A History of Korea (21 page)

The aristocracy in the unified Silla period possessed enormous wealth and a large number of slaves, which formed the foundation of its economic and military strength. Originally the aristocracy had received various economic privileges from the state. In particular, those who distinguished themselves in battle were awarded the sik
ŭ
p. For example, Kim Yu-sin was rewarded hereditary rights to a tax village of 500 households. He was also granted 500
ky
ŏ
l
of farmland and six horse farms.
²
Kim In-mun also received a tax village of 300 households. In addition to the right to levy taxes and tributes, these men could also command the labor services of the peasants who toiled their land. Government officials were also paid for their services to the state by allocations of
nok
ŭ
p,
or stipend villages. Like the recipients of sik
ŭ
p, those who received nok
ŭ
p also could levy a grain tax as well as exact corvee labor from the peasants.

To consolidate his power, however, the monarch had to impose restrictions on the aristocracy’s economic strength. After unification in 687, in the reign of King Sinmun, officials were allocated
chikch
ŏ
n,
or office land, from which they could receive only the grain tax. Subsequently, in 689, the institution of nok
ŭ
p was abolished. These changes represented the monarch’s attempt to limit the aristocracy’s direct control over the peasant population. In 722, in the reign of King S
ŏ
ngd
ŏ
k, peasants generally were allocated the so-called
ch
ŏ
ngj
ŏ
n,
or able-bodied land, which was designed to free them from the control of the aristocracy. In 757, in the reign of King Ky
ŏ
ngd
ŏ
k (742–765), however,
the nok
ŭ
p system was revived and the chikch
ŏ
n institution was abolished. These changes demonstrate that the aristocracy reasserted itself by relaxing the restrictions that the monarch had placed on the power elite.

As the aristocracy regained strength, the capital city of Ky
ŏ
ngju, the power base of the ruling class, became increasingly a city of luxury and enjoyment. In the “city of gold,” the pleasure-seeking aristocracy led a gay life. It is said that in the ninth century Ky
ŏ
ngju had 178,936 households divided among 1,360 residential quarters in 55 wards. The enormous number of households, equivalent to a population of some 900,000, may have included the households of neighboring areas as well as those of Ky
ŏ
ngju. If not, the number probably indicated the population of the capital city rather than the total number of households. As a comparison, for example, in the early and late Chos
ŏ
n periods, the population of Seoul was, respectively, about 100,000 and about 200,000. In the capital, it was said, there was not a single thatched-roof house but, instead, unbroken lines of tiled-roof and tiled-wall houses, and the sounds of music and song filled the streets day and night. It was also reported that emoluments flowed unceasingly into the houses of the highest officials, each of whom possessed 3,000 slaves, with corresponding quantities of armor, weapons, cattle, horses, and pigs. There were 35 mansions owned by the immensely wealthy, who had separate residences for each of the four seasons.
³
These records show the extravagant lives and pleasures of the Silla aristocracy living in the capital city. Moreover, in the last years of unified Silla, the monarch also was addicted to extravagance and enjoyment.

The local farming population usually lived in villages or hamlets called
ch’on
, the lowest and smallest local administrative unit. A village was normally composed of ten or more blood-related households. These villages were under the control of the central government, and groups of villages, usually three or four, were administered by village headmen.

In 1933 a portion of one Silla census register, believed to date from the unified Silla period, was discovered in the Shosoin imperial repository of the Todai-ji temple in Nara, Japan. As for the date when it was drawn up, several years have appeared—755, 815, and 875. The most persuasive view is that the census register was made out in 815. It contains detailed census figures for covering the secondary capital of S
ŏ
w
ŏ
n-gy
ŏ
ng, present-day Ch’
ŏ
ngju, and its neighboring four villages. The contents of this document demonstrate that the central government took very thorough censuses of its local population and society, and that
Silla census registers were compiled anew every three years. This document recorded the numbers of households, population, cattle and horses, mulberry trees, big cone pines, and walnut trees as well as the area of different types of farmland, including paddy fields and dry fields. It also put on record changes from the previous census in both human and livestock populations. The state seems to have levied taxes on the local population in accordance with these census statistics.

This census document indicates that at the time the local population was registered in six categories based on age—able-bodied adult men and women, adolescents, pre-adolescents, small children, the aging, and the aged, all arranged as the basis for exacting labor services from the population. Households were classified into nine categories by the number of able-bodied adults under the obligation of corvee labor.

The people of Silla believed that all their nation’s land belonged to the monarch and that they were all his subjects. Unlike the principle of state ownership, this concept made possible private ownership of land given to them by the monarch. The state allotted separate farmlands to village headmen and villagers. Allotments for village headmen, called
ch’onju widap,
are thought to have been a kind of chikch
ŏ
n, and those for villagers, called
y
ŏ
nsuyu ch
ŏ
ndap,
are believed to have been the so-called ch
ŏ
ngj
ŏ
n. These farmlands were originally in the possession of self-supporting village farmers, and the state simply authorized their ownership of the land. Although these villagers cultivated their own plot of farmland, the government took a certain amount of their crops as tax. The above census document recorded several categories of paddy and dry fields, as well as hemp fields, outside y
ŏ
nsuyu ch
ŏ
ndap. These were cultivated by village people, and the yield of these agricultural lands went to the state.

In addition to farming villages, there were other special units called hyang, so, and pugok. Contrary to the free commoner population of the villages, un-free humble people inhabited these special settlements. Either conquered people or those who were found guilty of crimes against the state were forcibly transported to these special administrative units to labor at such tasks as farming, livestock raising, fishery, or other manual work.
⁴

The lowest class in unified Silla society consisted of slaves. Slavery was prevalent, particularly in the capital. Large numbers of artisans and laborers with slave status were attached to various palace and government agencies, temples, as well as private houses of the aristocracy, and they supplied the needs of the royal and aristocratic households and temples. They also cultivated farmland
for their masters. Considering that the households of the highest officials in the capital possessed a large number of slaves, up to some 3,000 each, it may be surmised that the number of slaves owned by the aristocracy comprised a substantial portion of the total Silla population.

In unified Silla, the general population was occupied mainly with agriculture. The farming population paid grain and tribute taxes to the state. Peasant farmers were also mobilized for corvee labor exacted by the state. Unified Silla drew this threefold tax system from the Chinese Tang model.

Because Silla did not suffer any foreign invasion for 200 years after unification, it was able to achieve remarkable development in agriculture and handicraft manufacturing. This industrial development in turn led to the rapid growth of domestic commerce and international trade. The reservoir at Py
ŏ
kkol county (present-day Kimje, North Ch
ŏ
lla province), which had existed since the three Han period, underwent a large-scale extension in the late eighth century to irrigate paddy fields in seven neighboring counties. The term
py
ŏ
kkol
literally means a “rice-producing county.” Improvement of not only the Py
ŏ
kkol-je reservoir but other irrigation facilities and reclamation of wasteland brought about high productivity in agriculture.

The central government established the Kongjangbu, or Office of Artisans, as an agency to take charge of the nationwide manual industry. Silla handicraftsmen manufactured silk products, ornaments for royal and aristocratic households, arms for the state, images of Buddha and temple bells for Buddhist temples, and various kinds of pottery. The gathering of agricultural and handicraft products in the capital from every corner of the country resulted in the opening of various markets, the
s
ŏ
-si,
or western market, and the
nam-si,
or southern market, along with the existing
tong-si,
or eastern market, as well as the creation of an office to administer these markets. Silla also opened markets in the five secondary capitals and in the nine provincial capitals where the products of different localities were traded on the barter system.

Silla traded with Tang China, Japan, Parhae, and even the Arab world. Silla and Tang conducted two types of trade with each other, one official and the other private. Official commercial exchange was carried on in the form of a tribute to Tang. In reality, it was just another form of foreign trade and took place on a large scale. Private trading activities also flourished between the two countries. Silla exported gold, silver, ginseng, silk and hemp products, gold and
silver artifacts, horses, and seal skins to Tang, and Tang returned tea, books, silk clothes, and luxurious articles. Two routes linked Tang China to Silla, one from the present-day Inch’
ŏ
n area of central Korea to the Shandong peninsula of China and the other from the coast of Ch
ŏ
lla province to the Shanghai area.

Extensive and flourishing trade between Silla and Tang led to the appearance of special Silla settlements in areas of the Shandong peninsula and the lower Yangtze River basin. These were called the Silla-bang, or Silla Quarters. In these settlements, Silla-so, or Silla Offices, were established and had jurisdiction over the affairs of Silla residents. As self-governing bodies for Silla residents, these agencies were administered by the people of Silla themselves who resided in Tang and established their own Buddhist temples, where they prayed for the safe journey of their sailors and ships. These temples were called Silla-w
ŏ
n, or Silla Temples, and the best known among them was the P
ŏ
phwa-w
ŏ
n temple built at Chishan village in Wendeng prefecture, Shandong province, by Chang Po-go. It is said that as many as 250 Silla people assembled at one time in P
ŏ
phwa-won to listen to a sermon on Buddhist scripts.

Silla’s trade flourished not only with Tang but also with Japan. Because of frequent trading activities with Silla, the Japanese even posted additional Silla language interpreters on Tsushima Island. Silla even had contact with Arab merchants, who frequently visited present-day Ulsan, just southeast of Ky
ŏ
ngju. These Arab merchants brought carpets, glass vessels, spices, and jewelry to be consumed by the royal and aristocratic households as luxury articles.

Flourishing trade with Tang China and Japan led Silla to establish the Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin garrison, a naval and trade base, in 828, on present-day Wan-do Island off the southwest coast of South Ch
ŏ
lla province. Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin was located on the sea route between China and Japan, a site of great commercial importance. As the threat of Chinese piracy to Silla’s maritime trade intensified, the kingdom stationed more than 10,000 military forces and hundreds of sea-going vessels at Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin.

Chang Po-go (or Kung-bok) was the man who established the Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin garrison. When he was young, Chang had journeyed to Tang and pursued a successful military career in the service of Tang. Indignant at the frequent incidents of Chinese pirates capturing his countrymen and selling them into slavery, Chang Po-go returned to Silla and appealed to King H
ŭ
ngd
ŏ
k (826–836) to formally establish a garrison on Wan-do, where he had already built a strong military base. He asked the king for an army of 10,000 men and ships, which was granted. In 828 King H
ŭ
ngd
ŏ
k appointed him to command the Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin
garrison as its “commissioner.” Chang Po-go patrolled the Yellow Sea and the South Sea, and eliminated Chinese pirates who had raided Silla’s coastal areas to capture slaves. At the same time he built a great commercial fleet, monopolizing international trade in East Asia. As the master of the Yellow Sea and the South Sea, Chang established a maritime empire and gained great power and wealth. At the time the Japanese called him a “sea god.”

Finally, Chang Po-go intruded into the fierce political struggle in the capital, providing military support to Kim U-jing, who later ascended the throne as King Sinmu (839–839). With Chang’s help, Kim, who had lost out in an earlier struggle for the throne, rushed to the capital and took the throne for himself in 839. Chang Po-go’s sudden attainment of power aroused the jealousy and fear of the central aristocracy in Ky
ŏ
ngju. A few years later the aristocracy in the capital prevented King Muns
ŏ
ng (839–857, King Sinmu’s son) from taking Chang Po-go’s daughter as his second queen. The enraged Chang revolted against the central government, but his rebellion ended with his assassination in 846. After his death, the Ch’
ŏ
nghae-jin garrison itself was abolished in 851. The 10,000 troops under Chang’s command were removed to Py
ŏ
kkol county, where they were made peasants. From the time of unified Silla, for many centuries Korea maintained advanced shipbuilding technology, maritime leadership, and strong naval power in East Asia.