Silla, from six villages to a kingdom

Silla rulers did not use the title "king" at first; it took four other titles before Jijeung, the 22nd ruler, adopted it.

Silla started in the far south-east corner of the peninsula, around today’s Gyeongju, and for a long time it was the smallest and slowest of the three kingdoms to build a central government. It adopted written laws and Buddhism more than a century after Goguryeo and Baekje. Yet Silla was the kingdom left standing at the end. This unit looks at how a league of villages turned into a state with a strong king.

An egg by a well

The Samguk yusa tells a slightly different version, in which the six village heads meet to discuss founding a country and find the egg together. Both versions agree on what historians consider the real point: the six villages, which later became the six bu, created the state and kept a strong say in it for centuries.

Five titles for one office

Silla’s ruler was first called geoseogan, then chachaung, then isageum, then maripgan. The title wang, king, was adopted only under the 22nd ruler, Jijeung. The changes show how the office grew: an early chief who shared power with village heads slowly became a monarch who stood above them.

King Beopheung builds the state

King Beopheung, who reigned from 514 to 540, did the most to turn Silla into a centralised kingdom. In 517 he set up a ministry of war, the Byeongbu, which put the army directly under the king. In 520 he issued a law code and fixed the colours of officials’ robes. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that these laws probably included the 17 official ranks and the rules of the bone-rank system, which tied every family’s possible career to its birth rank. He also created the post of sangdaedeung to chair the nobles’ council, used Silla’s first era name of its own, and in 527 (528 in the Samguk sagi) accepted Buddhism after the death of Ichadon, the story told in unit 5. In 532 Geumgwan Gaya surrendered to him.

King Jinheung reaches the Han River

His successor, King Jinheung, used the new state to expand. In 545 the official Geochilbu compiled a national history. In 551 Silla and Baekje drove Goguryeo out of the Han River basin, and in 553 Silla took Baekje’s share too, founding a new province called Sinju. After winning at Gwansanseong in 554, Silla held the Han River valley, which gave it a port on the Yellow Sea and a direct sea route to China. In 562 the general Isabu destroyed Daegaya, the last strong Gaya state. Silla was now ready for the wars of the seventh century.