The King Who Took the Han River
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
In the last episode, we met King Beopheung of Silla. When the king, who had promulgated a law code, tried to build a temple, the nobles opposed him, and the young official Ichadon, it is said, gave his life to open the way for Buddhism. In 532, Kim Gu-hae, king of Geumgwan, came to surrender. When King Beopheung died in 540, the throne passed to Sammaekjong, his nephew and also his grandson through his daughter.
Characters
Became king at seven
Made Usan surrender
A monk in his youth
Twelve-string gayageum
Kim Yu-sin’s grandfather
The seventh month of 1816. Bibong, a peak of Bukhansan, north of Hanyang, the Joseon capital.
and some say it has no writing at all.
under the moss!
It was a stele raised on this mountaintop by a king of Silla more than 1,200 years before.
Silla was a kingdom whose capital, Seorabeol, lay at the far southeastern corner of the Korean Peninsula.
How did a king of that kingdom come to raise a stele on a mountaintop by the faraway Han River?
The story begins in Seorabeol, in 540.
In the autumn of 540, when King Beopheung died, his seven-year-old nephew and grandson through his daughter, Sammaekjong, took the throne.
Because the king was still young, his mother, the Queen Dowager, ruled in his place.
is too heavy.
what is heavy.
in command of all forces, within and without!
with my life.
In the third month of 541, in spring, a full foot of snow fell on Seorabeol.
In the seventh month of 545, the Ichan Isabu addressed the king.
to show them to all the ages to come.
what will those who come after have to read?
and compile the kingdom’s history.
a monk?
In his youth, Geochilbu had shaved his head, become a monk, and wandered far and wide.
As a young man, Geochilbu slipped into Goguryeo dressed as a monk to spy on it. There, the renowned Dharma master Hyeryang happened to be expounding the sutras.
but you are no ordinary man.
to learn from you, Master.
Go home quickly, before you are caught.
you will be a general one day.
do me no harm.
I swear it by that bright sun!
Geochilbu went straight back to Silla and entered government service, and at the king’s command he compiled the Guksa.
In 548, when Goguryeo and the Ye attacked Baekje’s Doksan Fortress, the king gave General Ju Jin 3,000 crack troops and sent him to rescue Baekje.
Baekje and Silla had stood together against Goguryeo for more than a hundred years.
In 550, Baekje and Goguryeo each took a fortress from the other: Baekje took Dosal Fortress, and Goguryeo took Geumhyeon Fortress.
Take the two fortresses now!
Isabu captured both fortresses, built up their walls, and left 1,000 armored soldiers to hold them.
Around that time, the Silla army crossed Jungnyeong Pass and took Jeokseong on the Namhan River (today’s Danyang, North Chungcheong Province).
For his service, he shall be rewarded!
The stone carved with this order also bore the names of commanders such as Isabu and Mu-ryeok.
shall be counted as “Gaeguk”!
In the first month of 551, the king, now eighteen, changed the era name to “Gaeguk (開國).”
In the third month of 551, while staying at Nangseong on a royal tour, the king heard that Ureuk, a musician from Gaya, and his pupil Nimun knew music well, and he summoned them specially.
modeled on the twelve months.
When Gaya fell into turmoil, Ureuk had come to Silla carrying his instrument. Each of the two composed new songs and played them before the king.
That year, the king ordered eight generals, including Geochilbu and Gujin, to attack Goguryeo together with Baekje.
When Baekje broke through on the lower Han River first, Geochilbu and the others rode the momentum and took the ten counties beyond Jungnyeong Pass and short of Gohyeon.
Just then, an old monk stood by the roadside with his disciples. It was Hyeryang.
How can I ever repay such kindness?
its fall is not far off.
Take me to your land, I pray you.
Geochilbu came home riding in the same cart as Hyeryang. The king made Hyeryang seungtong, the leader of the kingdom’s monks, and held the Hundred-Seat Assembly and the Palgwanhoe for the first time.
Seorabeol, 553. It was the second year since Baekje had taken the lower Han River and Silla the upper.
our pact with Baekje?
and you reach China across the sea.
In the seventh month of 553, Silla seized Baekje’s northeastern frontier, the land along the lower Han River, and set up “Sinju” there.
it’s all Silla land!
It was land taken from Baekje, the ally that had fought beside Silla two years before.
In the tenth month of 553, the king took the daughter of the Baekje king as a “lesser queen” (sobi).
This was the king who had seized Baekje’s Han River lands three months before. Why the marriage took place is recorded nowhere.
In the seventh month of 554, Myeongnong (King Seong) of Baekje attacked Silla’s Gwansan Fortress together with Gaya.
The Silla troops holding Gwansan Fortress were pushed back.
Hearing the news, Kim Mu-ryeok, military governor of Sinju, rushed to Gwansan Fortress with the Sinju troops.
That night, the Baekje king reached Gucheon with only fifty foot soldiers and horsemen.
The Silla records stated that Dodo, Kim Mu-ryeok’s aide, struck swiftly and killed the Baekje king.
The Silla records stated that in this battle they cut down four Baekje Jwapyeong and 29,600 soldiers.
Not a single horse
made it home.
匹馬無反者 — Samguk Sagi, Silla Annals, 15th year of King Jinheung (554)
News of the victory reached Seorabeol. In the Seorabeol palace was the lesser queen who had come from Baekje as a bride nine months before.
what is heavy.
What the two of them said to each other that day is recorded nowhere.
In the tenth month of 555, the king toured in person as far as Bukhansan and fixed the borders of the newly won land.
meets the sea—
Returning in the eleventh month, he waived a year’s taxes for the districts he had passed through and pardoned all prisoners except those guilty of two kinds of crimes.
Afterward, a stele recording the king’s tour of this land was raised on this peak.
At every edge of the land the king had won, a stele was raised.
In 562, Isabu, together with Sadaham, a hwarang of fifteen or sixteen, brought down Daegaya.
In 568, the king raised steles far to the northeast as well, at Hwangchoryeong and Maullyeong.
On the steles, the king called himself by the royal “We” (jim) and wrote:
Extending our borders on every side, we won people and land far and wide;
neighboring kingdoms swore good faith, and envoys of peace came and went.
四方託境 廣獲民土 隣國誓信 和使交通 — Maullyeong and Hwangchoryeong Steles (568)
In the spring of 572, Crown Prince Dongnyun died before his father. In the tenth month of that year, the king held a Palgwanhoe for seven days at a temple outside the city for the soldiers who had died in battle.
see those lights too?
In the spring of 576, the king chose outstanding young men, had them finely adorned, and had them honored under the name “hwarang.”
there we go!
The hwarang and their followers cultivated the Way together, delighted in song and music, and roamed famous mountains and rivers.
In his last years, the king shaved his head, put on a monk’s robe, and called himself “Beobun.”
In the eighth month of 576, in autumn, King Jinheung died. It was the thirty-seventh year since he had taken the throne.
In the sixth month of 1817, Kim Jeong-hui climbed this peak again with Jo In-yeong, examined the 68 characters that remained, and deciphered them.
And so the king’s name, forgotten beneath the moss, came back into the world.
With the Han River in its hands, Silla now sent envoy after envoy across the Yellow Sea to China.
The small kingdom at the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula
now stood at the very center of the three kingdoms.
