A History of Korea (7 page)

The foundation myths also suggest a strong consciousness of the well-established civilization on the continent, that of China. The best-known version of the Tan’gun myth, for example, recites that Tan’gun introduced administrative capacities to govern his realm. This suggests the need to legitimate this civilization as worthy of both Chinese-derived recognition, on the one hand, and autonomy from China on the other. Indeed, Korea’s ability to resist absorption into China while benefiting from the Middle Kingdom’s cultural influence has been central to Korea’s existence since the earliest times. This theme was exemplified by the well-known story, eventually integrated into the “Old Chos
n” narrative, that Tan’gun was
succeeded by a sage named Kija, a refugee from Chou dynasty China, in the centuries before Kogury
came into being. Kija represented the authenticating presence of Chinese civilization, and until the twentieth century Koreans commonly believed that Tan’gun bestowed upon Korea its people and basic culture, while Kija gave Korea its high culture—and, presumably, standing as a legitimate civilization. Nationalist sentiment in the modern era has diminished Kija’s place today to the point of near extinction, but unquestionably, whether Kija was real or fictitious, he symbolized the powerful self-consciousness vis-à-vis China from the earliest times of Korean civilization.

More historically tenable is the struggle Kogury
waged, in its formative years, against the Chinese military presence on the Korean peninsula. In the corridor between the peninsula and northeast China, the Chinese Han dynasty established four “commanderies” that ruled over parts of the peninsula and Manchuria, much as modern imperial powers governed their colonies. Like their contemporary Roman counterparts, these Chinese colonies transmitted the fruits of a more advanced culture and technology to the “barbarians,” but they also had an uneasy relationship with these tribes, whom they both nominally ruled and kept a wary distance from. Eventually the Lelang (Korean: Nangnang) Commandery, centered around present-day Pyongyang, would establish itself as the most stable and enduring of China’s colonial administrations on the peninsula. And the kingdom of Kogury
constituted the Korean counterpart providing the most consistent challenge to Chinese dominion. While the Lelang Commandery survived the fall of the Han dynasty itself, in the early fourth century Kogury
overran it. Soon Kogury
had to contend with competing kingdoms on the peninsula that had undergone much the same process of consolidation from tribal confederations. All these early kingdoms, from their adoption of Buddhism and Chinese writing to their mimicking of Confucian administrative patterns, reflected the blend of Chinese cultural influence and longstanding peninsular cultural behaviors. Among them, Kogury
, thanks to its geographical proximity to China, remained the most wary of, even hostile to, Chinese influence.

THE RISE AND FALL OF KOGURY

Kogury
seems not to have taken well to the notion of “Eastern Barbarians,” the original Chinese moniker for the peoples of the peninsula that eventually became a self-deprecating term of prestige for Koreans, who considered themselves “first among seconds” in relation to other peoples surrounding China. After the fall of the Han dynasty in the early third century, China itself underwent four centuries of fragmentation, and Kogury
took advantage of this situation to grow increasingly powerful in northeast Asia and dominant on the peninsula. The martial vigor, economic vitality, and cultural advancement of this kingdom, so visible in the numerous tomb paintings still extant, gives a good inkling of the impressive political and military power that Kogury
amassed. The other major polities on the peninsula—Paekche, Kaya, and Silla (see next chapter)—were much younger and, until the latter part of the sixth century, left to fight among themselves for the southern half of the peninsula, while Kogury
’s dominion extended all the way to the far reaches of Manchuria. An early peak of Kogury
power was achieved at the turn of the fifth century under the reign of King Kwanggaet’o, whose exploits in pushing the boundaries of Kogury
’s dominion in all directions befit his name, which means “extender of territory.” Kogury
, however, did not seek conquest of the entire peninsula, despite the perpetual condition of competition and struggle among the kingdoms. At times it offered aid, such as to Silla when invaders from the Japanese archipelago harassed the southeastern region. At other times the Kogury
court sent its own cultural missionaries—to a nascent kingdom in Japan, for example—to transmit Buddhism, the arts, architecture, and other fruits of high culture. Kogury
was, in short, the great power on the peninsula, indeed of the entire northeast Asian region, and this was to last until the latter half of the sixth century, when developments both on the peninsula and in China threatened this status.