Detail of inscription.
|Hangul||광개토대왕비 also 호태왕비|
|Hanja||廣開土大王碑 also 好太王碑|
|Revised Romanization||Gwanggaeto Daewangbi also Hotae Wangbi|
|McCune–Reischauer||Kwanggaet'o Taewangbi also Hot'ae Wangbi|
The stele of King Gwanggaeto of Goguryeo was erected in 414 by King Jangsu as a memorial to his deceased father. It is one of the major primary sources extant for the history of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and supplies invaluable historical detail on his reign as well as insights into Goguryeo mythology.
It stands near the tomb of Gwanggaeto in what is today the city of Ji'an along the Yalu River in present-day northeast China, which was the capital of Goguryeo at that time. It is carved out of a single mass of granite, stands nearly 7 meters tall and has a girth of almost 4 meters. The inscription is written exclusively in Classical Chinese and has 1802 characters.
The stele has also become a focal point of varying national rivalries in East Asia manifested in the interpretations of the stele's inscription and the place of the kingdom of Goguryeo in modern historical narratives. An exact replica of the Gwanggaeto Stele stands on the grounds of War Memorial of Seoul and the rubbed copies made in 1881 and 1883 are in the custody of China and the National Museum of Japan, respectively, testament to the stele's centrality in the history of Korea and part of Manchuria.
The stele's location, in Ji'an in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, was key to its long neglect. Following the fall of Goguryeo in 668, and to a lesser extent the fall of its successor state Balhae in 926, the region drifted outside the sway of both Chinese and Korean geopolitics. Afterwards the region came under the control of numerous Manchurian states, notably the Jurchen and from the 16th century the Manchu. When the Manchu conquered China in 1644 and established their hegemony, they jealously guarded their ancestral homeland in Manchuria, prohibiting movement there by any non-Manchu peoples. This seclusion came to an end at the end of the 19th century, when the region was opened up for Han Chinese emigration. Manchuria thereafter became the coveted prize of vying regional powers, notably Russia and Japan for its rich natural resources and strategic location.
The opening up of Manchuria also resulted in the influx of Chinese and Japanese scholars, the latter often supplemented by Japanese spies traveling incognito to spy the region's fortifications and natural layout, prescient of a future of increased international rivalry. In the late 1800s many new arrivals to the region around Ji'an began making use of the many bricks and baked tiles that could be found in the region to build new dwellings. The curious inscriptions on some of these tiles soon reached the ears of Chinese scholars and epigraphers. Many were found to bear an inscription in ancient Chinese script reading:
"May the mausoleum of the Great King be secure like a mountain and firm like a peak."
It was around 1875 that an amateur Chinese epigrapher Guan Yueshan, scrounging for more samples of such tiles around Ji'an, discovered the mammoth stone stele of Gwanggaeto obscured under centuries of mud and overgrowth.
The clearing away of the stele's face invariably led to the damaging of its engraved text. Almost every inch of the stele's four sides were found be covered with Chinese characters (nearly 1800 in total), each about the size of a grown man's hand. The discovery soon attracted scholars from Japan, Russia, and France. In 1883 a young Japanese officer named Sakō Kageaki traveling in the guise of an itinerant Buddhist monk arrived in Ji'an. Sakō had been ordered from his last post in Beijing to proceed back to Japan via Manchuria and to make detailed observations there of the region's layout. It was while traveling through Liaoning that he apparently heard of the stele's recent discovery and managed to procure an ink rubbing of the stele's face to carry back to his homeland. It was scholars in Japan who were to make the first detailed analysis of the stele's ancient text.
Note: Text written with italic in brackets has been reconstructed from graphs chipped or eroded on the stone monument.
Of old, when our first Ancestor King Ch'umo laid the foundations of our state, he came forth from Northern Puyo as the son of the Celestial Emperor [Ch'onje]. His mother, the daughter of the Earl of the River (Habaek), gave birth to him by cracking an egg and bringing her child forth from it. Endowed with heavenly virtue, King Ch'umo [accepted his mother's command and] made an imperial tour to the south. His route went by the way of Puyo's Great Omni River. Gazing over the ford, the king said, "I am Ch'umo, son of August Heaven and the daughter of the Earl of the River. Weave together the bullrushes for me so that the turtles will float to the surface." And no sooner had he spoken than [the God of the River] wove the bullrushes so that the turtles floated to the surface, whereupon he crossedover the river. Upon the mountain-fort west of Cholbon in Piryu Valley he estalblished his capital, wherein his family would long enjoy the hereditary position. Accordingly he [ritually] summoned the Yellow Dragon to come down and "meet the king." The King was on the hill east of Cholbon, and the Yellow Dragon took him on its back and ascended to Heaven. He left a testamentary command to his heir apparent, King Yuryu, that he should conduct his government in accordance with the Way. Great King Churyu succeeded to rule and the throne was handed on, [eventually] to the seventeenth in succession, [who], having ascended the throne at twice-nine [i.e., eighteen], was named Great King Yongnak ("Eternal Enjoyment"). His gracious beneficence blened with that of the August Heaven; and with his majestic military virtue he encompassed the four seas like a [spreading] willow tree and swept out [the Nine Tribes of Yi people (Kui - meaning all of Korean people),] thus bringing tranquillity to his rule. His people flourished in a wealthy state, and the five grains ripened abundantly. But Imperial Heaven was pitiless, and at thirty-nine he expired in majesty, forsaking his realm. On the twenty-ninth day, uryu, of the ninth month of the kabin year [28 October 414] his body was moved to its tumulus, whereupon we erected this stele, with an inscription recording his glorious exploits to make them manifest to later generations. Its words are as follows:
It came to pass in the fifth year of "Eternal Enjoyment" [Yongnak] [A.D. 395], ulmi, that because the Piryo [wouldn't desist from their quarrelling], the king personally at the head of his army crossed over Pu Mountain and [then another] Pu Mountain. On reaching the bank of the Yom River, he smashed their three villages, with six or seven hundred encampment in all; he seized cattle, horses, and sheep too numerous to count. He thereupon turned homeward.
Paekchan [Paeke] and Silla had long been our subject peoples and such had brought tribute to our court. But the Wa [a Japanese people and state in Kyūshū] had, since the sinmyo year , been coming across the sea to wreak devastaton. Paekche [in concert with them] invaded Silla and subjected its people.
In the sixth year, pyongsin , the king personally led his naval force to chastise Paekche. The army, [marching by separate routes], first attacked and took eighteen fortified towns, after which they [advanced and laid siege to] that state's capital. The enemy, rather than bring their spirit into submission, dared to come out and fight numerous battles. Flaring up in terrible rage, the king crossed the Ari River. He sent his vanguard to put pressure on the city, and [with a lateral thrust and frontal assault] they seized the capital. The Paekche king (Chan wang), in dire straits, proffeered a thousand male and female captives and a thousand bolts of fine cloth. Pledging his allegiance to out king, the Paekche king swore a solemn oath: "From this time on I shall forever be your slave-guest." Our great king graciously granted him pardon for his [earlier] transgressions and formally recorded the sincerity of his pledge of obedience. Thereupon, [having taken possession of] fifty-eight towns and seven hundred villages, he turned his army around and returned to his capital, bringing with him the Paekche king's (Chan wang's) younger brother and ten great officers.
In the ninth year, kihae, of Yongnak [ A.D. 399], Paekchan [Paekche], in violation of its sworn oath, concluded a peace with the Wa. The king responded by making a tour down to P'yonyang, where an envoy sent from Silla reported to him, saying "The Wa people have filled our territory and are overwhelming and smashing our walls and moats. Since, as slave-guests, we have become your subject people, we take refuge in Your Majesty and ask for your command." The great king in his benevolence praised the sincerity of their loyalty and sent the envoy home to impart [a secret plan] to the Silla king.
In the tenth year, kyongja [A.D. 400], the king sent five myriads of troops, both foot and horse, to go to the aid of Silla. The whole area from Namgo-song to the Silla capital was filled with Wa people. At the approach of our government troops the Wa enemy retreated. [Our government troops came following their tracks; attacking the Wa] from behind, our troops reached Chongbal-song in Imnagara, which forthwith surrenderd.
The troops of the Alla people seized the Silla capital. It was full of Wa people, who flooded over the walls [in flight?].
In the fourteenth year, kapchin [A.D. 404], the Wa rose up and made an incursion into the territory Taebang. The king's forces, having waited for them at a critical point, surprised and assaulted them. The Wa marauders [Woegu] were utterly defeated, and countless numbers of them had their throats cut.
In the seventeenth year, chongmi [A.D. 407], the king issued instructions for the dispatch of five myriads of troops, foot and horse, [to wipe out the Wa marauders once and for all. When the marauders turned back and invaded P'yongyang, the royal] army engaged them in battle, smiting them mightily and wiping them out entirely.
The stele records entire battles of Gwanggaeto's reign as triumphs. Recorded battles are following;(The full text in classical Chinese is available at the Chinese wikisource)
It soon became clear that the stele was dedicated to king Gwanggaeto of Goguryeo, who reigned 391-413 CE. It also became clear the stele was raised as a grand memorial epitaph to the celebrated monarch, whose empty tomb indeed lay nearby. Though historians and epigraphers still grapple with the interpretation of portions of the text, the inscription's general layout is clear. One face provides a retelling of the foundation legend of Goguryeo. Another provides terms for the maintenance of Gwanggaeto's tomb in perpetuity. It is the rest of the inscription, which provides a synopsis of Gwanggaeto's reign and his numerous martial accomplishments (see section above) that is rife with the most controversy.
The most controversial portion of the stele's narrative has come to be known simply as the "sinmyo passage". The sinmyo passage as far as it is definitively legible reads thus (with highly defaced or unreadable characters designated by an X):
The Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, which learned about the stele and obtained a rubbed copy from its member Kagenobu Sakōo in 1884, became intrigued over a passage describing the king's military campaigns for the sinmyo 辛卯 year of 391 (sinmyo being a year designator in the sexagenary cycle that characterizes the traditional Sino-oriented East Asian calendar). Some officers in the Japanese army and navy conducted research during the 1880s and the rubbed copy was later published in 1889. Most Japanese scholars, notably Masatomo Suga, interpreted the passage as follows (brackets designating a "reading into" the text where the character is not legible):
They presumed that Wa referred to a centralized Japanese government at the time that controlled the entire western part of Japan.
In the 1910s and 20s, Ryūzō Torii and other Japanese scholars traveled to Ji'an and observed the stele close hand. They found that the inscription had been repaired by clay and lime, and therefore questioned the credibility of the rubbed copy.
The first Korean scholarly study was that of Chang in 1955. He supposed that the subjects of the sentence 渡海破 and 以爲臣民 were respectively Goguryeo and Baekje. By Chang's interpretation the entire passage read as follows:
In 1959 the Japanese scholar Teijiro Mizutani published another important study. He had acquired rubbed copies made before the repair of the stele and concluded that Sakō's copy had not been made by the rubbing method but rather had been traced, a method known in China as 双鉤塡墨.
The North Korean scholar Kim reported his conclusions in a 1963 article. He had studied the Japanese chronicles Kojiki and Nihonshoki, and concluded that Wa referred to colonies of Samhan in Japan. He claimed that these colonies were established by Korean immigrants and centered around Kyūshū, Kinai, Izumo. Later, according to Kim, the colonies were absorbed by Yamato polity, which was also founded by Koreans. He also posited that the subject of 來渡海破百殘 was Goguryeo, and 百殘 was not the Baekje kingdom but Baekje's colony in Japan. Other North Korean scholar also argued for Goguryeo's invasion of Japan.
Many Korean scholars reject the interpretation that Japan conquered Baekje and Silla on the basis of evidence that cites the contrary. It is difficult to tell when sentences begin or end because of the absence of punctuation and the necessity of reading into the text via context. Furthermore, the subjects Baekje and Silla are not recognizably mentioned in the passage; only the first character for "Baekje" (百) is noted, and even the supposed first character of Silla is not complete (only 斤 as opposed to 新). Furthermore, the character "jan" (殘) was a character used derogatively by Goguryeo in place of the character "jae" (濟) in Baekje's official name (this may have denoted wishful thinking on the part of Goguryeo that another nation came and conquered Baekje). Thus, when taking into consideration the major absence of characters and lack of punctuation, the passage reads:
And in the sinmyo year the Wa (Japanese) crossed the sea. (Abbreviation of someone's title) made (?) subjects of (?) However, further analysis of the passage is that Goguryeo, not Japan, crossed the sea and defeated Baekje or Wa.
In the case of this interpretation, and the abbreviation of King Gwanggaeto's title in the passage, the passage states:
And in the sinmyo year the Wa crossed the sea. King Gwanggaeto (abbreviation) made Silla and Baekje subjects of (?). Some point out several facts that put in doubt the traditional Japanese interpretation of the sinmyo passage. Firstly, the term Wa at the time the stele was made did not solely refer to people from Japan but could also refer to the people from southern Korean, particularly from the Gaya Confederacy.
In 1972 the Zainichi Korean scholar Lee Jin-hui reported the most controversial theory of the interpretation. He claimed the stele had been intentionally damaged by the Japanese Army in 1900s to justify the Japanese invasion of Korea in 20th century. According to his books, Sakō altered the copy and later the Japanese General Staff thrice sent a team to make the falsification of the stele with lime. In 1981, the Korean Lee Hyung-gu began putting forth the argument, based on the irregularity of the Chinese character style and grammar, that the sinmyo passage was altered so as 後 read 倭, and 不貢因破 read 來渡海破. Thus, the subject of the sinmyo passage becomes Goguryeo. Geng Tie-Hua questioned another character, claiming 毎 was altered to 海 These allegations were generally discredited by Chinese and Japanese, but many North and South Korean scholars advocated them.
Chinese scholars participated in studies of the stele from the 1980s. Wang Jianqun interviewed local farmers and decided the intentional fabrication had not occurred and the lime was pasted by local copy-making workers to enhance readability. He criticized Lee Jin-hui's claim. and he considered 倭("Wa") word meaning is not a country but a pirate group, and he also denied Japan dominated southern part of Korea.  Xu Jianxin of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences discovered the earliest rubbed copy which was made before 1881. He also concluded that there was no evidence the Japanese had damaged any of the stele characters.
Today, most Chinese and Japanese scholars controvert the conspiracy theories, based on the study of the stele itself and advocate Japanese intervention in the era, although its size and participant are disputed.
In the project of writing a common history textbook, Kim Tae-sik of Hongik University (Korea) denied Japan's theory. But, Kosaku Hamada of Kyushu University (Japan) reported his interpretation of the Gwanggaeto Stele text, neither of them adopting Lee's theory in their interpretations.
The question is to be asked as to why a monument honoring the triumphs of a Goguryeo king singles out a Japanese victory as worthy of mention on the stele (if one follows the Japanese interpretation). Generally, Japanese scholars points out that the rhetoric of inscription describes Gwanggaeto's battle as "overcoming the trying situation". Yukio Takeda claims that "Wa's invasion" was used as such situation when describing battles against Baekje. Many Japanese scholars also agree that Wa's power was more or less exaggerated by Goguryeo to illustrate the triumph of the King, and the sinmyo passage does not necessarily proves the power of Wa in Korean peninsula of the late 4th century. On the other hand, they generally reject the Korean interpretation because the stele says Baekje was previously a state subservient to Goguryeo before the simmyo passage and that recording the conquest into Baekje would result tautology in this section of the stele. However, Korean scholars generally refute this claim by pointing to ancient records (chiefly the Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa), which make clear that before King Gwanggaeto, Baekje held out well against its northern neighbor. Therefore, the statement in the stele that claims Baekje was a Goguryeo subject before the sinmyo passage would be propaganda on the part of Goguryeo; thus the conquest of Baekje would not be redundant.
The Japanese Kojiki (or "Records of Ancient Matters") is the oldest surviving book in Japan (written in 680), and the Japanese Nihon Shoki (which, written in 720, has proven invaluable to historians as it includes the most complete extant historical record of ancient Japan despite apparently intentional timeline obfuscations, and is more elaborate than the Kojiki) describes the conquest of the south of the Korean peninsula. This is generally understood by modern historians to be part of the mythological aspects of both the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki.
The Nihon Shoki (Chapter 9: Okinaga Tarashihime no Mikoto (Regent Empress Jingu) records of a Japanese invasion that devastated Silla at the end of 4th century. The Samguk Sagi's Silla bongi and Baekje bongi record instances of those countries sending their crown princes to Japan as pledges.
The Nihon Shoki also makes claims of tribute from Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo and a colony at Gaya.
The legend of Empress Jingu's conquest of southern Korea (otherwise from being irrelevant to the sinmyo passage : Empress Jingu is said to have reigned in the 3rd century, while the Sinmyo passage falls along the lines of the 5th century) was considered as mythological by the Japanese, but can be linked to the Samguk Sagi (Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms), with King Asin of Baekje sent his son Jeonji in 397 and King Silseong of Silla sent his son Misaheun in 402. This all adds to the debate on whether the Japanese Imperial family is Korean and which ethnicity Empress Jingu really was.
The three Korean kingdoms boasted centralized administration (influenced by China), but it is also argued that war was made by warriors and not by bureaucrats. In addition, the more advanced weapons technology in Korea at that time also adds to views that the Wa state, which was not yet a consolidated state at the time nor possessed iron weaponry and horses, was in fact incapable of the military exploits recorded in the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki. Most scholars today agree that Yamato couldn't send a military expedition by the time of the stele's inscription; on the other hand, Japanese generals of Yamato conquered (from 3rd century to the 6th century) territories from Southern Kyūshū to current Aizu in Tohoku. So the question is again discussed, were the Yamato a colony from Korea that conquered Kyushu?
An important comparison is that ancient Chinese chronicles confirm the Japanese presence in the continent :
The Chinese Book of Sui says that "Silla and Baekje both take Wa to be a big country of treasure source, with many rare and precious things in Japan; also [Silla and Baekje] highly esteemed it [many rare and precious things], and regularly send their person there."  Some scholars claim that the Wa is considered to be a colony from Korea in ancient times, so how the Book of Sui should be interpreted is still debated, especially given its potential for political bias (the Book of Sui was compiled not by Sui court historians but by those of the successor kingdom of T'ang, who were bitter enemies of both Baekje and Goguryeo, and later Silla for a brief time, and thus had plenty of reason to slander them in court records).