Korean Kingdoms

For centuries, the small state of Silla on the southern and central Korean peninsula was considered the weakest and least developed of its neighbors.

High upon the northern reaches of the Korean peninsula and stretching across the vast, forested expanses of Manchuria, a power emerged that would define the geopolitics of East Asia for over seven centuries.

In 18 BCE, a queen named Soseono left the northern kingdom of Goguryeo, taking her sons Biryu and Onjo south to the Han River basin to carve out a new destiny.

To understand the scale of what King Gwanggaeto achieved, one must look at the state of Goguryeo when he was born in 374 CE.

The rise of Wang Kŏn to the throne of Korea began not with royal blood, but with the salt air and mercantile wealth of the peninsula's northwestern coast.

The modern name of Korea traces its ancestry back to a state born from chaos in 918 CE.

When Goryeo collapsed under the weight of war in 1392, Taejo of Joseon seized power in Kaesong, initiating a dynasty that would shape the Korean peninsula for over five centuries.

The villagers of Geoncheon-dong learned early on to avoid the home of young Yi Sun-sin, a boy who ruled his childhood war games with a miniature bow and arrow, ready to shoot at any adult he deemed unfair.

To her contemporaries, she was known simply as Queen Min—a woman who, in accordance with the customs of the late Joseon dynasty, was never given a personal name.

The spark that set Korea ablaze in the final decade of the nineteenth century began not with a foreign invasion, but with a local tyrant.