Aristocrats, revolts and a century of military rule

The Choe family's own slave, Manjeok, planned an uprising in 1198 to end slavery in the capital.

By the 12th century a few great families held Goryeo's highest offices from generation to generation, married their daughters to kings and gathered land. Historians call them munbeol gwijok, the aristocratic clans. Their power reached its peak with Yi Ja-gyeom, who was both the grandfather and the father-in-law of King Injong.

Two revolts in ten years

In 1126 Yi Ja-gyeom and the general Cheok Jun-gyeong, his ally by marriage, struck at the king's supporters and seized power; the palace burned in the fighting. Soon afterwards Cheok Jun-gyeong turned on Yi Ja-gyeom and drove him out, and was himself impeached and removed. The same year, with the Jin now the strongest power in the region, Goryeo agreed to treat it as overlord.

The burned palace and the humbling before the Jin opened the way for a monk from Seogyeong, today's Pyongyang, named Myocheong. Using geomancy, he argued that Gaegyeong's earth had lost its power and that the capital should move to Seogyeong, where a new palace, Daehwagung, was built for the king. Myocheong's party also urged that the king call himself emperor, adopt his own era name and attack the Jin. When the plan met resistance in Gaegyeong, Myocheong rebelled at Seogyeong in 1135. An army from Gaegyeong under Kim Bu-sik put the revolt down. Ten years later, in 1145, the same Kim Bu-sik completed the Samguk sagi, the oldest surviving history of the Three Kingdoms.

The coup of 1170

Under King Uijong the gap between civil and military officials grew wide. Civil officials were favoured and military men looked down on, and ordinary soldiers were not even paid their land allowances properly. In 1170 the generals Jeong Jung-bu and Yi Ui-bang struck. They killed many civil officials, deposed Uijong and exiled him to Geoje Island. The National Institute of Korean History describes it as an event of a single night whose result was about a hundred years of rule by military men.

The first decades were bloody. Yi Ui-bang, Yi Go, Jeong Jung-bu, Gyeong Dae-seung and Yi Ui-min each rose to the top and fell. In 1196 Choe Chung-heon removed Yi Ui-min and began a family dictatorship that lasted until 1258. He sent the king a ten-point reform plan but in practice gathered land, slaves and private soldiers. From 1209 he ruled through a new office, the Gyojeong dogam, which stood above the regular government, and he kept a private guard called the Dobang.

Revolts from below

Military rule shook the old order, and people at the bottom began to rise. In 1176 Mangi and Mangsoi led a revolt at Myeonghak-so, a special district in Gongju; in 1182 government slaves rose in Jeonju. In 1198 Manjeok, a slave in Choe Chung-heon's own household, planned a rising of slaves in Gaegyeong to win their freedom. The National Institute of Korean History heads its account with his question: generals and ministers? Who says a slave cannot be one? The plot was found out before it began.