Thirty years of war with the Mongols

At Cheoin-seong, an earthen fort in today's Yongin, the monk Kim Yun-hu shot the Mongol commander Saritai in 1232, and the invading army turned back.

The Mongols first met Goryeo as allies. In 1219 the two armies together defeated a Khitan band holed up at Gangdong-seong, and Goryeo and the Mongols swore to be brothers. The friendship did not last. The Mongols demanded heavy tribute, relations broke down, and in the eighth month of 1231 the first invasion began. With pauses, the war lasted until a peace was agreed in 1259.

To the island

The Mongols fought on horseback and had little experience at sea. Choe U, then head of the military regime, pushed through a decision against strong opposition: in the seventh month of 1232 the court moved to Ganghwa Island, just off the coast near Gaegyeong. The National Institute of Korean History counts the move as one of the main reasons Goryeo could keep resisting for so long. The cost fell on the people of the mainland, whose fields the armies crossed again and again.

Seen from the World row of the timeline, Goryeo's resistance stands out. The Mongols took Kyiv in 1240 and sacked Baghdad in 1258, and they completed their conquest of the Song in 1279. The court on Ganghwa never surrendered, and in the end it made peace and kept its own kings and its own name.

Carving the Tripitaka again

Goryeo had carved a full Buddhist canon on wooden blocks in the 11th century, the first Tripitaka. In 1232 the Mongols burned it. In 1236 the court set up a special office to carve the whole canon again, hoping the power of the Buddha would help drive the invaders out. The Goryeosa gives the project sixteen years, ending in 1251. The dates cut into the blocks themselves run from 1237 to 1248, so the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture reads the sixteen years as including the preparation, with about twelve years of carving. These blocks, the Tripitaka Koreana or Palman daejanggyeong, were later moved to Haeinsa temple in 1398 and are still there. We look at them more closely in the culture unit.

Peace, return and the Sambyeolcho

In 1258 the Choe regime fell, and in 1259 Goryeo made peace. The Mongols' conditions were that the king come to their court and that the government leave the island and return to Gaegyeong. The crown prince went in place of the aged king, but the return was delayed for eleven years by the military men who still held power. When the court finally returned in 1270, the Sambyeolcho, the elite troops that had fought through the whole war, were ordered to disband. They refused, declared they would fight on against the Mongols, and moved their base first to Jindo and then to Jeju. A joint Goryeo and Mongol army crushed them in 1273.