Kings Gwangjong and Seongjong build the state

Goryeo's first state examination, in 958, passed only seven men.

Wang Geon held the country together through alliances with local strongmen, but that left the throne surrounded by powerful families with private armies and many dependants. After his death the question became who would really rule: the king or the great families who had helped found the dynasty. Two kings answered it in different ways. Gwangjong, the fourth king, used force and new laws to raise the throne above the nobles. Seongjong, the sixth, gave the state its lasting shape with the help of a Confucian scholar.

Gwangjong frees slaves and opens exams

In 956 Gwangjong ordered an inquiry into slaves: anyone who had been free before but had been made a slave in the wars at the end of Silla was to be freed. The law is called the Nobi angeom-beop, the Slave Review Act. It is usually explained as a blow against the nobles, because slaves were their workers and often their soldiers. The National Institute of Korean History adds a caution: the official chronicle for 956 barely mentions it, and the main account survives in the biography of Gwangjong's own queen, Daemok. After Gwangjong died there was a backlash, and in 987 a law sent some of the freed people back into slavery.

Two years later Gwangjong held Goryeo's first state examination, gwageo. The idea came from Ssanggi, a Chinese official who had arrived with an envoy from the Later Zhou in 956, fallen ill, and stayed on at the king's request. Ssanggi was put in charge of the exam of 958, which tested poetry, rhapsody, eulogy and essays on current affairs, and passed seven men across three tracks: literary composition, the classics and technical subjects. For the first time, posts could be won by study rather than by family alone.

The exam lasted far longer than its founder. In changing forms it ran through the rest of Goryeo and on until late Joseon. Gwangjong also reorganised officials' robes twice, the first time in 956, when he ordered them to follow the Chinese system. Together these steps made officials look and act like servants of the king rather than followers of a great house.

Seongjong and Choe Seung-ro's 28 points

In 982, his first year, King Seongjong asked officials of the fifth rank and above to write down their views on the problems of the day. Choe Seung-ro, then 56 and born in Gyeongju to a family of the old Silla head-rank six, sent a long memorial. The first part judged the five kings since Wang Geon, praising and criticising each. The second part listed 28 tasks for the present, known as the Simu 28 jo.

Seongjong took much of it to heart. Royal governors were sent out to twelve major districts, the 12 mok, so that the centre could reach the provinces; the Palgwanhoe festival was abolished and turning homes into temples was banned. In 983 Choe Seung-ro himself oversaw the state examination, and the top candidate that year was Gang Gam-chan, the general who would defeat the Khitan in 1019.