Far East Kingdoms

Korea
Incorporating Dongye, Okjeo, and the Yemaek

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The Korean peninsula in East Asia rarely witnessed occupation by a single unified state. Only towards the later centuries of the Silla kingdom of the first millennium AD did a unified kingdom form and, even though that was destroyed, a replacement single kingdom emerged soon afterwards, lasting until the beginning of the twentieth century.

At most other times the country has been fragmented into several warring kingdoms. In the early days, during the Korean peninsula's Jeulman and Mumun pottery periods, there were many smaller independent states which often fought one another for domination, sometimes for several centuries.

Even today, the peninsula is divided between North Korea and South Korea. Territory which was occupied by Korean states before the first few centuries AD stretched farther to the north than North Korea does today, with the possible nucleus of Korean cultural and national identity being formed in the areas immediately north of today's northernmost border, somewhat to the south of the Tungusic homeland around the River Amur.

The Korea of the late classical and early medieval periods was for the most part divided into 'Three Kingdoms', although others also existed. Amongst the earliest states to appear were Old Choson (largely legendary during the Early Korea phase but emerging into history towards its end in the second century BC), Buyeo, and Koguryo (both of which emerged from the break-up of Wiman Choson in the first centuries BC and AD.

These largely appeared in or around the territory which was home to the proto-Korean Seo Dansan culture in what today is Manchuria in the far north-eastern corner of China, and perhaps straddling the border with modern North Korea (see feature link for additional chronology notes). In the southern half of the peninsula the Jin confederacy formed during the fourth century BC, but this does not feature in the early Korean historical record.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from A New History of Korea, Lee Ki-baik (1984, supplied by Michael Welles, but excluding Koguryo), from Pre-Modern East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Volume I: To 1800, Patricia Ebrey & Anne Walthall (Cengage Learning, 2013), from In State Formation in Korea: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (Introducing Kaya History and Archaeology), Gina L Barnes (Curzon, 2001), Relations between Kaya and Wa in the third to fourth centuries, K C Sin (Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 2(3-4), 2000), and from External Links: History of Manchuria, and Buyeo Kingdom Artifacts (Koreatrack.com).)