Wang Kon

Korean king (r. 918-943)

• Born: 877
• Birthplace: Songak (now Kaesong, North Korea)
• Died: 943
• Place of death: Kaegyong (now Kaesong, North Korea)

Wang Kŏn founded the Koryŏ Dynasty, which reunited the Korean peninsula and became the first Korean state to successfully integrate all the peoples living on the peninsula.

Early Life

Wang Kŏn (wang guhn) was born in Songak, a prefecture in central Korea that was part of the Silla kingdom. His family, which had settled there several generations before, had become de facto leaders of the prefecture. They relied partly on maritime trade for their wealth and power.

Nothing is known about Wang Kŏn’s childhood and adolescence. According to a twelfth century mythological account, his rise to power was preordained. The account traces the origin of the Wang clan to a semidivine ancestor, who descended from Mount Paektu, the sacred mountain also associated with Tangun, the mythical ancestor of the Korean race. After settling in Songak, the Wang clan was further enhanced through intermarriage with the daughter of a dragon king and a Chinese emperor. In 876, the geomancer-monk Tosŏn (827-898) instructed Wang Kŏn’s father, Wang Yong, on using and adapting the geomantic conditions of Songak to prepare for the future ruler, Wang Kŏn, whose birth Tosŏn predicted.

In actuality, scholars believe that Wang Yong benefited from the collapse of the Silla Dynasty (668-935), which enabled him to build his own power base. The Silla kings had once ruled more than two-thirds of the Korean peninsula from their capital in Kyŏngju. However, their power gradually eroded during the ninth century, as local strongmen became more and more independent. In the last decade of the ninth century, two independent states broke away from Silla: Later Paekche (900-936) in the southwest and Later Koguryŏ (901-918) in the north. Because this situation was identical to an earlier episode in Korean history, the period from c. 900 to 936 became known as the Later Three Kingdoms period. In this new order, Wang Yong allied himself with Kungye, the founder of the Later Koguryŏ> state (also known as T’aebong).

In 898, Kungye moved his capital to Songak and appointed Wang Kŏn as his chief military commander. Wang Kŏn was entrusted with consolidating and expanding the frontiers of the new state. He carried out this duty with great zeal and ability. Over the next twenty years, he was engaged in numerous land and sea battles with Kyŏn-hwŏn, the king of Later Paekche. Wang Kŏn was especially successful in establishing naval superiority: He established a naval base in Naju, in the southwestern corner of the peninsula, from which he controlled the western sea coast. About 910, in an attempt to drive Wang Kŏn out of Naju, Kyŏn-hwŏn sent a large fleet to recapture the city but was defeated in a major naval battle, in which Wang Kŏn used a surprise attack to set fire to the enemy fleet.

Although Wang Kŏn was loyal to Kungye, signs of a rift became apparent at an early stage. In 905, Kungye moved his capital out of Kaesŏng, and from then on, Kungye and Wang Kŏn avoided each other. According to the official histories, written to justify Wang Kŏn’s actions, Kungye became increasingly tyrannical, gradually becoming insane. Everyone rallied behind Wang Kŏn and begged him to become the new ruler. Wang Kŏn finally relented and took the throne in 918, when he proclaimed the Koryŏ Dynasty (918-1392).

Life’s Work

After assuming the title of king of Koryŏ at the age of forty-one, Wang Kŏn still had a long way to go to establish the authority of his new dynasty. Final reunification would be achieved only in 936, and at his death in 943, centralized government control still did not reach most local areas.

In spite of his military successes against Later Paekche, Wang Kŏn’s military power was limited; he set about consolidating the new dynasty by concluding alliances with the town heads and castle lords who controlled major cities and regions. These alliances were often forged through marriage ties: Wang Kŏn married no less than twenty-nine times, each of his spouses belonging to an important regional family. While this promoted wider recognition of the dynasty, it also proved a liability, especially when it came to choosing a successor, as each family would vie to place one of its own on the throne.

At the time of his succession, his authority was far from universal in the territory he inherited from Kungye, which stretched from the upper Han River in the south to the Taedong River in the north. He had to overcome several rebellions and only gradually won the allegiance of regional strongmen. This process of internal consolidation diverted Wang Kŏn’s attention from dealing with his rival states, Silla and Later Paekche. A stalemate developed with Later Paekche, as neither side took any major military initiative.

Kyŏn-hwŏn tried to lure Wang Kŏn into a trap by turning his attention to Silla. Weakened by centuries of infighting among the royal clan, the Silla court had lost control over all but the Kyŏngju basin. Still, it commanded considerable symbolic authority, and Wang Kŏn was keen to obtain the mantle of legitimacy from the Silla Dynasty. Therefore, while trying to win over regional commanders nominally loyal to Silla, he also professed his loyalty to Silla and acted as its protector. When Kyŏn-hwŏn sacked Kyŏngju in 927 and installed a puppet king, Wang Kŏn was forced to lead a force of five thousand deep into Silla territory to save the dynasty but was routed by Kyŏn-hwŏn and barely escaped with his life. After this defeat, another stalemate arose between Koryŏ and Later Paekche.

Wang Kŏn’s patience in winning over the old Silla elite finally paid off in 935 when the last Silla ruler abdicated and submitted to Wang Kŏn, thus transmitting his mandate to the new dynasty. In the same year, Kyŏn-hwŏn suffered a major setback when his elder sons, angry at being passed over for succession, rebelled and imprisoned their father. He escaped, however, and sought refuge with Wang Kŏn, who welcomed him and used the dissent at his enemy’s court to his advantage. In 936, he finally defeated the last forces of Later Paekche, his enemy of forty years, in the Battle of Ilsŏn-gun, thus unifying all but the northernmost part of the peninsula.

Wang Kŏn was a skillful military strategist and an astute political leader. After making his conquests, his biggest task was to present himself as the legitimate ruler of all the Korean people. To this end, he created a persona that appealed to the various regional sensibilities and relied on a variety of ideologies.

First, Wang Kŏn chose a name for the dynasty that reclaimed the inheritance of an ancient state: Koryŏ was simply an alternative spelling for Koguryŏ. At its peak, between c. 300 and its defeat by combined Silla-Tang forces in 668, the state of Koguryŏ had covered a vast area, consisting of much of present-day Manchuria and the northern and central part of the Korean peninsula. Silla managed to integrate only part of the former Koguryŏ territory and never claimed its people as part of Silla. Wang Kŏn, on the other hand, was keen to integrate the remnants of the ancient Koguryŏ state, particularly Parhae, founded by Koguryŏ renegades in 698 in the area now known as Manchuria. However, his ambitions were thwarted when Parhae was overrun by the Khitan in 926. Despite this setback, Wang Kŏn made recovery of the ancient Koguryŏ heartland an official policy, which set Koryŏ on a collision course with the Khitan, the effective rulers of these lands.

Identification with Koguryŏ apparently was done primarily for territorial purposes. There were no attempts to favor people of Koguryŏ descent. Indeed, Koryŏ looked up to the Silla heritage and sought to integrate officials who had worked for the Silla court. Wang Kŏn’s policy was to integrate peoples from all the former Korean states. Symbolically, this was expressed in the integration of the former ruling clans: Remnants of the Silla, Parhae, and Later Paekche royal families were all welcomed by Wang Kŏn, and some of the family members were integrated into the Wang clan through marriage. An exception was made for Later Paekche, however. In his political testament, he warned his successors never to trust people from this area. This statement seems to have sown the seeds of a long-standing discrimination against people from the southwest, which continues to this day.

Wang Kŏn also invoked the mandate of heaven theory (heavenly authorization of rule) to justify his kingship. He was careful to make his actions and persona fit with this theory, according to which a person endowed with the right character and moral fiber will resonate with the cosmic order, producing signs in the natural world that he is fit to rule. This explains why Koryŏ historiography is so keen to portray Kungye as an evil ruler who has lost that mandate, and why Wang Kŏn took so much care to receive the mandate from the last Silla ruler rather than to simply usurp it. He also tailored his policies to conform with those of the Chinese dynastic founders: He granted amnesties, alleviated the people’s tax burdens, and took measures to stimulate agriculture.

Besides the mandate of heaven, Wang Kŏn appealed to more popular ideologies to support his dynasty, notably geomancy and Buddhism . In the Korean reinterpretation of geomantic principles, the natural flow of ki (energy) through the earth was connected with the peninsular geography and the mythical importance of Mount Paektu. All the positive energy was thought to originate from Mount Paektu and diffuse via the mountain ridges that ran down the peninsula. Kaegyŏng, as the capital of Koryŏ became known, was situated at the end of one of those ridges, tapping directly into the positive energy. Wang Kŏn was also a keen supporter of Buddhism, notably of the Sŏn (Zen) school. The Sŏn school not only was the most vibrant religious force of the time, but its temples also were established across the peninsula and were important religious, intellectual, and economic centers with strong ties to local society. By patronizing Sŏn monks and inviting them to his court, Wang Kŏn was able to spread an image of himself as a humane ruler and devout Buddhist in the local societies in which the Sŏn monks were based.

Wang Kŏn died at the age of sixty-six, exhausted after conducting nearly forty years of continuous warfare. He left behind a kingdom that was still beset by internal contradictions, and it was up to his successors to build institutions of state and a more sophisticated government structure that could recruit people to administer the country. He failed to secure a stable succession, as his designated successor proved unable to fend off rival siblings. Only after a bloody succession struggle and equally bloody purges among the elites who had supported Wang Kŏn’s rise to power was King Kwangjong (r. 949-975), another son of Wang Kŏn, able to secure the dynasty.

Significance

Wang Kŏn laid the foundations of a dynasty that lasted nearly five centuries, from 918 to 1392. He was, in effect, the first known dynastic founder among the Korean people and the first to achieve true unification. Previous peninsular states had all evolved from tribal societies and never quite shook off the constraints of these local origins. Although the Silla Dynasty unified most of the peninsula, it consistently excluded anyone not belonging to the Kyŏngju-based Kim clan from power. Wang Kŏn managed to take over the best elements of Silla culture, but through the judicious use of geomancy, Confucianism, and Buddhism, he created a culture with which various elite groups could identify.

Despite the remarkable longevity of the Koryŏ Dynasty, its kingship was inherently weak. Wang Kŏn had initially tried to create an empire, using his own reign titles and calendar, but in the end, he chose to become vassal to China. Although vassal status was largely symbolic, it meant that he could not find sufficient support for his position internally. Though his policies of reconciliation and alliance laid the foundations of a unified state, he had to make too many compromises to achieve a strong centralized leadership.

Major Rulers of the Koryŏ Dynasty, 918-1392

Reign

• Ruler

918-943

• T’aejo (Wang Kŏn)

944-945

• Hyejong

946-949

• Chŏngjong

949-975

• Kwangjong (Wang So)

975-981

• Kyŏngjong (Wang Yu)

981-997

• Sŏngjong (Wang Ch’i)

997-1009

• Mokshong

1009-1031

• Hyŏnjong

1031-1034

• Tokjong

1034-1046

• Chŏngjong

1046-1083

• Munjong (Wang Hwi)

1083

• Sunjong

1083-1094

• Sŏnjong

1094-1095

• Hŏnjong

1095-1105

• Sukjong

1105-1122

• Yejong I

1122-1146

• Injong I (Wang Hae)

1146-1170

• Ŭijong

1170-1197

• Myŏngjong

1197-1204

• Sinjong

1204-1211

• Hŭijong

1211-1213

• Kangjong

1214-1259

• Kojong I

1260-1274

• Wŏnjong

1274-1308

• Ch’unguŏl Wang

1308-1313

• Ch’ungsŏn Wang

1313-1330

• Ch’ungsuk Wang

1330-1332

• Ch’unghye Wang

1332-1339

• Ch’angsuk Wang

1339-1344

• Ch’unghye Wang

1344-1348

• Ch’ungmok Wang

1348-1351

• Ch’ungjŏng Wang

1351-1374

• Kongmin Wang

1374-1388

• U (Sin-u)

1389

• Sinch’ang

1389-1392

• Kongyang Wang

Bibliography

Duncan, John. The Origins of the Chosōn Dynasty. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. Analyzes the descent groups that monopolized political power in the Koryŏ period. Contains a useful introduction on the political system of early Koryŏ.

Hurst, Cameron G., III. “’The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’: Personalities in the Founding of Koryŏ.” Korean Studies Forum 7 (1981): 1-27. Still the only work in a Western language that contains reliable biographies of the main actors in the founding of Koryŏ.

Kang, Hugh H. W. “The First Succession Struggle of Koryŏ, in 945: A Reinterpretation.” Journal of Asian Studies 36, no. 3 (1977): 411-428. A detailed study of the factors that led to the violent succession struggles after Wang Kŏn’s death.

Kang, Hugh H. W. “Wang Kŏn and the Koryŏ Dynastic Order.” Han’guk Munhwa 7 (1986): 161-175. Highlights the Confucian elements in Wang Kŏn’s legitimation strategy.

Rogers, Michael. “P’yŏnnyŏn T’ongnok: The Foundation Legend of the Koryŏ State.” Journal of Korean Studies 4 (1982-1983): 3-72. A detailed study of the geomantic discourse and legends that served to mythologize the Wang royal lineage.