고려는 어쩌다가 고구려를 계승한 나라로 인식됐을까

Abstract

“Goryeo was a state that succeeded the ancient Goguryeo.” This sort of definition of the Goryeo dynasty’s identity had been based on various historical records and sources: the Official histories(正史) like Songshi(宋史) and Yuanshi (元史), encyclopedic sources like Cèfǔ Yuán’guī(冊府元龜) and Wénxiàn Tōngkǎo(文獻通考), and travelogues or memoirs like Gāolì Tújīng(高麗圖經), created by people of Chinese dynasties that existed during the Goryeo period. But the identification of Goryeo in Chinese sources as “Goguryeo’s successor” seems like a result of repeated documentation of a misconception, which was triggered in the first place by an event with a purely coincidental nature. This article is an attempt to confirm that possibility.<BR> 923, the year Goryeo sent the very first envoy to China, was the last year of the Later Liang(後梁) dynasty. The Chinese record of this visit was lost in the wake of wars and battles, leaving the Chinese without any verifiable information regarding how Goryeo was founded, or from where the royal family came. So, the intellectuals of China chose to identify Goryeo with the late Goguryeo, to which they were already well accustomed as a state which had also been called ‘Goryeo’ in short. In the end, they came to view the two as the same entity in different names.<BR> History books and encyclopedias in subsequent periods also shared such notion, as they continued to quote and cite old (and misinformed) knowledge. The misconception kept being replicated and even further grew. The authority of renowned historians like Ōuyáng Xiū(歐陽修), and the description of Goryeo by Chinese envoys who actually visited Goryeo such as Xú Jīng(徐兢), only lent credibility to the aforementioned notion, establishing it as an irrefutable fact. Also, due to the Chinese intellectuals’ misunderstanding of ‘Goryeo’ as ‘Goguryeo,’ the Goryeo dynasty came to inherit the image of the late Goguryeo dynasty, which was a state of impressive military prowess.