Battle of Illicheon: Goryeo reunites Korea

At the end of the 9th century Silla’s authority collapsed in a wave of rebellions. In the south-west the former Silla officer Gyeon Hwon founded Later Baekje (892/900); in the north Gung Ye built a rival state, later called Taebong. Wang Geon, born in 877 into a family of Songak magnates who, historians believe, had long traded across the sea with China, served Gung Ye as a general. On 25 July 918 the generals overthrew the increasingly tyrannical Gung Ye and enthroned Wang Geon, who named his kingdom Goryeo after Goguryeo and moved the capital to his home town of Songak (Gaegyeong). In 927 Gyeon Hwon sacked the Silla capital, Gyeongju, and drove King Gyeongae to his death, and Wang Geon barely escaped with his life after a defeat at Gongsan near Daegu; but Goryeo recovered, and local lords and Balhae refugees went over to it.

In 935 the balance tipped. In the third lunar month Gyeon Hwon’s eldest son Singeom imprisoned his father in the Geumsan temple and killed his half-brother Geumgang, whom Gyeon had chosen as heir; in the summer Gyeon escaped to Goryeo, where he was received with honour as Sangbo, ‘Honoured Father’. In the tenth month King Gyeongsun of Silla, seeing that all his lands had passed to others, decided to give up his kingdom; in the eleventh he travelled to Gaegyeong with his court in a procession said to stretch for more than thirty li, and in the twelfth Wang Geon gave him a rank above the crown prince and made Silla the district of Gyeongju.

In the summer of 936 Gyeon Hwon begged Wang Geon to punish his rebellious son, and in the ninth month the Goryeo army advanced through Cheonan to Ilseon commandery (Seonsan), where on 26 September it faced Singeom across the Illicheon. The Goryeosa lists units totalling 87,500 men, among them 9,500 picked horsemen of the Heishui Mohe and other northern tribes; other sources give still larger figures, and historians disagree on how far to trust them. Seeing the might of the Goryeo host, four generals of the Later Baekje left wing took off their helmets, threw down their spears and surrendered before Gyeon Hwon’s horse; Wang Geon then sent his general Gong Hwon straight at the enemy centre, where Singeom stood, and Singeom’s army collapsed, losing more than 5,700 men beheaded and 3,200 captured. Singeom and his brothers surrendered at Hwangsan, and Gyeon Hwon died a few days later in a temple there. Wang Geon spared Singeom, sent the captives home and forbade looting. Korea was once again ruled by a single state, which absorbed the lands of Silla and Later Baekje and many Balhae émigrés; its name lives on in the word ‘Korea’.