Ch 2 - Tales of Three Kingdoms

Silla

Korea's Three Kingdoms struggled for dominance through a series of shifting alliances that put an end to the Kaya Federation and make mortal enemies of Silla and Paekche.

Paekche was at the height of its power during the 4th century AD. It not only controlled southwestern Korea, but had created the Yamato kingdom in Japan and established an alliance with the Kaya Federation in the southeast. In order to cope with Koguryo's expansive policies and maintain and enhance its own military position in southeastern Korea, Paekche depended on its amicable alliances with Yamato and the Kaya Federation. Yamato cooperated with Paekche warriors to take control over a large area of Kaya Federation in the Naktong River basin. They established armed garrisons in the area and, in most cases, retained local petty chieftains in administrative office. The presence of these Yamato garrisons not only gave Paekche a friendly force protecting its flank against Silla, it strengthened Paekche's claim as heir to the former lands of Mahan. The presence of Yamato troops in the region also gave Japan a foothold from which it could easily intervene in Korean intrastate politics. For some time, Paekche called on the Yamato garrisons in Kaya to initiate direct attacks against Silla. To check the expansive designs of its western neighbor, Silla's King Naemul turned to Koguryo for help.

Beginning in 391 AD, just one year after Prince Homuda had been enthroned as king in Yamato Japan, Paekche came under a heavy, nearly continuous battering from joint military operations by Koguryo and Silla troops under King Kwanggaet'o. Sailing the Yellow Sea from northwestern Korea, Koguryo cavalry and infantry struck Paekche from the southern and southwestern coasts while large land armies invaded from the north. Five years later, in 396 AD, as the northern kingdom pushed its borders further south, King Kwanggaet'o again routed Paekche troops, but could not conquer the defiant kingdom. Paekche's capital at Wiryesong remained intact and its alliances with Yamato Wa and the Kaya Federation held firm.

Paekche's King Asin attempted to restrain Koguryo by establishing relations with both the northern and southern Chinese dynasties. He also continued to call on Yamato Wa to mount attacks against Silla, which had been continually harassing the small kingdoms of the Kaya Federation. In 398 and 399 AD, Paekche's King Asin busily made plans for a large-scale military expedition against Koguryo. Silla reacted by asking Koguryo for support against Paekche and in 400 AD, armed warriors from Silla and Koguryo swarmed into the Naktong River basin. Intense battles raged along the river as the northern alliance pushed Yamato troops all the way to Imna (Mimana).

Changsu, "the long-lived," succeeded Kwanggaet'o on the throne of Koguryo in 413 AD and within one year commissioned the construction of a memorial to commemorate his father's reign. The large stone pillar still stands on a hill east of the old capital fortress at Kungnae-seong on the north side of the Yalu River in Ji-an, in the Tonghua Special Area, Ji-lin Province. The inscriptions on this memorial, a written eulogy of King Kwanggaet'o's military exploits, provide an indelible record of events during the reign of Koguryo's most revered ruler. The memorial captures the intense conflict between the Koguryo-Silla alliance on the one hand and the Paekche, Imna (Mimana), Kaya and Yamato Wa alliance on the other .

King Changsu's seventy-eight year reign continued his father's enterprises and brought Koguryo to its flourishing height using a technique that became a common diplomatic strategy in East Asia. While Koguryo engaged in military confrontation with Chinese states close at hand, it simultaneously established a policy of maintaining friendly relations with Chinese states distant from its own borders. He also formed ties with the nomads on China's northern frontier. From behind his own greatly expanded frontiers King Changsu held Chinese ambitions in check by maintaining diplomatic ties with states in both north and south China, thus enabling him to manipulate the two contending forces to Koguryo's advantage.

Koguryo fashioned an empire that stretched from the Sungari River basin in the north to the modern site of Vladivostok in the northeast, down the Manchurian plain through the Liao River basin, southward on the Korean peninsula to the southern extent of the Bay of Namyang adjacent Seoul on the west coast, and to the Chungnyong Pass overlooking the Han River between North Kyongsang and North Ch'ungch'ong provinces on the east coast. As a regional power, Koguryo's military strength and well-functioning institutional machinery allowed it to compete directly with the Chinese for supremacy on the field of battle.

By involving Koguryo in its conflict with Paekche, Silla opened the door for further expansive pressure from Koguryo. Koguryo's capitol fortress at Kungnae-song could not remain a military encampment forever. It needed room to develop into a major metropolitan center and to focus on the economic, social and political life of the nation. In 427 AD, Changsu transferred his seat of government from the narrow mountain valleys along the Yalu River to the broad river basin at Pyongyang. Both Paekche and Silla viewed the move as a serious, common threat. Silla's King Nulchi concluded an alliance with Paekche six years later in an attempt to counter the implications of that move and to check the pressure being exerted by Koguryo on their northern frontiers. Despite several occasions during the ensuing years when the two kingdoms carried out joint military operations against Koguryo, the Silla-Paekche alliance proved to be an exercise in futility. In 475 AD, Koguryo seized the Paekche capitol at Wiryesong near modern Kwangju just below Seoul, captured King Kaero and beheaded him. Barely managing to preserve its national existence, Paekche moved its capitol further south to Ungjin near modern Kongju.

Trouble was also brewing in the Kaya states. For nearly four generations, Paekche refugees from the fighting with Koguryo had been escaping southwestern Korea and moving into the villages of Imna. In 487 AD, a daring and ambitious Yamato administrator based in Imna developed contacts with Koguryo. Based on plans set down by two men from Imna, he assassinated the Paekche Crown Prince at Irin. After building the castle of Te-san to defend his position, he cut off access to the harbor through which supplies were being shipped. Paekche's King Tongsong was so enraged by the affrontery of the act he ordered the destruction of the Te-san castle and its occupants. Paekche troops laid siege to the fortification, killing over three hundred people, including the original plotters and their families.

To better control the unsettled situation in the southern Kaya states, Paekche requested the four Imna districts of Upper Tari, Lower Tari, Sata, and Muro (Japanese names) be turned over to them. The Governor of Tari agreed, seeing the change as a way to preserve his small state from being absorbed by a foreign power. The Yamato Court however, was divided over such a move. Emperor Keitai favored granting the four districts to Paekche, but Imperial Prince Ohine was dead set against such a plan, arguing that any cession of frontier territory would be contrary to Yamato's interests in the region. Paekche envoys at the court acknowledged the prince's argument with the subtle threat, "granting that it were true, which is the more painful - to be beaten with the large end of a staff or with the small one?"  In 513 AD, a group of generals from Paekche, Silla, the Kaya states of Ara and Pan-phi were summoned to the Yamato Court to receive the imperial order giving the territory seized by Pan-phi and Te-san back to Paekche. For years, many people in the Yamato Court believed this transfer of territory was the root cause of Silla's resentment against the Yamato Kingdom.

Shortly after Pophung took the Silla throne in 514 AD, he adopted the Chinese royal title wang, meaning king, the first Silla ruler to do so. He adopted the independent era name Konwon, "Initiated Beginning," and formally declared the confederated states east of the Naktong River to be the Kingdom of Silla. Pophung's new title not only firmly established his royal authority, but clearly indicated that he viewed his kingdom as a regional power with a status equal to that of China. The use of Chinese titles, naming the era of the reigning monarch, and the assumption of a national identity reflected a readiness on the part of Silla to accept China's advanced political institutions as its own. King Pophung refined Silla's old governing system and reoriented its social structures . Sometime between 527 and 535 AD, Buddhism became the state religion in Silla for many of the same reasons that Koguryo accepted the religion centuries earlier. Buddhism provided the ideological underpinning for national unity and solidarity in the newly centralized Silla state.

While Silla strengthened its position in southeastern Korea, Yamato readied a 60,000-man army to re-establish and unite Imna, South Kaya and Tok-sa-tan, small states which had been conquered by Silla. A minor rebellion on Kyushu in 527 AD, which blocked tribute ships arriving from and departing to Koguryo, Paekche, Silla, and the Kaya Federation, delayed the movement of this army for nearly two years. Forced to avoid the protective headlands, ships were exposed to high winds and heavy seas that damaged their precious cargo. The King of Paekche rebuked Governor Oshiyama of Lower Tari for delivering "wholly spoiled and unsightly" goods and urged him to use the Port of Tasa in Kaya as the crossing route for tribute to Yamato Japan. Governor Oshiyama sent a request to the Yamato Court asking to turn over the Port of Tasa to the King of Paekche. The request greatly disturbed the King of Kaya, who believed transferring the port facility to Paekche would be against the long standing grant that originally established the port. Yamato's envoys could not make the grant openly, but sent a special envoy who secretly affected the transfer of authority to Paekche. As a result, the King of Kaya began spreading hatred against the Yamato Kingdom.

In 529 AD, the year Paekche gained control of the Port of Tasa, the King of Kaya married King Pophung's daughter, thereby allying his kingdom with Silla. The 100 men who escorted her to Kaya, well-dressed in the rank-defining costumes of Silla, were well-received. Following the wedding, they were dispersed throughout the districts of Kaya. The King of Imna bitterly complained of the strange clothing worn by the men from Silla and sent messengers to secretly return them to Silla. Silla took this as a great insult and in an act of retaliation captured three Imna castles at To-ka, Ko-phi, and Phona mura. The King of Imna went to the Yamato Court with an urgent request to Emperor Keitai for military assistance against Silla.

Pinched between Silla and Paekche, Kaya suffered the effects of the conflict between them and never managed to achieve full political or social development. Kaya came under persistent harassment from Silla, until finally, in 532 AD, Pon Kaya fell to Silla's growing power. By 540 AD, the position of Imna's port facility as well as the existence of the entire Kaya Federation became very precarious. The conquest of Pon Kaya made Silla's southern border conterminous with Imna, a situation that proved disastrous to the southern states of the Kaya Federation.

In 540 AD, rulers of the southern Kaya states along with the Yamato Commissioner of Imna, traveled to Ungjin to visit King Song-myong of Paekche. Song-myong told his visitors that the Yamato emperor had decreed the re-establishment of Imna and the Kaya Federation. He reminisced about former times during the reigns of Kun Ch'ogo and Kun Kusu, when Paekche first established contact with the kings of Ara, Kaya and Tak-sun and established a cordial friendship with them, treating the small states as "children or younger brothers."  He then angrily denounced Silla for deceiving them and causing anger against Yamato Japan. Tok-ki-tan, sitting on the border between Kaya and Silla, had been harassed for several years before being finally defeated and Imna had been unable to stop it. The small state of South Kaya, he continued, had "come to ruin," and the double dealing and corruption in Tak-sun had led to its ruin as well.

King Song-myong had a strong desire to return to the harmonious relationships of former ages, to rescue those provinces taken by Silla and restore them to their original connections within the Kaya Federation. Seeking to play the role of father or older brother to the small states, Song-myong noted that Silla had invaded the Kaya Federation with help from Koguryo, but had yet to conquer the territory. Believing that Silla could not succeed by itself, he warned them of the dangerous entanglements of Silla's "slanderous deceit" and the risks of falling captive to others. He told the Yamato authorities of Imna that their only hope for survival lay in joining with Paekche to restore the former status of the Kaya Federation.

King Song-myong spoke of high Japanese officials, long-time residents of Imna living close to the Silla frontier, who had been poisoning Imna and plotting a defense against Yamato Japan. He angrily accused them of feigning service to the Yamato Court and of maintaining a false pretense of goodwill toward Imna. Silla had long ignored the Imperial decree urging Paekche and the Kaya states to reestablish South Kaya and Tok-ki-tan, so before they annex the territory entirely, he warned, Yamato authorities should quickly seize the opportunity and move to establish the Kaya Federation.

An envoy arrived in the Paekche capital at Ungjin in 543 AD with a message from Emperor Kimmei that decreed that prefects and districts in the lower Kaya region belonging to Imna be put under Yamato jurisdiction. Kimmei reminded King Song-myong that he had been presenting memorials for the past ten years saying that the Kaya Federation should be established, but nothing has been done. Imna was key to the region and its collapse would do great harm to Paekche. He urged Paekche to quickly establish the federation. Song-myong's ministers agreed that Emperor Kimmei's decree should be complied with at once and voiced their opinion that Paekche's prefects and governors in Lower Kaya should not leave its jurisdiction. Song-myong summoned the Yamato agents of Imna and the kings of the various provinces to Ungjin to establish a common policy, but neither sent their agents.

Imna treated the small state of Ara as a father and regarded Yamato Japan as its authority to do so. The authorities in Ara exercised absolute authority over the administration of Yamato's interests in the Kaya Federation and continued to conspire with Silla making it nearly impossible to establish the Kaya Federation. Local authorities deceived the Yamato Court with reports stating that Paekche was too far distant and unable to help them in their need. One of the highest ranking Yamato agents in the region wore the cap of a high-ranking Silla official, indicating his devotion to Silla body and soul. King Song-myong reminded Emperor Kimmei in 544 AD that Silla's unprincipled behavior was the root cause of the numerous problems in the Kaya Federation and that every spring and autumn Silla assembled troops in large numbers with the object of invading Ara and Hasan. It was only the fact that Paekche had sent its own troops into the area that prevented Silla from harassing the region.

In an effort to restore the small state of Tak-sun, Song-myong proposed to construct six fortresses along the Naktong River on the frontier between Silla and Ara and petition the Emperor for 3,000 troops - 500 for each fortress - to augment Paekche soldiers. Paekche would supply clothing and food for the garrisons. He proposed to retain the prefects and governors of castles in South Kaya in their stations to continue harassing Silla and protect Imna.

To escape the confines of the mountain-ringed Ungjin area, King Song-myong moved the Paekche capitol in 547 AD to the town of Sabi on the broad plain near the modern city of Puyo. In addition, he ordered his monks to foster the spread of Buddhism throughout the kingdom to firm up its spiritual foundation. After King Song restructured Paekche internally and increased its military strength, he turned his attention to the recovery of Paekche's former territory in the Han River basin. He made a pact with Silla's King Chinhung and together they struck northward to take advantage of growing internal dissension in Koguryo. The combined forces of Silla and Paekche surged against Koguryo in 551 AD, sweeping across the fertile valleys of central Korea. Silla warriors drove through the Han and Imjin River valleys, taking possession of the richest agricultural land in the peninsula, the military and draft labor services of peasants, iron mines, and ten communities along the upper reaches of the Han River. The campaign greatly increased Silla's wealth and opened an easier route to China from ports on the Yellow Sea. The success of this venture foretold of even greater expansion by the Kingdom of Silla.

The following year, King Song-myong dispatched a diplomatic mission to Yamato Japan that began Yamato's long period of Chinese tutelage. Paekche envoys carried presents that included a bronze statue of Buddha, scrolls of Buddhist teachings, and a personal letter extolling the new faith. By the sixth century, Japan had already witnessed a heavy flow of diplomatic and cultural influences from both China and Korea. The flow quickened in the mid-sixth century to a level that made the Japanese people quite conscious of the new influence from the north. Factional disputes broke out in the Yamato court over these foreign ideas;  some factions favored the adoption of Buddhism, while other Chinese ideas clashed with opposing groups that fought all change. The idea that Buddhist images and beliefs constituted a magical system of equal or possibly greater power than native Japanese Shinto beliefs became a particularly contentious issue. A generation later, with Japan united under a hierarchical bureaucracy administering a complex system of provinces, districts, and villages, Crown Prince Shotoku (593-622) championed both the new religion and the continental civilization which accompanied it.

Paekche's King Song-myong had only a brief time in which to celebrate his victory over Koguryo along the lower reaches of the Han River. Flushed with the success of his own armies, Silla's King Chinhung ordered his troops westward and drove Paekche's forces completely out of the Han-Imjin River basins, securing the entire Han River basin and the Bay of Namyang for Silla. The conquest gave Silla control over a large settled population in a rich agricultural area that provided additional taxes, manual labor, and military service. It also opened a gateway to communicate directly with China across the Yellow Sea and brought technological gains to Silla such as an existing iron industry. Silla's unexpected seizure of the Han River basin came as a devastating blow to King Song-myong who saw his dreams end in failure.

King Song-myong dispatched an envoy to the Yamato Court in 553 AD with unexpected news. The urgent message informed Kimmei of alleged statements exchanged between Silla and Koguryo to the effect that, "Paekche and Mimana [Imna] resort frequently to Japan, doubtlessly to ask for troops wherewith to invade our territories . . . it may be hoped that we shall anticipate the Japanese troops and conquer Ara before they have started. We can then cut off their communications with Japan."  Silla and Koguryo had a common plan. In another message to Emperor Kimmei later that year, Song-myong requested a large supply of bows and horses for his armies. A mission sent from Kyushu to Paekche arrived with a present of two good horses, two traveling barges, fifty bows, fifty sets of arrows, and an Imperial message saying, "As to the troops asked for by the King, his wishes shall be complied with."  The rapidly changing situation in the Han-Imjin basin prompted Song-myong to rush a messenger to Kyushu the following year to announce that, "The campaign of this year is a much more dangerous one than the last;  and we beg that the force granted to us may not be allowed to be later than the first month."  Yamato responded by sending an auxiliary force of 1,000 men, 100 horses, and 40 ships.

Enraged by Silla King Chinhung's treachery, King Song-myong turned against his former ally and personally launched a frontal assault against Silla across the Kum River in 554 AD. King Song-myong died in the ensuing campaign, killed in the confusion of a deadly night battle at Kwansan Fortress near modern Okch'on, a battle that severed a Silla-Paekche alliance that had endured for 121 years. King Chinhung pushed ahead with his own policy of territorial expansion and vigorously went on the offensive against his neighbors. Undaunted by the attacks from Paekche, Silla continued to apply pressure in southern Korea. Silla's earlier subjugation of the island of Ullung in the East Sea and its conquest of the northern Kaya tribes created a springboard for its advance along the fertile Naktong River.

In 562 AD, Silla forces swept down the Naktong River basin. Tae Kaya succumbed, followed in kind by each of the other petty states of the Kaya Federation, ten provinces in all. The conquest of Imna completed Silla's domination of the Naktong River basin. In the aftermath of this defeat, Emperor Kimmei issued a vengeful edict condemning the people of Silla as "a tribe of wretches in the West" and asking people to join in "doing vengeance on the enemies."  Yamato had done nothing to Silla that deserved this kind of treatment, he continued, yet "Silla with long spears and strong bows has oppressed Imna," and massacred the population of the Kaya Federation. Nine years later, bedridden with illness, Emperor Kimmei summoned the Imperial Prince and commanded him to, "make war on Silla, and establish Imna as a feudal dependency, renewing a relationship like that of a husband and wife just as it was in former days. If this be done, in my grave I shall rest contented."

Beginning with the Silla victories in the Han-Imjin River basin, Paekche saw Silla as a mortal enemy. Paekche turned to Koguryo for help and launched continuous attacks against Silla, a confrontation that presaged a great storm that soon erupted over northeast Asia.