4.8: Outflanking the Xiongnu on the East

As we have seen, an early Han fief or kingdom had initiated the war by defecting to the Xiongnu. A similar occurrence on the peninsula kicked off a very slow process of political development. There, a large number of tribes lived in relative peace, if for no other reason than that bronze and iron – with their superior capacity for wounding and killing – arrived there together only in about 300 BC. Before the Qin unification, Chosŏn was one of a number of tribes northeastern of today’s Beijing, near the state of Yan. The Chosŏn people were defeated by Qin, but not eliminated.

In 195 BC, a Han feudal king in Yan allied with a Xiongnu leader. One of the king’s subordinates, Wei Man (Wi Man in Korean), headed northeast (the precise location is debated). He worked for the Chosŏn chief, and then took over in 180 BC. This regime, called “Wiman Chosŏn,” provided a haven for Han dissidents, and played middleman in trade and diplomatic relations between the Han empire (perhaps represented by a small office in the Liaodong peninsula) and the various tribes of Manchuria (including the Xiongnu) and the Korean peninsula.

Wudi could not tolerate a power-broker supplying the Xiongnu from the east, so in 109 BC, he sent one army across the Bohai Sea and one overland to attack the capital of Chosŏn. Wi Man’s grandson, Ugŏ, by strength and guile, held off the Han army and navy for over a year. Then a second campaign and Ugo’s murder by his own ministers brought Han victory. The dynasty had lasted 72 years: far longer than united Qin. This is the first regime we know of in the Korean peninsula and Manchuria. It was only later in Han times that writers claimed the easternmost part of Chosŏn as Kija’s refuge after the Zhou conquest, and later historians added detail after detail to extend Chosŏn history backwards.¹⁵ This is a clear sign of myth: for how could later ages know more than earlier ones, before scientific archaeology?

To incorporate the area into the Han empire, commanderies were set up in the northern peninsula in 108 BC, at the same time as in Vietnam and in Xiongnu territory. Two of the commanderies lasted only 25 years, but Lelang became the center of the vibrant trade Wudi wished to control, a Yellow Sea trading circuit formed a century or so earlier.¹⁶ The trade ran from the southern peninsula far up into Manchuria, which produced hardwoods, furs, fish, salt, and grain; by land to the mainland and the steppe route to the Middle East and Europe; and by sea over to the archipelago (a short hop by boat) and along the coast of the mainland to southeast Asia. Individuals rarely travelled the whole way (although one Chinese emissary, Ganying, did go to the Persian Gulf); but objects, techniques for making them, and sometimes the ideas behind them, crossed the whole of Eurasia. Indian and Roman coins, beads, rings, and so on have been found in Vietnam from at least the second century AD, and Roman glass has been found in Silla tombs on the peninsula from about 500 AD.¹⁷ Gold, flowered Silla-style crowns have been found in Afghanistan. And once paper was invented (some time before 80 BC), it passed to the Middle East and then Europe, so that by the twelfth century paper was being made in Moorish Spain...

But that is getting ahead of the story. The point is that Korea was in the middle of a vibrant trade. Lelang’s purpose may have been not only to outflank the Xiongnu, but also to protect its state monopoly of salt and iron, threatened by coastal trade carried out by the peninsula’s boatmen.