Baekje

A brother who found sterile land

formationDrafted from Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905)

When Jumong's Buyeo-born son Yu-ri arrived at the Goguryeo court bearing the broken half of a sword token and was proclaimed heir, two younger sons of Jumong's more recent wife read the succession correctly and fled south rather than wait to learn what an established heir does with rival half-brothers. Pi-ryu and On-jo climbed Sam-gak San together, the mountain behind what is now Seoul, and surveyed the country before splitting up: Pi-ryu chose the coast, On-jo chose to press further south.

One settlement fails, one succeeds

Pi-ryu settled at Mi-ch'u-hol, near modern Incheon, and found the land sterile and the climate unhealthy; his settlement never took hold, and he is recorded to have died "of chagrin at his own failure" not long after rejoining his brother. On-jo settled inland at Eui-rye-sŭng, in what is now Ch'ung-ch'ŭng Province, where the king of Ma-han granted him a generous tract of land as a guest rather than a rival. On this grant On-jo raised a small kingdom he first named South Pu-yŭ, after the homeland his own family had already left once.

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Saigen Jiro · CC0

A name of uncertain origin

The source records three competing explanations for how the kingdom came to be called Baekje rather than South Pu-yŭ: that a hundred followers made up On-jo's entire original party; that it was first called Sip-je and renamed once Pi-ryu's people swelled its numbers; or that Baekje was already the name of a Ma-han district before On-jo ever arrived, and simply stuck to the kingdom that grew there. Whichever is true, the people who lived under the name seem not to have used it themselves.

An early kingdom, not yet a threat

On-jo's small state spent its first years defending itself rather than expanding: in 10 BC the Mal-gal tribes besieged his capital and were driven back only after heavy fighting, after which On-jo built the fortresses of Ma-su-sŭng and Ch'il-chung-sŭng against further raids. Nothing in these early years marked the kingdom as anything but one more small state living at the sufferance of its neighbors, least of all the Ma-han that had granted it land in the first place.

A hunting trip that ended a kingdom

expansionDrafted from Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905)

For its first quarter-century Baekje held its land as a guest of Ma-han, the confederation whose king had granted On-jo his original settlement. Baekje did not forget the debt outright: when it first raised a line of breastworks against Ma-han's capital, Ma-han's own king sent a message asking only "Did I not give you a hundred li of land? Why do you then suspect me of hostile designs?" — and Baekje, "partly from shame," tore the barriers down again.

A grant repaid with treachery

The peace did not last. Twenty-seven years after receiving his own land, On-jo judged Ma-han weak enough to settle the relationship permanently. He organized what was announced as a great hunting expedition, and under its cover marched on the Ma-han capital and took it almost without a fight. The source draws the comparison itself: as Wiman had once repaid Gija's own kingdom of Joseon for its hospitality with betrayal, so now On-jo repaid Ma-han's last king in exactly the same way. What had been a tenant's plot became, in a single stroke, an independent kingdom holding the ground its former patron once ruled.

A rivalry with Silla begins

With Ma-han absorbed, Baekje's attention turned east, toward a Silla still consolidating its own early kingdom. By the year 168 Baekje judged itself strong enough to raid deep into Silla's western border and carried a thousand captives home in triumph; Silla, unable to answer in kind, could only write asking for their return. Fighting between the two recurred across the following two centuries without either gaining a decisive advantage, punctuated by occasional and always temporary alliances against their shared northern neighbor, Goguryeo.

A kingdom testing its own strength

By the early fourth century Baekje had absorbed Ma-han's territory, held its own against Silla, and built enough of an army to matter in the wars between its two larger neighbors — without yet having tested that army against Goguryeo directly. That test, when it came, would carry Baekje's own king further north than his kingdom had ever reached.

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Saigen Jiro · CC0

An arrow at the walls of P'yongyang

peakDrafted from Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905)

Goguryeo, checked in the north by a more dangerous neighbor, turned south against Baekje around 360 and threw up a fort at Ch'i-yang, near Baekje's own capital, garrisoned with twenty thousand men who set about systematically plundering the countryside. Baekje's Crown Prince led a sudden counterattack that broke the garrison outright, leaving five thousand Goguryeo dead on the field when the survivors withdrew.

A defensive victory becomes an invasion

Baekje followed up by building breastworks along the Han River against further raids, but the victory had also exposed something to Baekje's own leadership: Goguryeo was weaker than its reputation. An army of thirty thousand crossed into Goguryeo territory and met no serious resistance the entire way north, arriving beneath the walls of P'yongyang itself. During the assault on the city an arrow mortally wounded Goguryeo's own king. The attempt to storm the walls failed, and Baekje's army withdrew in good order rather than press a siege it could not sustain — but it withdrew having done something no Baekje army had done before or would do again.

A capital moved in triumph

"Elated over so many evidences of his growing power," Baekje's king moved his own capital north across the Han River into what had been Goguryeo's own territory, settling in the area of present-day Seoul. The source records disagreement among traditions over the precise site — Puk-han, Nam P'yŭng-yang, or a point just outside Seoul's east gate — but agrees on the direction: Baekje's government had shifted its center of gravity to the very frontier it had just fought across.

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Saigen Jiro · CC0

A victory the people did not share

Success at the top did not translate into contentment below it. Whether from the weight of military exactions or from fear of the reprisal Goguryeo's wounded pride would eventually bring, over a thousand people fled Baekje for asylum in Silla during this same period, settling in six villages Silla's own king set aside for them and refusing Baekje's demand for their return. The kingdom that had just humiliated Goguryeo at its own capital could not fully hold its own people at home.

A monk who played chess

contractionDrafted from Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905)

A century after Baekje moved its own capital in triumph onto ground it had taken from Goguryeo, the same rivalry reversed itself completely - and it began with a chess game rather than an army.

A councillor sent to empty a treasury

Goguryeo sent a monk named To-rim into Baekje's capital pretending to seek asylum. The Baekje king, finding him an excellent chess player, took him into his own confidence as a trusted advisor - a position To-rim used to convince the king that his palaces, walls, tombs and public buildings all badly needed expensive repair, and to press him into hauling an enormous stone monolith to the capital at ruinous public expense. With the treasury drained exactly as he had planned, To-rim slipped back across the border and reported that Baekje was now too poor to defend itself.

A capital surrounded before it knew there was a war

Goguryeo struck immediately, guided to the weakest approaches by a Baekje fugitive from justice named Kŭl-lu. The capital was surrounded almost before its own court understood a war had begun. Goguryeo's army burned the suburbs first, then forced its way in and set the palace itself alight. The king fled out the west gate with only ten attendants, but Kŭl-lu caught up with him on the road. According to the account, the king begged for his life on his knees; Kŭl-lu spat in his face three times, bound him, and sent him to a fortress where he was killed. Goguryeo's army withdrew north with eight thousand captives.

A prince who rebuilt a kingdom from its ashes

Crown Prince Mun-ju had been in Silla seeking help when the disaster struck, and returned with ten thousand borrowed troops to find his capital in ashes, his father dead, and the survivors mourning their own families dragged off into captivity. He took control immediately, moved Baekje's capital south to Ung-jin - modern Kongju - and withdrew what remained of Baekje's population from the Han River territory the kingdom had held in triumph for exactly a century. The frontier Baekje's king had once crossed to build a new capital in 371 was the same frontier that erased the old one in 475: the kingdom that had humiliated Goguryeo at the walls of P'yongyang had, within four generations, lost everything that victory had won.

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Ashy Minivet · CC0

Gongju National Museum · Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Bernard Gagnon · CC0

A councillor's dying warning

endDrafted from Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905)

By the mid-seventh century Baekje's court had grown, in the source's own judgment, "utterly corrupt," ruled by a king it calls incompetent even as fighting with Silla continued on and off across the peninsula. One of the king's own best councillors was imprisoned and starved to death for rebuking his excesses, but sent a final message from his cell before he died: guard the two chokepoints of Baekje's own defense, "Charcoal Pass" and the Baek River, and surprise would be impossible. The warning went unheeded.

Seoul Baekje Museum · Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Gary Lee Todd · CC0

A defector opens the door

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Bernard Gagnon · CC0

A Silla captive who had escaped Baekje's capital was persuaded to return as an informant, and found Baekje's own Prime Minister willing to sell his country's defenses for a price. From that point, the source says, Baekje's downfall properly began. Meanwhile Silla secured what Baekje could not: sustained Chinese military backing, formalized in 659 when the Tang Emperor ordered Gen. So Chŏng-bang to carry a hundred and thirty thousand men by sea to Baekje's own coast and coordinate with a Silla army converging by land.

Omens, a council divided, and a pass surrendered

Tradition records a season of portents heralding the kingdom's fall — frogs swarming trees, phantom bellowing over the palace, a buried tortoise shell reading "Baekje is at full moon; Silla is at half moon." A council of war split over whether to meet the Chinese fleet or the Silla army first, and while the court debated, Baekje's own troops reached Hwangsan Pass to find Gen. Kim Yu-sin's Silla army already streaming through it. Baekje's general Kyebaek, who had killed his own family before the campaign so grief could not make him waver in battle, held his ground and fell there with his men.

A king made to pour the victors' wine

With the pass lost, nothing stood between Silla's army and Baekje's own capital. The king fled north; the palace women, left behind, are said to have thrown themselves from a cliff above the harbor rather than face capture, a site still known as Nak-wha-am, the "Precipice of the Falling Flowers." Days later the king returned from hiding and surrendered voluntarily along with his Crown Prince. China offered to split the conquered territory with Silla, but Silla's own commander declined any share, saying revenge for old wrongs was all Silla had sought. At the victory feast that followed, Baekje's king was made to pour wine for his conquerors — and was then carried to China with four sons, eighty-eight officials and nearly thirteen thousand of his own people, closing a kingdom the source credits with six hundred and seventy-eight years on the throne under thirty kings. He died in China the following year.

Hulbert, The History of Korea, Volume I (1905) · Frankhöffner · CC BY-SA 3.0

A pretender's kingdom that did not outlast him

Resistance did not end with the king's capture. A former official named Pok Sin raised a rebellion in Baekje's name, proclaimed a son of an earlier king as monarch, and came close enough to alarming the Chinese emperor that he summoned Silla troops to put it down. Combined Silla and Chinese forces broke the movement's main stronghold, but pockets of resistance held out for years afterward across a countryside that had, in the end, not been reconciled to Baekje's fall so much as exhausted by it.