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North Korea Unification by Kory
Wang Kn's army fought ceaselessly with Later Paekche for the
next decade, with Silla in retreat. After a crushing victory in
930 over Paekche forces at present-day Andong, South Korea, Kory
obtained a formal surrender from Silla and proceeded to conquer
Later Paekche by 935--amazingly, with troops led by former
Paekche king Kynhwn, whose son had treacherously cast him
aside. After this accomplishment, Wang Kn became a magnanimous
unifier. Regarding himself as the proper successor to Kogury, he
embraced survivors of the Kogury lineage who were fleeing the
dying Parhae state, which had been conquered by Kitan warriors in
926. He then took a Silla princess as his wife and treated the
Silla aristocracy with great generosity. Wang Kn established a
regime embodying the remnants of the Later Three Kingdoms--what
was left after the almost fifty years of struggle between the
forces of Kynhwn and Kungye--and accomplished a true
unification of the peninsula.
Placing the regime's capital at Kaesng, the composite elite
of the Kory Dynasty (918-1392) forged a tradition of
aristocratic continuity that lasted to the modern era. The elite
fused aristocratic privilege and political power through marriage
alliances and control of land and central political office, and
made class position hereditary. This practice established a
pattern for Korea in which landed gentry mingled with a
Confucian- or Buddhist-educated stratum of scholar-officials;
often scholars and landlords were one and the same person. In any
case, landed wealth and bureaucratic position were powerfully
fused. This fusion occurred at the center, where a strong
bureaucracy influenced by Confucian statecraft emerged.
Thereafter, this bureaucracy sought to dominate local power and
thus militated against Japanese or European feudal pattern of
parcelized sovereignty, castle domains, and military tradition.
By the thirteenth century, two dominant government groupings had
emerged: the civil officials and the military officials, known
thereafter as
yangban
(two groups--see Glossary).
The Kory elite admired the Chinese civilization that emerged
during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Official delegations and
ordinary merchants brought Kory gold, silver, and ginseng to
China in exchange for Song silk, porcelain, and woodblock books.
The treasured Song porcelain stimulated Kory artisans to produce
an even finer type of inlaid celadon porcelain. Praised for the
pristine clarity of its blue-green glaze--celadon glazes also
were yellow green--and the delicate art of its inlaid portraits
(usually of flowers or animals), Kory celadon displayed the
refined taste of aristocrats and later had great influence on
Japanese potters.
Buddhism coexisted with Confucianism throughout the Kory
period; it deeply affected daily life and perhaps bequeathed to
modern Korea its eclecticism of religious beliefs. Kory Buddhist
priests systematized religious practice by rendering the Chinese
version of the Buddhist canon into mammoth woodblock print
editions, known as the Tripitaka. The first edition was completed
in 1087, but was lost; another, completed in 1251 and still
extant, is located at the Haeinsa temple near Taegu, South Korea.
Its accuracy, combined with its exquisite calligraphic carvings,
makes it the finest of some twenty Tripitaka in East Asia. By
1234, if not earlier, Kory had also invented moveable iron type,
two centuries before its use in Europe.
This high point of Kory culture coincided with internal
disorder and the rise of the Mongols, whose power swept most of
Eurasia during the thirteenth century. Kory was not spared;
Khubilai Khan's forces invaded and demolished Kory's army in
1231, forcing the Kory government to retreat to Kanghwa Island
(off modern-day Inch'n). But after a more devastating invasion
in 1254, in which countless people died and some 200,000 people
were captured, Kory succumbed to Mongol domination and its kings
intermarried with Mongol princesses. The Mongols then enlisted
thousands of Koreans in ill-fated invasions of Japan in 1274 and
1281, using Korean-made ships. Both invasions were repelled with
aid, as legend has it, from opportune typhoons known as "divine
wind," or kamikaze. The last period of Mongol influence was
marked by the appearance of a strong bureaucratic stratum of
scholar-officials, or literati (sadaebu in Korean). Many
of them lived in exile outside the capital, and they used their
superior knowledge of the Confucian classics to condemn the
excesses of the ruling families, who were backed by Mongol power.
The overthrow of the Mongols by the founders of the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644) in China gave a rising group of military men,
steeled in battle against coastal pirates from Japan, the
opportunity to contest for power. When the Ming claimed
suzerainty over former Mongol domains in Korea, the Kory court
was divided between pro-Mongol and pro-Ming forces. Two generals
marshaled their forces for an assault on Ming armies on the
Liaodong Peninsula. One of the generals, Yi Sng-gye, was
pro-Ming. When he reached the Yalu River, he abruptly turned back
and marched on the Kory capital, which he subdued quickly. He
thus became the founder of Korea's longest dynasty, the Yi
(1392-1910). The new state was named Chosn, harking back to the
old Chosn kingdom fifteen centuries earlier; its capital was
built at Seoul.
Data as of June 1993
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