Ch 3 - Paekche and Silla

Flowers Will Bloom

Warlord Yang Jian reunified China under the Sui Dynasty, initiating a period of peaceful prosperity and starting China on the road to its second great imperial period. King Chinhung supported the development of Hwarang-do, the "way of flowering youth," and built a uniquely Korean method by which the Silla court selected its leaders in time of peace and generals in time of war.

The prolonged divisions and civil wars that ravaged China fragmented the country into a series of competing kingdoms early in the 4th century AD. The Jin Dynasty (265 - 420 AD) managed to unify the country briefly in its early years, but it could not withstand the continued invasions of northern nomads. In 317 AD, the Jin court fled Luoyang and reestablished a new capital at Jiankang, south of the Yangtze River near the modern city of Jiankang. Over the next two centuries northern nomadic peoples completely overran northern China as a succession of dynastic founders established states of their own in the vain hope of taking for themselves the very empire they were defeating. The first to succeed was Tuoba Gui, who led his Tuoba tribe in establishing the Northern Wei Dynasty among the kingdoms of northern China in 386 AD. The Northern Wei dominated much of North China from its capital city in Datong on the banks of the Yu River North China.

China's large, dense, and mostly agrarian population gradually "swallowed" the northern invaders in a process not unlike that which followed the "barbarian" conquest of the Roman Empire. The northern nomads underwent a period of rapid cultural absorption as traditions of the steppe nomads blended with Chinese governmental and military traditions. The strong influence of southern China's imperial tradition and the increasing popularity of Buddhism in both north and south China contributed to this process. By the late fifth century, the Tuoba nomads and other "barbarian" tribes had so thoroughly intermingled with the local population and culture of northern China that the Northern Wei court set in place a conscious policy of Sinification.

In 493-494 AD, Emperor Emperor Wen (Tuoba Hung II) moved the Northern Wei capital from Datong to Luoyang, the former capital of the Later Han and Western Jin dynasties. At about the same time, Chinese was made the official court language. Tuoba aristocrats were ordered to adopt Chinese customs and dress, take on Chinese surnames, and encouraged to intermarry within the local population. Soon, any distinctions among the Tuoba and Chinese were little more than theoretical. The complete Sinification of the Northern Wei court did not sit well with all the nomadic tribes settled in North China, many of whom still maintained tribal military forces under the control of local warlords. As the central government in Luoyang increasingly became the target of its own great wealthy families, a number of serious revolts erupted in the region beginning in 524 AD.

While China floundered in the turbulence of its own civil wars, a remarkable evolution took place across the Yellow Sea on the Korean Peninsula. Sixteen-year-old Kim Sammaekchong, nephew of King Pophung, ascended the Silla throne in 540 AD as King Chinhung, the kingdom's twenty-fourth monarch. Honoring his uncle's will, King Chinhung became a devoted follower of Buddhism, whose earlier introduction into Silla and whose status as a state religion made it the principal channel for the importation of ideas and philosophies to Korea. Throughout his thirty-seven year reign, he encouraged the construction of a number of Buddhist monasteries and worked to enhance and strengthen the Silla government.

Silla had no straightforward way to quantify the intelligence and character of potential candidates for government service. King Chinhung and his officials were puzzled by the problem of how to find a reliable method of discovering talented people. Knowing that much can be learned of a man's character by noting his behavior while he plays or otherwise amuses himself, the king selected two beautiful young women, Nammo and Kyojong (or Chunjong), to be his wonhwa, or "original flowers." The Silla court hoped to observe the behavior of the three to four hundred wonhwa followers. The most talented among them, those who fared well, would be picked for government service.

The two women soon began competing with each other for attention. Driven by jealousy, Kyojong invited Nammo to her home for a party, where she got Nammo drunk on wine. Kyojong then led her unsuspecting guest to the banks of a nearby river, crushed her head with a rock and left her for dead. Word of Nammo's death left her followers grief-stricken. Unable to find her, they gradually dispersed. Someone at the party learned of the crime and composed a song about the event and had it sung by children. A number of Nammo's followers went to the river and found her body floating in midstream. They quickly turned against Kyojong and killed her in revenge. As soon as King Chinhung learned of the disastrous outcome, he abolished the wonhwa.

Years later, King Chinhung took a very different approach. Rather than trying to find men who already possessed the necessary qualifications for government service, King Chinhung apparently decided they should be trained from the beginning. By observing the behavior of young men at play it would be possible to select the best students. Talented students would be recommended to the court as candidates for government service. Properly trained, such a group would provide Silla with able ministers, good generals, brave warriors, and loyal subjects. Instead of women, he chose handsome young men of virtue and strong character from aristocratic families and, in some cases, the sons of low ranking parents fortunate enough to belong to this elite group. Their faces were made up and they dressed in beautiful clothing. They were called hwarang, or "flowering youth," and "men of various sorts gathered around them like clouds."

The students, rangdo, selected for training were mostly 14 to 18 years of age. Gathered in groups of between a few hundred to as many as five thousand, the students studied and played together. They entertained one another with songs and music and traveled to distant mountains and rivers for physical training, to enjoy the beauties of nature, and to make their peace with the mountain spirits. These highly literate young men, all pledged to the same ideals and goals, were schooled in the principles of loyalty, filial duty, trustworthiness, valor, and justice. Hwarang students learned etiquette, music and dance, calligraphy, mathematics, literature and sciences. Classes consisted of a near equal mix of Chinese classics, history, philosophy, religion, military skills and tactics.

Hwarang students focused on studying Chinese classics and military strategies, as well as the fighting arts:  horsemanship, swordsmanship, archery - mounted and unmounted - and the martial skills of self-defense. A national festival was held every summer where hwarang warriors demonstrated their martial arts skills. A skilled hwarang fighter could kill an opponent instantly by penetrating his bamboo lamellar armor with a single thrusting punch. They could spin-kick so quickly that opponents frequently thought their feet were swords. Though not a part of Silla's regular army, the hwarang warriors' ferocious fighting spirit became legendary, and their military spirit, sense of loyalty to king and nation, and bravery on the battlefield contributed greatly to the power and fighting ability of Silla's army .

Hwarang-do, the "way of flowering manhood" , evolved into a kind of fraternal knighthood that, from the wonhwa to the end of the Silla kingdom, produced over 200 highly renowned "knights." With its origins deeply rooted in shamanism, Hwarang-do was based on a philosophic and religious code that borrowed a great deal from the contemporary world's greatest philosophical principles. It drew on Confucianism for the tenets of filial piety, empathy with one's fellow man, and loyalty to the state. The concept of action through non-action came from Daoism. Finally, it borrowed the philosophy of rejecting evil, acting for good, and respecting the sanctity of life from Buddhism. The mixture of East Asia's two greatest philosophies, its most formidable religion, and the peninsula's own brand of shamanism produced a way of looking at life that was uniquely Korean.

Hwarang-do's influence was felt throughout the Korean Peninsula, but nowhere was it more impressively applied than in Silla, where Hwarang-do schooling produced an elite corps of disciplined, skilled, highly educated men recruited and trained over a ten-year period who were later employed in the service of the state. Hwarang-do became part of the ethical, mental and physical philosophy of young men trained to become the ruling backbone of Korea. Most of Silla's greatest military leaders and the majority of its bravest warriors were once hwarang. Deeply imbued with a spirit of harmony and unity, they not only led armies for the king or queen, but owed a personal loyalty to the throne. Silla endured and survived many serious foreign and domestic crises in its history largely through the impact of Hwarang-do. To this day, the Korean Military Academy near Seoul honors the Hwarang tradition by referring to its campus as Hwarang-dae, or "Hwarang Hill."

After a decade of increasing turmoil in China, two generals led a coup that toppled the Northern Wei Dynasty. They did not declare themselves emperors, but established the Eastern and Western Wei Dynasties, which they controlled under two puppet emperors. In 550 AD, the throne of Eastern Wei was usurped and became the Northern Qi Dynasty. Just seven years later, yet another usurper overthrew the Western Wei and established the Northern Zhou Dynasty at Changan in the Wei River valley. From this historic military stronghold, the Northern Zhou conquered the Northern Qi Dynasty in 577 AD. Absent some powerful unifying force, three centuries of constant division and civil war had made the task of reunifying China nearly impossible.

Northern China could not create a new empire and southern China could never rebuild the old empire. The great land-owning families of southern China, whose splendid manors and estates sustained a wealthy aristocracy below the Yangtze River, dominated the Jin Dynasty's weak central government. All that ended with the stunning emergence of a powerful warlord in Northern Zhou. General Yang Jian, born of mixed Chinese and Xianbei blood and raised in an aristocratic military family, married Emperor Yu Wenyun's daughter to become uncle to the crown prince. When Emperor Yu Wenyun died in 580 AD, the crown prince assumed the Celestial Throne in Changan. Determined to reunify all of China and restore its former glory, Yang Jian forced the abdication of the young emperor and took the throne himself in 581 AD. Under the ruling title Emperor Wen, the "Cultivated Emperor," he proclaimed the birth of the Sui Dynasty.

The sudden reunification of northern China under the Sui Dynasty brought about a period of impressive economic growth. Emperor Wen introduced a number of economic reforms that attempted to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. He reduced peasant's taxes and ordered a careful population census to ensure equitable tax collection. In order to control access to land ownership and prevent the accumulation of massive land holdings by a few wealthy families, Emperor Wen restored the Equitable Field System, a method of land allocation used in the Northern Wei Dynasty. Every taxable male received a grant of land, part of which was returnable to the central government when he ceased paying taxes at age 60, and part of which he could pass on to his heirs. The Sui Dynasty ushered in a period of relative peace and prosperity at home, and helped restore China's presence abroad after the debilitating civil wars that followed the fall of the Han Dynasty. Caravans loaded with luxurious goods from faraway places were a common sight in many of northern China's major cities. As economic conditions improved and people became more prosperous, their ambitions and expectations began to rise as well.

Beginning in 587 AD, the Sui government instituted a comprehensive series of all-important examinations that tested a candidate's detailed knowledge of Confucian doctrine and his literary skill in writing essays. Imperial China used this Examination System in one form or another to select its government officials from magistrate level upward until 1905. The Examination System, with its lofty ideal of open competition, created a path for upward mobility that had never before existed in China. The fortunes of entire families often rested on a man's success or failure in taking these exams.

With one eye on reunification and the other on the wealth and prosperity below the Yangtze River, Emperor Wen conquered southern China in 589, reuniting the Chinese empire for the first time since the collapse of the Han Dynasty in 220 AD. China continued to be ruled from the north after unification and those who ruled it, from the emperor down, were primarily non-Chinese . As nomadic cultural traditions took hold in northern China, especially among the aristocracy, recreational activities such as hunting and the game of polo, became popular pastimes. Because nomadic men and women were traditionally more equal than in Chinese culture, the status of northern Chinese women tended to rise. Buddhism was the most important religion in China when the Sui Dynasty came into existence, and Emperor Wen's generous support of Buddhism went a long way toward building a cultural connection to unify the peoples of the north and south.

The Sui Empire extended far into Manchuria and spread over the northern half of the Korean peninsula. Almost concurrent with the birth of the Sui Dynasty, the Tujue (Turks) formed a vast nomadic nation comprised of a new and powerful tribal federation of Xianbei nomads that stretched from the Ural Mountains in western Russia across the Mongolian steppes north of China to the northern frontier of Koguryo. Ever watchful of events in China, Koguryo's King Yangwon built ties with the Tujue Empire to confront the Sui Chinese and protect his western territory. The emergence of Sui China and the Mongol Empire had a noticeable impact on the relationships among Korea's Three kingdoms.

In the past, only the Silla-Paekche alliance had been able to keep Koguryo in check. Now, only an alliance between Paekche and Koguryo could successfully oppose Silla's growing power. To counter Silla, King Yangwon made an alliance with his southern neighbor, Paekche, who maintained diplomatic ties with the Yamato state in Japan. Unable to conquer his two main rivals unaided, Silla's King Chinp'yong promptly sought an alliance with Emperor Wen's Sui Dynasty and created an east-west alliance to oppose the north-south alliance of the Tujue, Koguryo, Paekche, and Japan.

Paekche's King Song sent his emissaries to the Yamato court in 552 with an appeal for military help against Koguryo and Silla. They also carried a number of gifts including a bronze image of Buddha, Buddhist scriptures, and a letter praising the religion. Buddhist teachings had been slowly arriving in Japan ever since 538, when Chinese Buddhist priests visited the island nation. The introduction of this "foreign" religion came as a great cultural shock to the Yamato leadership and some of the greater Yamato clans were adamantly opposed to its introduction. Awed by the advanced civilization that was shaping China into a great nation, Soga's clan minister Iname saw Buddhism as a convenient way to import Chinese culture into Japan. He also hoped to import and adopt the more orderly Chinese political system which emphasized a strong central bureaucracy in the hands of powerful ministers.

Minister Iname's pro-Buddhist policies triggered a fifty year struggle between supporters of Buddhism and Yamato clans who felt it threatened the sanctity of Shinto (the way of the gods), a loosely organized native Japanese religion. The gifts from Paekche to the Yamato court triggered a dramatic burst of interest in Buddhism, which was not only a religion, but a vast storehouse of detailed contemporary knowledge about a wide variety of subjects. It also proved to be a natural weapon for court politics and many people converted to Buddhism. Eventually, the pro-Buddhists of the Soga clan gained the upper hand in establishing a national policy of accepting Buddhism.

By 587, around the time the Asuka region on the island of Honshu became Japan's administrative and cultural center, the Soga clan came to monopolize the administration of governmental affairs. Minister Iname's son, Umako, sent embassies and students to China to study the religion and brought numerous Chinese scholars and books to Japan. The books described Confucian ideas and writing using Chinese characters, which introduced reading and writing to the Japanese for the first time. Umako encouraged the founding of Buddhist temples, monasteries, and convents and invited groups of architects, sculptors, painters and metal workers from Paekche to build the first Buddhist temple in the Asuka district capital in 588.

The fighting on the Korean peninsula among Paekche, Silla and Koguryo forced waves of Koreans to emigrate to Japan. They came by the thousands, bringing with them such continental technologies as smelting, weaving, road construction, ceramics, and paper manufacture. The Korean and Chinese immigrants, whose names have been lost to the past, were valued sources of new ideas and technology. The ruling clans welcomed their arrival and considered them as teachers and consultants. Refugee families settled on small plots of land along the Yamato frontiers. To this day, many Japanese communities have Chinese or Korean like names.

Empress Suiko, the twenty-eight-year-old wife of the former Yamato emperor Bidatsu, took the Yamato throne in the Asuka district in 592, becoming the first reigning Japanese empress in recorded history. As conditions in China and Korea became more widely known in Yamato from envoys to the two countries, new movements appeared which steadfastly opposed the introduction of "foreign" ideas and other international and domestic trends. To make matters worse, powerful military aristocracies began resisting Yamato's hegemony, seeking to throw off old structures and build a stronger and more durable Japanese state.

Just one year after Empress Suiko came to power, her nephew Umako selected twenty-year-old Crown Prince Shotoku Taishi as regent of the Yamato court. This dynamic young prince administered sweeping changes in Japan. The Yamato court responded to its growing domestic problems by adopting a Chinese-style government. They sent envoys to China to study government, society, and philosophy, while Prince Shotoku reorganized the royal court into 12 ranks along the Chinese model. He opened relations with China's Sui Dynasty, adopted the Chinese calendar, and fostered the spread of Buddhism. By the beginning of the seventh century, Japan had created a Chinese-style political system, at least as they understood it from reading imported books and listening to a few learned ex-patriate Chinese. Gradually, this model evolved into a unique "national identity" that marked the beginning of the "Asuka Era," the period in which Japan's imperial dynasty established its sovereignty.

Prince Shotoku Taishi's most enduring legacy came in 604, when he prepared and adopted his Seventeen Article Constitution, Kenpo Jushichijo . It not only represented the earliest piece of Japanese writing, but formed the overall philosophic basis of government through much of Japan's history. With his constitution as a core, Prince Shotoku gradually succeeded in centralizing government under the authority of the Yamato rulers, who were now the imperial rulers of Japan. From his belief that the Emperor is placed in authority by the will of Heaven in order to guarantee the welfare of his subjects, the "great king" of earlier Japanese history was replaced by the Tenno, or "Heavenly Emperor."

The first great test of relative strength among the growing Asian powers came in 598 AD, during a showdown between Koguryo and Sui China. Realizing that a Sui attack was imminent, King Yangwon ordered his warriors to secure strategic bases for the defense of Koguryo's western frontier. Koguryo went on the offensive and boldly stormed across the Liao River to assault the Liaoxi Fortress. Later that year, Emperor Wen massed his army and retaliated, but a combination of bad weather, outbreaks of disease, and fierce Koguryo troops inflicted devastating losses on the Sui armies. The tremendous suffering of the Chinese forced Emperor Wen to finally abandon his invasion in mid-campaign and withdraw.

Yang Jian died in 604 AD, succeeded on the Celestial Throne by his son, Yang Guang, who reigned as Yang Di, the "Zealous Emperor." He built a new imperial capital city near modern Xi'an and named it Daxingcheng, the "City of Great Prosperity." Yang Di and his father rebuilt and strengthened China's defensive fortifications, built huge, glorious new palaces, and adopted some of the laws and institutions of the south, including many of the governmental and administrative practices of the Han Dynasty . They fully restored the former prestige of the Chinese Empire under a strong central government created for all Chinese and started China down the path to its second great imperial age.

Determined to protect his new empire and avenge the defeat of his father by Koguryo, Yang Di soon infused China with a new militaristic zeal. He earnestly began clearing his borders of all states that posed a potential threat to Chinese power. The Sui court had earlier accepted a Koguryo apology for its assault against the Liaoxi Fortress, but in 607 AD, the discovery of a Koguryo envoy in the camp of the Tujue Khan revived Chinese fears of a strong alliance among the northern tribes. Two years later Sui forces conquered Tibetan and Xianbei tribes in the western kingdom of Tuyuhun in northern Tibet. In the northeast, the Eastern Tujue acknowledged the suzerainty of Sui China. Emperor Yang successfully defeated the Mongols and Turks in the west and north and extended Chinese control as far south as Taiwan and Vietnam. Soon afterward, he redirected his attention to Koguryo.