Ch 2 - Tales of Three Kingdoms

Breaking the Stalemate

The authoritarian Kingdom of Paekche challenged Koguryo for dominance on Korean Peninsula. King Sosurim adopted Buddhism as a state religion in Koguryo.

Chinese control of the Lolang and Daifang commanderies faced nearly continuous challenges from both Koguryo and Paekche throughout the first half of the 4th century AD. When Koguryo's queen dowager returned from China in 355 AD, Koguryo's suzerain relationship with China vanished completely. Not long afterward, the Chinese tribute system established among the villages and clan settlements in the Mahan region totally collapsed and Koguryo spread its influence southward into the Mahan and Chinhan regions.

The Chinese residents of Lolang found themselves essentially isolated from their homeland. Rather than rebel against their change of status however, they merely acknowledged the newly instituted authority of King Mich'on and continued to live as before under Chinese governors and administrators appointed by Koguryo. The Chinese continued to maintain a considerable cultural presence in Lolang until well past the middle of the 4th century, even as Koguryo continued to consolidate its power on the peninsula.

In China, the seriously weakened Yen Empire disappeared altogether by 370 AD. Almost simultaneously, the last vestiges of Puyo's existence in Manchuria vanished when Puyo passed under the total protection of Koguryo. Tribal chieftains who had been invested with title and position by the Chinese could only watch in dismay as their authority and prestige diminished.

The rise to power of the militaristic kingdom of Paekche presented a serious challenge to King Kogugwon's ambition to dominate the peninsula. Beginning with Prince Piryu's son, the formidable warrior-king Kun Ch'ogo, the ruling power of Paekche became increasingly authoritarian. Kun Ch'ogo enforced his royal family's ruling power by leading Paekche warriors across Mahan in a campaign that succeeded in establishing his kingdom as a strong military power in the Daifang military district. Freed from its suzerain relationship with China, Koguryo concentrated on expanding its domain southward in the face of Paekche's growing strength. After several years of mounting pressure from Paekche warriors, King Kogugwon took personal command of a Koguryo invasion of Paekche in 369 AD, and suffered a severe defeat in the violent fighting that followed. Kun Ch'ogo retaliated by allowing his son, Crown Prince Kun Kusu, to invade Koguryo, resulting in the capture of some 5,000 Koguryo warriors.

Two years later, Kun Ch'ogo struck northward in a bid to take complete control of the former domain of the Daifang Commandery. Beginning from their capital at Wiryesong, near modern Seoul, Paekche warriors drove deep into Koguryo, reaching as far north as Pyongyang. In the winter of 371 AD, Prince Kun Kusu commanded the advanced guard that first reached the city walls of Pyongyang. Standing in confidence with his warriors below the ramparts of Pyongyang, King Kogugwon awaited the impending attack. Prince Kun Kusu's troops struck the second harsh blow against Koguryo in as many generations by killing King Kogugwon during the assault. Just six years later, Paekche struck again with a force of 30,000 soldiers. The string of Koguryo military defeats at the hands of Paekche and the earlier invasions by the Xianbei in the north dealt Koguryo a severe blow. The engagements marked the beginning of a long, bitter feud between these two kingdoms that lasted most of the next three hundred years.

While Paekche and Koguryo battled each other for dominance of the Korean Peninsula in the latter half of the 4th century, the region east of the Naktong River in modern north Kyongsang Province came under the control of the Kingdom of Silla and the centralized authority of a king. Of the original six Silla clans, only three - Pak, Sok, and Kim - belonged to the ruling clan division. For nearly three hundred years the Silla crown alternated among the three royal clans, each contending with the other for the kingship. This long-standing rivalry finally ended in 356 AD, when King Naemul of the Kim clan ascended the Silla throne and monopolized the right to succession on a hereditary basis.

King Kogugwon's death during the Paekche assault at Pyongyang left Koguryo without an effective ruler for nearly two years. When King Sosurim took the Koguryo throne in 371 AD he began a complete reexamination and restructuring of the kingdom's governing institutions. The following year Sosurim led the formation of a centralized aristocratic state structure that operated under an entirely new administrative legal code. He further strengthened this new bureaucracy by founding the T'aehak, the National Confucian Academy, an essential element in the establishment of his new bureaucratic regime. Another element in the solidification of Sosurim's new bureaucracy came, not from Koguryo, but from China in the company of a Buddhist monk named Sundo.

King Sosurim began to develop close ties with the Eastern Jin Dynasty of Emperor Fu Jian, ties which further contributed to such cultural imports as ideographic writing, medicine, arts, social customs, and various currents of Chinese philosophy. Both Confucianism and Buddhism enjoyed the favor of Jin emperor Fu Jian's court in Nanjing. Traveling under imperial orders from the Jin emperor, Sundo packed his Buddhist scriptures and images and journeyed to the royal court of King Sosurim in 372 AD. Sundo's teachings, which gave great recognition to the privileged position of the aristocracy, quickly spread among Koguryo's royal clans and opened many minds to a new system of beliefs. Koguryo's nobility welcomed the idea of a single body of believers devoted spiritually to the ways of Buddha, a religion seemingly well-suited to function as a spiritual prop to support the ruling structure of a central authority on the throne. Koguryo's initial acceptance of Buddhism happened largely because it fit the aristocracy's well-defined Confucian concept of an entire nation serving the king as a single body.

The acquiescence of Koguryo's powerful aristocracy virtually assured the official acceptance of Buddhism. Less than a year after its introduction, King Sosurim adopted Buddhism as a state religion in Koguryo and ordered the construction of Korea's first Buddhist temple . Merely proclaiming a new state religion however, did not lead to the immediate acceptance of Buddhism throughout the country. Buddhism remained primarily a cult affair in the decades that followed its introduction, practiced almost exclusively within royal court circles. Nevertheless, the acceptance of Buddhism and the creation of a new bureaucratic structure laid the groundwork for Koguryo's external expansion.

For years, Koguryo and Paekche clashed in violent battles for regional control of Korea that devastated the countryside. King Kwanggaet'o, whose name literally means "broad expander of domain," took the Koguryo throne in 391 AD at the age of seventeen. Beginning that year and continuing throughout his twenty-two year reign, the son of King Kogukyang led his warriors across all of Koguryo's land boundaries in a succession of notable victories that expanded Koguryo's territories far into the Korean peninsula. In the sixth year of his reign, King Kwanggaet'o personally led a major naval expeditionary force against Paekche and extended his domain southward into the region between the Imjin and Han Rivers. His armies captured a total of sixty-four fortress domains, fifty-eight Paekche castles, and 1,400 villages. Among the vast amount of treasure taken were ten Paekche ministers and a brother of the Paekche King, as well as a promise that Paekche would serve Koguryo (a promise that lasted only a few years). In the northeast, after Kwanggaet'o's mounted warriors overran the millet and wheat fields of the forest dwelling Tungusic Su Shen tribes and subdued the countryside, he made himself the master of Manchuria. In the west, his troops occupied the Liaodong region.

At the southern end of the Korean peninsula along the lower reaches of the Naktong River basin, located in a region once controlled by the twelve walled-town states of Pyonhan, six small kingdoms emerged that were known collectively as Kaya. At a site near Kimhae, located just northwest of the modern port city of Pusan, Suro became Kaya's first king in 42 AD and developed the Pon (original) Kaya kingdom. The region around Koryong in the hills above the eastern banks of the Naktong River evolved into the Tae (great) Kaya kingdom. Four other Kaya kingdoms emerged in this region:  the Ara Kaya near Haman, the Konyong Kaya from Hamnyong, the Songsan Kaya situated near Kyongsan and the So Kaya from the area around Kosong. Imna, the southernmost of these walled town-states, emerged in the coastal region near the mouth of the Naktong River. Pon Kaya and Tae Kaya later joined with the other small states in the lower Naktong River basin to created the independent confederation of walled-town states known as Kaya Federation.

The coastal population of the Kaya states, particularly in Imna, were predominantly fishermen who engaged in a variety of maritime activities. Sailing from small fishing ports scattered along the southern coast, the Kaya maintained contact with the Chinese commanderies near the Yalu River by sea, sailed northward up the east coast to trade with the fishing populations of Eastern Ye, and sailed south across the Tsushima Strait to maintain contact with fishing villages on the large islands to the south and east. In fact, the Pyonhan people had regarded the northern and western coastal areas of Kyushu as their additional territory long before the creation of the Kaya Federation. They also considered the people living in these areas as fellow tribesmen and trading partners.

Relations among Koguryo, Paekche and Silla, known collectively as the Three Kingdoms, pivoted around China. Each kingdom had its own strategy for unifying the peninsula and vigorously pursued its own expansionist policies. Each became quite adept at taking diplomatic advantage of China's political turmoil and absorbing those elements of Chinese culture that might benefit their future development, all the while maneuvering diplomatically to make use of any resource to further their own aims. Squeezed in the middle, between Paekche and Silla, the Kaya Federation became both a pawn in the battle for dominance on the peninsula and a portal to the emergence of a new player on the international scene - the island nation of Japan.