3. The Ye-Maek Diaspora as the Background to the Battle of Baekchon River
What is currently offered as the background to the Battle of Baekchon River is the international relations of the Three Kingdoms. It is explained in terms of Tang's expansionist policy and its meeting of minds with the weak state of Silla. However, existing theories, which leave out the ethnic background underlying those international relations, fail to account for why the Silla–Baekje alliance—formed less than fifty years earlier—broke apart, or why the Japanese regime, which had been on friendly terms with Silla, was suddenly replaced by a regime friendly to Baekje. Nor can they explain why, after the failure of the Baekje revival army, Japan sought to join with Balhae to invade Silla. By contrast, recent Chinese theories, which regard the reason for the change in the Three Kingdoms' international relations as a deeper confrontation between the Ye-Maek people (濊貊) and the Xianbei, present the Ye-Maek diaspora as one approach to the background of the Battle of Baekchon River.
The representative Chinese scholar who presents the Ye-Maek diaspora as the background to the Battle of Baekchon River is Li Deshan.[20] In his paper "On the Dongyi Origins of the Ancient Peoples of the Northeast," published in the Journal of Northeast Normal University in 1995, Professor Li Deshan divides the indigenous peoples of the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia into the Ye people and the Maek people, and differentiates them from the peoples of the Xianbei lineage who came down to the Korean Peninsula after the Three Kingdoms period.[21]
Yi Gi-hun, who has argued for a Dongyi-Korea theory by applying Professor Yi Deok-san's theory to Korean history, explains the Korea–China–Japan relations at the time of the Battle of Baekchon River as a confrontation between the Xianbei forces of Silla–Tang and the indigenous Ye-Maek forces of Goguryeo–Baekje–Japan–Balhae.[22] Indeed, the history of the Three Kingdoms as recorded in the Samguk Sagi after the invasion by the state of Yan is one that even professional historians have called into question.
The intervention of the Xianbei into the Korean Peninsula, which had hitherto been centered on the Ye-Maek people (濊貊), begins with the fall of Nangnang. The fall of Nangnang came about when the Murong clan, the Xianbei who founded the state of Yan, were pushed out by the Northern Wei and moved into the Korean Peninsula.[23] After the Yan forces came to the peninsula, the surnames of the kings and ruling classes of the weaker states of Baekje and Silla changed to Mo (慕), of the Yan Xianbei lineage.[24] In the case of Silla, King Beopheung, a Mo—another name for the Murong clan—took power and established a Chinese-style state system like that of Yan. In the case of Baekje, the Mo kings Munju (475–477) and Dongseong (479–501) succeeded to the throne and greatly expanded the nation's power. The Chinese record Sui shu (History of the Sui) states that a Xianbei of Baekje descent, apparently King Beopheung (514–540), became king of Silla.[25] In Japan too, the existing Asuka regime of the Ye-Maek Buyeo lineage withdrew, and the pro-Silla Taika Reform (大化改新) regime of the Murong lineage came to power. Just before the establishment of the Mo regime of King Beopheung, Silla—which, as shown by the Gwanggaeto Stele, had been close to a vassal state of Goguryeo—grew powerful, allied itself with Baekje, and its relations with Goguryeo rapidly deteriorated.
The Tang–Silla alliance and the Baekje–Japan alliance out of which the Battle of Baekchon River arose came into being as this Korea–China–Japan system of the Murong Xianbei of Yan collapsed simultaneously in both Baekje and Japan.[26] In China, the Northern Wei—which had driven out the Murong clan's Yan and remained its sworn enemy—was replaced by the Tang, of the Yuwen Xianbei line; and in both Baekje and Japan, which had been stronger than Silla, coups likewise broke out, expelling the Xianbei of the Murong line, so that the Buyeo clan of the Ye-Maek line once again recovered power in Baekje and Japan. As the Buyeo-clan Baekje–Japan took shape, the existing Silla–Baekje alliance was broken, and Silla came to rely on the Tang. The subsequent history has already been well studied, but in the end this ethnic background was precisely what previous scholarship had omitted.
Dangjin's trauma can ultimately be found in the fall, spanning 1,980 years, of a Ye-Maek regime. Silla's Hwangnyongsa in fact tells us that Silla was a state of the Murong Xianbei.[27] The title of the king of Yan was King of Joseon, and the name of the state was the Kingdom of Hwangnyong (Huanglong). That is, after the Hwangnyongsa incident that appears in the Samguk Sagi, Baekje and Silla were absorbed by the Murong-Xianbei line that founded the state of Yan. However, after King Muryeong, Baekje broke away from the Murong-clan line, and Silla, left alone and thrown into crisis, cooperated with the Sui and Tang, who were of the same Xianbei line. Thereafter a united front was formed between Tang and Silla, of the Xianbei line, and the Baekje–Goguryeo–Wa coalition, which had become of the Ye-Maek line. Although they were of the same Ye-Maek line, Baekje in particular was close to the Ye people, the indigenous force of the Korean Peninsula, while Goguryeo was close to the Maek people who had come over from the Shandong Peninsula. Indeed, even in today's genetic maps, Korea contains an even mixture of the genes of the Chinese-line Maek people, the indigenous Ye people, and the northern Xianbei, and it is said that the genes of Korea, China, and Japan diverged from about 1,200 years ago, around the time of the Battle of Baekchon River.[28]
If we examine the Three Kingdoms in greater detail following Yi Gi-hun, who has intensively investigated the Chinese records, Silla can be traced not only to Dangun but also to the Yin dynasty (Shang dynasty, 16th century B.C.–11th century B.C.).[29] This is because Silla claimed to be the descendants of Lelang, and Lelang was the descendant of Gija Joseon, which had migrated from Liaoxi, while Gija Joseon was a state of people who had migrated from the Yin dynasty of the Central Plains.[30]
Goguryeo was a confederated state of the Ye-Maek people (the Haemosu faction) and the Gu-i people (the Habaek faction), established with its core formed by the Maek people, who were closely connected to the Yin (Shang) dynasty, the Ye people (Buyeo, Wa), and the Gu-i forces of eastern China (Shandong) who were called the Manyi (Eastern barbarians).
Baekje became a multicultural, multinational state whose ruling class shifted repeatedly: from Ye, the original masters of the Korean Peninsula (Wa, Buyeo, the Baekje of King Onjo), to Han (漢, Daebang, the Baekje of King Chogo), then to the eastern Ye (Dongye, Dongbuyeo, Wa, the Baekje of King Biryu), to Bukbuyeo (the Baekje of King Geunchogo), and again to Yan, formerly the master of the Central Plains (the Murong Xianbei state, the Baekje of King Dongseong)—until at last, breaking away from the Murong Xianbei lineage (the line of King Dongseong) and attempting to restore Bukbuyeo, it perished (the Baekje of King Seong).[31]
Wa (Ye, Japan), viewed archaeologically, was a state founded by Korean-peninsula Bronze Age people (the Yayoi) who migrated to the Japanese archipelago to escape the great upheaval on the Korean peninsula in the third century B.C. It is regarded as a state that the plain-pottery peoples of Manchuria and the peninsula (the Ye people and the Buyeo people) established after the tenth century B.C., having been pushed—by the continual attacks of China's Yan and Qi and of the Maek people (Gija Joseon, Nangnang)—through the southern part of the peninsula until they finally settled there; a state that, fighting to the last in Manchuria and on the peninsula against the Yan and Maek forces pressing in from the west (Gija Joseon, the Han commanderies), was in the end reduced to the Japanese archipelago. Prior to the Dongi-Korea theory there was the Biryu-Baekje theory,[32] and even now the Yeonsan River basin of the Mahan region is under intensive investigation.[33]
Applying this more specifically to the Dangjin region, one can apply the theory of Park Seong-heung, a local historian of Dangjin. Local historians hold that, just as the Yeongsan River basin draws attention as a Mahan regional culture, Dangjin can be identified with the Zhenfan Commandery and the state of Mokji.[34] Unlike existing theories that regard the state of Jin as the origin of Silla and assert Silla's legitimacy, Park Seong-heung holds that Baekje was the legitimate heir of the state of Jin, that this connected to Gaya, and that it was in turn absorbed back into Silla; he holds that the origin of the name Hanjin derives from Zhenfan among the Four Commanderies of Han.[35] Although Zhenfan is said to have been the first of the Four Commanderies of Han to fall,[36] at the time when the Zhenfan Commandery—able to absorb the culture of the Four Commanderies of Han quickly—was established, Dangjin was early Gaya.[37] Indeed, the largest mountain in Dangjin is Mount Gaya.
In the end, Dangjin was a Ye-Maek–Han Commanderies–Gaya diaspora that began with Gija Joseon, and because it shared this with Baekje, the world war between the Xianbei-lineage Tang–Silla and the Ye-Maek diaspora of Baekje–Wa had to be fought without fail.