Goryeo: The Dynasty That Gave Korea Its Name

At a glance

• 📜918–1392: 474 years, 34 kings

  Founded by Wang Geon in 918; the Later Three Kingdoms were unified in 936. It ran 44 years shorter than Joseon.

• 🌏'Korea' is 'Goryeo'

  The English name Korea comes from Goryeo, and the name Goryeo itself came from Goguryeo.

• 🏛️The capital is in Kaesong — you cannot go

  Gaegyeong was built as Goryeo's capital by Taejo Wang Geon, and it lies in North Korea today.

• ⚔️Three decades of war fought from an island

  The court moved to Ganghwado in 1232 and returned to Gaegyeong in 1270. Some 80 years under Yuan rule followed.

The English word Korea comes from the state name Goryeo, and the name Goryeo was itself inherited from the older kingdom of Goguryeo.

How it reached the West is recorded too. The name Goryeo is understood to have travelled westward through trade with Saracen — that is, Muslim — merchants during the Goryeo dynasty. During the period of Yuan domination the country was in contact with a far wider world through the Yuan capital, then an international city, and this is also when the Korean peninsula first became known to the Western world.

One more distinction saves confusion later. The "Han" in Daehanminguk — the Republic of Korea — does not come from Goryeo at all. It comes from the Samhan, the collective name that in Goryeo times referred to the Three Kingdoms as a whole, and it carried through into the Korean Empire and then the modern republic. So the name Koreans call their country and the name foreigners call it descend from two different dynasties.

Goryeo was founded by Wang Geon, a regional strongman from Kaesong. He established the state in 918 and unified the Later Three Kingdoms in 936.

Why that unification counts differently from Silla's is set out plainly in the encyclopedia. When Silla unified the Three Kingdoms, its existing ruling class — the true-bone aristocracy — kept its position afterwards. Goryeo, by contrast, was founded in the middle of a wholesale replacement of the ruling class, as regional powers that had risen in Silla's final years broke the old bone-rank order.

The same openness shows in its intellectual life. Under Goryeo, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and geomancy coexisted without serious conflict, and rites sponsored by the king and the royal house drew on all of them together. That is a different kind of state from the Joseon that followed, which organised society around Neo-Confucianism alone. Knowing only that much changes how the Goryeo cases in a museum read: the strict order you see in Joseon palaces and Confucian academies is not Korean history's default setting.

The event that shaped Goryeo's second half was its war with the Mongols.

The Mongols invaded in 1231, and the military government then holding real power moved the capital to Ganghwado in 1232 and directed the resistance from there. The Choe regime that had led that resistance collapsed in 1258, and Goryeo made peace with the Mongols the following year, in 1259.

One moment in that settlement is worth remembering. The crown prince — later King Wonjong — met Kublai in person and secured a promise that Goryeo would keep its own institutions and customs in return for submission. The dynasty survived because of that negotiation rather than because of the fighting.

The court returned to Gaegyeong in 1270. The Sambyeolcho rose against that decision and were suppressed in 1273, which also ended the military government. Some eighty years of Yuan domination followed.

The end began with a general turning his army around rather than with an invasion.

In 1388 Yi Seong-gye, sent to campaign against Liaodong, turned back at Wihwado. He removed King U and Choe Yeong, who had pushed the campaign, allied with the scholar-official class and carried through a reform of private landholding. Having also removed King Chang and conservatives such as Yi Saek, he founded Joseon in 1392.

So the founding of Joseon and the collapse of Goryeo are two halves of one event. When a palace information board gives you "founded 1392", that same year is the year a 474-year dynasty ended.

Honestly: Goryeo is the hardest Korean dynasty to see in South Korea, because its capital Gaegyeong is in North Korea. There is no equivalent of walking into a Joseon palace in the middle of the city.

So you meet Goryeo through objects rather than buildings, and in Seoul the National Museum of Korea is where that starts. Opening hours, admission and access for it are on its own page, linked from the card below.

Ganghwado belongs to this story directly as well: it is the island the military government moved the capital to in order to keep fighting the Mongols.

Where to go for Goryeo

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  National Museum of Korea

  The largest collection in Seoul where Goryeo material is on show. A dynasty whose buildings did not survive is one you meet through objects.

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  National Palace Museum of Korea

  Palace and royal-household collections. Useful straight afterwards for seeing what the dynasty that replaced Goryeo changed.

Frequently asked questions