.
And then the word the Egyptians used to call them? Shasu.
→
It's like the Chinese bundling up everyone northeast of them and then calling them one name.
Oh yeah, they did that, Dongyi; the "Eastern Barbarians". Yi, because their definition of Us was apparently a little tighter than those not Us. Probably, no one who lived east of China called themselves Yi. Ironically, at some point in time, the Israelites may have called themselves the Shasu.
2. The Germanii
Julius Caesar looked north and saw a bunch of smelly, quite primitive to his Roman eyes, people who could fight like crazy.
The name he gave them? Germans and Gauls.
Gauls for those who played well with Romans.
Germans for those that didn't.
But to the individual people he was pointing to, none of them considered themselves "German." At their largest Us, they thought of themselves as Suebi, Tencteri, Usipetes, Sugambri, Ubil, Cisrhenani and a dozen, if not hundreds of different names.
Germanii was a "You" title made up by Caesar, to make sure he had a foe memorable enough to fight, and brag about.
To the various tribes, they probably lived their entire lives never even hearing the word "German."
Their Us was their individual tribe.
Sometimes living peacefully.
Sometimes fighting with each other.
Sometimes choosing to join hands to temporarily form a larger Us to fight fucking Caesar.
And so they remained until the Us hardened.
To this day the German Us is not singular.
You have Austrian Us vs. Germany Us.
You have Bavarian German vs. Hessen German vs. Saxon German vs. all the other German Germans.
You even have Borussia Dortmund German vs. Schalke 04 German (don't believe me? you need to watch some Bundesliga games).
→
We see this in Korea and the rest of East Asia. Us fracturing, combining, becoming state-like, dissolving into less state-like entities. But always following the same fracture lines.
Tiny Us → Small Us → Biggesr Us → Small Us → Huge fucking Us → Small Us
3. The Ummah
Before Mohammed, there were the Quraysh, the Banu Thaqif, the Hawazin, the Aws and Khazraj, the Banu Ghatafan, the Banu Bakr & Banu Khuza'a, and even the Jewish Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, and Banu Qurayza.
After Muhammed, most of those same tribes remained, in fact the list grew considerably.
To this day, these tribes still exist, and exert immense power and authority.
Tribe first. Muslim second. Arab third.
Countries fit in there fluidly, always changing depending on who has the bigger stick.
In fact the greatest split in Islam today is based on how Muslims define Us.
I'm grossly oversimplifying this, but:
- If you think it's blood, then you're Shia.
- If you think it's something a little more complicated, then you're Sunni.
- And if you don't like either extreme, then you are one of a dozen other types of Muslim, or a heretic, sometimes both (like the Druze).
The Ummah is a perfect description of Us.
It could mean:
All Muslims
All Sunni Muslims
All Muslims that pledged loyalty to a certain Caliph, or Shah.
All Muslims that had no choice but to pledge loyalty to a certain Caliph, or Shah.
→
And so was the Songhua-Liao region and the Korean Peninsula as well.
This is me.
This is my family.
This is my village.
This is my clan.
This is my tribe.
This is my country, state, nation.
Until someone with a big enough stick and a complex book of rules comes and suggests I think otherwise. But once that stick disappears? I devolve into ever decreasing circles of Us.
Not one, not quite two.
---
The beginnings of Goguryeo
~100 BCE / 37 BCE - ~56 CE
Talking about early Goguryeo history is incredibly challenging. The historical records are simply not there.
Goguryeo was initially too small to attract much attention from the Chinese scribes writing about the world around them, so what survives is a mixture of myth, scattered foreign records, and stuff that somehow survived while consecutive civilizations built on top of everything else.
- Myths involve eggs hatching from armpits.
- Historical records either don't exist, or was written with such a strong Chinese worldview that they have to be read carefully.
- Stuff just tells bad stories.
- And now that China has decided to "claim" all of Songhua-Liao history as theirs through the Northeast Project (东北工程; Dōngběi Gōngchéng), you also have to filter out Chinese Nationalistic bullshit.
So it involves a lot of educated guessing. You stich together what you can, look carefully at the Soil and the Stuff, use reason to tell a coherent story, an then compare your guesses against everyone elses's guesses.
For early Goguryeo, I am mostly stuck with the Samguk Sagi and Chinese records because that's basically all we have. The later Goguryeo inscriptions can sometimes tell us how Goguryeo itself remembered its beginnings, but they were written centuries afterward.
For middle Goguryeo, something wonderful happens.
Goguryeo starts speaking for itself.
We have:
- Ji'an Goguryeo Stele (집안고구려비; 集安高句麗碑): c. 397–410?
- Gwanggaeto Stele (광개토대왕릉비; 廣開土大王陵碑): 414 CE
- Chungju Goguryeo Stele (충주 고구려비; 忠州高句麗碑): c. 449–495?
- And a few surviving inscriptions on tombs.
For late Goguryeo: whatever records I can get my hands on.
Whenever possible, I will use the various Goguryeo stelae and other surviving Goguryeo writing as my primary sources, because they were written by Goguryeo people, in Goguryeo soil, during the period being described.
The Samguk Sagi comes second. At least it was written within the Korean historical tradition, even though it dates to 1145 and was written by Kim Busik, a man with a definite Silla-centered perspective, a deeply Sino-centric worldview, and, more importantly, political reasons for writing history the way he did.
Chinese records come next, to corroborate events and fill in the enormous blanks.
None of these sources is neutral.
I have no magic way of filtering out their biases.
But for once,
when Goguryeo itself left words behind, I am going to let Goguryeo speak first.
One final note.
Do not take reason for granted.
- The records are incredibly confusing, and often contradict each other.
- Two different states point at the same place, at the same time, and call it theirs.
- Chinese court records in particular have every incentive to inflate victories, minimize losses, and leave inconvenient things out.
The major ethnic labels attached to the peoples of Northeast Asia are also a mess. They are inconsistent, unstable, and often written through a deeply Chinese hierarchy of Us and Barbarian. Some of the characters used for these peoples are openly ugly. Maek 貊 is written with a beast radical. Ye 濊 carries meanings like filthy, foul, or turbid. Other peoples are shoved into the great bureaucratic boxes of Yi 夷, Di 狄, Rong 戎, Man 蠻: East Barbarian, North Barbarian, West Barbarian, South Barbarian.
So when the records start throwing around Ye, Maek, Yemaek, Yilou, Sushen, Wuji, Mohe, I do not assume those are clean ethnic groups simply because some Chinese scribe wrote a different word.
- Sometimes the same people get different names.
- Sometimes different people get the same name.
- Sometimes a name moves.
- Sometimes it disappears.
- Sometimes it comes back centuries later attached to somebody else.
At some point, the labels stop making rational sense unless you remember who was doing the labeling.
Recorded history often tells a story that is not compatible with Soil.
- Mountain fortresses in the middle of plains.
- People teleporting from one place to another.
- Huge cities appearing where the land could never support huge populations.
- Armies crossing terrain that the story seems not to understand.
Soil and Stuff are silent.
But they can smell bullshit from a mile away.
They just need reason to do it.
---
From the Jumong myth:
Buyeo.
Jumong.
Archery.
Horses.
Jolbon.
Biryu and a bunch of other valley kingdoms.
Goguryeo.
And an armpit (the left one).
Based on the evidence that we have this is what we can piece together.
1. Buyeo, archery and horses
Whoever the founders of Goguryeo were, they seem to be exiles from Buyeo, another Koreanic-speaking Ye/Maek/Yemaek people that existed in the region for roughly 600 years (~2C BCE - 494 CE). We know they spoke Koreanic because the Sanguozhi (三國志) says something about their language like:
Buyeo ≈ Goguryeo ≈ Okjeo ≈ Ye / Dongye
The Sanguozhi (三國志) also differentiates between the Ye and Maek people, using Maek almost interchangeably with Goguryeo. Ye, they located to the far east.
Buyeo is important here because its heartland lay in the central Songhua basin, broadly around modern Jilin and Changchun. Overlooking the central Manchurian plain, and cradled by the Sounghua River. They bred horses that were famous throughout the region, and mounted warfare was deeply embedded in their world, a tradition Goguryeo would later develop into one of its defining military strengths.
While Buyeo was an established state, like many other states around it, it seems to have been somewhere between a tribal confederation and a centralized polity. A "chief- of-chiefs" that led a coalition of five tribes, a center run by the king, surrounded by four outward Ga (사출도/가; 加: 마가, 우가, 저가, 구가), who maintained significant autonomy, collected their own taxes, commanded their own troops, and fielded their own armies. This is important since this was probably what the political environment surrounding nascent Goguryeo was.
2. From Buyeo to Jolbon (졸본; 卒本)
Whether Jumong actually fled Buyeo to Jolbon can never be proven. But if we were to believe at least some of it, he travelled approximately 350 kilometers directly south, a trip that would have taken him at least 7 days. He would have had to cross multiple rivers and travel along increasingly rugged valleys shaped by steep mountains. In each of these valleys, close to rivers and water sources, he would have encountered multiple villages of varying size. Each semi-independent, but tied to larger tribal networks, similar to how Buyeo was organized, but deep inside mountains. After a while, as the Changbai mountains got deeper, the influence of Buyeo over those villages would have reduced. Each village becoming a small state onto itself.
3. Jolbon (졸본; 卒本), Hwando (환도; 丸都) and Gungnaesung (국내성; 國內城)
Finally arriving in Jolbon, Jumong would have encountered a moderately wide plain, with millet farms on both sides of the Hun River (혼강; 渾江), a major tributary of the Yalu/Amnok River (압록강; 鴨綠江), and steep mountains everywhere. The large Huanren reservoir you see on the map above would not have existed at that time.
Jolbon was not empty. It was occupied by existing tribal polities, of the type we mentioned above. Chinese records later remembered Goguryeo as five constituent groups: Sono, Jeollo, Sunno, Gwanno and Gyeru. Korean records preserve related names using 나 (那): Biryuna, Yeonnabu, Hwanna, Gwanna, and Gyeru.
The Jumong tradition remembers an existing ruler named Songyang, king of Biryu, already established around Jolbon when Jumong arrived. Later records tell us that Sono, probably the same political group remembered as Biryu/Biryuna, originally held the kingship before the Gyeru group replaced it.
That sounds considerably less like somebody founding an empty country and considerably more like one political group taking control of an existing federation.
Jolbon sat inside one valley statelet, called 나(那) in the records.
Now look at all the valleys in the map below. I'm not saying that each dot there is a Na, but they could be. That's a lot of potential Nas.
Goguryeo took them one by one:
- Biryu-guk first (near Jolbon) in ~36 BCE,
- Haengin-guk (near Mt. Baekdu?) in ~32 BCE
- North Okjeo (Tumen River basin) in ~28 BCE,
- Gaema-guk and Guda-guk (the Gaema plateu) in 26 CE
- Dong Okjeo (northeast Korean coast) in 56 CE.
As Goguryeo expanded, its center eventually shifted from the Jolbon/Huanren valley south toward Ji'an on the Yalu/Amnok River. Here a much more characteristic Goguryeo capital system emerged: Gungnaesong (국내성; 國內城) on the valley floor, with Hwando (환도; 丸都) looming in the mountains behind it.
One for living.
One for surviving.
And sometime in between all this expansion, someone from Gyerubu establishes the royal Go (고; 高) bloodline that would rule Goguryeo until its fall in 668 CE.
Eventually Goguryeo ran out of little valley polities to swallow and began colliding with much larger powers: Buyeo to the north, the Xuantu commandery and the various rulers of Liaodong to the west, and eventually the Murong Xianbei.
Tradition puts the founding of Goguryeo at ~c. 37 BCE. But realistically, I think Goguryeo may have begun its foundation journey before that, at around ~100-75 BCE. But that's just my guess.
~37 BCE is probably when the Jumong Gyerobu line became the hereditary royal line.
The biggest reason I think this is Xuantu.
In 75 BCE, the Han commandery of Xuantu, which administered this northeastern world, was forced westward under pressure from the local Yi-Maek populations. Under the reconstruction I'm using, its original center was only about 33 miles north of Jolbon, right inside the same valley world from which Goguryeo emerged.
The Hou Hanshu records:
後為夷貊所侵，徙郡於高句驪西北
(“Later it was invaded by the Yi-Maek, so the commandery was moved to the northwest of Goguryeo.”)
募郡國徒築遼東、玄菟城
(“Men were recruited from the commanderies and kingdoms to build the fortifications at Liaodong and Xuantu.”)
75 BCE.
Thirty-eight years before Jumong supposedly founded Goguryeo.
Maybe that's coincidence.
I don't think it is.
But as I said, that's just me.
37 BCE may not be when Goguryeo began.
It may be when the story remembered which group won.
---
Breaking out of the mountains: taking Lelang
56 - 314 CE
By 56 CE, Goguryeo had largely finished swallowing the smaller valleys and peoples immediately around its mountain homeland. It had followed the Amnok northeast into Buk Okjeo (North Okjeo), then swung south into Dong Okjeo (East Okjeo). Goguryeo now reached the East Sea and controlled a long stretch of the northeastern peninsula, from the Tumen/Najin world down toward Hamheung.
There were still places east and south that remained distinct. But the easy expansion was over.
To grow any farther, Goguryeo now had to push west and south.
And west was different.
West was the Xuantu (현도군) commandery.
West was Liaodong.
West was the heavily fortified, administrative machinery of the Han Empire.
West was beyond the Changbai.
Beyond the mountain exits, west opened onto the Liaodong plain, a completely different battlefield from the valleys Goguryeo had learned to dominate.
For the next two hundred and fifty years, Goguryeo would repeatedly smash itself against that frontier.
Sometimes it won.
Sometimes it lost horribly.
Sometimes it bowed, sent tribute, waited a few years, and attacked again.
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the frontier moved.
Around the turn of the second century, Goguryeo pressure helped force the Xuantu Commandery out of the Suzi River basin and farther west toward Fushun (2nd Xuantu → 3rd Xuantu on the map).
That was not yet a conquest of Liaodong.
The Chinese administrative frontier had once sat inside the mountain approaches to Goguryeo.
Now it was retreating out of them.
And Goguryeo followed.
In 105 CE, Goguryeo and Maek forces raided six counties of Liaodong.
Han counterattacked and defeated them.
So Goguryeo did something it would become very good at doing.
It stopped.
In 111, it sent tribute through Xuantu and temporarily accommodated itself to Han.
Then seven years later, it attacked again.
This time in two directions.
Xuantu to the west.
And Huali, one of the old eastern Lelang counties, far to the southeast.
Goguryeo was no longer merely defending the valleys around Jolbon and Gungnae.
It was beginning to feel along the edges of the entire Han frontier system.
Looking for weakness.
And in 121–122, it found a fight.
Han sent the inspector of Youzhou and the governors of both Xuantu and Liaodong against Goguryeo.
Goguryeo counterattacked.
Settlements burned.
Thousands were killed or captured.
Yemaek and Xianbei forces joined attacks on Liaodong.
The Liaodong governor Cai Feng was killed.
Goguryeo then joined with Yemaek and, bizarrely, a group the Hou Hanshu calls Mahan, and besieged Xuantu itself.
And then, wonderfully, Buyeo showed up on Han's side and ruined everything.
Dad had apparently decided his son was getting a little too ambitious.
The siege broke.
Xuantu survived.
And the frontier remained.
This becomes the rhythm of early Goguryeo history.
Push west.
Get pushed back.
Wait.
Push again.
In 146, Goguryeo struck at a place that would become increasingly important:
Xi'anping (서안평; 西安平).
Xi'anping sat near the mouth of the Amnok River (Yalu; 鴨綠江), where the routes from Liaodong crossed toward Lelang and the Korean Peninsula.
It was not merely another frontier county.
It was part of the cord connecting the mainland to the commanderies in the south.
Goguryeo killed the magistrate of Daifang County there and captured members of the Lelang governor's family.
They had found the artery.
They just weren't strong enough to cut it yet.
The next century was ugly.
Han armies came east.
According to the Samguk Sagi, in 172 Goguryeo refused to meet a large Han invasion in the open.
Instead, the famous Goguryeo Prime Minister Myeongnim Dap-bu (명림답부) emptied the countryside, held the fortresses and waited.
Now look at the map.
The Han army probably walked east down the valleys from Liaodong towards Jolbon. Flanked on each side by high mountains.
You see nothing.
Every last ounce of food was taken into mountain fortresses.
The fields were burned.
The villages razed.
You've probably been harassed all the way.
You're tired, you're hungry, you're cold.
And then you finally arrive.
To your front is the Hun River blocking you.
You look up and Holbon Fortress (홀본성) stands 200 meters above you.
Sheer mountains, and a 8-meter-high ring of walls around it.
Archers at every parapet.
You make a few attempts at attacking, but it's not easy.
Goguryeo walls are no fucking joke.
Soon you're running out of food because no supplies are coming through, and there is nothing left to find.
You make the only sane choice left to you.
You retreat.
Back through the valley towards Liaodong.
But this time Goguryeo forces are not standing back.
They attack.
They attack again.
The records say:
"Not one horse returned."
Some dismiss the Jwawon battle as Goguryeo propaganda. Many experts agree.
But if I look at the map, I'm not too sure.
The strategy would become unmistakably Goguryeo:
mountains + fortresses + distance + hunger + bitter cold.
An invading army did not merely have to defeat Goguryeo.
It had to remain alive long enough to do it.
Another Liaodong attack came in 184.
Again, Goguryeo survived.
Then the world to the west began falling apart.
By the end of the second century, the Han Empire was collapsing, and the Gongsun family turned Liaodong into something approaching its own hereditary state.
This should have been good news for Goguryeo.
It wasn't.
A Goguryeo succession dispute gave the Gongsun regime an opening.
Balgi, having lost the struggle for the throne, went west looking for help.
The Gongsun family intervened, but failed.
Goguryeo came under enormous pressure.
Around this same period it built Hwando and shifted its political center into the paired fortress system around Gungnaesong (modern day Ji'an).
One city for living.
One city for surviving.
Meanwhile, the Gongsun regime did something even more annoying.
Instead of allowing the old Han commandery system to die, it rebuilt it.
Around 204, Gongsun Kang carved the southern half away from Lelang and created a new commandery:
Daifang (대방군; 帶方郡).
The old Chinese frontier system was changing hands.
It was not disappearing.
And yet the direction of human movement was beginning to change.
In 217, more than a thousand households from the Liaodong frontier crossed into Goguryeo and were resettled at Chaekseong.
People were no longer only moving from the mainland into the commanderies.
They were beginning to move into Goguryeo.
Then Goguryeo made what must have seemed like a very sensible decision.
The Gongsun family had become a problem for both Goguryeo and the new Chinese state of Cao Wei.
So they became allies.
In 238, Sima Yi marched into Liaodong.
King Dongcheon (동천왕; 227–248 CE) contributes Goguryeo troops.
The Gongsun regime was annihilated.
Problem solved.
Except Goguryeo had just helped destroy the buffer between itself and the strongest state in northern China.
Four years later, the same Goguryeo king who helped defeat the Gongsun clan, King Dongcheon, attacked Xi'anping again.
Cao Wei responded.
And this time Goguryeo nearly died.
In 244, the Wei general Guanqiu Jian invaded.
Goguryeo was defeated.
Hwando fell.
The capital was sacked.
King Dongcheon fled east.
Wei armies pursued him deep through Okjeo and toward the northeastern frontier.
For a state that had spent two centuries learning how to survive invasion, this was catastrophe.
But not extinction.
Goguryeo rebuilt.
Again.
By 259, the Samguk Sagi already remembers another Wei force being defeated at Yangmaek Valley.
The mountains ate another invading army.
Then Wei disappeared.
Western Jin replaced it and, briefly, put China back together.
Then Jin began disintegrating.
Beginning in 291, members of the Jin royal family spent fifteen years fighting one another in the War of the Eight Princes. As the state tore itself apart, peoples who had long lived along and inside its northern frontiers began building states of their own.
This became what Chinese history calls the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms period (오호십육국; 五胡十六國). The “Five Hu” were a catch-all for five major northern peoples: Xiongnu, Jie, Xianbei, Di, and Qiang. “Sixteen Kingdoms” is equally misleading. There were more than sixteen states, constantly appearing, disappearing, merging and killing one another across northern China between roughly 304 and 439.
For Goguryeo, this did not mean the threat to the west disappeared.
It fragmented.
Instead of one enormous empire, Goguryeo now faced a rotating cast of Xianbei chiefs, Chinese warlords, collapsing dynasties and new kingdoms fighting over Liaodong.
One of them was about to become particularly important.
The Murong Xianbei.
They attacked Goguryeo in 293.
But Goguryeo was no longer merely reacting.
In 302, it attacked Xuantu with 30,000 troops, carried away thousands of people, and resettled them inside Goguryeo.
The commandery that had once administered the Goguryeo world was now being raided for population.
And then Goguryeo went after the artery.
Xi'anping.
Three times across nearly two centuries.
This time it worked.
In 311, Goguryeo finally took Xi'anping.
The route connecting Liaodong to Lelang and Daifang had been severed.
Two years later, King Micheon moved south.
In 313 CE, Goguryeo overran Lelang (낙랑군; 樂浪郡).
The commandery that Han had planted around Pyongyang after destroying Wiman Joseon in 108 BCE was gone.
The following year, Daifang disappeared as well.
It had taken more than four hundred years.
Han had once planted commanderies deep inside this northeastern world and placed a county named Goguryeo under Xuantu.
Now Xuantu had been pushed west.
Xi'anping had been taken.
Lelang was dead.
Daifang was dead.
And the little mountain polity those commanderies once looked down upon had become the power swallowing them.
Goguryeo had broken out of the mountains.
I've tried to represent this in a map as best as I could.
I mapped,
Every city and Na
Every fortress
Every attack
Every conquest
Every defeat
Every invasion
as best as I could based on every piece of information I could get my hands on.
The first phase, shown in purple (37 BCE-56 CE), was the consolidation of a mountain world. Goguryeo absorbed the surrounding Na polities one valley at a time, pushed northeast into Buk Okjeo, swung south into Dong Okjeo, and steadily expanded across the rugged uplands around its core. At the same time it kept testing the western frontier, colliding again and again with Xuantu and Liaodong, and even pushing north into Buyeo, its own “daddy-land.”
The second phase, shown in orange (56-314 CE), was different. By now the little mountain polities had stopped mattering. History still remembers a few names like Juna and Jona, but after that they disappear, swallowed into something larger. Goguryeo’s attention turned west. Xuantu kept moving west because Goguryeo kept pushing it west, until the Chinese frontier was finally expelled from the mountain approaches altogether. Then Goguryeo drove southwest, took Xi’anping, and severed the artery linking Liaodong to the southern commanderies. Once that cord was cut, the rest followed: Lelang in 313, Daifang in 314.
It was attacked many times.
It was close to being defeated many times.
It used the mountains to protect and kill its enemies.
Han was pushed out of the Korean Peninsula and the sacred mountains.
What remained were the plains.
---
Catastophy and Rebuilding
314-391 CE
314 is a triumphant place to begin. Goguryeo has just destroyed Daifang. Xi’anping is gone. Lelang is gone. The old Han commandery system south of Liaodong is finished.
After 421 years, China is gone from the Korean peninsula.
King Micheon probably didn't think that way.
The mountains, ours.
Okjeo and the northeast shores, ours.
Lelang, ours.
Daifung, ours.
The Dadeong River, ours.
But to him, his world wasn't the Korean Peninsula.
The Liao-Songhua World was.
It's only later, sitting 1,712 years afterward, that a Korean-American sitting in front of a computer writing a blog post recognizes the symbolism of it.
Micheon was probably thinking:
Liadong!
Baekje?
Then the world changed again.
Out of the chaos to Goguryeo's west, a new power was emerging: the Murong Xianbei.
They had been building their power across Liaoxi for decades under Murong Hui, fighting, absorbing populations, making alliances, and gradually turning themselves from one Xianbei confederation into a state. His son Murong Huang took over in 333, and in 337 proclaimed himself King of Yan, creating the state historians now call Former Yan (전연; 前燕).
The “Former” part came later. To the people living there, it was simply Yan. Historians had to start adding labels because the Murong family and its successors would create several different states called Yan: Former Yan, Later Yan, Western Yan, Southern Yan, and eventually Northern Yan.
Unfortunately for Goguryeo, Yan wanted exactly what Goguryeo wanted.
Liaodong.
And now two expanding states were looking at the same plain and saying:
Ours!
Goguryeo and the Murong clashed repeatedly through the following decades. In 335, Goguryeo built Sinseong on the western approaches. By 342, it was repairing Hwando and strengthening the Gungnae-Hwando defensive complex, clearly preparing for something much larger.
It was right to worry.
In 342, Murong Huang came.
Former Yan invades by two routes. Goguryeo expects the main attack on the easier northern road and sends about 50,000 elite troops there. Murong Huang does the opposite: only about 15,000 go north, while his main force of roughly 40,000 takes the difficult southern route.
The gamble works.
The southern Goguryeo force collapses.
Hwando falls.
King Gogukwon (고국원왕; 331–371 CE) escapes, but his mother and queen are captured. Former Yan digs up Micheon’s grave and carries off his corpse, loots the royal stores, burns the palace buildings, destroys Hwando, and the records claim roughly 50,000 people were taken captive.
Former Yan withdraws.
And unusually, the surviving Chinese and Korean records even tell us why.
Goguryeo’s land was difficult to occupy. Its king was still alive. Its people had scattered into the mountain valleys. Once the invading army left, they would simply gather again.
So rather than try to hold Goguryeo, Murong Huang took hostages, Micheon’s corpse, treasure, and prisoners as leverage.
That is almost a preview of the problem every later invader encounters.
Goguryeo has been catastrophically defeated.
But defeating Goguryeo and occupying Goguryeo are two completely different things.
In 343, Gogukwon submits diplomatically enough to get his father’s body returned. His mother remains a hostage until 355, when Goguryeo formally enters a tributary/investiture relationship with Former Yan and she finally comes home.
So Gogukwon spends years swallowing humiliation because he has very little choice.
In the meantime, Former Yan was not only fighting Goguryeo.
It was systematically dismantling the old powers around it.
And in 346, it went after Buyeo.
Remember Buyeo?
Daddy-land.
The old northern kingdom from which Goguryeo claimed Jumong had come. The horse-rich state of the Songhua plains. The power that, two centuries earlier, had been strong enough to intervene on Han's side and ruin Goguryeo's attack on Xuantu.
Buyeo had survived all of this while Goguryeo expanded east, south and west.
But it had not survived untouched.
The Murong had already smashed Buyeo once in 285. Its king died, members of the royal family fled toward Okjeo, and Western Jin had to help restore the kingdom the following year. Afterward, Murong forces repeatedly raided Buyeo territory and carried away its people.
Buyeo survived.
Then in 346, the Murong came back to finish the job.
According to the Chinese records, Former Yan sent 17,000 cavalry under Crown Prince Murong Jun, with Murong Ke and other generals, against Buyeo. They crushed it, captured King Hyeon, and carried away more than 50,000 people.
Murong Huang did something revealing afterward. He did not kill the captured king. He appointed Hyeon a general and married one of his daughters to him.
Former Yan had not merely raided Buyeo.
It had broken its political center, stripped away a huge part of its population, and absorbed its king into the Murong system.
Buyeo survived.
But the old Buyeo did not.
And that matters.
The great northern power that had once been strong enough to intervene against Goguryeo was now badly wounded.
For the first time, the road north was beginning to open.
Gogukwon turns his attention to the south once more.
And walks into another disaster.
- 369: he attacks Baekje with about 20,000 infantry and cavalry around Chiyang. Baekje defeats him badly.
- 371: Goguryeo attacks again and is defeated around the Pae River. Then Baekje counterattacks north with 30,000 elite troops under King Geunchogo and the crown prince.
They attack Pyongyang.
Gogukwon goes out to fight.
He is hit by an arrow and dies.
So Gogukwon’s reign is brutal:
- 342: capital destroyed, mother and wife captured, father’s corpse stolen.
- 371: killed fighting Baekje.
That leaves his son Sosurim (소수림; 371-384 CE) inheriting a state whose problem is no longer simply:
“we need to win the next battle.”
The state itself needs rebuilding.
And this is why Sosurim matters so much.
He does something remarkably unglamorous.
He stops trying to be Gwanggaeto before Goguryeo is ready for Gwanggaeto.
- 372: Former Qin sends the monk Sundo, Buddhist texts, and images. Goguryeo formally embraces Buddhism.
- 372: Sosurim establishes the Taehak (태학; 太學), a state academy.
- 373: he promulgates Yulryeong (율령; 律令), codified laws and administrative rules.
- 374: the monk Ado arrives.
Goguryeo had spent centuries becoming very good at conquering valleys.
Sosurim starts making all those valleys behave like one state.
Buddhism gives it a transregional ideology.
Taehak trains administrators.
Yulryeong gives the king a body of law that exists above individual clans, bu, and aristocratic families.
This is not cultural decoration.
This is state machinery.
Sosurim dies in 384.
His brother Gogukyang (고국양왕; 384–391 CE) takes over.
And now you get the first sign that the rebuilding worked.
In 385, Goguryeo sends a force recorded as 40,000 men, attacks west, and temporarily takes Liaodong and Xuantu from Later Yan. Yan eventually takes them back, so it is not yet permanent conquest.
But think about what that means.
342: Murong troops penetrate to Hwando and carry off the king’s family.
385: Goguryeo is invading Liaodong with tens of thousands of troops.
Forty-three years.
Then in 391, Gogukyang dies.
His son takes the throne.
Damdeok (담덕).
Better known to us as:
Gwanggaeto the Great.
---
Gwangaeto the Great and Goguryeo at its Apex
391-598 CE
Born Go Damdeok (고담덕; 高談德: high + speak + virtue) in 374, later remembered by the posthumous title Gwangaeto the Great (광개토호태왕; 374-412 CE), is one of those rare individuals who appear in history and carve their mark onto the soul of a People.
He is to Koreans what Napoleon is to the French, Frederick to the Germans, and Genghis Khan to the Mongols.
And this was the world Damdeok was born into:
- 342: Murong Yan, better known as Former Yan, sacks and destroys Hwando, Goguryeo's capital.
- His great-grandfather Micheon's corpse is dug up and stolen.
- His grandfather Gogukwon's mother and wife are carried away.
- Tens of thousands of Goguryeo people are taken.
- 346: The Murong smash Buyeo, Goguryeo's ancestral reference point.
- 371: His grandfather Gogukwon was killed fighting Baekje.
- 371-384: His uncle, Sosurim spends his reign building the foundations of a new Goguryeo.
- 385: His father, Gogukyang becomes king, and attacks takes Liaodong and Xuantu with 40,000 men in 385.
- 386: Gogukyang attacks Baekje
- 391: His father dies. Damdeok takes the throne.
He is only eighteen.
And his interitence looks like this:
A machine built by Sosurim.
Tested by his father Gogukyang.
And a lifetime of stories about humiliation, captivity, revenge, survival and recovery.
This is the world that formed him.
And now, for the first time in our story, we have an actual source worth stopping for.
When Gwanggaeto dies in 412, his son Jangsu erects an enormous stele beside his tomb in 414, recording his father's reign and accomplishments.
Not a Chinese historian describing Goguryeo from somewhere else.
Not Kim Busik writing seven centuries later.
Not a myth preserved through generations.
Goguryeo history.
Written by Goguryeo hands.
Carved into stone within living memory of the events themselves.
The Gwangaeto Stele
1,775 characters individually carved across 44 vertical lines on four faces, directly into a natural stone standing 6.39 meters tall.
Not all 1,775 characters survived cleanly. After nearly 1,500 years of weathering and vegetation, followed after its rediscovery by clearing, fire, lime and repeated rubbings, some characters are damaged or completely unreadable.
So when you see □, that isn't me leaving something out.
The stone literally no longer tells us what was there.
And then everybody forgot about it.
For almost fifteen hundred years it stood near Gwanggaeto's tomb at Ji’an, slowly disappearing beneath mud, vines and vegetation. The Qing Dynasty eventually sealed much of Manchuria from ordinary settlement, which helped isolate the entire region even further.
Then, around 1880, after the Qing reopened the area to settlement, a farmer clearing land came across an enormous stone covered in strange writing.
He reported it to the local authorities.
It was the Gwanggaeto Stele.
Which means one of our most important surviving documents about Goguryeo is actually a remarkably new addition to the historical record.
Kim Busik never read it.
Iryeon never read it.
Joseon historians never built their understanding of Goguryeo around it.
For most of the history of Korean historiography, this thing effectively did not exist.
And then things get weird.
In 1883, a Japanese army officer named Sakō Kageaki (酒匂景信) passed through Ji’an while conducting intelligence work in Manchuria. He obtained an inked tracing of the inscription and carried it back to Japan. The Japanese Army General Staff began studying it, and in 1889 published the first major complete readings and analyses of the text. Korean scholars only became broadly aware of the monument through this process.
The stele is basically divided into three parts.
First, it tells us who Goguryeo thought it was: the founding story of Chumo/Jumong, his divine ancestry, and the royal lineage leading down to Gwanggaeto.
Second, it records Gwanggaeto’s reign: his campaigns against Paeryeo, Baekje, Silla/Wa, Sushen, East Buyeo, the fortresses he took, the peoples who submitted, and the enormous armies he moved around the Songhua-Liao world and Korean Peninsula.
Finally, it turns strangely administrative, laying out rules for the people assigned to maintain the royal tombs: who they were, where they came from, and how the system was supposed to work.
So this isn’t merely a tombstone saying:
Here lies a great king.
It is part founding myth, part royal genealogy, part military résumé, and part administrative document.
And one of the first accomplishments the stele chooses to record is:
永樂五年歲在乙未
王以稗麗不□□人
躬率往討
過富山負山
至鹽水上
破其三部洛六七百營
牛馬群羊不可稱數
於是旋駕
因過襄平道
東來□城力城北豊五備□
遊觀土境
田獵而還
Yeongnak (永樂), fifth year, the year being eulmi (乙未).
because the Paeryeo (稗麗) did not □□ people.
personally led [them] forth to punish
passed Fushan (富山) and Busan (負山)
arrived at Yeomsu (鹽水)
broke their three burak (a tribal group)
six-seven hundred camps
cattle, horses, flocks of sheep, impossible to count the number
thereupon turned the royal conveyance
thereupon passed by the Xiangping road
coming east through □ Fortress, Licheng, Beifeng, Wubei□.
toured / inspected the territory and its borders
hunted, and returned.
Punish some troublesome guys.
Take their animals.
Take a leisurely stroll back along the Xiangping road back home do some sightseeing.
The problem is quiet clear if you look at the map below and know a little bit of history:
1. This is an enormous campaign.
Yeomsu (鹽水), “Salt Water,” is commonly identified with the Xar Moron world in what is now Inner Mongolia.
From the Shenyang/Fushun region, where this campaign begins, that puts Gwanggaeto roughly 500–600 kilometers to the northwest.
And that is straight-line distance.
He wasn't driving down I-95.
He had to move an army across rivers, mountain passes, grasslands and the political spaces separating Goguryeo from the peoples living around the Xar Moron.
Through supposedly hostile territory.
2. The Paeryeo are not some piddly village.
The Paeryeo (稗麗) were Khitan.
The stele itself tells us the scale:
three tribal groups.
600–700 encampments.
Enough cattle, horses and sheep that the Goguryeo inscription simply says:
too many to count.
These belonged to the same Khitan world that would centuries later produce the Liao Dynasty, destroy Balhae in 926, seize large parts of northern China, destroy the Later Jin in 947, and fight the Song Dynasty as one of its great rival powers.
Gwanggaeto didn't ride out to burn three huts.
He went deep into a major pastoral world, smashed hundreds of camps, and came home with an enormous amount of livestock.
3. And then he takes a different road home.
The stele specifically says:
因過襄平道
("He returned by way of the Xiangping road.")
Xiangping was the great old city of Liaodong, near modern Liaoyang.
And Liaodong was not some quiet backwater.
It was one of the most fought-over pieces of land in the entire Songhua-Liao world.
Yan wanted it.
Goguryeo wanted it.
China's northeastern commandery system had been built around it.
Gogukyang had attacked it with 40,000 men in 385.
And according to the surviving Chinese record, Later Yan had taken it back.
Ten years later, Gwanggaeto is riding through it.
4. And nothing about the return sounds like hostile territory.
This is the part that bothers me.
The stele does not say:
"Gwanggaeto fought his way through Liaodong."
It does not say:
"He attacked Xiangping."
It does not say:
"Yan intercepted him."
It does not say:
"He hurried through enemy territory before they could respond."
Instead:
過襄平道
("Passed along the Xiangping road.")
Then:
遊觀土境
("Toured and inspected the territory and its borders.")
And finally:
田獵而還
("Went hunting.")
And returned.
Read that again.
After marching hundreds of kilometers into the Khitan world, destroying 600–700 camps, and dragging home a ridiculous amount of livestock, Gwanggaeto reaches supposedly Yan-controlled Liaodong
...and goes sightseeing.
...then hunting.
That is not the language of a king moving through enemy territory.
That is the language of a king moving through his territory.
Which creates a very simple problem.
Chinese records tell us that Later Yan recovered Liaodong in 385.
Gwanggaeto's own monument, erected by his son in 414, describes him ten years later casually traveling through the Xiangping road, inspecting 土境, and stopping to hunt.
So:
How can Gwanggaeto casually stroll through Liaodong if Later Yan supposedly controls it?
Something doesn't add up.
And for once, we don't have to rely on what somebody in China wrote about Goguryeo hundreds of years later.
We have Goguryeo.
Written by Goguryeo hands.
Carved into stone.
At the time it happened.
And the stone is telling a very different story.
This is only the first thing on the Stele's list of accomplishments. This is what Goguryeo wanted to remember. But if I combine the Stele records with everything else he did, the list becomes truly mindblowing.
392 (Samguk Sagi)
At only 18 years old, invades Baekje with a large force and captures 10 northern fortresses; Baekje loses much of the territory north of the Han.
392 (Samguk Sagi)
Campaigns north against the Khitan, captures 500, and brings back 10,000 Goguryeo people who had previously been taken away.
392 (Samguk Sagi)
Captures Gwanmi Fortress, on the Goguryeo-Baekje border, an exceptionally difficult coastal/river fortress, after dividing his army into seven routes and attacking for 20 days.
393 (Samguk Sagi)
Establishes/builds nine Buddhist temples in Pyongyang, extending the institutional work begun under Sosurim and strengthening Pyongyang as a royal center.
394 (Samguk Sagi)
Defeats a major Baekje invasion at Sugok Fortress with 5,000 elite cavalry; surviving Baekje troops flee at night.
394 (Samguk Sagi)
Builds seven fortresses along the southern frontier specifically to defend against Baekje.
395 (Samguk Sagi)
Defeats Baekje at the Paesu, capturing more than 8,000 men.
395 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Personally campaigns against the Paeryeo/Khitan world, reaches Yeomsu, destroys 600–700 encampments, takes cattle, horses and sheep beyond counting, then returns by the Xiangping road, inspects 土境, hunts, and goes home.
396 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Personally launches the great invasion of Baekje. Captures 58 fortresses and 700 villages, crosses the Arisu/Han, threatens the capital, and forces King Asin to submit. Asin gives 1,000 people and 1,000 bolts of fine cloth, swears to be Gwanggaeto’s 奴客, and hands over his brother plus 10 senior officials as hostages.
396–397 (Chinese: Liangshu)
Later Yan formally recognizes Gwanggaeto as Governor of Pingzhou and King of Liaodong and Daifang. Goguryeo also introduces the offices jangsa, sama, chamgun, suggesting a more elaborate military/diplomatic administration.
398 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Sends forces into Sushen territory; captures about 300 people from named settlements. The stele says that afterward Sushen sent tribute and consulted Goguryeo in affairs.
399 (Gwangaeto Stele)
While Gwanggaeto is touring Pyongyang, Silla sends an embassy begging for help against Wa. He accepts the appeal and prepares intervention. This is less a conquest than evidence that Goguryeo has become the state Silla calls when facing existential danger.
400 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Dispatches 50,000 infantry and cavalry to rescue Silla. Goguryeo drives Wa forces out of Silla and pursues them deep into Gaya/Imna Gaya, reaching Jongbal Fortress, which submits. The campaign transforms the political balance in the south and places Silla strongly under Goguryeo influence.
400, aftermath (Gwangaeto Stele)
The stele remarks that previously the Silla king had never personally come to Goguryeo to discuss affairs, but after this intervention the relationship changes and Silla renders tribute/subordination in a much more direct way.
402 (Samguk Sagi)
Sends an army across the Liao to attack Sukgun Fortress, west of the Liao River. Later Yan’s governor of Pingzhou, Murong Gui, abandons the fortress and flees.
404 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Wa forces invade the old Daifang region. Gwanggaeto personally leads the response from the Pyongyang side; Goguryeo cuts off the critical route and annihilates the invading force, killing numbers the stele calls impossible to count.
405 (Samguk Sagi, Chinese: Jinshu)
Later Yan emperor Murong Xi personally attacks Liaodong Fortress. Goguryeo holds it and Yan fails to take the city. Whatever happened earlier, this proves that by 405 Liaodong city is in Goguryeo hands and Yan is attacking it, not defending it.
406 (Samguk Sagi, Chinese: Jinshu)
Murong Xi marches more than 3,000 li, abandons heavy supplies, and attacks Goguryeo’s Mokjeo Fortress. His army arrives exhausted and freezing; the campaign fails.
407 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Sends another 50,000 infantry and cavalry on a major campaign. The surviving stele text says the enemy was annihilated, Goguryeo captured more than 10,000 suits of armor plus innumerable weapons and supplies, and took several fortresses on the return. Unfortunately, the damaged text no longer securely preserves who the enemy was.
408 (Samguk Sagi)
Opens direct relations with Go Un / Gao Yun, the Goguryeo-descended ruler of Northern Yan, treating him explicitly as kin; Northern Yan reciprocates with an envoy.
409 (Samguk Sagi)
Builds six eastern fortresses, including Doksan, and relocates households from Pyongyang there. This is active settlement/fortification policy, not merely campaigning.
409 (Samguk Sagi)
Makes his son Georyeon, later Jangsu, crown prince, securing succession.
410 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Personally campaigns against East Buyeo. The stele says the entire country is terrified when his army reaches Yeo Fortress; several local groups follow the Goguryeo army, and the campaign captures/destroys 64 fortresses and 1,400 villages.
412 (Gwangaeto Stele)
Dies at 39 after roughly 21 years of rule. His contemporary monument summarizes the reign as one in which his military power shook the surrounding world, the country became wealthy, the population prospered, and agriculture flourished.
That is a resume worthy of the name, "The Great," or Taewang (태왕; 太王).
To understand the extent of Goguryeo under Gwanggaeto, we have another interesting thing to try and comprehend. And like Yeomsu (염수), it pushes the heteredox Chinese history to its limits:
Deokheung-ri Tomb
Deokheung-ri tomb. Not a Stele, or a historical book, but a tomb covered in beautiful, detailed paintings and inscriptions, discovered in 1976 around Nampo, in North Korea.
By carefully examining the inscriptions, archaeologists were able to confirm that the tomb was for a person named Jin (진; 鎭), who died in 408 CE, approximately 100 years after Micheon took Lelang.
During his life it seems to have held three titles:
Governor of Liaodong (요동태수; 遼東太守)
Commandant of the Eastern Yi (동이교위; 東夷校尉)
Governor of You Province (유주자사; 幽州刺史)
Governor of Liadong? OK. But wasn't Yan supposed to be holding Liaodong?
Commandant of the Eastern Yi? Weird, but OK.
Governor of You Province? Wut???
You Province (幽州) was a major historical administrative region covering parts of modern-day Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Liaoning. A Cishi (자사; 刺史) was originally a regional inspector but later evolved into a powerful provincial governor who held vast civil and military authority over the province's commanderies.
What the hell was a Goguryeo dude doing overseeing territories around Beijing?
It doesn't stop there.
The painting shows the guy receiving reports from thirteen of his subordinates. And attached to each of those thirteen people are the territories they are responsible for.
연군태수 (燕郡太守), 범양태수 (范陽太守), 어양태수 (漁陽太守), 상곡태수 (上谷太守), 광녕태수 (廣寧태수), 대군내사 (代郡內史), 북평태수 (北平太守), 요서태수 (遼西太守), 창려태수 (昌黎太守), 요동태수 (遼東太守), 현토태수 (玄菟太守), 낙랑태수 (樂浪太守), 대방태수 (帶方太守).
낙랑태수 (樂浪太守) and 대방태수 (帶方太守) refer to Lelang and Difang Commanderies.
요동태수 (遼東太守) and 현토태수 (玄菟太守) is the Liaodong and Xuantu Commanderies.
So far it makes sense. Goguryeo had taken them all by now, though we're still arguing about Liaodong and Xuantu.
Then we get,
북평태수 (北平太守), 요서태수 (遼西太守), 창려태수 (昌黎太守). Beiping, Changli, and Liaoxi respecively. This makes no sense. Laoxi...maybe. Changli...difficult to accept. Beiping...unbelievable.
Then finally,
연군태수 (燕郡太守), 범양태수 (范陽太守), 어양태수 (漁陽太守), 상곡태수 (上谷太守), 광녕태수 (廣寧태수), 대군내사 (代郡內史). There are all well documented, established regions in and around modern day Beijing. Deep inside Later Yan.
Let me show this on a map:
Green: OK?
Orange: Are you sure??
Red: Are you fucking crazy???
What the hell is going on here?
If we take the painting literally, Jin is sitting as Governor of Youzhou while thirteen commandery governors from a territory stretching all the way to modern Beijing come to report to him.
And Jin isn't buried in Beijing.
He is buried deep inside Goguryeo, in 408, under Gwanggaeto's reign, using Gwanggaeto's era name.
Does that mean Goguryeo controlled Beijing?
Probably not.
And this is exactly why historians have been arguing about this tomb ever since it was discovered.
Possible explanations:
- Jin is lying.
- Jin was a Yan refugee, and when he was younger, was the governor of all these places.
- Yan was some kind of tributary/client state of Goguryeo, perhaps around the time Go Un (고운; 高雲), a man of Goguryeo descent, became ruler of Later Yan.
- Goguryeo really did conquer half the world, as claimed by the Hwandan Gogi (환단고기; 桓檀古記).
My view?
Have no idea. Goguryeo directly ruling Beijing is impossible for me to take seriously.
But at the very least, this tomb tells us that the political world surrounding Gwanggaeto’s Goguryeo was far larger, stranger, and more entangled with the old Yan territories than our neat modern maps make it look.
And then there was his son, King Jangsu (장수왕), who solidifies everything.
Stops pushing west.
Makes friends with everyone in China: Northern Wei (북위 / 北魏) and Liu Song (유송 / 劉宋).
Consolidates his holdings in the Goguryeo heartland.
Pushes south and makes Shilla and Baekje's lives a living hell.
And, more importantly, creates a strategic order that Goguryeo manages to preserve for generations.
Jangsu (413–491)
- 414: erects the Gwanggaeto Stele.
- 427: moves the capital to Pyongyang.
- Plays the northern and southern Chinese dynasties against one another instead of attaching Goguryeo to either.
- 475: invades Baekje with 30,000 men, captures Hanseong, kills King Gaero, and forces Baekje to abandon the Han River basin for Ungjin.
- Keeps pressure on Silla while holding the Liaodong-Songhua heartland.
- Reigns for nearly eighty years.
And under Jangsu there's another strange piece of information that sits awkwardly with the textbook picture of Goguryeo as a state boxed into the Yalu, Liaodong, and northern Korea
The Book of Wei (Weishu; 魏書) records:
地豆于國，在室韋西千餘里。多牛羊，出名馬
...
太和三年，高句麗乃與蠕蠕謀欲取地豆于以分之
(The State of Jidouyu is located over a thousand li west of the Shiwei.
They have many cattle and sheep, and produce famous horses
...
In the third year of Taihe [479 CE],
Goguryeo thus conspired with the Rouran,
plotting to conquer the Jiduwu and divide it.")
Jidouyu?
These were steppe people of the Greater Khingan world(大興安嶺 / 대흥안령), the massive, mountain-steppe-zone that divides the Manchurian plains from the Mongolian plateau. In modern administrative terms, this covers the Hinggan League (兴安盟), Tongliao, and northern Chifeng in eastern Inner Mongolia.
It was a prime buffer zone that separated Goguryeo to the east, the Rouran steppe empire to the west, and the Northern Wei dynasty to the south.
By 479, Goguryeo was not merely dealing with Liaodong, the Yalu, and the northern Korean Peninsula.
It was operating in the eastern steppe fringe.
Across this same zone are a chain of old forts.
One near Ulanhot, and the Tao-er River Basin.
One near Lindong, the Khitan frontier.
One near Linxi, the Xar Moron River border.
To this day, the local Mongolian-speaking people who live there refer to these places as Gaoli-cheng (고려성 / 高麗城). "Goryeo Castles". The castles today are mostly worn down, but it's possible to see the distinctive architecture of Goguryeo castle building:
walls built into mountains following its natural contours,
들여쌓기 to protect against ballistic weapons,
치, those projecting defensive sections so common in Guguryeo fortifications.
And then there are these massive stone mortars, 돌절구, heavy grain-processing tools.
They make little sense as the ordinary household equipment of highly mobile pastoralists driving herds across open steppe. But for a sedentary fortified population like Goguryeo, they make perfect sense.
They are found again and again at secure Goguryeo sites farther east.
Funny thing is that the Korean minority that live there today have dragged these ancient stone mortars into their homes to make 떡, Korean rice cakes. Their Mongol and Manchu neighbors don't.
So put it all together.
A Chinese source placing Goguryeo in the politics of the Greater Khingan in 479.
A belt of forts in that same corridor remembered locally as Goryeo castles.
Architecture that looks Goguryeo.
Heavy stone mortars that fit a sedentary grain-eating population better than a mobile steppe one.
At some point the obvious question becomes:
If not Goguryeo, then who?
I put orange colored castle-shaped pins to indicate the three Jidouyu castles, separate from the Goguryeo castles we've identified already (in purple).
Now the Yeomsu raid, indicated by the orange star in the far northwest, makes a lot more sense.
Which brings up another thing that clashes with Chinese orthodox history.
If Buyeo is absorbed by Goguryeo in 494 CE, how on earth did Goguryeo have castles way to the north and west of Buyeo territory?
This is the third phase of Goguryeo's expansion, at the widest extent of its demonstrated reach.
Take this map with a grain of salt. I haven't found a single "expert" that can agree on what the boundaries of Guguryeo are.
On the Chinese side, Goguryeo's boundaries end at Jilin to the north, and Liaodong to the west. And even then the west is contested.
On the Korean nationalist side, Goguryeo's territories go far beyond the Amur to the north, all of Mongolia to the west, and Beijing to the southwest.
My map is based mostly on "confirmed" Goguryeo castles. My reasoning goes,
"Why build a massive castle on somebody else's land?"
I put the word "confirmed" in parentheses, because later folks came and built their own castles on exactly the same sites...so determining what is Goguryeo, what is Balhae, what is Liao (Khitan), what is Yuan (Mongol), what is Qing (Jurchen/Manchu) is very unclear.
And the word territory is probably wrong here.
The word border may be even worse.
The farther you get from the political center, the less this looks like a modern country and the more it looks like a sphere of power.
Launch an expedition.
Defeat a local ruler.
Take hostages.
Bring back horses.
Demand tribute.
Build a fortress at the important river crossing or mountain pass.
Leave a garrison there.
Come back when somebody stops paying.
Most of the people living between those forts probably continue farming, hunting, herding, marrying, fighting, and calling themselves whatever they called themselves before Goguryeo arrived. And kept doing whatever they were doing after Goguryeo left.
That is not a modern border.
But it is power.
---
Munjamyeong (491–519)
- In 494, the remnants of Buyeo submit to Goguryeo.
- The polity from which Goguryeo's own founding story had emerged is finally absorbed into Goguryeo itself.
- Goguryeo remains the dominant power of the northeast.
Anjang (519–531)
- Maintains the empire.
- Continues fighting Baekje in the south.
- But Baekje and Silla are becoming stronger and increasingly cooperate against Goguryeo.
Anwon (531–545)
- The empire still looks strong from the outside.
- Inside, aristocratic factionalism and succession struggles begin becoming much more dangerous.
Yangwon (545–559)
- This is where the first major territorial loss becomes impossible to ignore.
- In 551, Baekje and Silla attack Goguryeo's southern holdings and take much of the Han River basin.
- Silla then turns on Baekje and takes the lower Han for itself.
- Goguryeo loses the central peninsula that Jangsu had conquered.
Pyeongwon (559–590)
- Stabilizes the kingdom after those losses.
- Goguryeo is still enormously powerful, but the world around it is changing.
- Silla is stronger.
- The steppe is changing.
- And, most importantly, China is slowly putting itself back together.
From 391 to 598, for 207 years, Goguryeo remains one of the dominant powers of Northeast Asia, controlling the Songhua-Liao heartland and, for much of that period, enormous portions of the Korean Peninsula.
And then, in 589 CE, Sui unifies China.
Let the crazy begin.
---
That's a lot of history, on a blog series where I continuously repeat that this is not a series on history. I can't help myself. Goguryeo history is just that fascinating.
But to prove I have not lost my way, and our main job is still to try and find out whether "Koreans exist" and if so, "Where Koreans come from", let's take a step back and do what we've diligently been doing throughout this series.
The Duck-Test.
1. Soil (Land)
Goguryeo easily passes the Korean Peninsula test. It's capital is in Pyeongyang, the capital of North Korea), and it possessed Seoul, the capital of South Korea. This one is easy.
But like Balhae before it, Goguryeo poses an interesting problem.
- It was founded in Jolbon, currently Wǔnǚ Shān in modern-day Huanren Manchu Autonomous County, Liaoning Province, China.
- At its greatest extent, the Korean Peninsula only covered approximately 30% of total Goguryeo territory. Most of its territory was in modern-day Manchuria: Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang.
So founded outside Korea.
Territory mostly outside the Korean Peninsula.
If Goguryeo is "Korean", then so is the Songhua-Liao World a part of Korean Soil.
Conversely, if the "Songhua-Liao World" is Goguryeo, then Goguryeo can also be legitimately claimed by China.
I have no problem with that.
Soil: Yes.
2. Stuff (Artifacts)
This one is also easy.
Goguryeo left behind an enormous and unmistakable material footprint on both sides of the modern China-Korea border.
Mountain fortresses.
Stone-chamber tombs.
Painted tomb murals.
Roof tiles.
Weapons.
Horse equipment.
Cities.
Steles.
The same Goguryeo material world appears from Ji’an and Liaodong all the way south into Pyeongyang, the Han River basin, Chungju, and beyond.
And when Goguryeo disappears politically, its stuff doesn't simply disappear with it.
Much of it continues north through Balhae, while elements of its fortress, burial, architectural and elite traditions remain part of the world inherited by later Korean states.
Stuff: Yes.
3. Blood (DNA)
By now we already know this is the wrong place to look for a clean answer.
There is no Goguryeo gene.
There is no Korean gene.
Goguryeo itself absorbed people from Buyeo, Okjeo, Ye, Liaodong, Lelang, Daifang, Sushen/Mohe populations and probably many others.
Its population was almost certainly heterogeneous.
But that's the point.
Those people did not vanish in 668.
Some went into Balhae.
Some went into Silla.
Some remained where they were.
Some were relocated by Tang.
Some later flowed into Goryeo.
Whatever mixture eventually became modern Koreans contains people who once lived inside Goguryeo.
Blood: Yes.
Not because Goguryeo people possessed some special Korean DNA.
Because they are among the populations from which later Koreans descend.
But this leaves us with another very important question.
What about all the other people who became part of Goguryeo?
Goguryeo-in.
Buyeo-in.
Ye.
Maek.
Buk Okjeo.
Dong Okjeo.
The people of Lelang, Xuantu, Liaodong, and Daifang.
Han Chinese who settled, defected, fled or were absorbed into the kingdom.
Khitan groups along the western frontier.
And then there are the people whom Chinese scribes increasingly called:
Mohe.
Who the hell were they?
I have a dedicated section specifically devoted to the Mohe. The more I look into them, the more it gets difficult to talk about the Korean story without them.
Let me leave you with a provocative statement:
Perhaps the Mohe, or at least some of them, were Korean.
4. Words (Language)
This is probably the strongest test of all.
Chinese records repeatedly group the languages of Buyeo, Goguryeo, Okjeo and Ye together or describe them as similar.
Whatever exactly early Goguryeo sounded like, it belongs squarely inside the northern linguistic world we have been tracing toward Koreanic.
And unlike Japonic on the southern peninsula, this linguistic lineage survives.
Eventually it wins.
The language spoken by modern Koreans is descended from the same broad Koreanic world in which Goguryeo existed.
Words: Yes.
5. Books (Written records)
And now, after spending half this post drowning in them:
Yes.
Not only do Chinese and later Korean histories describe Goguryeo.
Goguryeo describes itself.
The Gwanggaeto Stele.
The Chungju Goguryeo Stele.
The Ji’an Stele.
The Deokheung-ri inscriptions.
The Pyongyang fortress stones.
Names.
Kings.
Officials.
Ranks.
Campaigns.
Founding stories.
Laws.
Construction assignments.
This is no longer a people we are reconstructing entirely from somebody else's description.
Goguryeo speaks.
And after Goguryeo falls, later states explicitly inherit its name and memory.
Goryeo itself takes its name from Goguryeo.
Books: Yes.
So, are Goguryeo Korean?
Soil: Yes.
Stuff: Yes.
Blood: Yes.
Words: Yes.
Books: Yes.
By every test we have been using throughout this series:
Yes.
But that answer creates a problem.
Because if Goguryeo is unquestionably part of the Korean story, then the Korean story cannot begin and end at the Yalu and Tumen Rivers.
Most of Goguryeo didn't live there.
Its birthplace wasn't there.
Most of its land wasn't there.
Much of its population wasn't there.
Its political heartland for centuries wasn't there.
Which means the answer to “Where do Koreans come from?” keeps dragging us back to the same place.
The Songhua-Liao World.
That does not make the Songhua-Liao World exclusively Korean.
China can claim it too.
So can the histories of Manchus, Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols and others.
History does not become weaker because more than one People inherits it.
---
Goguryeo Castles
Before we end our scetion on Goguryeo, we need to talk about their castle system.
Goguryeo did not simply build castles on mountains.
They turned mountains into castles.
And there is an important distinction here.
The small forts Goguryeo scattered across the Korean peninsula were often forward military positions, built while Goguryeo was pushing south against Baekje and Silla.
Liaodong was different.
Liaodong was where Goguryeo expected enormous armies to come from.
So this is where Goguryeo built monsters.
Baegam.
Bisa.
Ansi.
Liaodong.
Gaemo.
Sinseong.
I tried mapping all 300 known Goguryeo castles onto a map. I gave up after a while, and just did the larger ones. But it's enough to give you a picture of what it looked like. Goguryeo wasn't one castle here and there, it was a connected network of castles. Built hundreds of miles deep.
And anyone who wanted to take Goguryeo had to fucking fight through every single one of them.
First came the wide plains as you emerged from the mountain passes.
where you would be greeted by Goguryeo's elite armored cavalry, the Gaema-musa (개마무사).
Then the infamous Liaodong marshes that would swallow up whole caravans.
Later on, they built a wall stretching from Siping in the north, to Yingkou in the south, stretching a thousand li (500 kilometers).
Then your first fortress. Built into a valley, bordered on each side by sheer mountain cliffs. You climb 100 meters up a mountain. And on top of that, 30 meter high walls.
20 kilometers later?
Another fortress.
Fortress after fortress, built not to control a village or watch a road, but to stop continental invasion.
The first step was choosing the right mountain.
A good site already did most of the work for you: steep slopes, cliffs, narrow valleys, rivers below, and only a handful of approaches large enough for an army to use.
Sometimes the mountain was so difficult that they simply didn't bother building a wall on one side.
There was no point.
The mountain was the wall.
Where the terrain was vulnerable, Goguryeo engineers closed the gap with stone walls that followed the contours of the land rather than forcing the mountain into some neat geometric shape.
And they didn't build those walls like somebody stacking rocks around a hill.
Many had a packed-earth interior faced with enormous pieces of granite or limestone.
The walls themselves were built to stay put.
Instead of rising perfectly vertical, many were constructed using 들여쌓기, with each successive layer set slightly farther inward than the one beneath it.
The result was a wall whose center of gravity leaned backward into itself.
Think pyramid.
Except halfway up a mountain.
The stones were clever too.
One particularly Goguryeo technique was 맞물려 쌓기, interlocking masonry.
Behind the visible face were pointed, drum-shaped stones driven into the body of the wall. In front of them were wedge-shaped facing stones, broad and relatively flat on the outside but narrowing deep into the wall behind them.
The pieces locked together.
So when a giant stone from a siege engine smashed into the wall, it wasn't simply hitting a vertical stack of blocks.
The wall absorbed the impact.
The outer face might break.
A section might fall.
But the damage did not necessarily unzip the whole structure.
Then Goguryeo solved the obvious problem with any wall:
What happens when the enemy gets right underneath it?
They built 치 (雉), rectangular bastions projecting outward from the wall.
Nothing revolutionary about that by itself. Other civilizations figured out the same thing.
What is striking is where Goguryeo put them.
On mountains.
A mountain fortress already has gravity doing half the killing for you.
Goguryeo looked at that and apparently decided:
Not enough.
They sometimes flattened sections of mountain just so they could build projecting bastions at regular intervals.
From them, defenders could fire sideways along the face of the wall, shooting anyone trying to climb it instead of merely dropping things straight down.
The gates were treated even more viciously.
A gate might be wrapped by an 옹성 (甕城), an additional wall forcing attackers into a narrow, enclosed approach before they could even reach the main entrance.
Instead of charging directly at a door, an attacking force could find itself compressed into a confined space with defenders shooting down from several directions.
And even knocking a hole through the wall did not necessarily solve the problem.
Goguryeo defenders were apparently very good at simply building another wall behind the hole.
Timber.
Stone.
Whatever was available.
You spend days hauling siege engines uphill.
You pound the wall until part of it collapses.
You finally have a breach.
Night falls.
By morning there's a barricade sitting in it.
Start again.
Water was just as important as walls.
Goguryeo understood moats perfectly well.
They just frequently didn't need to dig them.
They built next to rivers.
Streams.
Cliffs.
Valleys.
Why dig a ditch when the mountain has already supplied you with one?
On the largest scale, the Liao River itself was the moat.
Cross that and you had entered a landscape filled with fortified mountains.
Many major Goguryeo fortresses were 포곡식, enclosing an entire mountain valley rather than merely circling a summit.
- Springs, streams and runoff could be captured inside the walls, while reservoirs stored water for siege.
- Inside were enough relatively flat areas for soldiers, civilians, livestock, grain stores, workshops and administrative buildings.
This meant that a major Goguryeo fortress was not simply a military outpost.
It could be a small fortified world.
And major Goguryeo centers often came in pairs.
A lower settlement or flatland fortress gave access to rivers, farmland, roads and trade during ordinary life.
Behind or above it sat the mountain fortress.
When a major enemy appeared, the calculation changed.
Take what you can.
Move the soldiers.
Move the population.
Move the food.
Go uphill.
Gungnae and Hwando are the classic example.
Below: The city.
Above: The mountain.
Around both: River and cliffs.
This was not a painless strategy.
The lowland city might be destroyed.
The fields might burn.
Anything left behind could feed the invader.
But Goguryeo was making a brutal trade.
Land could be rebuilt.
The population, army and state could survive inside the mountain.
And now imagine the problem from the invader's side.
You cross the Liao River.
There is a fortress. You can attack it.
That means dragging siege equipment into mountain terrain and trying to smash stone-faced walls built into cliffs.
Or:
You can walk past it. Except now thousands of armed men are sitting on a mountain behind you.
And your grain wagons have to pass underneath them tomorrow.
That is not a comfortable choice.
And there was never just one castle.
More than 300 Goguryeo fortresses and military installations have been identified.
Not all of them were enormous.
That was part of the point.
Large fortresses controlled major routes.
Smaller forts watched valleys, rivers and crossings.
Those connected to other fortified positions.
And behind them were more mountains.
More walls.
More soldiers.
More problems.
So imagine being an invading soldier.
You march hundreds of kilometers carrying food, weapons and siege equipment.
You cross a river.
You enter a narrow valley.
There is a fortress on the mountain above you.
You spend weeks taking it.
You lose men.
You lose horses.
You consume enormous amounts of grain.
Your siege equipment breaks.
Men get sick.
The season keeps moving.
Finally:
The fortress falls.
You march onward.
And there is another fortress down the road.
Then another.
Then another.
That was the genius of Goguryeo defense.
Not some magical wall.
Not some unbeatable castle.
Not even Ansi.
Time.
Every fortress forced the enemy to make another decision.
Attack it?
Bypass it?
Besiege it?
Starve it?
Leave troops behind?
Risk your supply line?
And every decision cost something.
Men.
Horses.
Food.
Equipment.
Days.
Weeks.
Eventually winter.
This is what Sui and Tang were walking into.
The enemy was not fighting a castle.
They were fighting geography that Goguryeo had spent centuries turning into a network of castles.
Goguryeo came from the mountains.
Goguryeo was the mountains.
And those mountains ate Goguryeo's enemies.
Sui and Tang, two of the most powerful kingdoms in the world would find out how hungry those mountains were.
I'll give you one anecdote.
In 613, Sui attacked Liaodong Fortress from all four sides.
Day and night.
They brought siege towers.
Battering rams.
Scaling ladders.
They dug tunnels beneath the walls.
For more than twenty days, Liaodong held.
So Sui brought up an enormous fifteen-zhang assault ladder.
Still no breakthrough.
Then Emperor Yang tried something extraordinary.
He ordered more than one million sacks filled with earth.
The soldiers began piling them in front of the fortress, building an artificial ramp thirty paces wide.
The order was simple:
Build it as high as the wall.
Beside it they constructed enormous eight-wheeled siege towers, deliberately taller than the fortress, so Sui archers could finally fire down onto the defenders.
Think about that.
They had already tried smashing the wall.
Climbing it.
Going under it.
Attacking it continuously for weeks.
None of it was enough.
So they tried to build a mountain of their own.
That is what it could take to attack one Goguryeo fortress.
And Liaodong was only one of them.
---
The End...?
598-668 CE
After 169 years of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (남북조시대; 南北朝時代, 420-589 CE), China was finally reunited.
In 589, Yang Jian, Emperor Wen of Sui, conquered the last southern dynasty and brought almost all of China under one government again.
And turns his eye towards the northeast.
Goguryeo.
In 597, he sends a letter that reads:
???
Goguryeo responds by leading an attack comprised of 10,000 cavalry across the Liao. Causes havoc, returns back across the river and waits for what comes next.
What followed was a series of invasions by first Sui and then Tang spanning seventy years, from 598 to 668.
Sui would not survive the attempt.
Tang eventually would.
But only after Goguryeo began eating itself alive through internal strife.
The mountains held.
The people broke.
Before we get there, though, I need to explain something about the evidence.
The numbers I'm going to throw around in this section are so enormous that I sometimes have trouble even imagining them, let alone believing them.
So I'm going to do something slightly different.
I'm going to tell you what the records say.
Because the records themselves are part of this story.
Almost everything we know about these wars comes through histories written or compiled on the Chinese side, and much of the Sui narrative that survives today was compiled under Tang.
That creates a rather delicious problem.
Tang had every reason to:
- Legitimize Tang.
- Delegitimize Sui
- Explain why war against Goguryeo was justified.
- Minimize or rationalize Tang failures.
- Elevate Tang Taizong, one of the central architects of the dynasty.
And once you begin looking for that pattern, some things become difficult not to notice.
- Sui's gigantic projects become evidence of oppression.
- Sui's military disasters come with wonderfully detailed numbers.
- Its dead practically arrive itemized.
Meanwhile Taizong increasingly reads like Jesus, Muhammad and Julius Caesar rolled into one man.
- His victories are brilliant.
- His decisions are wise.
- His mercy is legendary.
- And his armies sometimes produce casualty figures that would require significant assistance from Superman, Spider-Man and Thanos.
There is another problem. The Shilu.
East Asian court historians were supposed to record the emperor independently, in documents known as Shilu (實錄). Emporers were forbidden from reading them. They were allowed to rule, but they were never free from judgement in the future.
- Court historians recorded the ruler's words and actions in records such as the Qijuzhu (起居注).
- These records and other official documents were later used to compile the emperor's Shilu (實錄), “Veritable Records.”
- After a dynasty fell, the succeeding dynasty drew on those materials to compile the official dynastic history, the Zhengshi (正史).
- In Korea, the closest parallel was the 사초 → 실록 system.
These records were sacred. People died to protect the integrity of these records. Obviously, living emperors wanted to read them, and perhaps revise them. But few succeeded.
I'll give two famous examples in Korean history.
First, while out hunting King Taejong, the founder of the Joseon Dynasty, famously fell from his horse. Embarrased, he looked around and commanded his entourage,
"Do not let the historian know about this."
To this day, the Taejong Silok explicitly reads:
"The king fell off his horse and said, 'Do not let the historian know.'"
Taejong was constantly frustrated by his historians; he repeatedly complained about an officer named Min In-saeng who would hide behind screens and peek through doors to eavesdrop on private royal conversations, complaints which Min In-saeng dutifully recorded.
Second, probably one of the most reviled kings in Joseon history, Yeonsangun, demanded to read the drafts being compiled for his predecessor's reign and discovered a historian had included a veiled critique of his great-grandfather. Yeonsangun used this to launch the First Literati Purge (Muo Sahwa), executing the historian and several scholars. History records him as "gun", a title ordinarily reserved for princes, posthumously stripping him of "wang", king.
The emperor wasn't supposed to stand over their shoulder asking:
What did you write about me?
Taizong did.
His own historian reminded him that emperors traditionally did not inspect those records.
That alone does not prove that anything was falsified.
But I worked in marketing for thirty years.
You don't actually have to tell the copywriter:
Make me look good.
Sometimes you merely need to become the person reading the copy before it goes out.
And then there is Mohe.
Chinese histories repeatedly divide the northeastern world into named peoples: Ye, Maek, Yemaek, Goguryeo, Mohe, Khitan, Turks, and many many others.
Maybe those categories describe how those people understood themselves.
Maybe sometimes they do.
But I cannot in good conscience believe that.
I'll put this on a map to make it clear.
Some of the people later called Mohe had lived in the Buyeo-Goguryeo heartland for centuries.
- What the Chinese describe as the "the Baishan Mohe" supposedly come from the Mt. Baekdu area. A mere 75 miles from the capital of Goguryeo. They lived like this from before 37 BCE to 926 CE when Balhae collapsed.
963 years.
- "The Sumo Mohe" supposedly lived a little north, near Jilin. The birthplace and capital of Buyeo. From the 2nd century BCE to 926 CE. Chinese records even claim the founder of Balhae, Dae Joyoung was of "Sumo Mohe" lineage.
1,126 years.
1,126 years.
Think about it.
56 generations of people, living, dying, marrying, farming, being taxed, being consrcipted, fighting together against a common enemy time and time again...
1,126 years.
Yet modern histories can make the transition sound almost effortless:
Goguryeo disappeared.
Then a Balhae appears where a Goguryeo-like elite appears to be governing a vast population.
Them?
I'm not convinced they were the same "them."
I am almost certain they are an "Us" divided into two "Us's" so that an artifical "Us" and a "Not-Us" is created, by someone who has every reason to do this.
So throughout what follows, whenever a Chinese source labels someone Goguryeo, Mohe, Khitan, Turk, rebel, subject or barbarian, I'm going to tell you what the source calls them.
Then we're going to look at the Soil.
Then their Stuff.
What those people were actually doing.
And decide for ourselves what the label is worth using common sense and reason.
Because there is one question the surviving narrative still does not satisfactorily answer:
Why did Sui invade Goguryeo?
Goguryeo had coexisted with powerful northern Chinese dynasties for roughly two centuries.
There is little evidence that Goguryeo was preparing to conquer China.
Yet Sui repeatedly hurled enormous armies across the Liao.
It failed.
It tried again.
It failed.
It tried again.
Then Sui collapsed.
Tang eventually looked at that history and decided:
Let's do it too.
Something smells.
And before we count a single dead soldier, I want to know what.
---
The Goguryeo-Sui War
The first invasion (598 CE)
In 597, A letter written by Emperor Sui Wendi addressed to King Pyeongwon (which itself is strange because Sui's own records indicate that Pyeongwon had died and had been replaced by Yeongyang) arrives in the Goguryeo court:
王既人臣，須同朕德，而乃驅逼靺鞨，固禁契丹。
……王謂遼水之廣，何如長江？高麗之人，多少陳國？朕若不存含育，責王前愆，命一將軍，何待多力
"Since you, King, are my subject, you must align with my virtues.
Yet you drive and coerce the Mohe, and firmly obstruct the Khitan [from submitting]."
......
"Does the King consider the Liao River to be wider than the Yangtze?
Are the people of Goguryeo more numerous than those of the State of Chen?
If I did not wish to nurture all living things, I would punish your past transgressions.
I would need only command a single general, what need would there be for a massive army!"
Goguryeo's response?
Yeongyang sends a punitive force of 10,000 cavalry across the Liao River, raids Liaoxi, then promptly withdraws and prepares for an attack.
Wendi assembles a force of 300,000 land and naval troops under Yang Liang (漢王楊諒), Wang Shiji (王世積), Zhou Luohou (周羅睺) and attack.
The land army under Yang Liang and Wang Shiji advanced east through Linyuguan, essentially toward the Liaoxi-Liao corridor.
The fleet under Zhou Luohou sailed from Donglai on the Shandong peninsula, intending to attack toward Pyongyang by sea.
And then the records gives some bullshit narrative about floods and disease.
And ends with:
八九死焉
eight or nine out of ten men died.
Not a single word about a battle, or an action.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Then the records say that Yeongyang sends a letter to Wendi saying:
“Your dung-and-earth subject of Liaodong.”
Wendi accepts. Peace is restored for ten years.
That is what the records say about the first Goguryeo-Sui War:
300,000 invade.
240,000 to 270,000 men die.
A flood. Disease.
"I am shit, please forgive me."
Peace.
The second invasion (612 CE)
Wendi is dead and his son Yangdi is on the throne.
Someone in Yangdi's entourage notices a Goguryeo envoy at the camp of the Göktürk Khan.
If I am Yangdi, that sets every alarm bell ringing.
Goguryeo on my northeast.
Göktürks on my north.
Talking to each other.
He prepares for war. Four years of preparation as he gathers men, makes weapons, acquires horses, and builds a massive flotilla of ships.
He assembles a weirdly specific force of 1,133,800 men, suported by a support group twice that size to carry food and supplies.
3,401,400 men
if we take those numbers literally.
He divides them into 24 armies: twelve left, and 12 right.
The formations were so large that it took them 40 days to depart, and the marching column stretched for 960 li (480 kilometers). The imperial headquarters itself supposedly extended another eighty li.
The Sui shu describes it as an army unlike anything seen in recent antiquity.
They attempt to cross the Liao.
Sui engineers built floating bridges across the Liao.
The first bridges reportedly came up short of the eastern bank, leaving troops exposed while trying to cross. Goguryeo attacked them. Several senior Sui commanders, including Mai Tiezang, were killed.
Sui repaired the bridges, eventually forced the crossing, and pushed the Goguryeo defenders back. The source tradition gives roughly 10,000 Goguryeo dead during this phase, so this was not some bloodless defensive masterpiece. Goguryeo paid heavily for the river.
Then Sui reached:
Liaodong Fortress.
Sui surrounded Liaodong.
Other Sui forces attacked other fortresses.
The Goguryeo field armies increasingly withdrew behind walls and forced Sui into siege warfare.
The Sui shu gives a bizarre command problem. Yangdi had ordered that if Goguryeo offered surrender, commanders were to accept rather than sack the city.
According to the Sui narrative, whenever Liaodong was close to falling,
The defenders offered surrender.
The generals stopped.
They sent messengers to Yangdi.
Permission came back.
By then Goguryeo had repaired the walls and prepared again.
The process supposedly happened repeatedly.
Whatever we think of that wonderfully convenient explanation for Sui failure, the hard result is:
Liaodong refused to fall.
By June, Yangdi himself was outside the walls berating his generals because essentially nothing had been accomplished. The surrounding Goguryeo fortresses likewise continued holding.
So Yangdi changes the plan.
If he cannot break the western fortress network quickly enough:
Go around it.
Sui creates a huge strike force of nine armies totaling 305,000 men, commanded by figures including Yuwen Shu and Yu Zhongwen.
Their job:
Bypass the fortress system.
Cross the Amnok/Yalu.
March directly on Pyongyang.
At the same time, Lai Hu'er brings a huge naval force across the Yellow Sea and sails up the Pae River, generally identified with the Taedong, toward Pyongyang.
This is actually a very sophisticated plan.
The main Sui army pins Goguryeo's western defenses.
The nine armies come overland.
The fleet comes by sea.
They converge on the capital.
Lai Hu'er's navy arrives first.
He initially beats a Goguryeo force about sixty li from Pyongyang.
His deputy Zhou Fashang tells him:
Wait for the other armies.
Lai Hu'er refuses.
He selects tens of thousands of elite troops and goes straight for Pyongyang.
Goguryeo retreats.
Sui enters the outer city.
Then Sui troops begin looting.
Their formation breaks apart.
Hidden Goguryeo troops emerge and suddenly attack.
Lai Hu'er barely escapes.
According to the record, of the force that entered, only several thousand returned to the ships.
He retreats to the river mouth and no longer links up with the advancing land army.
That matters enormously. Because the fleet apparently carried food and military supplies intended for the operation. The land force is now alone.
The land army arrives next.
305,000 strong.
Carrying 100 days of food.
Each soldier was expected to carry an enormous load.
Commanders announced that anyone abandoning food would be executed.
So the soldiers allegedly began secretly burying their grain along the road.
By the time they approached the Amnok/Yalu River:
they were already starving.
Now Eulji Mundeok enters the story.
He goes personally into the Sui camp under the pretense of negotiating surrender.
Yangdi had apparently issued secret instructions that if King Yeongyang or Eulji Mundeok appeared, they should be captured.
Yu Zhongwen wants him seized.
Another official, Liu Shilong, objects.
They let Eulji go.
Then immediately regret it.
But he is already gone.
And, critically, he has now seen the Sui army from inside.
He knows they're hungry.
He knows they're tired.
And he knows their command structure is fighting with itself.
Eulji retreats.
Sui follows.
They engage several times and break off.
The Sui army keeps advancing.
Across the Amnok/Yalu.
Across northern Korea.
Across the Salsu, traditionally identified with the Chongchon River.
Until the Sui army is roughly thirty li from Pyongyang.
Then Eulji sends Yu Zhongwen his famous poem:
神策究天文，
妙算窮地理。
戰勝功既高，
知足願云止。
신기한 책략은 하늘의 이치(천문)를 다하였고,
오묘한 셈은 땅의 이치(지리)를 꿰뚫었도다.
싸움에 이겨 세운 공이 이미 드높으니,
만족함을 알고 그만 돌아가기를 바라노라.
Your godlike plans have read the sky entire.
Your fine calculations has sounded the ground.
You are already victorious. Your merit is high.
Be satisfied. Turn back.
The Sui commanders finally understand their situation.
No fleet.
No food.
Hundreds of kilometers of hostile territory behind them.
They withdraw.
Rapidly.
When they reach the Salsu River, Eulji Mundeok attacks.
According to the records:
305,000 entered.
2,700 returned to Liaodong.
What about the other 828,800 combat troops that were supposedly sieging Liaodong?
What about the additional 2,267,600 people the record itself says were transporting their supplies?
Suddenly the calculator disappears and everything gets suspiciously vague.
We are merely told that food ran out, the army became exhausted, transportation failed, “many armies suffered defeats,” and everyone went home.
The third invasion (613 CE)
Yangdi attacks again in 613. No records on troop size.
- Yuwen Shu and Yang Yichen move toward Pyongyang.
- Wang Rengong attacks Sinseong through the Buyeo route. The source says tens of thousands of Goguryeo troops oppose him; he leads 1,000 elite cavalry against them, drives them back, and the defenders retreat behind the walls.
And this time Sui brings everything.
Flying siege towers.
Battering rams.
Scaling towers and ladders.
Tunnels.
Attacks from four sides.
Day and night.
For more than twenty days.
Both sides reportedly suffer heavily.
Then comes the fifteen-zhang assault ladder.
A Sui soldier named Shen Guang climbs to its end and literally fights Goguryeo soldiers hand-to-hand at wall level.
Still no breakthrough.
So Yangdi orders more than one million cloth sacks filled with earth.
They begin building the Yuliang Great Road, an artificial assault ramp:
thirty paces wide
and eventually:
as high as the wall.
Beside it Sui constructs enormous eight-wheeled siege towers, taller than Liaodong's walls, allowing archers to shoot downward into the fortress.
Then:
Sui explodes behind them.
Yang Xuangan, one of the most powerful men in the empire and the son of Yang Su, rebels near Luoyang.
Worse, senior official Hu Sizheng, connected to Yang Xuangan, defects directly to Goguryeo.
That means Goguryeo now knows exactly what is happening in Sui's rear.
Yangdi panics.
He orders an immediate withdrawal.
The fourth invasion (614 CE)
Four times the charm. No records on troop size.
Yangdi orders his officials to discuss another invasion.
The record says:
For several days, nobody dared speak.
Then he orders troops throughout the empire mobilized again
Yangdi reaches Huaiyuan.
Lai Hu'er again takes the naval route.
He reaches Bisa Fortress.
Goguryeo troops come out to fight and this time Lai Hu'er wins.
Sui is exhausted.
Goguryeo is exhausted.
Goguryeo hands over Hu Sizheng, the Sui defector who had fled to Goguryeo during Yang Xuangan's rebellion.
Yangdi is delighted.
He accepts.
And orders Lai Hu'er home.
Four years later:
The Sui Dynasty is dead.
A few years later, Tang is the new power in China.
---
The Goguryeo-Tang War
Apparently Taizhong never got the memo about Goguryeo mountains eating invaders. After Tang had consolidated China, he decided to try what Sui had tried four times.
And this is where the Chinese records get crazy.
Not the normal:
"The records are off by a few thousand men" crazy,
but,
"What the fuck are you talking about?"' crazy.
Tang Taizhong is venerated as one of the greatest emperors of China. Perhaps.
But reading the record of his Goguryeo campaign, I think he might actually be one of the greatest public-relations men who ever lived.
The first invasion (645)
In 645, Tang Taizong decides to invade Goguryeo.
According to Chinese records, he does not bring a million men.
Tang sends roughly 60,000 land troops under Li Shiji toward Liaodong and a separate naval force of roughly 40,000 elite troops plus additional recruits under Zhang Liang toward the peninsula. Later Tang summaries describe about 100,000 men crossing into Liaodong, with a separate naval army operating by sea.
Tang crosses the Liao through the marshes and swamplands, not the well maintained roads.
Gaemo falls.
Bisa falls.
Then Tang reaches Liaodong Fortress.
Goguryeo sends 40,000 cavalry from Sinseong and Gungnae to relieve it.
One Tang commander, Zhang Junyi, retreats.
Another Tang commander counterattacks and claims victory.
Zhang Junyi is executed for retreating.
Tang then besieges Liaodong for roughly twelve days.
The records say a strong south wind helps spread a fire through the fortress.
Tang storms the walls.
Liaodong falls.
Tang claims more than 10,000 Goguryeo soldiers killed, more than 10,000 fighting men captured, and roughly 40,000 civilians taken.
Baegam falls next.
Then Tang reaches Ansi.
Goguryeo sends a massive relief army under Go Yeonsu and Go Hyejin.
The Tang sources say:
150,000 men.
Taizong supposedly tricks them into attacking, surrounds them, destroys the army, and receives the surrender of 36,800 men.
Tang claims to capture tens of thousands of horses, 50,000 cattle, and thousands of suits of armor.
Then Tang attacks Ansi itself.
For weeks.
Then months.
The defenders repair damaged walls with timber barricades.
Tang attacks repeatedly.
Finally, Tang builds an enormous earthen assault mound beside the fortress.
The records say it takes sixty days and 500,000 units of labor to build.
Then the mound collapses against the wall.
Part of the wall collapses with it.
A few hundred Goguryeo soldiers rush out, seize the Tang mound, fortify it, and hold it.
Tang attacks for three days and cannot retake its own siege mound.
The officer responsible for guarding it, Fu Fu'ai, is executed.
By September, Tang's supplies are running low and the weather is turning cold.
Taizong orders a retreat.
Once more ignoring the easy main road.
Through the marshes and swamplands.
Sinking carts into it to make temporary bridges.
Taizhong himself apparently pushes those cart.
And according to the Tang records, he goes home with:
36,800 men surrendered.
50,000 cattle captured.
tens of thousands of horses captured.
10,000, suits of armor captured.
The Tang Huiyao says that when the army entered Liaodong it had around 100,000 men, enormous numbers of pack animals, and 40,000 warhorses.
When it returned:
1,200 soldiers had died.
The naval army had lost only several hundred more.
But 70–80% of the pack animals and warhorses were dead.
So, from the Tang side:
They take several fortresses.
Fight a 40,000 strong cavalry.
Destroy a 150,000-man relief army.
Capture enormous quantities of livestock and equipment.
Fight repeated battles.
Besiege Ansi for months.
Lose the siege.
Retreat because food is running out and winter is coming.
Lose most of their transport animals.
And somehow lose only around:
1,500–2,000 men.
That is the Tang version.
Now let's add some common sense to this story.
1. You don't lose 70-80% of your animals and 1.2% of your men.
Same road. Same cold. Same empty carts. Whatever was killing four horses out of five was working on that column for months, and it doesn't stop to check who's a soldier.
Some of those animals were eaten. That's what running out of food looks like. An army chewing through its own transport has already lost.
And the record isn't claiming 1,200 battlefield deaths.
It is claiming only 1,200 military deaths in the entire campaign.
Another tradition generously raises that to nearly 2,000.
The same account has just told us that “many soldiers died” after being soaked in a blizzard.
*cough, cough* Bullshit. *cough, cough*
2. The battle they nearly lost.
為賊所乘，殆將不振. They were pressed by the enemy and almost unable to recover.
黑旗被圍. The black banner (of Li Shiji) is surrounded.
帝大恐. The emperor was greatly afraid.
Go Yeonsu's army drives the Tang army to the edge of collapse. Li Shiji's command is encircled. Taizong panics. Then somehow it all turns around, Tang annihilates 150,000 men, and 36,800 surrender.
And then Tang lets most of them go.
An army short on food, months from home, still stuck outside a fortress it can't take, releases tens of thousands of enemy soldiers.
That's not mercy. That's an army that couldn't feed or guard what it caught.
*cough, cough* Bullshit. *cough, cough*
3. The retreat.
They're sinking carts into the marsh to build a road. The emperor is hauling wood himself.
And there's a much easier road to the north. A road that according to the Tang records, they already should have had complete control over. It would have taken three days, yet he chooses the swamps and marshes that would take weeks to traverse.
And we're supposed to believe they're driving 50,000 cattle, 50,000 horses, and 10,000 suits of armor across it.
Cattle can barely make ten miles a day on a good road. In a herd, on soft ground, they don't cross at all.
So either the spoils are invented, or they never came home, or the retreat didn't go through the marsh.
The record says all three.
Then they executed two commanders.
Zhang Junyi, for retreating at Liaodong. Fu Fu'ai, for losing the siege mound at Ansi.
Nobody kills field commanders over a campaign that cost them 1.2%.
*cough, cough* Bullshit. *cough, cough*
4. And Taizong never came back.
He took three fortresses, lost one siege, walked home through a swamp, and never personally led another expedition into Goguryeo. From 647 the whole strategy changes, small raids, burned harvests, grind them down over years.
You don't throw out a plan that cost you only 1,200 men.
According to the Zizhi Tongjian, Taizhong asks Li Jing:
吾以天下之衆困於小夷，何也？
“I brought the forces of the realm, yet was frustrated by a small state. Why?”
若使魏徵在，不使我有此行也
“If Wei Zheng had still been alive, he would not have allowed me to make this expedition.”
In 647, when Taizhong considers another war, his court officials tell him:
高麗依山為城，攻之不可猝拔
“Goguryeo relies on mountains for its fortresses; they cannot be quickly taken by assault.”
When Taizhong dies, his testamentary order reads:
罷遼東之役
“Cancel the Liaodong campaign.”
*cough, cough* Bullshit. *cough, cough*
After 645
647
Two-pronged attritional raids under Li Shiji by land and Niu Jinda / Li Hai’an by sea
Raids several fortresses, burns outer settlements, captures Shicheng; withdraws
648
Xue Wanche leads ~30,000 by sea toward the Yalu and attacks Bakjak/Pozhuo Fortress
Wins field action, cannot take the fortress, withdraws
648
Tang-Shilla enter into a strategic partnership, agreeing to cooperate against Baekje and Goguryeo.
649
Taizong plans a 300,000-man invasion for the following year.
Never happens. Taizong dies.
655
Cheng Mingzhen + Su Dingfang raid across the Liao.
Defeats Goguryeo troops near Guiduan, burns settlements, withdraws.
658
Cheng Mingzhen + Xue Rengui attack again.
Tang takes Chifeng garrison and claims victories, but broader campaign fails to break through.
659
Xue Rengui attacks at Hengshan.
Tang claims victory.
660
Tang turns south and destroys Baekje with Silla.
Su Dingfang attacks Baekje by sea.
Silla attacks from the east.
Baekje collapses.
Strategic map changes completely.
Tang possesses a military bridgehead on the Korean Peninsula.
Now Goguryeo can be attacked from:
Liaodong in the west/northwest
and
the peninsula from the south.
661–662
Huge renewed invasion: 35 Tang armies, 350,000 men.
Ren Yaxiang: Paegang route
Qibi Heli: Liaodong route
Su Dingfang: Pyongyang route
plus Xiao Siye and other forces.
Pyongyang besieged, but operation collapses; Pang Xiaotai’s army annihilated at Sasu; Tang retreats.
663–665
No comparable grand Goguryeo invasion.
Tang is busy with Baekje restoration war and other fronts.
666
Yeon Gaesomun dies; his sons fight. Namsaeng defects to Tang with territory and followers.
This is the decisive internal break.
667–668
Final invasion under Li Shiji, supported by Qibi Heli, Xue Rengui, Namsaeng and eventually Silla.
Western/northern fortress system collapses from fighting + defections; Pyongyang falls in 668.
The mountains held.
The people broke.
In 698, Dae Joyeong (大祚榮) founds Balhae, after defeating a Tang force at the Battle of Tianmenling (天門嶺). Just thirty years after Goguryeo fell.
- ה -
If Baekje is:
The wound that never healed.
Then Goguryeo is:
The question that never resolved.
To most Koreans today, Goguryeo is a series of What If scenarios:
What if the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms (五胡十六國) period had lasted a little longer?
What if Sui and Tang had never invaded?
What if Goguryeo had produced better leadership during its final crisis?
What if Yeon Gaesomun had left behind more capable sons?
What if Goguryeo had survived?
What if?
Because after Goguryeo, something changed.
- Balhae survived in the north for another two and a half centuries.
- Unified Silla became enormously prosperous.
- Goryeo would later defeat the Khitan and build a powerful state of its own.
But no Korean kingdom would ever again occupy quite the position Goguryeo once had.
Goguryeo:
Fuck you. Come at me.
After Goguryeo:
You're stronger. We'll accommodate you and survive.
What a fucking miserable way to survive.
Goguryeo is the last great Korean memory of not having to swallow our pride.
To list just a few things that happened afterwards:
The Khitan Invasions (Liao Dynasty)
993, 1010, 1018
The Mongol Invasions
1231-1259
The Red Turban Invasions
1359, 1361
The Japanese Invasions (임진왜란)
1592-1598
The Manchu Invasions (병자호란, 병자호란)
1627, 1636
French and American Expeditions
1866, 1871
Japanese Colonization
1910-1945
The Korean War and Chinese Intervention
1950-1953
American troops that never left
1953-today
Different centuries.
Different powers.
Different circumstances.
Some inflicted upon us.
A remarkable amount inflicted upon ourselves.
And through all of it, Korea developed another way of surviving beside powers much larger than itself.
사대 (事大).
Serving the Great.
Bow when you have to.
Send tribute.
Learn the language.
Adopt the bureaucracy.
Use their calendar.
Call their emperor Emperor.
Keep your king.
Survive.
Goguryeo represents almost the opposite fantasy.
Don't bow.
Build a fucking fortress.
Which is probably why Goguryeo occupies such a strange place in the Korean imagination.
It isn't simply remembered as a kingdom.
It is remembered as a possibility.
And apparently I am not the first Korean to sit around getting angry about this.
Let me reintroduce Shin Chae-ho (신채호; 申采浩).
Historian.
Journalist.
Independence activist.
Later anarchist.
Professional pain in the ass to basically everyone in authority.
Writing while Korea itself had disappeared into the Japanese Empire, Shin became obsessed with a question very similar to ours:
What the fuck happened?
How did the people who produced Goguryeo become a country obsessed with serving larger powers?
And like me, Shin blamed Kim Bu-sik.
More precisely, he blamed what happened in 1135, when the Buddhist monk Myocheong (묘청; 妙淸) led the movement to move the Goryeo capital north from Gaegyeong to Seogyeong, modern Pyongyang, declare a new era, and take a much more aggressive posture toward the Jurchen Jin Dynasty.
Myocheong lost.
The man sent to crush him was:
Kim fucking Bu-sik.
Yes. That Kim Bu-sik.
The man who, only a decade later, would oversee the compilation of the Samguk Sagi.
Shin Chae-ho thought this was no ordinary rebellion.
He called it:
朝鮮歷史上一千年來第一大事件
(“The greatest event in a thousand years of Korean history.”)
Why?
Because to Shin, Myocheong versus Kim Bu-sik represented something much larger than two factions fighting over where to put the capital.
He described it as:
낭가·불가 vs 유가
the native/Buddhist tradition versus Confucianism
국풍파 vs 한학파
the native tradition versus Chinese learning
독립당 vs 사대당
the independence party versus the serve-the-great party
진취사상 vs 보수사상
expansionist/progressive thought versus conservative thought
Myocheong represented the first.
Kim Bu-sik represented the second.
And Kim Bu-sik won.
Shin's conclusion was savage.
He argued that if Myocheong had won, Korean history might have continued in an independent, outward-looking direction.
Instead, Kim Bu-sik's victory pushed Korea toward what Shin saw as a thousand years of:
사대적, Subservient.
보수적. Conservative.
속박적. Bound.
That interpretation is very much Shin Chae-ho's interpretation, not some neutral historical fact. Modern historians can and do read the 1135 conflict as regional rivalry, court factionalism, struggles between Gaegyeong and Seogyeong elites, competing foreign policies toward Jin, and all kinds of less romantic things.
But I almost don't care here.
Because we are talking about Goguryeo's place in the Korean imagination.
And Shin Chae-ho is Exhibit A.
A Korean intellectual living under foreign rule looked backward through a thousand years of history and decided that the great catastrophe was not when the Mongols invaded.
Not Imjin.
Not the Manchu invasion.
Not even Japan annexing Korea.
He chose:
the moment the northward-looking faction lost to Kim Bu-sik.
All these questions eventually run into a very Korean way of remembering unresolved loss.
A word that still refuses a clean translation:
한.
Han.
Resentment.
Sorrow.
Grief.
Unresolved.
Helplessness.
The pain of something that happened and cannot be undone.
It is not anger.
Anger still knows what it wants to hit.
한 is what remains when there is nothing left to hit.
Goguryeo is Korean 한 turned backward into a question.
Not:
Why did this happen to us?
But:
What if it hadn't?
Now the tricky part.
Soil (Land): Yes
Stuff (Artifacts): Yes
Blood (DNA): Yes (no evidence yet)
Words (Language): Yes
Books (Written records): Yes
Are they Korean ('Us')?
→ Yes
And if Goguryeo is Korean, then by definition
Baekje is Korean,
Balhae is Korean.
The more interesting part is that,
the Songhua-Liao World also becomes Korean.
And that's a whole different can of worms.
From a timeframe standpoint, nothing really changes since Goguryeo was founded after Shilla and collapsed while Shilla existed.
And on Songhua-Liao being Korean?
I believe:
Songhua-Liao is Mohe.
Songhua-Liao is Chinese.
One claim does not make another claim disappear, nor does it make another claim any weaker.
- ה -
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