A History of Korea (22 page)

THE ISSUANCE OF WANG K
N’S “TEN INJUNCTIONS,” 943

The founding of the Kory
dynasty constitutes a seminal event in Korean history in many ways. It pacified the peninsula after decades of civil war during what is commonly called the “Latter Three Kingdoms” period (late ninth–early tenth centuries), extended the territory of the country further northward by incorporating the southern edge of the Parhae kingdom, integrated the ruling groups of both the Parhae and Silla into a new aristocratic element that might have lasted into the twentieth century, and expressed a clear sense of national identity based on native religious and cultural elements. The apex figure in this process was Wang K
n, the founder of the Kory
dynasty, and the event that binds him to these significant trends is his issuance, just before his death, of the “Ten Injunctions” to his royal successors.

The Ten Injunctions has come down as one of the most influential documents in Korean history and a testament to the forces that shaped Kory
into an enduring political entity. This series of directives accentuated
the significance of Korea’s distinctive cultural identity, emphasized the centrality of both Buddhism and geomancy as well as Confucian statecraft, warned of the “barbarians” to the north, and institutionalized, some say, discrimination against the southwestern region of the peninsula. This last feature, specified in the eighth injunction, has aroused considerable interest lately because of its ostensible sanctioning of the bane of South Korean politics since democratization in 1987—namely, regionalism. Many scholars claim, in fact, that Injunction #8 proves that the Ten Injunctions were a forgery, that circumstantial evidence renders it highly unlikely if not impossible that Wang K
n himself actually issued such orders. The skepticism is well founded, but it does not deny the impact of this document in Kory
and Korean history. Indeed, that the Ten Injunctions remains an object of contention continues the long history of its service as a helpful lens into the significance of the Kory
founding on Korea’s identity and culture.

“GREAT FOUNDER OF KOREA”

Wang himself was born and came of age as the idea of a single country began to fall apart in the final two decades of the tenth century. As noted in
Chapter 3
, the Silla kingdom experienced difficulties keeping the outlying parts of the peninsula under institutional control, and the local strongmen who arose in the peripheries, such as Chang Pogo, served as potentially dangerous challengers to Silla rule. Indeed the first major rebel leader, Ky
n Hw
n, was a high Silla military official assigned to the same southwestern coastal zone that had served as Chang’s power base. Ky
n Hw
n fanned the flames of anti-Silla resentment and remnant Paekche loyalties to amass a territory that he called “Latter Paekche,” which proved formidable enough at one time to ransack the Silla capital and install his own preferred monarch. His primary challenger, however, came not from the Silla court but rather from another rebel leader based in the central part of the peninsula, Kim Kungye, who referred to himself as the successor to the Kogury
monarchs. Like Ky
n Hw
n, Kungye had belonged to the upper tiers of Silla society—he was a prince, in fact. When he was cast off from his family (likely because he was an illegitimate son), he retreated to the countryside
as a Buddhist monk. Before long, however, he joined the growing anti-Silla movement among local strongmen and displayed great skills in capturing territory in the peninsula’s heartland. Kungye’s battles against Ky
n Hw
n over peninsular supremacy at the turn of the tenth century rendered imminent the death of Silla, but this duel was not decided until Kungye was toppled, not by Ky
n Hw
n, but rather by one of his own lieutenants.