Let me demonstrate. Goryeo is pronounced "gor-YUH." Say that six times fast. I'll wait. You might need to give it a couple of tries; it's a tricky one. Say it as clearly as possible, as fast as possible, and listen carefully to the sound you're making. Finished? Good. Didn't that sound pretty darn close to "Korea" to you? Splendid. On with the show.
Goryeo coalesced in 918 A.D. (founded by a king called Taejo), and overpowered the limping remnants of Silla and Baekje left after the stagnation of Unified Silla. Goryeo would eventually come to dominate the entire peninsula for 474 years. This dynasty seemed a bit more imperialistic than its forebears. Instead of seeing themselves as a kingdom, they viewed themselves as an empire. For one thing, its rulers called themselves the Supreme Kings, and were addressed as "imperial majesties." That having been said, Goryeo accomplished some rather stupendous things, equal or superior to what had come before. For one thing, the fourth supreme king, Gwangjong, passed laws that emancipated slaves and (perhaps coincidentally) instated exams for the hiring of civil officials. Goryeo is also well-known for its celadon pottery (celadon being a kind of greenish glaze, quite beautiful), and the Tripitaka Koreana, the entire Buddhist scriptures inscribed by hand onto eighty thousand wooden blocks. These blocks were so well preserved (with a combination of salt, coral, and lime) that they have withstood buildings burning down around them, not to mention Korea's seasonal fluctuations in humidity, and have lasted for about a thousand years. They are still stored at Haeinsa, a temple north of my position, where they are housed in a cleverly built storage compartment with different-sized windows on its upper and lower parts, to regulate humidity and temperature.
Goryeo is perhaps best remembered, however, for inventing the world's first movable-metal-type printing press, in 1234. The Jikji, a Buddhist text, was printed in 1377 using Goryeo's press, predating the Gutenberg Bible by more than seventy years. It is the oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type; it currently resides in the National Library of France.
East Asia is not a peaceful place, nor has it ever been. Goryeo, like all of its predecessors, went to war many times. This time, the aggressors were the Liao Dynasty, also known as the Khitan Empire, which controlled bits of Manchuria, Mongolia and Northern China. They invaded first in the year 993, with a staggering 800,000 men. That attack was called off, however, after the Goryeo king Seo Hui negotiated with the Khitans and agreed to cease relations with the Chinese Song Dynasty. Khitan peacefully withdrew. The lines of communication to China were kept open, however. But then, in 1009, a rogue general led a military coup against the current king of Goryeo, Mokjong, killing him and establishing military rule. The opportunistic Khitai people invaded again with an army 400,000 strong. Gang Jo, the rogue general, fended them off as best he could until he died; the new king, Hyeonjong, had to beat feet south to Naju in Jeollanam Province (far south of the old Goryeo capital). However, Khitan was unable to establish a foothold and had to withdraw once again.
...until 1018, when they invaded again with 100,000 men. This time the Koreans had had enough of their act. The Korean general, Gang Gam-Chan, had his men dam a river. As the Khitai began to cross, he then ordered the dam destroyed. The ensuing flood did enormous damage to the Khitai forces. General Gang then initiated a tremendous counterattack that all but massacred the invaders. Barely a few thousand survived to see the final Khitai defeat at Kwiju a few years later.
Not long after this, the Jurchens (a loose conglomerate of tribes dwelling north of Goryeo) became dissatisfied with paying tribute to the Koreans and invaded. They were defeated in the early twelfth century by a force of 17,000. Fortresses were built along the northern borders to prevent this sort of thing from happening again...but it was during the Jurchen invasions that schisms in the leadership of Goryeo began to make themselves apparent. The rest of the twelfth century was taken up with a series of power struggles, coups, assassinations, puppeteering, and wholesale wangling between the kings, the military and the ruling aristocracy, most notably the Inju family.
The thirteenth century had barely come along when bam! Hither came the Mongols. Thousands of warriors under the command of Ögedei Khan, the third son of Genghis Khan, came galloping into Goryeo as part of a general campaign to conquer China. Between 1231 and 1259, the Mongols staged six campaigns and four major invasions that did tremendous damage to the entire Korean peninsula (even as far south as the Jeolla and Gyeongsang Provinces), costing thousands of Korean lives. The entire Korean government had to relocate to an island off Gyeonggi Province. (These invasions were actually the catalyst for the creation of the Tripitaka Koreana...or I should say, the re-creation. The original set was burned by the Mongols, and the supreme king, Gojong, ordered their reinstatement.)
Goryeo finally sued for peace in 1259, after King Choe U was assassinated by Korean powers who, ironically, were in favor of a peace agreement with the Mongols. (Rumor has it that those militants who were still in favor of fighting the Mongols fled and hid out on islands off the coast of the peninsula, where they waged guerilla warfare...who knows but that Geoje may have been among them!) Goryeo then became a satellite of the Mongol's Yuan Dynasty and paid tribute. The Mongols did no further harm to the peninsula, but annexed the northern boundaries of present-day North Korea and incorporated it into their empire. I didn't know this before, but the Mongols also recruited some Korean help during their ill-fated amphibious invasion of Japan. I'm sure you've read about this in the history books. Japan loves to hang it over everybody's heads. When the Mongol (and, now that I'm aware of it, Korean) ships were within striking distance of the Japanese islands, and all the samurai were assembled, ready to die fighting them, suddenly a great wind blew down from heaven and smashed the interlopers' ships all to hell. Most of the men were drowned or dashed to pieces, and Japan remained free from incursion. The storm or gale or whatever it was came to be known in Japan (and elsewhere) as the Kamikaze, or "Divine Wind."
In 1341 King Gongmin ascended to the throne. He was forced to spend time in the Yuan Empire, being treated like the puppet king he was. Instabilities in the Yuan Empire (soon to fall to the Ming Dynasty) galvanized Gongmin to action, however. He removed all pro-Mongol officials and generals from their positions, and set about attempting to repel the Mongol influence from the Korean peninsula. His noble ideals were shattered with the death of his wife (a Mongolian princess), however. He became disinterested and lackluster, entrusting his political reforms to others, until finally he was assassinated by his own apprentices. In 1388, the son of King Gongmin attempted to attack the Mongols in the north, but the general he sent (Yi Seong-Gye) did an about-face and rebelled. He executed all the remaining "supreme kings" of Goryeo and established the Joseon Dynasty in 1392.
Despite the military conflicts, Goryeo kept up the traditions of Baekje and Silla and did a roaring trade in ginseng, "agricultural implements" (according to the Volunteer Agency Network of Korea) and its famous celadon ceramics, importing manufactured goods, books, and silk. The dynasty apparently acquired a worldwide reputation, for traders came from not only China and Japan but as far away as Arabia and Persia. They brought away the name of the dynasty, Goryeo, and from it (remember that little exercise I had you do?) the name Korea spread throughout the world.
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