Korea: history to 1637

A popular print depicting Hideyoshi Toyotomi, a Japanese feudal lord and samurai (Japanese warrior). Under the rule of Hideyoshi, Christian activity in Japan was greatly restricted.

The first recorded historical event on the Korean peninsula is in 195 BC. A legend carries the story back to about 1000 BC, and myth dates the foundation of the country as 2333 BC. Recent archaeological work has deepened our knowledge of the early centuries of the Christian era, but for periods earlier than that archaeological evidence (30,000-year-old stone tools, providing evidence of Palaeolithic settlement, and a Neolithic settlement dated to 4270 BC), supported by comparative linguistic studies, indicates that for thousands of years of prehistory the whole of the Korean peninsula, the southern part of Manchuria, and the western part of Japan were inhabited by peoples tending to migrate southwards, and probably closely related culturally, but showing many local diversities. Through its later history, when Korea had neighbours more powerful than itself on either side, China and Japan (both of which dominated Korea at different times), it nevertheless succeeded in retaining a distinct cultural identity and language and even acted as a cultural bridge between these neighbours.

The dynasties of Korea The periods of history normally accepted by Koreans are those of the ruling dynasties of the separate kingdoms that first emerged: the Kim dynasty, which called the country ‘Silla’, from about AD 700 to 918; the Wang dynasty, which called the country ‘Koryo’, 918-1392; and the Yi dynasty, which called the country ‘Choson’, 1392-1910. These are followed by the Japanese Government General, 1910-45, and the period since liberation and partition in 1945. The dynastic view was imposed by the methods of recording history within a Confucianist framework (see Confucianism). In Confucian society the ruler was at the apex, and the legitimacy of the succession was vital to the well-being of the country - and, in more practical terms, vital to recognition by China, Korea's powerful neighbour. The legitimacy of a new dynasty was the most difficult to prove, and one way of doing this was to present the final years of the previous dynasty as showing the unfitness of that dynasty to rule. Thus a history of the previous dynasty would normally be produced during the early reigns of the new dynasty. The dynasties are normally divided into reigns. The annals of each reign were compiled from the government records during the succeeding reign, and, again, were on occasion concerned as much over the legitimacy of the succession as the actual facts. However, the day-to-day records themselves were kept with an accuracy that was at times almost fanatical, and in the compiling of the annals of each reign there would always be those who would argue that the record should stand. Thus our information on any period depends - in a way peculiar to this sort of society - on the type of documents that have survived. Hardly any of the original government records survived the destructive wars fought around 1600. The annals of the kings from the beginning of the Yi dynasty did, however, survive, and there are also private or semi-official records from this period. From the earlier periods there survive only the dynastic histories with one or two other records, but neither the government records nor the annals of each reign.

The beginnings of Korean history The myth of the founding of the country first appears in extant documents only in the 13th century AD. A system of dating from the accession of Tan'gun in 2333 BC has been used from time to time, and this founding of the country is still celebrated annually at a shrine to Tan'gun in Seoul. However, the myth is now mainly of interest for the interpretation of its various elements, in particular that it was a bear, and not a tiger, that earned the privilege of turning into a woman and bearing Korea's first king. A Chinese historian writing about 200 BC mentions that a Shang refugee from the Zhou dynasty of China set up his own kingdom in Korea in 1122 BC. The Chinese of this period called Korea ‘Chaoxian’ (Ch'ao-hsien; ‘Choson’ in Korean). The name of the refugee was Chi-tzu (in Korean ‘Kija’), and descendants of Kija have been listed as ruling in Korea from 1122 to 195 BC. This period is usually called Kija Choson. Other notes on Korea by Chinese historians between about 100 BC and AD 300 indicate that there were many tribes on the Korean peninsula who never belonged to any larger political unit during this period. In 195 BC Wei-man (in Korean ‘Wiman’) led a thousand troops out of the defeated north Chinese kingdom of Yen and established a kingdom, now called Wiman Choson, in the northwestern part of Korea. However, again it is not clear what area this kingdom actually covered at any time. When the Han dynasty of China conquered the northern part of Korea in 108 BC, it found the whole area consisting of small independent kingdoms or tribes. The capital of the Han colony, Lo-lang, near present-day Pyongyang, is the oldest centre of government in Korea on which the historical and archaeological evidence is sufficient to give any picture of the total social and political reality of the time. Lo-lang was clearly a Chinese, not a Korean city. There is evidence of order and great wealth there until the middle of the 4th century AD. However, long before that it had from time to time lost most of its territory to the Puyo and other tribes. The population of Lo-lang may have reached 400,000 at its height, but even such a large-scale Chinese settlement failed to assimilate the surrounding Korean population into the Chinese political system.

The Koguryo and Han period A federation of tribes gradually emerged as dominating the area, and by the 1st century AD is just recognizable as the kingdom of Koguryo. The hunters developed into a professional military class that came to rule Koguryo, and by the 4th century they had almost continuous control of southern Manchuria and Korea down to the area of Lo-lang. The Chinese histories tell of ‘Han’ peoples living in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. This name is distinguished in Chinese writing from ‘Han’, the name of the Chinese dynasty of the time, and it is thought to represent a Korean word for ‘great’, ‘great one’, or ‘chieftain’. The Han of China had fairly formal relations with these chieftains, and during this period the tribes appear to have been in three main groups. The Pyon-han, around the lower stretches of the Naktong River, had very close relations, which are variously interpreted by different historians, with the Wa people of Japan. During the 5th and early 6th centuries the Pyon-han were strongly united in a federation known as Kaya in Korean, and Kara (later Mimana) in Japanese. In the southwest, as far north as the Han River, were the Ma-han.

The emergence of Paekche and Silla During the 4th century one of the Ma-han tribes, the Paekche, which claimed descent from the Puyo of the north, gained dominance. It organized a strong bureaucracy, modelled on the Chinese, and an army that expanded and consolidated their territory. As a kingdom, Paekche established firm relations with the Eastern Qin dynasty in China and with the Wa of Japan. Among the Chin-han, to the north of Kaya and east of Paekche, the Kim clan gained predominance, and from the mid-4th century established a kingdom probably called Saro at the time, but now known as Silla. During the 5th century Koguryo expanded south into the Han River area, but an alliance between Paekche and Silla contained further expansion. In the 6th century Silla conquered Kaya and the Han River area, as well as territory in the wild lands to its north. It also weakened Paekche considerably by diplomatic and military moves.

The formation of a united kingdom The Tang dynasty in China made it one of its first tasks to eliminate the power of Koguryo. For this purpose it allied with Silla, and in the 660s the two defeated first Paekche, destroying a large Wa fleet from Japan in the process, and then Koguryo. The Tang then claimed suzerainty over the whole of Korea. However, by 700, in the central part of Koguryo, southern Manchuria, there arose a new kingdom of Parhae (in Chinese ‘Pohai’), which resisted all Tang attacks and survived as a state of strongly independent culture until the 10th century. This state has been considered not to be Korean, although it occupied all but the southernmost area of Koguryo, which is considered to be Korean. In return for Silla's cooperation in attacks on Parhae, the Tang finally recognized Silla's claim to independent rule of all but the northernmost parts of present-day Korea in 735. By this time the Wa people in Japan had turned away from interest in Korea towards the east and north, and from this point a united kingdom of Korea was established more or less as it was to remain until the 20th century.

Early Korean culture and the Chinese impact It had been the south, rich in agricultural land and, hence, in population, which gained the upper hand in Korea over the hunters and military adventurers of the north. One factor in this process was certainly the Chinese interest in having to its east a rich, settled territory, which it regarded as a tributary state, rather than an unsettled state with inclinations towards military adventurism. Culturally every kingdom in Korea had gained much from Chinese interest. Each learned methods of government from China, not only in practical terms such as civil and military organization, but also in terms of the thinking (in a vast volume of writings) that backed up the Chinese system. By the 8th century the cultural background of Korea was first and foremost the classical and historical canon of China. Buddhism had spread from China to Korea during the 4th century, and this provided the stimulus and framework for artistic developments, in architecture and the pictorial arts (the Sokkuram stone grotto near the Sillan capital Kyongju is an outstanding example of Buddhist art), and also in literature, though this is now all but completely lost. Nevertheless in Korea, as indeed in China itself, the popular beliefs persisted and even permeated Confucianism and Buddhism as actually practised. The royal accoutrements found in tombs in Kyongju show clearly the strength and vitality of a culture, immediately prior to the unification, based on animism, with the ruler as chief priest. One effect of the wars leading to the unification had been a flow to Japan of Korean aristocrats, men of learning and technicians, who contributed greatly to the cultural development of that country. They introduced Buddhism and its associated monastic architecture, ceramic techniques, embroidery skills, and medical knowledge. A register of Japanese aristocrats in 815 shows one-third claiming Korean descent.

Land and power during the Silla-Koryo period, 735-1392 Certain general features emerge from the details of the first six and a half centuries of the unified kingdom of Korea. The most prominent of these features is that Korea was throughout a settled agricultural land having very little scope for expansion of wealth. Land ownership, which was physically limited by the mountainous nature of Korea's terrain, was a vital factor throughout all this period, since it provided almost all wealth and hence economic power. In Confucian theory all land belonged to the king, but service to the king was always rewarded with grants of land, and since economic power was to that extent lost by the king to other forces, the monarchy was seldom strong enough in practice to match its theoretical supremacy. Weak monarchs are remarkably common in the histories, and, although allowance must be made for some rewriting of the facts of history so as to portray certain monarchs as worthy of deposition, this does seem to have been a root cause of political instability. Certainly both the Kim (Silla) and Wang (Koryo) dynasties are portrayed as disintegrating in weakness and corruption.

Piracy in the Silla-Koryo period Korea was bordered to the north by nomadic tribes; across the sea to the east and south were the seafaring Japanese; and across the sea to the west was the great power of the region, China. It is this geographical situation that is the second outstanding feature of this period. Piracy, in which the Japanese were the most active, was a continual problem, interrupting trade and communications with China and causing distress in Korea's coastal regions. Its effects were particularly severe around 800, and the power gained by the strong man who brought it under control then, Chang Po-go, led almost directly to the downfall of the Kim dynasty. Again in the 13th century pirate raids on Korea became a serious problem, and the family that overthrew the Wang dynasty gained some of its power from its role in combating pirate incursions into Korean territory.

Attacks from the north Attacks from the north were more continuously serious. The state of Liao, one of the successors of Parhae, launched a devastating invasion in 1011 and continued its attacks for a decade. Although an arrangement was finally made between Liao, China (then ruled by the Song dynasty), and Korea, Korea suffered from the aftermath of these for most of the 11th century. To the cost of reconstructing the country, particularly the capital, now at Kaesong, was added that of building a ‘long wall’ on the mountainous northern frontier in the years 1033-44, and of printing the whole of the Buddhist Tripitaka twice between 1070 and 1090. This work of national devotion involved producing some 150,000 engraved wood blocks for the printing.

The impact of the Mongols In 1231 the expansion of the Mongol Empire again brought devastation to Korea for a generation. This time there was added to the cost of the destruction wrought in the invasions not only a third printing of the Tripitaka in 1251 (the printing blocks for which are thought to be the 81,137 existing today), but also the cost of providing for two abortive attempts by the Mongols to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281. For a century, from 1274, Korea was a part of the Mongol Empire, with the two royal families related ever more closely by intermarriage. Mongol military commanders were stationed in Korea, and city life was dominated by the cosmopolitan culture that the Mongols had acquired in their wide-ranging conquests.

The influence of Chinese culture in the Silla-Koryo period Although the Silla-Koryo period was punctuated by these devastating wars the land was basically rich. Its varied products were exported, mainly to China, but also as far afield as the Middle East. With the adoption of the Chinese bureaucratic system came also the civil-service examination. The earliest recorded occasion on which this was held was in 788. This involved considerable reading of the Chinese classics and skill in composition in Chinese. Since the Korean language is by nature as different from Chinese as it is from English, literacy was the privilege of the few. It was, however, not merely the key to power and material riches; it was also the key to intellectual pleasures: the poetry, fiction, and essays of Tang and Song China, besides the opportunity to travel in China and enjoy what was the highest civilization in the world at the time. However, despite the opportunities that were introduced by the examination system, social rank based on birth remained more important in Korea than academic ability, and the key national leadership continued to be drawn largely from a paramilitary youth organization for the elite, the hwarang (‘flower knights’). It would be an oversimplification to say that Korean culture entirely disappeared under Chinese influence. Nativist institutions survived underneath the ‘wrap-around’ of Chinese cultural forms. Moreover, Chinese culture was itself created by diverse peoples, including some, such as the Mongols, with close cultural affinities with the Koreans, and it was immensely varied, allowing Koreans to introduce their own local flavour.

Buddhist culture The role of Buddhism grew steadily greater from the beginning of the Silla period. The court was advised by Buddhist leaders from at least the 8th century on, and for the people Buddhism, overlaying and intertwined with animism, became a way of life. Some of the great sermons and the biographies, in Chinese, of the saints of this period still survive, and the little literature in Korean that remains from this time is permeated with Buddhism. The green celadon of the Koryo period, one of the highest achievements of the potter's art, features such Buddhist designs as the lotus blossom, and the oldest extant example of printing from metal moveable type in the world is a Buddhist text printed in Korea in 1377.

The establishment of the Yi dynasty The Wang dynasty fell foul of the Ming dynasty of China, established in 1368. Basically the difficulty was the insecurity of the Korean royal house. A weakened administration led to a poor quality of goods traded with China, which China always regarded as tribute. Several successions to the throne were also questioned by the Ming. The Koryo king planned a campaign against the Ming in 1388, but the general in charge, Yi Song-gye, turned back, destroyed Koryo's military advisers, and deposed the king. For four years Yi maintained a puppet king on the throne, during which time he put into effect a sweeping land reform. This land reform was aimed primarily at depriving Buddhist institutions of their land holdings, as Yi felt they were responsible for the maladministration of the late Koryo period. His actions alienated some of the aristocracy, and their opposition in turn hardened support for him. In 1392 Yi assumed the throne himself and revived the name of Choson for the country. In 1394 he moved the capital to Seoul.

The early Yi dynasty, 1392-1637 The dynasty that Yi Song-gye founded was to continue for more than 500 years, but its early days were as precarious as any. Yi had eight sons by two wives, and, coming to the throne at the age of 59, was faced with the fairly pressing problem of determining the succession. Two bitter court struggles were necessary to decide this, and even the reign of the fourth king of the dynasty, Sejong (reigned 1418-50) - who is known to Koreans as their greatest king ever - was marked by constant quarrels between the king and the bureaucracy. These difficulties persisted, and 11 kings reigned in the century and a half until the Japanese invasions of the 1590s. It was still the distribution of land that was the root cause of political difficulties. Those who had supported the winning sides in the founding of the dynasty and the early disputes over succession were given titles and grants of land. Since land was limited, they became entrenched in power. There was, however, an institution through which their power could be attacked, the Censorate. The duty of this body, in which it was aided by the National Academy, was to examine the propriety of government appointments and actions. During the 15th and 16th centuries there developed a regular confrontation between the Censorate and the State Council, in which the king was usually in an impossible position. The actual causes of disagreement were many and various, but the attitude of the Censorate to some of King Sejong's policies deserve particular mention. He was attacked for his sympathy with Buddhism, which was increased by his grief at the death of his queen, and for his proposals that the crown prince share the duties of state with him in view of his own poor health. But above all he was attacked for his proclamation in 1443 of a Korean alphabet. The king, who was something of a scholar, justified the introduction of a phonetic script (hang'ul) for the Korean language on the grounds that his people needed to be able to read the laws and present written petitions. Such a revolutionary notion threatened the fabric of the state, the Censorate argued, and it lay dormant for over 450 years. Moreover, such was the prestige of the Chinese script that the evident advantages of the new script do not appear to have outweighed its appeal.

Culture in the early Yi period Culturally the first two centuries of the Yi dynasty are noted for literary achievement in both Chinese and Korean, for the establishment of a strong musical tradition, and for the construction of a philosophy of government. Korean literature in Chinese, though remembered in Korea by the names of such authors as Kil Chae (1353-1419) and his school, Song Hyon (1439-1504), and Yi Haeng (1478-1534), is perhaps not so remarkable within the vast corpus of literature in Chinese. Literature in Korean, however, is remarkable. Because Korean could not be written easily before 1443, it emerged apparently from nowhere, and set the pattern of literature until it ceased to be the preserve of the ruling class in the 19th century. Music was regarded as essential for court ritual, and therefore for good government. The kings gave every support to what still survives in Seoul today as the National Music Academy. In philosophy Koreans followed the Zhu Xi school of Neo-Confucianism, which gained importance with the institutional demise of Buddhism, irreparably weakened by the large-scale confiscations of the landholdings which had underpinned it The outstanding exponents of the Zhu Xi school in Korea were Yi Hwang, known as T'oegye (1501-1570), and Yi Yi, known as Yulgok (1536-1584). Neo-Confucianism, as a political philosophy, encouraged the careful interpretation of history, and the period produced many historical writings, from the official history of Koryo to the anecdotes of local officials.

The Japanese invasions of 1592-98 The year 1592 was a year of a ‘black dragon’ in the Chinese 60-year cycle, and is referred to as Imjin in Korean. This year is famous in Korean history as marking the first attempt by the Japanese to conquer Korea. Led by the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi, this venture appears to be a classic case of aggression: a naked desire for conquest combined with a need to divert destructive forces abroad. The Japanese forces occupied almost the whole of Korea in one campaigning season and believed themselves to be poised for an equally successful attack on China. However, it proved to be beyond the power of the Japanese even to maintain their conquest of Korea. Although the Korean government forces and the government itself was in ignominious retreat on the Chinese border, local guerrilla forces emerged who made it impossible for the Japanese to administer the country and live off the land. In addition the Korean navy made communications between Japan and its forces in Korea almost impossible. Koreans attribute the defeat of the Japanese primarily to the commander of the Korean navy, Admiral Yi Sun-sin (1545-1598). It is clear that he was both a first-class naval tactician and a capable naval architect, making effective use of his ‘turtle ships’, so called because of the appearance of their protective shells of iron plates. Chinese attacks in response to the Korean government's requests for assistance were not entirely successful, but time was clearly against the Japanese, and early in 1593 they withdrew from all but a few beachheads on the south coast. There followed four years of negotiations between China and Japan, in which neither appeared to have any conception of the other's basic intentions. During this period Korea was in chaos. Virtually two years' crops had been exhausted by the marauding armies, leaving the treasury bare. Government records had been destroyed, if not in the fighting, then by people who stood to gain by their loss. Most government posts were therefore up for sale, and bitter quarrels ensued in the court, during which Admiral Yi was deprived of his rank and imprisoned. The fighting was resumed in 1597. Yi Sun-sin was restored to office, and, although the Japanese resisted land attacks by Korean and Chinese forces, they were again soundly defeated at sea. Toyotomi Hideyoshi died late in the summer of 1598, and by the end of the year the last of the Japanese invaders had left Korea.

Korea and the Manchu Already in 1592-93 Korea had been in contact with the Manchu leader Nurhaci, who was rivalling the Chinese Ming dynasty in the area to the north of Korea. Korea, however, rejected his offers of help against the Japanese and stayed loyal to the Ming. A defeat of Ming-Choson forces in 1619 led to an uneasy truce with the Manchu. Dissident Korean forces, fleeing after an abortive revolt in 1624, joined Nurhaci, and in 1627 he invaded Korea to put an end to Korean support for the Ming. Although bound by oath not to support the Ming, Korea was reluctant to support the Manchu, and an excessive demand for such support in 1636 led to a declaration of war by Korea. Within months the Manchu had conquered Korea, devastating the northern half of the country, and in January 1637 Korea submitted to the Manchu, who, seven years later, established their own Qing dynasty in China. For subsequent events, see Korea: history 1637-1953, and Korea, North and Korea, South.