Why Is Gwanggaeto the Great Famous? The Goguryeo King Who Expanded an Ancient Korean Kingdom

Gwanggaeto the Great is famous because, in a reign of barely twenty years, he turned the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo into the leading power of Northeast Asia. Ruling from 391 to 412, he fought campaigns from the Han River in central Korea to Liaodong and the steppes beyond, and he is one of only two Korean rulers who are routinely called "the Great", the other being King Sejong. We know much of his story from an unusual source: a six-metre granite monument raised by his son, which still stands near his tomb. His name itself is a summary of his reputation: Gwanggaeto means roughly "broad expander of territory".

First, where and when was Goguryeo?

If you have never studied Korean history, start with the "Three Kingdoms" period. Around the fourth and fifth centuries, the Korean Peninsula and southern Manchuria were divided among three main kingdoms: Goguryeo in the north, Baekje in the southwest and Silla in the southeast, with a confederation of smaller states called Gaya in the south. To the west lay a patchwork of Chinese and steppe dynasties, and across the sea lived the people that Korean and Chinese texts called the Wa, an early name used for people of the Japanese archipelago.

Goguryeo was the largest and most militarised of the three. Its heartland straddled what are now North Korea and northeast China, and its capital in Gwanggaeto's time was near today's city of Ji'an, on the Yalu River border.

A prince born into a crisis

Gwanggaeto was born in 374 with the personal name Go Damdeok. He was the son of King Gogukyang, and his family had suffered a painful humiliation: his grandfather, King Gogukwon, had been killed fighting Baekje in 371. The boy grew up in a kingdom that had to rebuild its army and its pride.

He came to the throne in 391, aged about seventeen. One of his first symbolic moves was to adopt his own era name, Yeongnak, meaning "eternal rejoicing", and the title Taewang, "greatest king". Using an independent era name was a statement that Goguryeo saw itself as the equal of the Chinese imperial dynasties, not a junior partner.

Striking south: the war with Baekje

His first great target was Baekje, the kingdom responsible for his grandfather's death. In 392 he attacked with a reported 40,000 troops and captured ten walled towns. A few years later he pressed on to Baekje's capital, Wiryeseong, in the Han River area near present-day Seoul. Baekje's King Asin submitted, handing over a prince and ten ministers as hostages.

The sources give slightly different years for this victory, 395 in one place and 396 in another, which is a useful reminder that even dramatic events from the fourth century come to us through fragmentary records.

Rescuing Silla and fighting the Wa

Around the year 400, Silla asked Goguryeo for help against an alliance of Baekje, Gaya and Wa forces. Gwanggaeto reportedly sent 50,000 troops south. The intervention turned Silla into something close to a dependent ally: Goguryeo later sent back a Silla prince, Silseong, who had been staying at the Goguryeo court, and saw him installed as king in 402. In 404 Goguryeo forces also defeated a Wa attack in the area of the former Daifang commandery.

How these events should be read, especially the role of the Wa, is still a subject of discussion between Korean and Japanese scholars, which we will come back to below.

Turning north and west

Gwanggaeto did not only look south. Around 395 he campaigned against a Khitan group along the Liao River, and in 398 he subdued the Sushen peoples to the northeast. His most dangerous rival was Later Yan, a state founded by the Xianbei Murong clan in northern China. Goguryeo repulsed a Later Yan attack in 400, seized one of its fortresses in 402 and beat off further assaults in 405 and 406, ending up in control of the whole Liaodong region.

In 407 his army won another major battle with 50,000 men, capturing around 10,000 suits of armour, and in 410 he attacked Eastern Buyeo, an older kingdom to the northeast. By the end of his reign Goguryeo's territory stretched from the Han River valley across Manchuria to the Liaodong peninsula, with some scholars arguing for an even wider sphere of influence.

More than a warrior

It would be easy to remember him only as a conqueror, but Goguryeo under Gwanggaeto was also a state investing in institutions and religion. Buddhism had been officially welcomed by an earlier king, Sosurim, and in 393 Gwanggaeto is reported to have founded nine Buddhist temples in Pyongyang.

He died in 412, aged only about 38, of an illness whose nature is unknown. His son Jangsu succeeded him and ruled for an astonishing 79 years, building on the base his father had created.

The stele: a six-metre history book

In 414 Jangsu erected a memorial stele near his father's tomb. It is carved from a single block of granite, stands about 6.39 metres tall and is written entirely in Classical Chinese, with roughly 1,775 to 1,802 characters depending on how they are counted. The text has three parts: the founding myth of Goguryeo and its first king, Jumong; an account of Gwanggaeto's military campaigns; and a list of the families assigned to look after the royal tomb.

The monument was forgotten for centuries and rediscovered around 1876 by a local Chinese official who found it under mud and vegetation. In 1882 the vegetation was burned off, which damaged the surface, and in 1883 a Japanese army officer, Sakō Kageaki, obtained a tracing of the text. In 2004 it became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A famous debate over one sentence

One short passage, linked to the year 391 and known as the Sinmyo passage, has generated a remarkable amount of scholarship. Because the inscription has no punctuation and several characters are illegible, it can be read in more than one way. Japanese scholars traditionally read it as saying that the Wa subjugated Baekje and Silla, while Korean scholars generally read Goguryeo as the subject.

In 1972 the scholar Lee Jin-hui argued that the stele had been deliberately altered with lime. Later work, including a Chinese scholar's discovery of a rubbing made before 1881, led most Chinese scholars and a number of Korean and Japanese historians not to adopt the alteration theory. The episode is a good lesson in how much an ancient text depends on careful reading, and how historians keep testing each other's evidence.

His legacy today

In South Korea Gwanggaeto is a national hero. The navy's Gwanggaeto the Great-class destroyers carry his name, a statue and a replica of the stele stand in Guri near Seoul, and an ITF Taekwon-Do pattern called Kwang-Gae has 39 movements in reference to the year 391. He has also been portrayed in television dramas such as The Legend (2007) and Gwanggaeto, The Great Conqueror (2011–2012).

Learn with Gwanggaeto the Great

Five English phrases that help you talk about history like this:

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to come to the throne	to become king or queen	He came to the throne in 391.
to expand territory	to make a country larger by taking land	Gwanggaeto expanded Goguryeo's territory.
to submit to someone	to accept someone's authority	Baekje's king submitted to Goguryeo.
to be open to interpretation	to have more than one possible meaning	The Sinmyo passage is open to interpretation.
to leave a legacy	to leave something important for later generations	His son Jangsu built on his legacy.

A few Korean words from the story: 왕 (wang, king), 비석 (bi-seok, stone monument), 고구려 (Go-gu-ryeo, Goguryeo).

Try this: Write a short paragraph about a leader from your own country using "come to the throne" (or "come to power"), "expand" and "leave a legacy".