WI Goguryeo Korea?

maverick

Banned
Reviving the Korean power idea...

What if these guys had unified Korea in the 10th or 9th century?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goguryeo

Three_Kingdoms_of_Korea_Map.png
 
Korea probably still would have fallen to the Mongols, but whether it would get revived post-Yuan is unlikely.
 
The problem is they took a lot of traditional Chinese territory held since the Han dynasty while China was disunited and weak. As soon as the Sui reunited China, they started warring to retake those lands, and when the Sui failed and were in turn overthrown by the Tang, the Tang came right back. If you look at the history of the wars, you see that Goguryeo did extremely well, defeating multiple vast armies. However, whoever unites China will have enough resources to keep on trying until they succeed.

No Korean/South Manchurian polity could keep out the Chinese armies forever, and whoever rules China would never give up. So for Goguryeo to survive much less unite all Korea, either China needs to remain disunited, or Goguryeo needs to pull out of Manchuria and accept a vassal status with the Chinese Empire.
 

Neroon

Banned
Actually i'd say the Shilla and then the Joseon dynasties did quite well ruling Korea. It was after the Mongols, that Korea was nothing more than a Chinese Vassal for centuries and basically emulated China in stagnating along. With the Tang basically getting their foot into the door after helping Shilla uniting the peninsula.

In a hypothetical case of Goguryeo and Bakjae never falling out and uniting the peninsula i don't think Chinese revanchism would have been such a big liability. It might instead have provided just the right amount of constant pressure to prevent Korea from getting stagnant and complacent and keeping the technological institutes running even without the pressure of the internal rivalry.
That of course still leaves the Mongols to worry about.
 
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