A History of Korea (29 page)

AFTERMATH

Myoch’
ng’s antagonist in this ordeal, Kim Pusik, would go on to exert an influence on Korean history far beyond his leadership in suppressing the uprising. As the prime representative of the power elite of the Kory
capital region, however, his latter exploits can be considered an extension of his role in the Myoch’
ng saga. Kim was a descendant of the old Silla royal family, which constituted one of the key components of the emerging capital-based aristocracy that the Kory
founder, T’aejo, had collectively incorporated into his ruling order. This was significant because Kim would eventually make another mark on Korean history through his compilation, a decade later, of the court-sanctioned history of the pre-Kory
era,
the
History of the Three Kingdoms
(
Samguk sagi
). This work serves to this day as the core source of understanding of ancient Korea. Beginning with Sin Ch’aeho, who called the Myoch’
ng Rebellion the “most important event in a thousand years” of Korean history, many modern historians have condemned Kim Pusik’s impact. In particular, they have bemoaned Kim’s attempt in the
History of the Three Kingdoms
to strengthen the historical legitimacy of Kory
through an emphasis on Kory
’s status as the successor to Silla. This move, they claim, downplayed the standing of Kogury
both in the history of the Three Kingdoms era and as a source of the Kory
dynasty’s own identity.

Furthermore, the capital-based aristocratic elite that Kim represented, which coalesced around bureaucratic domination and hence maintained itself as the official class, would come to be known as
yangban
(“two orders”), in reference to the two sets of high officials, the civilian and the military. But, as symbolized by Kim, a renowned Confucian scholar-official, a firm hierarchy developed between these two strains of the central officialdom, with civilians like Kim enjoying supremacy. The Myoch’
ng Rebellion and Kim Pusik’s centrality in its outcome may have strengthened this civilian domination to the point of excess, and a backlash to this ordering came relatively soon thereafter. In 1170, military officials rose in revolt and implemented a hundred-year period of military domination of the government (
Chapter 6
), much like the Shogunal system in premodern Japan. But this represented merely a short hiatus in the millennium of Korean history from the tenth to the twentieth centuries, when on the whole the principle of civilian supremacy and military subordination prevailed. Kim’s victory over Myoch’
ng reinforced this order and likely contributed to the permanent branding of Pyongyang, and the northern regions as a whole, as the preserve of the military, rebellious, even uncivilized underbelly of the country. This perspective constituted a very real prejudice in the ensuing Chos
n dynasty, when the northern regions, considered a backwater, suffered social and political discrimination, and Pyongyang fell further from civilizational centrality.