A History of Korea (35 page)

When Chin-do fell to a combined Kory
ŏ
-Mongol force commanded by the Kory
ŏ
general Kim Pang-gy
ŏ
ng in 1271, the major figures in the revolt, including Pae Chung-son, lost their lives. Led by Kim T’ong-j
ŏ
ng, the survivors fled to Cheju-do, then called T’amna, to continue their resistance. Cheju-do also fell to Kim Pang-gy
ŏ
ng’s forces in 1273, terminating the Sam-by
ŏ
lch’o rebellion that had spanned almost four years. The Sam-by
ŏ
lch’o forces’ stubborn resistance led Mongols to stand in awe of Kory
ŏ
. Finally, after a quarter-century of fierce armed struggle, the Korean kingdom fell under Mongol domination.

With their titles and privileges greatly reduced, Kory
ŏ
’s kings were married to Mongol princesses, and the sons born to these Mongol queens ascended the
throne. Mongol officials closely watched over the Kory
ŏ
administration, and the Mongol culture strongly influenced Kory
ŏ
, particularly its ruling class.

Mongols proclaimed their state the Yuan empire in 1271, and their domain reached Central Asia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Russia, and China proper. Kublai Khan, who ascended the throne in 1260, finally destroyed Southern Song in 1279. Kory
ŏ
’s dogged resistance against Mongols led this mighty empire to recognize the small kingdom’s independence. But the northern part of Kory
ŏ
territory, along with Cheju-do, was placed under direct Mongol domination. Yuan established the Ssangs
ŏ
ng ch’onggwan-bu, or Two Castle Commandery, at present-day Y
ŏ
ngh
ŭ
ng, South Hamgy
ŏ
ng province, in 1258, to administer the territory north of the Ch’
ŏ
l-ly
ŏ
ng pass, which is the present-day Hamgy
ŏ
ng region; the Tongny
ŏ
ng-bu, or Eastern Tranquility Administration, at Pyongyang, in 1270, to govern the area north of the Chabiry
ŏ
ng pass, which is today’s P’y
ŏ
ngan region; and the T’amna ch’onggwan-bu, or Cheju Commandery, on Cheju-do, in 1273, to direct the Mongols’ livestock-raising operation on the island. Upon persistent requests from Kory
ŏ
, however, the territories under the administration of the Tongny
ŏ
ng-bu and the T’amna ch’onggwan-bu were returned to Kory
ŏ
in 1290 and 1294, respectively. The Ssangs
ŏ
ng ch’onggwanbu continued to exist until King Kongmin (1351–1374) recovered its territory by military force in 1356.

The Kory
ŏ
royal house was linked to that of the Mongol empire through marriage and blood ties. To boost royal authority and prestige among Mongol officials in Kory
ŏ
, King W
ŏ
njong sought to marry his son, the later King Ch’ungny
ŏ
l (1274–1308), to a Yuan (Mongolian) princess. The Yuan emperor Kublai acceded to this request, and the Kory
ŏ
crown prince was given one of Kublai’s daughters as his consort. From Kublai’s view, it was a political marriage to assist his ambition to conquer Japan. Thereafter it became standard procedure for Kory
ŏ
kings to marry princesses of the Yuan imperial house. Kory
ŏ
became Yuan’s “son-in-law nation,” and the royal house of Kory
ŏ
became nothing more than a branch of the Mongol ruling family. The Mongol consorts of the Kory
ŏ
kings exercised great power. Kory
ŏ
crown princes had generally resided at the Yuan court in present-day Beijing as hostages before they were called up to the kingship. Even after they took the throne, they were required to visit the Yuan capital frequently and stay in the imperial capital rather than their Korean capital. The customs of the ruling class, particularly those of the king, became strongly Mongolized, and despite its external independence, Koryo was reduced to a dependency of the Yuan empire.

In 1280 Mongols established the Ch
ŏ
ngdong haengs
ŏ
ng, or Eastern Expedition Field Headquarters, in Kory
ŏ
to carry out the second military campaign against Japan. Even after they gave up any thought of conquering Japan, Mongols continued to operate the field headquarters for a while, and transformed it into a means for interfering in Kory
ŏ
’s domestic affairs. The Kory
ŏ
king was automatically appointed to head this organization, with the title of
chwas
ŭ
ngsang,
or state minister of the left. Two years later, in 1282, after the disastrous failure of the second invasion of Japan, Mongols abolished this colonial agency.

Once the Kory
ŏ
king became a son-in-law of the Yuan emperor he was no longer the independent ruler of his kingdom, and Kory
ŏ
became a tributary state of the Yuan empire. The king was forced to endure degrading royal titles and privileges. In 1276 Yuan compelled Kory
ŏ
to downgrade all the terms relating to the king and his actions. The Kory
ŏ
kings were no longer given the posthumous titles of cho or chong that suggested equality with the Yuan emperors. Instead, the character wang was used as a suffix, with the character
ch’ung,
or loyal, added as a prefix to express the Kory
ŏ
kings’ spirit of loyalty to Yuan.
³
Other terms were similarly degraded, for example, the royal first-person pronoun was downgraded from
chim
to
ko,
the mode of addressing the king from
p’yeha
to
ch
ŏ
nha,
the term designating the crown prince from
t’aeja
to
seja,
and the name for a royal decree from
s
ŏ
nji
to
wangji.
These changes indicate that the status of the Koryo king was demoted from imperial ruler of a kingdom to ruler of the vassal state of an empire. Government organs also experienced the downgrading of their names. The three chancelleries were merged to form the Ch’
ŏ
m
ŭ
ibu, or Council of State, and the Ch’umirw
ŏ
n (formerly the Chungch’uw
ŏ
n), the
Ŏ
sadae, and the Hallimw
ŏ
n were renamed, respectively, the Milchik-sa, the Kamch’al-sa, and the Munhans
ŏ
, respectively. These nominal changes suggest that the importance of these offices was also diminished. Moreover, Kory
ŏ
was forced to abolish the Kong-bu and combine the Yi-bu and the Ye-bu to establish a new agency, the Ch
ŏ
nri-sa, or Office of Proprieties. Further, the Py
ŏ
ng-bu was renamed the Kunbu-sa, or Office of Military Rosters; the Ho-bu became the P’ando-sa, or Office of Census Registration; and the Hy
ŏ
ng-bu was now called the Ch
ŏ
np
ŏ
p-sa, or Office of Legal Administration. On the other hand, Kory
ŏ
voluntarily reorganized the Toby
ŏ
ngmasa, or Supreme Council of Military Affairs, into the Top’y
ŏ
ng
ŭ
isasa, or Supreme Council. In the early period the Toby
ŏ
ngmasa had been a nonpermanent government organ
that had commanded the Kory
ŏ
army in wartime. In this period, however, the Top’y
ŏ
ng
ŭ
isasa became the government’s permanent, highest decision-making organ. The deprecating rechristening and restructuring of government organs was forcibly carried out by Mongols and paralleled the downgrading of terminology related to the monarch. In sum, although Kory
ŏ
maintained political independence, its relationship with Yuan was that of sovereign and subject.

As time went on, Kublai’s ambition to conquer Japan continued to inflict great pain on Kory
ŏ
. Although Mongol forces excelled in land warfare, they had little experience in naval war and lacked the technology for building seagoing vessels large enough to carry a great armed force, and so they ultimately turned to Kory
ŏ
to make up for these deficiencies. Initially Kublai sent envoys to Japan several times in an effort to subjugate the island country by diplomatic means, but these attempts failed. Having already suffered from extensive warfare with Mongols and wanting to avoid another war with Japan, Kory
ŏ
tried to mediate the two parties. Kublai was adamant, however, and ordered Kory
ŏ
to provide vast quantities of provisions and hundreds of ships for a large-scale military campaign against Japan.

In 1274 a 40,000-man army left the Kory
ŏ
port of Happ’o (present-day Masan) for Japan. Kory
ŏ
provided most of the warships and 8,000 men, and the rest was comprised of Mongol forces. After first taking the islands of Tsushima and Iki, this allied force landed on Hakata beach in northern Kyushu. Although the Kamakura shogunate offered stout resistance, initially the Kory
ŏ
-Yuan forces easily defeated the numerically superior Japanese. But then a typhoon struck and wrecked some of the invaders’ ships, and the subsequent arrival of Japanese reinforcements sent Mongols sailing back to Kory
ŏ
.

Having failed in this first invasion of Japan, Kublai became even more aggressive and demanded that Kory
ŏ
make greater preparations for another expedition. The Kory
ŏ
king Ch’ungny
ŏ
l dispatched a mission to Yuan, explaining that his country could not afford another invasion of Japan. Kublai was not moved, however, and sent two missions to Japan with threatening letters in 1275 and 1279, but the Japanese refused to accept Mongol suzerainty and killed his envoys. The enraged Kublai demanded that Kory
ŏ
speed up preparations for a second invasion of Japan. He assembled a far larger expeditionary force, numbering 170,000, composed of Mongols, the Chinese, Koreans, and the Vietnamese, with 4,500 warships. Kory
ŏ
contributed 10,000 men and 900 vessels.

In 1281 the invasion force sailed toward Japan. As in their invasion of 1274, these combined forces again captured Tsushima and Iki as staging areas and then struck Hakata beach. This time the Japanese were better prepared and put up a fierce resistance. At first it appeared that Mongols and their allies could not be stopped, but in August a violent typhoon struck once again and wrecked most of the Mongol ships. Only some 200 ships and 20 percent of the invaders survived the storm or the Japanese soldiers waiting for them as they swam ashore. Cut off from their supplies, Mongols and their allies were easily defeated, and the Japanese reportedly enslaved some 12,000 invaders. The Japanese named the storms that saved them from the Mongol fleets
Kamikaze,
or divine wind.

Undeterred by this disaster, the indefatigable Kublai planned another invasion of Japan, but Kory
ŏ
could no longer support Kublai’s unreasonable demands for its participation. Partly because of Kory
ŏ
’s stubborn refusal and mainly because of unrest in China, Kublai finally gave up his ambition to subjugate Japan. The two invasions of Japan, in any case, imposed some of the heaviest burdens on the Kory
ŏ
peasantry.

After the abortive invasions of Japan, Yuan demanded, under the cloak of tributes, that Kory
ŏ
provide gold, silver, cloth, grain, ginseng, and even falcons, more precisely duck falcons (
haedongch’
ŏ
ng
), for hunting. The demand for falcons resulted in many abuses including corruption and high-handedness of Kory
ŏ
officials. In 1275 Yuan established
ŭ
ngbang
, or falconries, to catch falcons in numerous places, and Kory
ŏ
officials in these falconries who were backed by Mongol power enjoyed a variety of special privileges, incurring the people’s grievances. Mongols’ excessive impositions of tributes, along with the luxury and extravagance of the Kory
ŏ
kings, exacerbated the economic hardships among the people.

Mongols even demanded that young women and eunuchs work at the imperial palaces. To meet their requirements, in 1274 Kory
ŏ
established the Ky
ŏ
rhon togam, or Directorate for Marriage, to seek out young women and, in 1275, placed a ban on marriage throughout the country. Many Kory
ŏ
families were forced to dress young women in men’s clothing to hide them. Once Mongols took Kory
ŏ
’s young women in, however, they gave them respectable positions. The Kory
ŏ
women who went to Yuan, either willingly or unwillingly, were usually married to Mongol aristocrats, high-level officials, or rich men, even
members of the royal family, and ended up in the higher echelon of Mongol society. The later empress Ki, for example, became the consort of the Mongol emperor Shundi and bore him a son, Zhaozong, who became the next emperor of the Yuan dynasty.

Under Yuan domination, Kory
ŏ
kings detested the presence of the so-called King of Shenyang, who had jurisdiction over the Kory
ŏ
people living in Manchuria. When King Ch’ungny
ŏ
l was in the Yuan capital as crown prince, he was invested as King of Shenyang, and later, when King Ch’ungs
ŏ
n (1298, 1308–1313) was forced to abdicate the throne in 1298 and reside in the Yuan capital, he, too, was given that title. Appointing Kory
ŏ
royalty as kings of Shenyang was a maneuver on the part of Mongols to further consolidate their control over Kory
ŏ
by pitting members of Kory
ŏ
’s royalty against each other. The result was a constant confrontation between the Kory
ŏ
king and the King of Shenyang. For instance, a bitter struggle for the succession to the Kory
ŏ
throne erupted between Wang Ko, King Ch’ungs
ŏ
n’s nephew and his successor as King of Shenyang, and King Ch’ungsuk (1313–1330, 1332–1339). As a result of this struggle, King Ch’ungsuk, in 1330, was forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his young son, King Ch’unghye (1330–1332, 1339–1344), only to take the throne again two years later. Yuan also held sway over royal succession by frequently deposing a king and raising another to the throne.