Korea A History

PREFACE

Many books have been written about Korea, both in the native language and in foreign languages. Each has approached the subject from a different angle, and each has its merits and shortcomings. In this book I have attempted to present Korean political history from the socioeconomic standpoint, covering the old and the new Korea—from the Three Kingdoms period (57 B.C.) to the present two governments. The last two chapters deal with the unification problem and with the future prospects of the Korean people.

I do not expect all readers to agree with the views set forth in this introductory study. I will feel my efforts rewarded if it merely serves to stimulate further interest in Korea.

In English-speaking countries Korean studies in general, and history in particular, have been handicapped by a lack of sources in English. The two main works on Korean history, The History of Korea by Homer B. Hulbert and A History of the Korean People by James S. Gale were written more than a half century ago. Prof. Shannon McCune, author of Korea's Heritage: A Regional and Social Geography, has stated that, as a temporary measure, English translations of modern Korean history works would be a real service to Korean studies. Original research, on the other hand, is difficult, because mastery of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese is required.

It is perhaps best to note here that the Japanese and Korean names in the text are written with the family name before the personal name, as they are in their native countries.

I wish to express my sincere gratitude for proofreading and valuable suggestions to Mrs. Evelyn B. McCune, Korean born, member of a distinguished family of American missionaries and scholars, whom I have known for more than thirty years. My thanks also go to my publisher.

To Mrs. Henriette Lehman I owe an immeasurable debt for her genuine personal interest and for her kindness of many years, without which I would never have been able to write this book. I dedicate it to her. My thanks also go to Mr. Max Knight of the University of California Press, who glued my broken English together and painstakingly went over the manuscript many times, advising and making valuable suggestions. My wife, author of The Art of Oriental Cooking, and my four children have been patient while I concentrated on this study.

B.Y.C.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

PART I

THE OLD KOREA

CHAPTER 1

THE THREE KINGDOMS

57 B.C.–A.D. 668

Recorded Korean history begins with the Three Kingdoms period. This period derives its name from the three kingdoms of Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla, which, according to tradition, were founded about a half century before the time of Christ. They each occupied a section of the peninsula: Koguryo was in the northwestern section, which included the greater part of Manchuria; Paekche in the southwestern section; and Silla in the southeastern section.

The Koguryo people are said to stem from a tribe of hunting nomads known as the Buye, and originally lived in the northwestern part of Manchuria, somewhere along the Songhwa River. In the second century B.C. they moved to the central section of the Yalu River, in the mountainous area between Manchuria and northern Korea. Here the tribe, which was composed of five clans, defended itself against intruders and was able to maintain its independence even when the peninsula fell under the control of the Han dynasty of China.¹

According to tradition, the chief of the tribe, Chu Mong, became the first king of Koguryo in 37 B.C., thereby establishing the Koguryo kingdom. The new kingdom, with Tonggoo as its capital, expanded rapidly and soon conquered the east-coast area, including Hamkyong-do and Kangwoon-do. During the third and fourth centuries of the Christian Era, it extended its jurisdiction over the greater part of Manchuria and the southern half of the peninsula. In 427, when King Chang Shoo moved the capital from Tonggoo to Pyongyang, Koguryo was the most powerful kingdom in Korea and Manchuria.

In A.D. 327 Buddhism was introduced into the kingdom along with Confucianism and other features of Chinese civilization, such as astronomy and medicine. The aristocratic ruling class, the court of the Koguryo kingdom, adopted Buddhism as the state religion and the state political ideology, and many temples were erected with government funds.

From the beginning of the seventh century the kingdom of Koguryo was the target of military attacks from China. The Sui dynasty launched three expeditionary campaigns from 612 to 614, but all were repelled by Koguryo under the military leadership of Ulji Moonduk. In 657 the T'ang dynasty began a series of military campaigns against the Koguryo kingdom that lasted fifty years.

Also during this period, the three kingdoms engaged in wars against each other that eventually resulted in the unification of the peninsula. In the final movement toward unification, Silla first sided with the T'ang army and conquered Paekche. Then the allied Silla-T'ang armies overthrew the Koguryo kingdom, which had been greatly weakened by destruction of its agricultural economy in fifty years of war and by internal political struggles for the throne.² Korea was thus united for the first time in 668.

The history of the kingdoms of Paekche and Silla begins with a tribe called Han that lived in the central southern half of the peninsula in the first century B.C. The Han tribe was dominated until the fourth century after Christ by the Han dynasty of China (the two names have the same pronunciation but are written with different characters); yet it developed an autonomous political system and an indigenous culture, particularly in the southeastern part of the country. In contrast to the nomadic Koguryo people, the Han tribe, from the first century after Christ, engaged in farming, which included cultivating rice, planting grains, and raising silk worms, pigs, and cows. Farming and kitchen utensils made of iron were probably used, and some of them sent to China for trade or tribute.

At the time of the decline of the Han dynasty of China, at the beginning of the third century after Christ, the Han tribe revolted against the Chinese administration and set up three communal states: Mahan in the southwestern part of the peninsula, Chinhan in the southeastern, and Bunhan Kyongsang-namdo in the extreme southern area. Chinese control over the coast of the central western part of the peninsula, however, continued in some degree until the beginning of the fourth century.

Before we discuss the history of Paekche, it might be well to say a few words about Chinese influence on colonial areas in the southern part of Korea. The Han dynasty of China left its mark on that part by creating a class society based on Confucianism, which stressed filial piety, absolute obedience in relations between ruler and subject and between inferior and superior social classes, the custom of weak countries paying tribute to strong ones, heavy taxation in kind to be paid to the ruling class, and agricultural production by slave labor. These Han institutions were taken over by Silla, later by Koryo, and finally by the Yi dynasty.

The traditional story of the origin of Paekche is recorded in Samguk-chi, a history of the three kingdoms. The Paekche clan originally resided in the central part of Korea, the Kyonggi and Kangwoon provinces of today. Onjo (a son of Chu Mong, the founder of the northern Koguryo kingdom) and his younger brother moved south because they had lost to their oldest brother in a fight for succession to the throne. In A.D. 350 Onjo, who was to become the first king of Paekche, established a small communal city-state in Kwangju, near Seoul. This city-state was the nucleus and capital of the Paekche kingdom until constant attacks from Koguryo forced the capital to be moved further south, to Kongju in 474 and to Chungchong in 538.

Paekche came under attack from both north and south. From the north the Koguryo kingdom launched three military campaigns against Paekche in the course of 125 years and usurped much of its land. With the establishment of the Kingdom of Silla on the southeastern coast of the peninsula, Paekche was attacked from the south also, and in an attempt to strengthen itself it made an alliance with Japan.

But Paekche never became strong, militarily, economically, or culturally, although it possessed agricultural land, a warm climate, and a large population. One reason for its weakness was the fact that the ruling elements were composed of political refugees from the northern kingdom; in its entire existence Paekche never had its own native rulers. Consequently, the southern Han people felt themselves to be under foreign rule. Another reason for its weakness was that the people of Han, especially those who lived on the southwest coast, had been ruled by the Han dynasty of China for longer than any other section of the country and lacked experience in self-government. And, also, a large segment of the population had been made politically incompetent by having been worked as slaves in the fields and generally exploited for centuries by the ruling classes of local and central government. In short, the brief existence of the Paekche kingdom may be attributed to long alien rule, to the lack of an autonomous native government, and to the practice of slavery.

The Paekche kingdom came to an end when soldiers of T'ang and Silla occupied the capital city. Its territory was annexed to the Silla kingdom, and the T'ang army stayed for eight years.

Silla was formed about the middle of the fourth century after Christ and was the newest of the three kingdoms. It was founded in the village of Kyongju and gradually extended its jurisdiction over the southeast coast. Silla's political, military, and economic affairs were controlled by a rigid aristocracy, and it showed the most interesting development of indigenous institutions., The latter was partly due to Silla's geographical isolation from rival and hostile communities; particularly, the Taipaek mountains acted as a protective wall against Koguryo. It was partly due to the fact that the climate and soil were suitable for the development of an agrarian economy that made the kingdom more or less self-supporting. But perhaps the greatest reason was that of the three kingdoms Silla had been the least influenced by early Chinese administration and culture, though it eventually did, along with other reforms patterned after Chinese models, adopt Buddhism as the state religion and the Chinese title of wang (king) to designate the ruler of Silla.

The traditional story of the origin of Silla tells of six communal chiefs calling a conference in the village of Kyongju, which later became the capital city of Silla and for centuries was considered its cultural and intellectual center. Tradition says that such conferences were customarily held either at a riverside or on a hilltop, and that each clan sent its chief as a representative. The first order of business was to elect one chief as head of all the clans and then to decide upon important affairs that concerned the community, such as declaring war and making peace. At the first conference Huk Kesei was elected head chief of the six clans, thereby becoming the first ruler of Silla. The chiefs also elected the commanding military chief, who, besides performing his military functions, also exercised judicial power over the community.

In 660 Silla joined forces with T'ang and overthrew the Kingdom of Paekche. Then these two forces attacked Koguryo and subdued it in 668. In this way Silla and T'ang unified the peninsula. After the withdrawal of the T'ang forces nearly a decade later, Silla became the sole ruler of Korea and remained so for nearly three centuries, until 935.

THE RULERS

Koguryo. The Koguryo aristocracy, which was composed of five clans,³ practiced a primitive democratic procedure in selecting their chief. The members of each clan selected their own clan chief, and at the clan-chiefs' conference the five elected clan chiefs selected one head chief as the ruler of the whole community. It is not clear how long this practice was continued.

At the beginning of the third century after Christ, the aristocracy was divided into three groups: the royal family of the Ge-no clan, who had the privilege of kingship by birth; the nobles, who had the privilege of being allowed to marry members of the royal family; and the warriors, who defended the state from enemy invasion. These three groups composed the ruling class of the Koguryo kingdom.

Political power was shared more or less evenly by the three groups: the king was the head of state, the nobles were the heads of the administration, and the warriors had military power. The three groups divided land and slaves among themselves according to rank. The slaves were considered the most valuable property, because they produced food, weapons, and other necessary items for the ruling classes. For this reason the main objective of territorial expansion was the capture of slaves.

In the latter half of the Koguryo kingdom, the warrior class was the most powerful. The number of warriors had increased because of the constant wars against neighboring tribal states. They won almost every war with their neighbors—against the Manchus, the Chinese, Silla, and Paekche. The Koguryo warrior class produced a few brilliant military men, like Ulji Moonduk and Yunke Somoon. During the first part of the fourth century, Pyongyang became the new capital of the kingdom. Koguryo was then the most powerful and aggressive kingdom in the peninsula. The warriors at that time totaled ten thousand out of a population of one million. Most of them owned large estates and slaves, but they did not coalesce into a rigid military class like the samurai in Japan. No hereditary warriors existed. Some warriors, like Yunke Somoon, became de facto rulers, powerful enough to place different persons on the throne.

Paekche. The ruling class of Paekche was composed entirely of northerners and did not command the loyalty of the native Han people. As mentioned before, Onjo, who was from the Buye tribe and the third son of the first king of the Koguryo kingdom, moved south to establish Paekche and become himself the king. His descendants continued to succeed to the throne until the end of the kingdom in the seventh century, and his relatives became the court nobles and occupied all high government positions.

The royal family and the court nobles lived in castles known as tan-ee,⁴ built by forced Han labor. The tan-ee of both the nobility and the local rulers were completely segregated from the residences of the commoners. Until the administrative reorganization in the sixth century, the tan-ee were also used as military headquarters and as tax-collecting offices. The main concern of the court nobles was to collect taxes from the natives, not to govern. The nobles employed some influential natives as retainers in the local administration, authorizing them to impose and collect taxes from the peasants. The retainers collected taxes twice, once for the nobles and once for themselves. Thus the Han people had to serve two masters, the native local rulers and the nobles of the Buye tribe.

During the sixth century the court nobles reorganized the administration to meet the threats of Koguryo and Silla. The capital city was divided into five sections for defense purposes: upper, middle, low, front, and back. Each section had its own military head appointed by the king and was defended by five hundred soldiers. The local territory was divided into five subdivisions called bang. Each bang had its military commander, who was appointed by the king and commanded from five to seven hundred soldiers. During the militaristic administration some native Han people, especially the warrior clans, had an opportunity to advance their social status by rendering services to the king, but none of them became a court noble in the central administration. Under the militaristic administration the natives had to pay heavy taxes, and every able-bodied male was subject to be drafted. Severe exploitation of the people by the ruling class was characteristic of the Paekche kingdom.

Silla. As mentioned before, the six clans living in the vicinity of Kyongju called a conference to select one leader for the whole community. The leader was elected by unanimous agreement of the six clan chiefs (any resolution passed by this conference required unanimity). This practice came to an end in the fourth century upon the formation of a strong kingdom; the chiefs' convention system was superseded by the King's Council. The council had the authority to make decisions on important issues, such as succession to the throne, declaration of war, and conclusion of peace treaties.

When Silla extended its authority over other sections of the peninsula, many new communal chiefs came under its control, but they were excluded from the ruling class. Gradually the six original clans were divided into five different classes according to the kinship division system.⁵ The first kinship division was called Sungkol, and only three clans, Park, Suk, and Kim, were given the privilege of belonging to this division. The king was selected from one of these three clans. Marriages were allowed between the members of the first kinship group. At the beginning of the fifth century the Kim family wielded enough power to establish hereditary succession to the throne.

The second kinship group, called Jinkol, was composed of persons who had some blood relationship to the royal family. This group was excluded from the King's Council and had no voice in state affairs. Most of them became heads of the administration.

The third group was called Duknan; the fourth, Sadupum; and the fifth, Odupum. These groups had no voice in the policy-making decisions of state affairs either; they were given less important administrative positions in the central and local governments. All members of these classes were granted land and slaves by the king.

A significant development in the Silla kingdom was the early rise of a military group from the first two ruling classes. This group was known as Hwarang.⁶ It started during the third century after Christ; at that time it was a social and religious group, organized by the youths of royal and noble families and engaged in festival ceremonies and pilgrimages. These youths had a code of honor based on Buddhist doctrines, and they performed ancestor and nature worship as conducted by native shamans, and observed the Confucian ethics of filial piety, devotion, and faithfulness.

In the sixth century the Hwarang code began to change from social and religious concerns to political and military programs. The religious and festival ceremonies were replaced by prayers for victory in wars with the neighboring kingdoms; and pride in being a soldier, bravery, and loyalty to the Silla kingdom became the new code of honor. They became well-trained soldiers. Three outstanding warriors among them were Sata Ham, who became a famous general and subjugated the Kaya tribal kingdom; Kim You-shin, who became a hero for bringing about unification of the country; and Kwan Chang, who subdued the Paekche kingdom. One of the decisive factors in Silla's victory over the Koguryo and Paekche kingdoms in the unification war of 668 was that Silla had the military skill of the Hwarang.

After unification the members of the Hwarang were rewarded with lands and slaves. Some of them became retainers of the king in the central government, and many were sent to the country as local officials. Like the Koguryo warrior class, the Hwarang never became a rigid military class but they maintained their power throughout the existence of the Silla kingdom.

THE MASSES

Two sharply differentiated social classes composed the three kingdoms: the rulers and the masses. The privileged minority was nonproductive but owned the means of production—the land, the handicraft industries, and the slaves. The peasants and slaves—the productive forces in the society—owned none of the means of production.

The land of the three kingdoms belonged exclusively to the kings; they could dispose of it any way they chose. The court nobles, retainers, and government officials received land from the king as grants, but since private property rights were not recognized, the granted land still belonged to the king in theory. Under this economic system no independent peasant class could develop; peasants were merely tenants on the lands of the king, without rights or privileges. They were called commoners (sumin).

Many factors were responsible for the slave system in Korean history, but during the Three Kingdoms period, war was the main factor. During the wars between Koguryo and China, many Chinese soldiers were captured. They were treated as community property by king and nobles, who employed them both in the state-owned handicraft industry and in agriculture. The three kingdoms engaged in a series of wars among themselves to capture more slaves. Koguryo captured sixteen thousand persons from Paekche and eight thousand from Silla; Paekche captured five thousand from both Silla and Koguryo; and Silla captured six thousand from both Paekche and Koguryo during the three centuries of wars among these kingdoms.⁷

The legalization of slaves was another factor in the rise of the slave system. Any person who killed a horse or cow without permission was subject to become a slave; theft, adultery, and private and public debt were also punished by enslavement. Once a person became a slave, his status could not be changed; his offspring were also slaves.

The slaves were divided into five occupational groups.⁸ The first group was that of handicraft workers. Most skilled slaves were assigned work in the state-owned handicraft industries, which usually were situated in the capital and sometimes in the royal palaces. They produced silk fabrics, pottery, and other articles for the. members of the royal family. The second group was that of metals workers. They produced luxurious decorative articles made of gold, silver, or copper. The third group was that of architects. They designed pagodas, stone buildings, and Buddhist temples. The fourth was that of personal servants. This group, called nobi, consisted of entertainers (singers and dancers) and those engaged in general housework for government officials. The last group was that of agricultural slaves. Agriculture, the economic foundation of the kingdoms, was dependent entirely on human labor, so a large percentage of all slaves engaged in farming.

THE AGRARIAN ECONOMIC SYSTEM

The general characteristics of the primitive agrarian economy of the three kingdoms were similar. The land belonged to the king, who gave away land to his retainers and to the members of the royal family. The commoners and slaves were the forces of production, but no landlord class existed; hence no economic and social relations between landlords and tenants developed. Instead, a primitive type of collective farming under the supervision of public officials was common. The main problem in this economy was a shortage of manpower. The total population of the three kingdoms is estimated to have been two million. Of this number fewer than one million were actively working, subtracting the young, old, and disabled. The number of aristocrats, including the members of the royal family and the warriors, is estimated at sixty thousand. To solve the manpower problem the rulers squeezed more work from the slaves they had and waged war against weak neighboring states to capture more.

The land system⁹ of the three kingdoms can be classified into the following four categories:

Kwan-don, the land of the king and the royal family. It was worked by public slaves under the supervision of government officials. All produce was used for the king and his family. Some kwan-don were used for hunting and playgrounds for the royal family.

Sa-don, the land granted by the king to the nobles and warriors. This land was not considered the private property of the receivers; they had only the right to use it as long as the king considered them loyal. Public slaves as well as private slaves of the nobles and warriors cultivated the land.

Sikyup-don, the land of the local clan chiefs. The king granted land to the local chiefs as rewards for their war services. Within the kingdom there were many local clans which did not pledge loyalty to the king. When the country was invaded by a neighboring state, the king often granted autonomy to the clan chiefs as reward for military services. In this case, the territory of the clan chief became sikyup-don, and the chief could dispose of the land to his own subordinates without interference from the king. The sikyup-don land led to the development of feudalism, as will be discussed later.

Chonrak-kongyou-chi, the village common. This type of land consisted of large tracts of mountain and forest lands and pasture which were cultivated by collective labor only. Under this system everyone in the village engaged in farming under the supervision of the local clan chief, and the grain was shared equally by the members of that community. Under this primitive type of collective farming the legal owner of the land was still the king.

CHAPTER 2

SILLA UNIFIES THE PENINSULA

668-935

In the middle of the seventh century constant invasions of Koguryo (six times within fifty years, including one major war with China in 613) caused a gradual deterioration of the agrarian economy and of the poverty-stricken people's will to fight. A further disintegrating factor was the division of the ruling classes into two factions, which were split over the controversy about succession to the throne.

At this time the ambitious Kingdom of Silla made an alliance with the distant T'ang dynasty of China. Their combined armies invaded the southwestern part of the peninsula and conquered the Paekche kingdom in 660; later they invaded Koguryo territory simultaneously from both north and south. Finally in 668 the capital city, Pyongyang, fell to the invaders. Thus the Koguryo kingdom came to an end.

The T'ang army occupied most of the territories of the two conquered kingdoms and established a military administration, which lasted eight years after Silla had supposedly unified the country in 668. Silla's rulers were anxious to get rid of the T'ang military occupation. They adopted a policy of rewarding with land and title those loyal to Silla rather than to the T'ang regime.

In 670 Silla forces invaded the southwestern section of the peninsula with the aid of former Paekche ruling groups and ousted the T'ang military regime. Soon they launched an expedition against the northern part also, but failed to defeat the T'ang army there. About this time, a new powerful kingdom, Balhai-wang-guk,¹ came into existence in northern China and began to challenge the supremacy of the T'ang dynasty. Exploiting the weakness of T'ang, Silla prepared still another military attack on the Chinese army.

This time the T'ang rulers withdrew their army from the northern Korean peninsula, in 676.

Silla now extended its jurisdiction over the northeast and northwest, including the Taidong River area, and became the sole ruler of the Korean peninsula. Many local aristocrats, members of the former royal families, and nobles joined the Silla ruling class and were rewarded with lands and titles for their services during the unification struggle.

The unification of the peninsula by Silla is historically significant for three reasons: first, two tribes, the northern Koguryo-zok and the southern Han-zok, were welded into one nationality, that known as the Korean nationality today; second, a kingdom was installed that lasted until the Japanese annexation; and last, a unified national history, language, and culture began to develop.²

Characteristics of the Ruling Class. Silla's ruling class, composed of the Kim, Park, and Suk clans, continued with little change to wield power after unification. As before, the Kim clan was privileged in the succession to the throne. Kim Chun-chu became king of unified Silla, and Gen. Kim You-shin became a national hero for his military exploits in the unification struggle. The members of the Park and Suk clans were next in rank. The local rulers, the members of the former Paekche and Koguryo royal families, and the chiefs of the tribes became territorial lords with local autonomy. Thus the traditional Silla ruling class concentrated political power in its hands for the following two and a half centuries.

In order to understand the characteristics of the Silla ruling class, it is necessary to trace some of the political and socioeconomic developments which took place before the unification. Beginning in A.D. 502 the peasants began to employ the cow for cultivation of the land and thus increased production. This was a giant step forward from the primitive agrarian economy that had used only human labor. During that time the title of king in reference to the ruler was adopted, and uniforms for public officials were introduced to distinguish the rulers and the ruled. Buddhism became a state religion, and the government ordered the building of temples by peasants and slaves. Time was counted from the beginning of the founding of Silla, 536 being the first year.

In politics, kinship was still the predominant factor, and clan membership determined who succeeded to the throne and who held high positions in the central government. In local administration, however, the tribal chiefs were the rulers, and their kinship system dominated local politics. In view of this fact, the king was not an absolute ruler. A power-sharing system between the central and local rulers maintained the kingdom as a political entity.

A classical example of this system was the relationship between the Kumkwan-Kaya tribal chief and the Silla king.³ The chief surrendered his formal authority to the king and in return received title and land. The chief's granddaughter was married to a prince and later became an empress; and one of the chief's grandsons, Gen. Kim You-shin, became a member of the royal family by marriage. The chief himself remained as the actual ruler over the territory of Kumkwan-Kaya. Other tribal chiefs voluntarily surrendered their authority to the king following more or less the pattern of the Kumkwan-Kaya chief; they also became members of the ruling classes of the central government while remaining de facto rulers in their own territories.

The Ideological Foundation. In the seventh century Buddhism became the political ideology of the ruling classes and influenced the way of life of the intellectuals. The Mahayana branch of Buddhism was popular in Silla, because it preached the doctrine of blessing and happiness for the ruling classes and protection of state. Neither the doctrine of salvation nor the four noble truths and eight noble paths nor the idea of nirvana were introduced at this period. Many outstanding scholars, such as Woon Yo, Sung Jun, and their students, were sent to China and India by the government to study Buddhism. The capital city of Silla, Kyongju, became the center of Buddhist intellectual activity and the model of Buddhist culture in the peninsula.

Many temples, monastaries, and pagodas of great size and splendor were erected throughout the country by slaves under government supervision. Among them were the Bulguksa, Whangnongsa-goojungtap, Bong-songsa-sungdun and Bongduksa-dongjong temples. Some of them still remain as monuments of this period.

A special government administrative office was established to build temples. Great amounts of land and large numbers of slaves were bestowed on the temples by the king; the priests became the virtual owners of these, and consequently their influence in politics increased. The political philosophy, art, architecture, and sculpture of Silla were by and large the product of Buddhism.

Slaves and Commoners. The mass of the people consisted of slaves and commoners whose status was determined by birth. Although slaves were originally considered community property, this concept gradually changed until the idea of private ownership became dominant, and the ruling classes came to own great numbers of slaves. With the collapse of the Silla kingdom these slaves became serfs in the Asiatic type of feudalism that developed in the succeeding Koryo kingdom, as will be described later.

The productive activities of the slaves covered almost all economic fields: they worked on the farms, in the handicraft industry, and on public construction projects. There were specially trained slave groups like the palace slaves (gungnobi), who worked for the royal families, and the public slaves (kwannobi), who worked at the residences of government officials. A third group worked in Buddhist temples and were called sanohi.

The commoners were the peasants. They did not own land until the central government completed the land reform in the middle of the eighth century. Peasants cultivated the government lands and paid excessive taxes in kind to the government. Most of them lived in poverty and had no opportunity to advance their social and economic status; many of them became slaves because they contracted debts or committed crimes.

The public and government services became the monopoly of the local and central aristocratic ruling classes. The civil service examination system benefited exclusively the members of the aristocratic families because preparation for the examinations took years of schooling.

The Centralization of Power. After unification the need for reorganization became pressing, for territory and population had trebled. A plan for reorganization of the administration was adopted which took as a model the administration of the T'ang dynasty of China. This project was completed during the reign of King Kyungduk (742-65).

The reorganization consisted of the centralization of political power and the reorganization of the military.⁴ Thirteen administrative departments were created: the General National Administration, three military administrations, the Department of Ceremony, the Department of Impeachment, the Department of Construction, the Department of Shipping, the Department of External Affairs, the Department of Civil Service, the Department of the Court, the Capital City Improvement Administration, and the Administration for the Improvement of the Seven Great Temples.

The territory of Silla was divided into nine provinces. Each province was subdivided into four administrative units: gun, hyun, hyang, and bukok, the last being the local unit. Administrative positions, both central and local, high and low, were reserved for the members of the ruling classes. The king appointed the heads of departments from his own family in accordance with kinship relations; that is, the closest relative became the highest government official and distant relatives became less important officials. The local government positions were divided among the members of the local aristocracy.

Government officials were paid for their services with fixed amounts of land. They were not the owners of the land, but they had the right to collect taxes in kind from the peasants who cultivated this granted land. As described later, the land-compensation system developed into a system of autonomous local political units and laid the foundations for later feudalism. The central government also began to grant land to the peasants, with the right of cultivation but not the right to sell, and collected taxes in kind from them. Thus the peasants became tenants of the government.

Military reorganization was based on the principle that all subjects were soldiers and every able-bodied male obligated to serve in the army. As mentioned already, Silla adopted the standing-army system at an early date, with the Hwarang or warrior group playing an important role.

The military reorganization consisted in the establishment of four units: dung, sae, kung, and byun. The dung unit, corresponding to an army division, was installed in every major city, including the capital; about forty-five dung existed throughout the country. Sae was a special army unit, composed of prisoners of war and Chinese and Japanese who had become naturalized subjects. There were five units of this kind, and they were placed in remote areas. Kung, the bow unit, was the skilled unit in the army. Silla had two bow units. Byun was the coast-guard unit; there were three such units.

In the capital city, the sentinel division, composed of three thousand well-trained soldiers, was installed for the protection of the palace, the nobles, and the government officials.

In the reorganization plans, bukok, the local administrative unit, had special significance because most peasants lived in bukok. The word bukok consists of two Chinese characters; the Chinese used them to express slavery.

According to Prof. Pack Nam-woon, bukok was the name of the village where slaves lived; later most of them became serfs in the feudal society. The official adoption by the Silla ruling class of bukok as the local administrative unit was the sanction of slavery status for the peasants.⁵

Land Reform (687-757). After unification the concept that all land belonged to the king gradually changed, and limited recognition of the ownership of private land came into being. Every adult peasant was entitled to receive a fixed amount of land from the government with the right of cultivation. He could use the land for his own benefit without interference from the government until he reached the age of sixty; then he had to return the land to the government for redistribution to other peasants. In addition, private ownership and the right to inherit land were tacitly and unconditionally granted by the government to the ruling classes. Hence, when the king granted land, it was transformed into the private land of royal families, nobles, aristocrats, and priests. In this way the aristocrats gradually became great landlords.⁶

There were two reasons for the land reform measures. First, after the formation of the standing army, the central government faced a shortage of food supplies and needed a rapid increase of agricultural production. Limited recognition of the peasants' right to land ownership was an incentive for more production. Second, the reorganized administration system (centralization of power) did not work effectively because local aristocrats hesitated to support the king. Tacit recognition of private land ownership and the right of inheritance was the price the government paid for the support of local rulers.

According to the Samguk-saki, the traditional history of the three kingdoms, the land reform started in 687 and was completed in 757.⁷ The reform created five types of land.

Sikyup-che, an autonomous district. The history of this goes back to A.D. 532 (before unification) when the Silla king granted autonomy to the tribal chief of Kumkwan-guk as reward for his voluntary submission to the authority of the king. After unification the king continued this method as a means of obtaining the support of local chiefs. The chief of an autonomous district was given the right to govern his tribesmen freely as long as he pledged his loyalty to the king in time of war. Thus the chiefs were able to maintain economic independence from the Silla king and eventually become powerful landlords.

Rokyup-che, land of the officials. As pointed out before, government officials were entitled to collect taxes in kind from the government-granted land. They had no right to dispose of the land. However, many high government officials were able to establish themselves as landlords.

Dondon-che, land for the soldiers. The beginning of the dondon-che goes back to the period of the T'ang occupation of the peninsula. The military authorities of T'ang practiced a farming system for soldiers to ensure self-support in the occupied territories. The Silla king retained the dondon-che in the former Koguryo and Paekche territories, and the local warriors as well as the military commanders made the soldiers farm their own land.

Sawoon-doti, the land of Buddhist temples. The king granted vast amounts of land to Buddhist temples. In addition, members of the royal families and nobles donated lands and slaves to temples to purchase for themselves blessings and happiness. The land of Buddhist temples was exempted from government taxation. By the end of the Silla kingdom priests had become rich landlords.

Jung-don, land for the peasants. One of the significant features of the land reform was the distribution of land to the peasants. This was the first time the landless peasants were entitled to cultivate land for their own benefit. They were allowed to do this until they reached the age of sixty. The age limitation was perhaps imposed because after sixty the peasants were considered not strong enough to farm the land. There is no information as to what happened to the old peasants after they lost their land; evidently thereafter their livelihood depended on the support of their adult sons.

The land reform had important political, socioeconomic consequences. Contrary to what the central government expected, the authority of the king declined because he was no longer the legal owner of the land, and he depended on the good faith of the local rulers in matters of tax collection and defense. The gradual decentralization of power and the reappearance of the warrior states were the political consequences of the land reform. At the same time, a new system emerged: the tacit and partial recognition of private land ownership by the central government created feudal landlords and serf tenants. Thus feudalism came into being at the end of the Silla period.

The State-owned Handicraft Industry and Commerce. The handicraft industry was well developed under state ownership and operated by slaves. The capital city, Kyongju, became the center of this industry as well as of commerce. Domestic and foreign trade were also under the control of the central government. China was the principal outlet for external trade, and trading with China was conducted in the form of the annual tributary mission. There was also some minor trading with Japan.

Three kinds of handicraft industries existed:⁸ the most highly skilled slaves engaged in the production of silk and other fabrics for the members of the royal family, nobles, and high government officials; the textile industry produced less valuable fabrics from hemp and cotton for minor government officials and their families; and the metal industry produced gold, silver, and copper-made articles or simple weapons and horse saddles. The gold and silver ornaments of royal families that have come to light in some of the recent discoveries in Kyongju tombs show excellent taste and high skill.

The government installed three public markets in the capital to dispose of government surplus goods and to supervise business activities among the people. Under the supervision of the government, only licensed persons were permitted to do business in the public markets.

The Fall of Silla. There are four reasons for the collapse of the Silla kingdom. First, the transformation of land from state ownership to private ownership ruined the national treasury. From the end of the ninth century local officials became landlords and refused to collect taxes for the central government. Instead they collected from the peasants for their own benefit and imposed high rents on their tenants. The king sent his tax collectors to the country, but these were usually bribed by the local landlords and frequently did not return to the capital. Thus at the beginning of the tenth century the national warehouses were empty and the central government faced financial ruin. Many local landlords established their own private armies and challenged the authority of the central government. The local priests also formed private armies and even manufactured weapons for the protection of Buddhist property.

Second, the poverty-stricken peasantry revolted against both central and local rulers, but the ruling classes suppressed them. In 806 the combined forces of slaves and peasants threatened the central government in a mass rebellion and invaded the capital city. This revolt was also put down by force, but this time the king publicly admitted his misgovernings, acknowledged the existence of the rebellious movement, and abdicated.⁹

Third, the economic and military disintegration and social unrest led to the reappearance in Silla of the warrior states; at the end of the ninth century two rival warrior states came into being. The Fu-paekche kingdom was installed in the southwestern section, and the Fu-koguryo kingdom in the northeast. The three rival states waged a series of wars for fifty years, but none of them was strong enough to completely subdue the others.

Fourth, in 918 Wang Kon came into power in the Fu-koguryo kingdom and formulated new policies. He approached the rebellious peasants and slaves with a conciliatory and compromising attitude. He made political deals with the landlords and the Silla ruling circles, and in 935 formed the new kingdom of Koryo.

CHAPTER 3

THE KORYO KINGDOM

935-1392

CENTRALIZED FEUDALISM

The rise of the Koryo kingdom in the tenth century had two significant consequences: the transformation of a slave society into a feudal society and the formation of a centralized political administration under the newly emerged aristocracy.

At the end of the ninth century the slaves and peasants rebelled against the ruling classes; their struggle for economic and social betterment continued during the warriors' civil-war period, which lasted more than a half century. The revolts by the discontented slaves and peasants intensified the power struggles among the sectional warriors and weakened the authority of the Silla kingdom, contributing to its final downfall. However, the slaves and peasants fought for a lost cause. As soon as the new rulers under Wang Kon had seized political power, they reduced the majority of the population to serfdom. The period of centralized feudalism in Korea had begun.

The formation of the capital-centered administration¹ took more than a half century, because the long civil war among the warriors ended without a clear-cut military victory for any group. The Wang Kon group finally came into power through compromise and by buying off opponents with high position, land, and serfs. The former king of Silla was given the whole Kyongju territory and serfs to cultivate the land. Wang Kon allowed his daughter to marry the former king, Kim Don. The territory of Yangju was given to Park Young-kuy (a retainer of Fu-peakche), who then pledged his loyalty to the new king. Wang Kon himself became king of Koryo. It was during this period that the name Korea came to be applied to the country by Western nations. Songdo (Kaesung) became the new capital.

The capital-centered administration rested on centralization of politics, economics, and military strength. For more than a hundred years the new capital city was being remodeled by the building of new palaces, castles, offices, temples, and roads. More than 340 thousand compulsory laborers were employed. The beauty and magnificence of the capital city was admired even by the envoy of the Sung dynasty of China. All government offices and buildings were concentrated in the capital, and the king appointed all high officials from his retainers. The capital city was heavily guarded, and the kingdom was divided into military subdivisions to defend the capital from enemy attack. The capital symbolized the authority of the king and was the center of the activities of the ruling classes.

Local administration was subordinated to the central government. The country was subdivided into provinces, counties, districts, towns, villages, and places. The central government appointed officials above the county level; officials below that level were under the control of the local aristocracy. As a result of this system officials of the central government had no contact with the people; they did not rule directly. To correct this situation, the central government created two offices: one was the office of local administrator (hyangsa), which was filled through an election by the local residents. The main responsibilities of the local administrator were collecting taxes and recruiting compulsory laborers for the central government. He also acted as mediator in disputes among the people. Officially he did not belong to the central administrative bureaucratic classes—he was a servant charged to do its work. Yet he was in a position to know of economic conditions and political stirrings among the peasants, so his influence in the local administration could not be overlooked by the central government.

The other official was the sashimkwan (inspector). One was appointed to each district by the central government to supervise and restrict the activities of the hyangsa. Thus the locally elected hyangsa was always under the eye of the central government. Furthermore, to insure the hyangsa's loyalty to the central government, one of his sons was required to live in the capital as a hostage