King Asin’s Vow
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
King Gwanggaeto the Great (Damdeok) of Goguryeo, who became king at eighteen, took some ten Baekje fortresses in 392, along with Gwanmi Fortress, surrounded by the sea. Baekje’s King Asin, who had succeeded his uncle King Jinsa, asked his maternal uncle Jinmu to wipe away that shame, but the attack on Gwanmi Fortress in 393 had to pull back when supplies ran out, and Baekje was defeated again in 394 and in 395. In the winter of 395, King Asin set out at the head of his army himself, but heavy snow at Cheongmongnyeong Pass forced him to turn back.
Characters
Sought to retake Gwanmi Fortress
Leads his navy in person
King Asin’s maternal uncle
Crown Prince of Baekje
His name has not come down to us
Winter, 395. The king of the north and the king of the south were standing in the same falling snow.
The next year, 396, a great war broke out between the two kingdoms. Yet this war does not appear in the Samguk Sagi.
Only the Gwanggaeto Stele, raised by Goguryeo, tells of that year—in the voice of the victor.
Scornfully calling Baekje “Baekjan” (百殘), the stele recorded that year’s events like this.
In the sixth year of Yeongnak, the byeongsin year, the king himself led a navy
and subdued Janguk (Baekje).
以六年丙申 王躬率水軍 討伐殘國 — Gwanggaeto Stele
In 396, King Gwanggaeto the Great led his navy south in person.
The news soon reached Hanseong, the Baekje capital.
The stele lists, one after another, the names of the Baekje fortresses Goguryeo took at this time.
Taking Baekje’s fortresses one by one, the Goguryeo army closed in on the capital.
When the Goguryeo army drew near the capital, the Baekje army came out of the walls to fight.
King Gwanggaeto the Great, enraged, crossed the Arisu.
The “Arisu” of the stele is thought to be an old name for the Han River.
The Baekje army fell back inside the walls, and the Goguryeo army at once surrounded the capital.
Surrounded, King Asin was driven into a corner.
And then one day,
King Asin went out to stand before the king of Goguryeo.
King Asin offered up 1,000 men and women and 1,000 bolts of fine cloth.
Then he knelt before the king of Goguryeo and swore a vow himself.
Nogaek (奴客), “slave-retainer,” meant a subject who served the king of Goguryeo with reverence.
King Gwanggaeto the Great returned to his capital, taking with him King Asin’s younger brother and ten high ministers.
The stele recorded that in this war Goguryeo gained 58 fortresses and 700 villages.
In the fifth month of 397, King Asin made friendly ties with Wa and sent Crown Prince Jeonji there as a hostage.
Jeonji would return to Baekje only eight years later, after his father had died.
In the seventh month of 397, King Asin held a grand review of his troops south of the Hansu.
In the second month of the following year, Jinmu became Byeonggwan Jwapyeong, the minister in charge of the kingdom’s armies.
In the eighth month of 398, King Asin set out
at the head of his army to attack Goguryeo.
On the night the king’s army reached the northern stockade at Hansan, a great star fell into the camp with a loud noise.
The king took it as a very bad sign and withdrew his army.
In the eighth month of 399, King Asin, set on attacking Goguryeo once again, conscripted men and horses on a vast scale.
Worn down by forced labor, many of the people fled to Silla.
Across the land of Baekje, households and people dwindled.
The Gwanggaeto Stele recorded the events of 399 like this.
Baekjan broke its vow
and joined hands with Wa.
九年己亥 百殘違誓 與倭和通 — Gwanggaeto Stele
That year, King Gwanggaeto the Great came south to Pyongyang.
Just then, an envoy sent by the king of Silla came hurrying in.
The Silla envoy humbly called his own king a “slave-retainer.”
The Great King sent the envoy back with a secret plan.
The king of the north and the king of the south. One had received a vow; the other had not kept it.
And so the vow sworn on his knees was broken.
The next year, 400, King Gwanggaeto the Great sends 50,000 infantry and cavalry
to rescue Silla.
