Notes

The disunity of Korea in the tenth century was short-lived and soon the peninsula was reunited under the Wang Kŏn. He named the state Koryŏ after Koguryŏ, the ancient state that ruled the northern part of the peninsula as well as parts of Manchuria. The English name Korea is derived from Koryŏ. The Wang dynasty he founded in 918 ruled all of the peninsula for the better part of five centuries from 935 to 1392, making it among the longer-reigning dynasties in world history and inaugurating a sense of stability and continuity in Korean history. Under Koryŏ the peoples of Korea became integrated into a single, distinctive culture and society to a far greater extent than under Silla. In fact, it may not be too much to say that a truly Korean society and ethnicity that was coterminous to the state emerged during this time. Toward the end of the ninth century and into the early tenth century as centralized rule broke down, Korea became in effect a land where local military warlords ruled. Considering the rugged mountainous terrain of Korea, the strength of local traditions, and the great difficulty that even the ablest of Silla’s rulers had in trying to create a centralized state in the face of powerful aristocratic clans, the disintegration of the Silla is not surprising. What is more surprising is how quickly Korea was reunified in the tenth century under Wang Kŏn. Several factors help explain this. Silla left a two-century legacy of unified, bureaucratic government that may have become accepted as the norm. Furthermore, under the Silla a strong cultural unity among the peoples of the peninsula emerged, although it is difficult to gauge its extent or depth. Korea was also influenced by outside events. The nomad threat posed by the Khitans (or Qidan), a proto-Mongol group that emerged as dominant in Manchuria in the tenth century, made the need for a centralized authority more obvious. Korea may have also been influenced by the model of a strong unified state that Tang presented, a model reinforced by the reunification of China by the Song in 979.