Chinese Buddhist influence. All Koreans look back with pride to this period, particularly the South Koreans who since 1950 see in the unification of the peninsula launched from Silla's original "Pusan perimeter" in the extreme southeast an auspicious augury for our day.
During the Silla dynasty (676-918), Korea was ruled by kings—and frequently by strong queens—assisted by a powerful hereditary nobility legitimized by a rigid system of ranks. The administrative system was organized mainly on the Chinese model, under which officials, military and civil, were chosen through highly rigorous civil service examinations. This system continued relatively unchanged throughout the two succeeding dynasties and has had a marked impact on Korean society. The Silla dynasty was overthrown in the 10th century by a general who established the Kingdom (and dynasty) of Koryo (918-1392), from which the name Korea is derived. Korea soon came to occupy much its present overall boundaries and the peninsula remained united for the next thousand years. It was not divided again into separate states until after World War II. The country, however, was not spared war and devastation during this long period. The later Koryo period was truly a time of troubles. The Mongols, expanding across Eurasia from the Danube to the Yalu, conquered China and invaded Korea. Koryo managed to resist for almost 30 years, but finally capitulated in 1250. Korean kings were married to Mongol princesses, and many court ladies were sent to Peking as hostages or members of the Mongol Emperor's harem. The Koreans were subjected to great cruelty and hardship, especially when they were obliged to assist the Mongols in their two unsuccessful attempts to invade Japan. The Koreans sustained heavy losses in men, ships, and supplies when a typhoon (Kamikaze, the "heavenly wind") largely destroyed the Mongol armadas. The Mongols were diverted from another attempt on Japan by troubles in Indochina and elsewhere, but kept their yoke over Korea intact for nearly another century. Further suffering came to Korea when Chinese forces, rebelling against the Mongol's waning grip, raided across the Yalu, once more laying waste the north. In addition, throughout this period, Japanese freebooters, who developed sea-raids as a way of life, kept up continuing attacks against the coast of Korea, even raiding the island refuge where the Korean kings had long escaped the Mongols, and burning Hanyang (now Seoul) to the ground.
The Koryo dynasty did not long outlive the collapse of Mongol rule in China in 1368. An anti-Mongol Korean general, Yi Song-gye, set up his capital on the site of Seoul, overthrowing the Koryo king in 1392 and establishing the Yi Dynasty, which reigned until the Japanese annexed Korea in 1910. The Yi revived the ancient name of Choson for Korea, which is the official name used by the North Koreans today. During the Yi dynasty, Confucianism replaced Buddhism as the state religion and Confucian political and social ideals became the national standard. As in China, good government was regarded as possible only under a virtuous, paternalistic ruler and his morally and intellectually excellent scholar-officials. As in the two earlier dynasties, the civil service was recruited on the Chinese pattern of rigorous competitive examinations. Successful candidates, known as yangban, entered either civil or military service. In theory, as in China, the examinations were open to all aspirants, but in the later Koryo and Yi dynasties they became limited in practice mainly to the affluent, who could afford the leisure to master the Confucian classics. The term yangban came generally to stand for the landed nobility, and today has become roughly synonymous with "gentlemen."
This small elite group of scholar-officials set the pattern of administrative authoritarianism which has characterized so much of the Koran political experience. The claims of a rigid and increasingly sterile orthodoxy left little room for flexibility or mobility of bureaucratic in-fighting, the most obvious form of the factionalism which seems to be endemic in all Korean activities.
Despite Korea's internal and external woes, the very high level of artistic expression achieved during the Silla dynasty was revived and developed in both the
