The History of Korea (Vol.1&2). Homer B. Hulbert
Sil-la’s actions were most inconsistent, for having just saved herself from condign punishment by abject submission she nevertheless kept on absorbing Păk-je territory and reaching after Ko-gu-ryŭ territory as well. In view of this the Emperor ordered the Chinese troops in the north to unite with the Mal-galMal-gal and Kŭ-ran forces and hold themselves in readiness to move at an hour’s notice. They began operations by attacking the Chön-sŭng Fortress but there the Sil-la forces were overwhelmingly successful. It is said that 6,000 heads fell and that Sil-la captured 30,000 (?) horses. This is hard to reconcile with the statement of the records that in the following year a Sil-la envoy was received at the Chinese court and presented the compliments of the king. It seems sure that Sil-la had now so grown in the sinews of war that it was not easy for China to handle her at such long range. It may be too that the cloud of Empress Wu’s usurpation had begun to darken the horizon of Chinese politics and that events at home absorbed all the attention of the court, while the army on the border was working practically on its own authority.
A new kind of attempt to solve the border question was made when in 677 the Emperor sent the son of the captive king of Ko-gu-ryŭ to found a little kingdom on the Yalu River. This might be called the Latter Ko-gu-ryŭ even as the Păk-je of that day was called the Latter Păk-je. At the same time a son of the last Păk-je king was sent to found a little kingdom at Tă-bang in the north. He lived, however, in fear of the surrounding tribes and was glad to retire into the little Ko-gu-ryŭ kingdom that lay lower down the stream. The records call this the “last” end of Păk-je.
In 678 Sil-la made a northern capital at a place called Puk-wŭn-ju the capital of Kang-wŭn Province. There a fine palace was erected. The king enquired of his spiritual adviser whether he had better change his residence to the new capital but not receiving sufficient encouragement he desisted. This monarch died in 681 but before he expired he said “Do not waste the public money in building me a costly mausoleum. Cremate my body after the manner of the West.” This gives us an interesting clue to Sil-la’s knowledge of the outside world. If, as some surmise, Arab traders had commercial intercourse with the people of Sil-la it must have been about this time or a little earlier for this was the period of the greatest expansion of Arabian commerce. It is possible that the idea of cremation may have been received from them although from first to last there is not the slightest intimation that Western traders ever visited the coasts of Sil-la. It is difficult to believe that, had there been any considerable dealings with the Arabs, it should not have been mentioned in the records.
The king’s directions were carried out and his son, Chong-myŭng, burned his body on a great stone by the Eastern Sea and gave the stone the name “Great King Stone.” That the Emperor granted investiture to this new king shows that all the troubles had been smoothed over. But from this time on Chinese interest in the Korean peninsula seems to have died out altogether. The little kingdom of Latter Ko-gu-ryŭ, which the Emperor had established on the border, no sooner got on a sound basis than it revolted and the Emperor had to stamp it out and banish its king to a distant Chinese province. This, according to the records, was the “last” end of Ko-gu-ryŭ. It occurred in 682 A.D.
Sil-la now held all the land south of the Ta-dong River. North of that the country was nominally under Chinese control but more likely was without special government. In 685 Sil-la took in hand the redistribution of the land and the formation of provinces and prefectures for the purpose of consolidating her power throughout the peninsula. She divided the territory into nine provinces, making three of the original Păk-je and three of that portion of the original Ko-gu-ryŭ that had fallen into her hands. The three provinces corresponding to the original Sil-la were (1) Sŭ-bŭl-ju (the first step in the transformation of the word Sŭ ya-bŭl to Seoul), (2) Sam-yang-ju, now Yang-san, (3) Ch‘ŭng-ju now Chin-ju. Those comprising the original Păk-je were (1) Ung-ch‘ŭn-ju in thethe north, (2) Wan-san-ju in the south-west, (3) Mu-jin-ju in the south, now Kwang-ju. Of that portion of Ko-gu-ryŭ which Sil-la had acquired she made the three provinces (1) Han-san-ju, now Seoul, (2) Mok-yak-ju, now Ch‘un-ch‘ŭn, (3) Ha-să-ju, now Kang-neung. These nine names represent rather the provincial capitals than the provinces themselves. Besides these important centers there were 450 prefectures. Changes followed each other in quick succession. Former Ko-gu-ryŭ officials were given places of trust and honor; the former mode of salarying officials, by giving them tracts of land from whose produce they obtained their emoluments, was changed, and each received an allowance of rice according to his grade; the administration of the state was put on a solid basis.
One of the most far-reaching and important events of this reign was the invention of the yi-du, or set of terminations used in the margin of Chinese texts to aid the reader in Koreanizing the syntax of the Chinese sentence. We must bear in mind that in those days reading was as rare an accomplishment in Sil-la as it was in England in the days of Chaucer. All writing was done by the a-jun, who was the exact counterpart of the “clerk” of the Middle Ages. The difficulty of construing the Chinese sentence and using the right suffixes was so great that Sŭl-ch‘ong, the son of the king’s favorite monk, Wŭn-hyo, attempted a solution of the difficulty. Making a list of the endings in common use in the vernacular of Sil-la he found Chinese characters to correspond with the sounds of these endings. The correspondence was of two kinds; either the name of the Chinese character was the same as the Sil-la ending or the Sil-la meaning of the character was the same as the ending. To illustrate this let us take the case of the ending sal-ji, as in ha-sal-ji, which has since been shortened to ha-ji. Now, in a Chinese text nothing but the root idea of the word ha will be given and the reader must supply the sal-ji which is the ending. If then some arbitrary signs could be made to represent these endings and could be put in the margin it would simplify the reading of Chinese in no small degree. It was done in this way:way: There is a Chinese character which the Koreans call păk, Chinese pa, meaning “white.” One of the Sil-la definitions of this character sal-wi-ta. It was the first syllable of this word that was used to represent the first syllable of the ending sal-ji. Notice that it was not the name of the character that was used but the Sil-la equivalent. For the last syllable of the ending sal-ji, however, the Chinese character ji is used without reference to its Sil-la equivalent. We find then in the yi-du as handed down from father to son by the a-jun’s of Korea a means for discovering the connection between the Korean vernacular of to-day with that of the Sil-la people. It was indeed a clumsy method, but the genius of Sŭl-ch‘ong lay in his discovery of the need of such a system and of the possibility of making one. It was a literary event of the greatest significance. It was the first outcry against the absurd primitiveness of the Chinese ideography, a plea for common sense. It was the first of three great protests which Korea has made against the use of the Chinese character. The other two will be examined as they come up. This set of endings which Sŭl-ch‘ong invented became stereotyped and through all the changes which the vernacular has passed the yi-du remains to-day what it was twelve hundred years ago. Its quaint sounds are to the Korean precisely what the stereotyped clerkly terms of England are to us, as illustrated in such legal terms as to wit, escheat and the like. There is an important corollary to this fact. The invention of the yi-du indicates that the study of Chinese was progressing in the peninsula and this system was invented to supply a popular demand. It was in the interests of general education and as such marks an era in the literary life of the Korean people. The name of Sŭl-ch‘ong is one of the most honored in the list of Korean literary men.
The eighth century opened with the beginning of a new and important reign for Sil-la. Sŭng-dŭk came to the throne in 702 and was destined to hold the reins of power for thirty-five years. From the first, his relations with China were pleasant. He received envoys from Japan and returned the compliment, and his representatives were everywhere well received. The twelfth year of his reign beheld the founding of the kingdom of Pal-hă in the north. This was an event of great significance to Sil-la. The Song-mal family of the Mal-gal group of tribes, under the leadership of Kŭl-gŭl Chung-sŭng, moved southward into the peninsula and settled near the original Tă-băk Mountain, now Myo-hyang San. There they gathered together many of the Ko-gu-ryŭ people and founded a kingdom which they called Chin. It is said this kingdom was 5,000 li in circumference and that it contained 200,000 houses. The remnants of the Pu-yŭ and Ok-jŭ tribes joined them and