The Song of Seodong
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
In the last episode, we met King Seong of Baekje. In 538 he moved the capital to Sabi and renamed the kingdom “Nambuyeo,” and in 551 he won back the old lands along the Han River—but in 553 Silla, which had fought alongside him, seized that land. The next year, during the Battle of Gwansan Fortress, the king was killed by a Silla ambush on a night road at Gucheon, and his eldest son, Chang, took the throne.
Characters
of the Samguk Yusa
(600–641) · Son of King Beop
in the Samguk Yusa
Long stood against King Mu
in the Samguk Yusa
on a single gold plate as
“the daughter of Sataek Jeokdeok”
Chang (King Wideok) ruled Baekje for more than forty years. The kings who followed him, King Hye and King Beop, died one after the other, neither reigning even two years.
In 600, the son of King Beop took the throne.
He was the 30th king of Baekje: King Mu.
But the Samguk Yusa tells the story of this king’s childhood in an entirely different way.
The Yam-Digging Boy
The tale of Seodong, from the “King Mu” entry in the “Wonders” section of the Samguk Yusa
Long ago, by a pond south of the Baekje capital, there lived a woman on her own.
It is said that she came together with the dragon of that pond and bore a son.
The boy made his living by digging yams in the hills and selling them. People called him “Seodong,” meaning “the yam-digging boy.”
of King Jinpyeong of Silla?
Seodong shaved his head and went to Seorabeol, the capital of Silla. There he handed out yams to the neighborhood children.
learn a song?
The children ran through every alley, singing the song Seodong had taught them.
Princess Seonhwa
has married in secret,
and steals away by night
to hold her Seodong
善化公主主隱 他密只嫁良置古 薯童房乙 夜矣卯乙抱遣去如 — “Seodongyo,” Samguk Yusa
has married in secret,
and steals away by night
to hold her Seodong~
The song spread through the whole capital, until at last it reached inside the palace.
has spread all over the capital!
The officials fiercely urged that the princess be banished far away. She was to be sent into exile in a distant place.
On the day she left, the queen gave her daughter a peck of pure gold.
When she had almost reached her place of exile, a young man stepped out onto the road and bowed to her.
The princess did not know where he had come from, but somehow she trusted him and was glad. The two went on together.
As they traveled together, the two grew close. Only on hearing his name did the princess realize that the song had come true.
The two came to Baekje together. When the princess brought out the gold her mother had given her to talk over how they would live, Seodong burst out laughing.
What’s all this?
Enough to live on for a hundred years.
this stuff is piled up like dirt.
send this gold to my parents’ palace?
The two heaped the gold up like a hill and went to see Master Jimyeong of Sajasa Temple on Mount Yonghwa.
Bring the gold here.
When the princess wrote a letter to her parents and left it with the gold in front of Sajasa Temple,
the master used his divine powers to carry the gold to the Silla palace in a single night.
all this gold?
Astonished at this marvel, King Jinpyeong held Seodong in even higher regard, and it is said he often sent letters asking after him.
Through this, Seodong won people’s hearts, and at last he took the throne.
One day, on their way to Sajasa Temple, the king and queen came to the edge of a great pond below Mount Yonghwa.
a great temple here.
At that moment, a Maitreya triad rose from the middle of the pond.
With his divine powers, Master Jimyeong brought down a mountain in a single night and filled in the pond.
There, modeled on Maitreya’s three sermons, they built halls, pagodas and corridors in three places and named it “Mireuksa.” It is said that King Jinpyeong, too, sent craftsmen of every kind to help.
At the end of this tale, the Samguk Yusa added a note in small characters:
The Samguk Sagi calls him the son of King Beop,
but this tale calls him the son of a widow.
We cannot tell.
三國史云 是法王之子 而此傳之獨女之子 未詳 — Samguk Yusa
The Samguk Sagi records King Mu as the son of King Beop. His name was Jang (璋). He is said to have had an outstanding bearing, with the spirit and ambition of a hero.
great once more.
In the eighth month of 602, King Mu sent out troops and besieged Silla’s Amaksan Fortress. But he was driven back by several thousand swift cavalry sent by King Jinpyeong.
Silla, far from backing down, built four new fortresses near the border—Sota, Oeseok, Cheonsan and Ongjam—threatening Baekje’s land.
The king was furious.
and strike those four fortresses!
When the fighting went badly, Hae Su fell back to a great pond west of Mount Cheonsan, hid his troops and waited.
Mueun, the Silla general who had given chase, fell from his horse. But when Mueun’s son Gwisan and his friend Chuhang stood their ground and fought on, the Silla army rallied.
The Baekje army was badly defeated.
Hae Su barely escaped with his life and rode back alone.
Even after that, the fighting between the two kingdoms did not stop.
In 611 King Mu besieged Silla’s Gajam Fortress for a hundred days and took it, and in 616 he attacked Amak Fortress again. In 624 he seized six Silla fortresses.
In autumn 627, King Mu raised a great army to win back the land lost to Silla and made camp at Ungjin.
the land we lost!
When King Jinpyeong heard the news and sent envoys to Tang to report the emergency, King Mu halted his army.
In the eighth month of that year, the king’s nephew Boksin went to Tang as an envoy. Emperor Taizong of Tang told Boksin that Baekje should make peace with Silla, and sent the king a letter as well.
and your neighbor.”
neighborly ties, and stop fighting at once.”
King Mu sent envoys to give thanks. But the Samguk Sagi records: “Outwardly he claimed to obey, but inwardly the two still regarded each other as enemies.”
In the tale, King Jinpyeong of Silla and King Mu of Baekje were father-in-law and son-in-law.
In the records, the two kings
were at each other’s throats for nearly thirty years.
In the first month of 632, King Mu made his eldest son, Uija, crown prince. That same month, King Jinpyeong of Silla died.
In the second month of 634, Wangheungsa Temple was completed on the riverbank at Sabi. Its painted decorations were grand and splendid.
The king would often go to the temple by boat to burn incense.
In the third month, the king had a pond dug south of the palace. Water was brought from more than twenty li away, and willows were planted on its four banks.
immortals dwell look like that?
In the middle of the water an island was built, modeled on Mount Fangzhang, where immortals were said to live.
In the third month of 636, the king led his officials to a feast at the northern inlet of the Sabi River. The strange rocks and flowers on both banks looked like a painting.
Drinking and in the highest spirits, the king played the geomungo and sang along to it, and his companions danced again and again. People called the place Daewangpo, “the Great King’s Inlet.”
What song the king sang that day is not recorded anywhere.
The 29th day of the 1st month, 639: Mireuksa Temple in Iksan. Sarira were enshrined in the stone pillar at the heart of the western stone pagoda, which was then being built.
stand as firm as the mountains…
Beside the gold sarira jar was placed a single gold plate engraved with writing.
In the third month of 641, King Mu died.
Emperor Taizong of Tang mourned him at the Xuanwu Gate and posthumously honored him as Guanglu Daifu. His eldest son, Uija, took the throne.
The temple lived on long after Baekje fell, but at some point it fell into ruin. The western stone pagoda survived, half collapsed.
In 2001, to repair the pagoda, which seemed ready to collapse, workers began to dismantle it, taking down its stones one by one.
And then came January 14, 2009.
When the stone resting on the pillar at the center of the first story (the central pillar stone) was lifted, a square hole appeared in the top of the pillar.
inside the hole!
On the front and back of a palm-sized gold plate, some 190 characters had been engraved.
of Jwapyeong Sataek Jeokdeok…”
to raise this temple…”
reverently welcomed the sarira.”
According to the gold plate, the queen who gave her wealth to raise the temple and enshrined sarira in this pagoda was the daughter of Sataek Jeokdeok, a Jwapyeong of Baekje.
The princess in the song came from Seorabeol in Silla. The queen in the gold plate was the daughter of a Baekje Jwapyeong.
Was the princess in the song just a made-up story,
or was she another queen
who came before the one in the gold plate?
The song that has come down through fourteen hundred years, and the gold plate that waited 1,370 years inside the pagoda, have yet to give us the answer.
