Homer B. Hulbert - The History of Korea (Vol.1&2)

In 479 the aged king of Ko-gu-ryŭ, Kö-ryŭn, now in the sixty-eighth year of his reign, sought and obtained recognition from Emperor Ko-je (Kao-ti) the founder of the Ch’i dynasty in China. That this occurred in the very first year after the founding of that dynasty shows how sedulously Ko-gu-ryŭ was cultivating the good-will of the Chinese. Păk-je was not far behind, for she swore allegiance to the same Emperor only two years later.

During all these years it is to Sil-la that we must look for any signs of internal improvement, any of those innovations which are the mile-stones of progress. We saw above how she introduced the use of the cart and so raised a great burden from the shoulders of the people. The wheel is the great burden bearer of history. And now we find her introducing further reforms. The first was the horse relay system called the yong-ma . It did not bear so directly upon the condition of the people but it afforded an opportunity for the rapid transmission of official information and thus indirectly had an important bearing upon the welfarewelfare of the masses. In the next place, she organised a general market where at stated intervals merchants from the various districts could meet and exchange commodities. These are things that we look upon as matters of course and we do not realise their importance till we imagine ourselves deprived of the comforts that spring from the possibility of rapid communication and exchange of commodities. That Ko-gu-ryŭ had not made similar advances in the line of industrial reform is shown by the fact that when the Emperor of the Wei dynasty sent to grant investiture to Na-un the twenty-first king of Ko-gu-ryŭ in 499 he presented him with suits of clothes, flags, a crown and a cart. This shows that carts were not as yet in common use in Ko-gu-ryŭ. As for Păk-je, disaster was following upon disaster. At one time a thousand people were swept away in a flood. Then famine carried away three thousand. A few years later ten thousand people passed over into Sil-la to save themselves from starvation.

The sixth century dawned upon a comparatively peaceful Korea; for the time being the dogs of war were held in leash and feuds seem to have been laid on the shelf. The three kingdoms employed their time in different but characteristic ways. The king of Păk-je built an enormous pleasure-house and adorned it with all manner of curious flowers and animals. To the expostulations of his ministers he turned a deaf ear. A few years later he was murdered by one of his courtiers. In truth, peace was nearly as bad for Păk-je as war.

In Sil-la Buddhism had been introduced during the reign of Nul-ji, 417–458. A monk named Muk Ho-ja had been well received and was lodged in the palace. But, at the first, Buddhism did not find congenial soil in Sil-la. Tradition gives the following account of the first set-back which it suffered there. In 502 while the king was idling an hour away in a favorite summer-house outside the city, a raven appeared bearing in its beak a letter. It laid the missive at the king’s feet and flew away. The superscription said “If the king opens and reads this note two people will die; if he does not open it one will die”. He determined not to open it, but one of his attendants said, “The one referred to is Your Majesty and therefore you should open it even though two lives are sacrificed”. He broke the seal and read the strange words “Let the king take his trustiest bow, hasten to the palace and shoot an arrow through the zither case”. The king obeyed the mandate, hastened back to the palace by a private gate, entered the queen’s apartments unannounced and shot an arrow through a zither case that stood against the wall. The arrow pierced the zither case and the High Priest who was hidden behind it. The latter had taken advantage of the king’s absence to attack his honor. He was strangled together with the guilty queen.

With all her attempts at progress some evidences of the grossest barbarity still lingered in Sil-la. It was not, so the records tell us, until the year 503 that Sil-la discontinued the horrible custom of burying people alive when a king’s body was interred. It had been customary to bury five boys and five girls alive on such occasions, but in 503 the king published a decree forbidding the continuance of the custom. The very barbarity of the custom renders its abolition the more striking and places the name of king Chi-jeung, the twenty-second of his line, among the names of Korea’s benefactors. At the same time the custom of plowing with oxen was introduced, an innovation that had a most far-reaching effect upon society. It was in the beginning of the sixth century that Sil-la began to show evidences of the influence of Chinese literature and thought. In 504 she adopted the Chinese word Wang as the title of her kings in place of the pure Korean words I-sa-geum or Ma-rip-kan. She also changed the name of the kingdom from Kye-rim to Sil-la. We have been speaking of this kingdom under the name Sil-la but as a matter of fact it was not so designated until the year 504 A.D. Before that time it had been variously styled Sŭ-ya-bŭl, Sa-ro, and Kye-rim. The word Sil-la is said to have been composed of the Chinese words Sin and ra , which when united become Sil-la according to Korean laws of euphony. It is more than probable that it was merely an adaptation of Chinese characters to pure Korean words, for the last syllable la or na is the same as that used in other words, centuries before that time, in southern Korea. The na of T’am-na is the same character. To the word Sil-la was added the word Kuk or “kingdom” which put her in line with the other vassals of China. The Confucian code must have been making headway too, for in the following year the custom was adopted of assuming a mourning garb for three years upon the death of a parent. It was at this time that the influence of China upon Korea began to bear its legitimate fruit. Chinese religion, literature, government and art were beginning to mould the thought and life of the Korean people. Many Chinese words had been introduced into Korea before this time but the use of the Chinese character had not been general.

In the mean time Ko-gu-ryŭ had been paying attention not so much to internal reforms as to external alliances. She sent to the Wei Emperor begging him to remit the revenue in gold and jade, as they were obtained, the one in Pu-yŭ, which she claimed the Mal-gal savages had seized, and the other in Sŭp-na which she averred the wicked Păk-je had feloniously taken. But she added “Of course all that Ko-gu-ryŭ has is yours”. The Emperor good-naturedly remitted the revenue but urged his vassal to continue the good work of subduing the wild tribes of the peninsula. It is said that in a single year Ko-gu-ryŭ sent three separate embassies to the Wei court. At the same time she was coquetting, sub rosa , with the new Liang power which had arisen in 502. In this Păk-je of course followed suite. We thus see that the three kingdoms spent their time in different ways; Sil-la in internal improvement, Păk-je in self-gratification and Ko-gu-ryŭ in strengthening her foreign relations.

In the year 512 the kingdom of U-san was added to the crown of Sil-la. This was the little island of Dagelet, off the eastern coast of Korea, about opposite the prefecture of Kang-neung. How Sil-la happened to branch out in a policy of conquest we are not told, but having decided to do so she did it very neatly. The expedition was led by Gen. Yi Sa-bu. He ordered the construction of several lions with gaping mouths and enormous fangs. They were carved from wood. He placed one of these in the prow of each of the boats and when the little flotilla approached the shores of the island the natives were called upon to lay down their arms and surrender, or the lions would be set loose among them and would tear them to pieces. This, it is averred, brought the trembling islanders to their knees at once and Sil-la won a bloodless victory. This is among the most cherished traditions of the Korean people.