A History of Korea (19 page)

THE ASSASSINATION OF CHANG POGO, 846

The mid-ninth century witnessed the peak of the powers of Chang Pogo, the local strongman of the southwestern coast of Silla who dominated the profitable trading networks that linked the peninsula to Japan and China. But despite Chang’s tremendous economic and military authority, a wily assassin was able to penetrate the defenses surrounding him and end an ongoing struggle between Chang and the central elites of the Unified Silla kingdom. Chang’s death at the hands of this assassin demonstrated that, for all his powers, he could not evade the intrigues of court politics 200 miles away in the Silla capital of Ky
ngju—indeed, Chang had willfully engaged in them, even going so far as to arrange a marriage between his daughter and a Silla monarch. When this effort turned powerful aristocrats against him, he met his fate.

As it turned out, Chang’s demise would mark the beginning of the end of the Unified Silla era. This appears fitting, for Chang’s successes
and travails also symbolized key facets of Silla society, from his social background and his growth as a local warlord to his activities beyond the Korean peninsula. That Chang would go down in historical lore primarily as the man most responsible for Korea’s brief standing at the heart of the northeast Asian trading system points also to the revival of interest in him in contemporary times, when (South) Korea is seeking to reinvigorate its regional standing. This interest in Chang’s exploits from 1200 years ago harkens back to an era, swathed in mythical overtones, when Korea lay in the center of northeast Asia.

CHANG POGO, CH’OE CH’IW
N, AND UNIFIED SILLA SOCIETY

The scattered sources of information regarding Chang Pogo’s early life hardly suggest a future as a historically important figure. He appears to have made his way to the Shandong Peninsula in China as a young man, where he became a local military officer and later gained experience in seafaring and trading activities as a member of the Silla expatriate community. He is also credited with establishing a Buddhist temple for the Sillans,
P
phwaw
n
, which served also as a kind of consulate, a base for not only religious worship and ceremonies but economic and diplomatic activities. Chang’s return to his homeland is the next entrance in his sketchy biography. However, it is uncertain whether he was driven by a determination to thwart the pirates who regularly plied the shores of Korea, snatching Korean captives to sell as slaves in China, or if he became conscious of this issue upon his return. In any case in 828 Chang was able to convince the Silla government to put him in charge of a large naval fortress off the peninsula’s southwest coast near the island of Wando. This fort became known as “Ch’
nghaejin,” or Ch’
nghae Fortress, and it boasted a 10,000-man garrison. From this base, Chang not only put a stop to the pirates, but he applied his Shandong formula of combining military with economic pursuits to establish himself as the dominant figure in the tri-lateral maritime trade between Korea, Japan, and China.

Chang soon became enmeshed in the politics of the Silla central court, if not by his own initiative, then certainly because
his prominence made him a ready target for those court figures looking for support. In 836, Kim Ujing, loser in the latest battle over royal succession, made his way across the southern coast and pleaded for Chang’s protection, and within two years Chang found himself raising a private military force to battle the court’s army on Kim’s behalf. When victory allowed Kim to ascend the throne, he showered Chang with gifts and the greatly elevated title of Grand General of Ch’
nghae. Chang, flush with success in his interventions in capital politics, maneuvered in 845 to marry off his daughter as the monarch’s second queen (which might have been a condition for helping Kim Ujing in the first place). This appears to have gone too far, for the aristocratic elite in Ky
ngju, apparently aghast at Chang’s brazen move to insert himself into royal politics, sent the assassin, Y
mjang, to finish off Chang in 846.

While there is no explicit evidence, the common perception among historians is that resistance to Chang’s involvement in the highest circles of politics and society likely had something to do with his social status. This in turn leads us to consider the Silla social hierarchy as well as why Chang might have faced difficulties. For Silla deployed an early form of the stout social status system that came to characterize premodern Korea as a whole. Known commonly as the “bone rank” (
kolp’um
) system, the Silla method assigned a “bone rank” to people, based on their parentage, that determined their social status and, in turn, their spheres and manner of social interaction, marriage possibilities, tax and service obligations, and eligibility for bureaucratic office (or even royalty).

Especially striking are the interesting correspondence between economic activity and social status, on the one hand, and the limitations of economic activity in generating social mobility, on the other. For social status, as it would be throughout the premodern era in Korea, was first and foremost determined by birth. One’s occupation or primary economic activity also flowed from one’s birth status. Although the evidence is sketchy, there likely was a substantial group of people born into servitude. Above them were the majority of the population, the commoners, most of whom
were engaged in agriculture, while some earned their livelihoods through artisanal crafts, fishing and hunting, or trade. The category of “merchants” in reference to the latter group included those whose scope of trading activity ranged from inter-village exchange to international trade, as was the case with Chang Pogo. Like Chang, merchants could amass wealth and in turn sociopolitical prestige, but this wealth ultimately could not gain entry into the highest “bone ranks” occupied by people who lived off the masses through rent and bound labor, or through government office. In the Silla system, even those eligible to live off the taxes collected by the state were distributed into an intricate hierarchy, again according to birth.