Hwangsanbeol
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Kim Yu-sin, a descendant of Gaya royalty, became a hwarang at fifteen, and at eighteen, it is said, he took a treasured sword alone into the deep mountains and prayed to Heaven. In 629 he made his name at Nangbi Fortress by charging in and out of the enemy lines alone, and in 648 he gave up eight captured Baekje commanders to bring back the bones of Kim Chun-chu’s daughter and her husband, who had died at Daeya Fortress. Then, in the 5th month of 660, the sixty-six-year-old Kim Yu-sin set out from Seorabeol to attack Baekje with Kim Chun-chu (King Taejong Muyeol), who was now king.
Characters
Leads 5,000 men sworn to die
Eldest son of King Mu
Left a last letter from prison
Son of Pumil
Gwanchang’s father
Sixty-six years old
The 9th day of the 7th month, 660: Hwangsanbeol.
The Baekje general Gyebaek had seized the rugged ground first and set up camp in three places. From the east, across from them, Silla’s army of 50,000 came surging in.
Baekje’s sworn troops numbered five thousand. The Silla army was ten times that.
How had Baekje come to make its stand
for the kingdom’s fate on this field?
The story begins four years earlier, in Sabi, the Baekje capital.
Spring 656. The Samguk Sagi records that around this time King Uija gave himself over to pleasure with his palace women and never stopped drinking.
enough now!
See to the state!
Imprison him!
Enraged, the king had Seongchung thrown into prison. After that, no minister dared to speak the truth.
In prison, Seongchung grew thinner by the day. As death drew near, he sent the king a final letter.
does not forget his king.
Let me say one last thing, then die.
do not let them cross Tanhyeon
by land,
Gibeolpo by water.
can the kingdom be saved.
The king paid no heed to the letter. And so Seongchung died in prison.
In the summer of 660, the Samguk Sagi records, a ghost entered the palace, cried out, and vanished into the ground. When the spot was dug up, a turtle with writing on its back came out.
Baekje will fall!
Silla like the crescent moon.
will soon wane, while
the crescent will wax.
Enraged by the shaman’s reading, the king had the shaman killed. Then someone offered a different reading.
The full moon means strength; the crescent, weakness.
It means our kingdom thrives while Silla grows weaker, Your Majesty.
The king was pleased.
In the 3rd month of 660, Emperor Gaozong of Tang gave General Su Dingfang 130,000 troops and sent him to attack Baekje. In the 6th month, Su Dingfang met Silla’s Crown Prince Beommin at Deongmul Island (today’s Deokjeok Island).
the Great King’s army south of Baekje
and smash Uija’s capital!
The Tang ships, it is said, stretched for a thousand li as they crossed the sea.
From Silla, Crown Prince Beommin, Grand General Kim Yu-sin, the generals Pumil and Heumsun and others led 50,000 elite troops toward Baekje.
Gwanchang went along as a deputy commander under his father, Pumil.
The two armies were to meet on the 10th day of the 7th month and attack Sabi, the Baekje capital, together. The Tang army would come by sea through Gibeolpo, and the Silla army overland across Tanhyeon.
At news of the coming enemy, the king gathered his ministers and asked how to fight.
from the sea crossing.
Strike first, as they land!
Strike Silla first
and break its spirit!
Unable to decide, the king sent a man to ask Jwapyeong Heungsu, who had been exiled for a crime to Gomamiji County (today’s Jangheung).
our kingdom’s vital passes. One man
with one spear can hold them
against ten thousand.
brave men to hold them,
and to stand firm himself
until the enemy
wears itself out.
But the high ministers did not trust Heungsu’s words.
Heungsu has long been a prisoner and resents his king.
His advice cannot be used, Your Majesty.
If they struck once the enemy had entered the narrow ways, the ministers argued, it would be like catching chickens in a cage or fish in a net. The king followed their advice.
entered the Baekgang,
and the Silla army
has crossed Tanhyeon!
Lead your sworn troops
to Hwangsan. Stop them!
The king made Dalsol Gyebaek a general and sent him out to fight at the head of 5,000 soldiers ready to die.
Arriving at Hwangsanbeol, Gyebaek swore an oath before his soldiers ahead of the clash with the Silla army.
of Tang and Silla. Will our kingdom
survive? No one can say.
crushed the 700,000 of Wu
with 5,000 men!
and repay your debt
to the kingdom!
Kim Yu-sin split his army into three columns and attacked.
Four times they fought,
and all four times, the Baekje army won.
It is said that every Baekje soldier was a match for a thousand. The Silla troops were running out of strength.
The Silla general Kim Heum-sun called his son Bangul.
for a son, nothing is greater than filial duty.
and you fulfill both loyalty and filial duty.
Bangul charged into the enemy lines and died fighting hard.
Next, Pumil, General of the Left, stood his son Gwanchang before his horse and, pointing to the commanders, said:
but his will and spirit are bold.
can you be an example
to all three armies?
On an armored horse, with a single spear, Gwanchang charged straight into the enemy lines.
He struck down several men, but the enemy were many and his own side few, and in the end Gwanchang was captured.
The captured Gwanchang was dragged before Gyebaek, the Baekje commander-in-chief.
just a boy.
remarkable men.
what of its grown men!
Gyebaek could not bring himself to harm the brave young boy.
Gwanchang, back alive, said:
I could not cut down their general
or seize their banner.
I will surely do it.
After scooping up well water in his hands and drinking, Gwanchang mounted again and galloped toward the enemy lines.
Gwanchang charged into the Baekje camp once more.
When Gwanchang was captured again, this time Gyebaek did not send him back alive.
The horse Gwanchang had ridden came back to the Silla camp.
for his country…
Seeing this, every Silla soldier resolved to die. Beating drums and roaring, they advanced.
The Baekje army was too few, and its strength was spent.
Gyebaek died fighting on that field.
Jwapyeong Chungsang, Sangyeong and some twenty others were taken captive.
That same day, the Tang army led by Su Dingfang and Kim In-mun reached Gibeolpo at the mouth of the Geum River.
They laid willow mats over the muddy flats to make a path, came ashore and routed the Baekje troops who stood in their way.
Past Hwangsanbeol, the Silla army reached the Tang camp. Su Dingfang was furious that they had come later than the agreed day.
Behead their inspector,
Kim Mun-yeong,
at the camp gate!
the fight at Hwangsan, yet he
calls our lateness a crime!
First we settle it with Tang,
then attack Baekje!
The Samguk Sagi records that at this moment the treasured sword at Kim Yu-sin’s waist leaped out of its sheath by itself.
When Su Dingfang’s General of the Right, Dong Baoliang, stepped on his foot and whispered a warning, Su Dingfang released Kim Mun-yeong.
On the 12th day of the 7th month, the Tang and Silla armies surrounded Sabi Fortress.
and do not let them enter Gibeolpo.
and now it has come to this!
On the night of the 13th, King Uija slipped out of the fortress with his close attendants and went to Ungjin Fortress.
In Sabi Fortress, which the king had left, his second son Tae made himself king and held the fortress.
But people escaped over the walls on ropes, and the Tang troops climbed onto the battlements and planted Tang flags.
In the end, Tae too opened the gates.
An old record preserved in the Samguk Yusa says that when Sabi Fortress fell, the palace women threw themselves into the river from a great rock on the riverbank north of the capital.
That rock later came to be called Nakhwaam, “the Rock of Falling Flowers.”
On the 18th day of the 7th month, King Uija came out of Ungjin Fortress and surrendered. On the 2nd day of the 8th month, King Muyeol and Su Dingfang held a banquet and made King Uija pour their wine.
All of Baekje’s ministers choked with tears.
On the 15th day of the 8th month, the Tang carved an inscription proclaiming their pacification of Baekje, the “Inscription on the Great Tang’s Pacification of Baekje,” on the five-story stone pagoda of a temple in the heart of Sabi.
will soon wane…
On the 3rd day of the 9th month, Su Dingfang left Sabi by ship, taking with him King Uija, 93 members of the royal family and officials, and 12,000 commoners.
In the 11th month of that year, King Uija, who had been taken to Luoyang in Tang China, died there of illness not long after.
And so Baekje, said to have begun on the banks of the Han River in 18 BCE,
fell.
But the fight of the Baekje people was not over yet.
