This episode, as Okinaga Tarashi Hime is preparing her troops to cross the straits and seek out the land of “gold and silver” that the kami have promised her, we’ll take a moment to look at the peninsula and just what has been going on over there in the late 3rd to early 4th centuries, because this is when we see the peninsula enter into the Three Kingdoms period, with the countries of Baekje and Silla rising to meet the elder state of Goguryeo and becoming kingdoms in their own right.

Before we get too much into that, let me address a few things.

First, I don’t speak Korean, and so my apologies up front if I butcher any of these names. I’ll do the best I can. Also, on the spelling: There are various ways of turning Hangul, the Korean writing system, into Latin characters. So sometimes you’ll see Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, and sometimes you’ll see Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla. For the most part I’ll be using the Revised Romanization (Gug-eoui Romaja Pyogibeop) as opposed to the McCune-Reischauer system, but since I’m not always familiar with things, forgive me if I slip up from time to time.

So where are all these places we are talking about? Well, let’s first look at the location of the Samhan, or Three Han. By the way, it can get very confusing because generally I use “Han” in the meaning of the ethnic Han people in the area that is, today, modern China, including the various empires that were inspired by them (though those empires were not always properly “Han” in that context). (漢 / 汉) However “Han” is also the reading of the character that the old chronicles, like the Wei Chronicles, used to discuss three of the groups on the Kroean peninsula, and it also happens to be the term used in Korean for Korea itself (韓). For the most part, if I’m talking about the “Han” I’ll be referring to those people who came over from the areas of modern China, and not the early inhabitants of the peninsula.

Now exactly where these groups were is vague. It isn’t like anyone laid out a geographic map with borders. And there were other groups as well on the peninsula, even though we mostly concern ourselves with these three. So the map here gives a rough approximation of their location. The Commanderies would have been above them, to the north, and then the states of Okjeo, Goguryeo, and Buyeo beyond that.

After Goguryeo defeats the commanderies, and pushes them off of the peninsula, then the three kingdoms are able to take over most of the peninsula. The map here is actually of the borders in about 476—so about a hundred years after the time we are discussing—but it gives a general idea of where we are talking about. Of all of these, I’d say that Goguryeo probably has the most dramatic shift in borders. Then again, being at the northern end of the peninsula with access to the Manchurian massif and the Eurasian steppes, they have the greatest ability to expand, but also face the most threats in the form of other actors encroaching on their borders, while in the rest of the peninsular kingdoms they have at least one back to the ocean.

And, remember, other than Goguryeo, the Kingdoms generally weren’t being written about until after the fall of the Commanderies, and so we don’t exactly have great records for their full extent until much later.

References

• Kim, P., & Shultz, E. J. (2013). The 'Silla annals' of the 'Samguk Sagi'. Gyeonggi-do: Academy of Korean Studies Press.

• Kim, P., Shultz, E. J., Kang, H. H. W., & Han'guk Chŏngsin Munhwa Yŏn'guwŏn. (2012). The Koguryo annals of the Samguk sagi. Seongnam-si, Korea: Academy of Korean Studies Press.

• Jeon, H.-T. (2008). Goguryeo: In search of its culture and history. Seoul: Hollym.

• Best, J. (2006). A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, together with an annotated translation of The Paekche Annals of the Samguk sagi. Cambridge (Massachusetts); London: Harvard University Asia Center. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1tg5q8p

• Shultz, E. (2004). An Introduction to the "Samguk Sagi". Korean Studies, 28, 1-13. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23720180

• Iryŏn, ., Ha, T. H., & Mintz, G. K. (2004). Samguk yusa: Legends and history of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press.