Goguryeo–Sui War: A Visual History

The Goguryeo-Sui War (598-614) was a series of four invasions of the northern Korean kingdom of Goguryeo by the Sui dynasty, which had just reunified China. Emperor Wen's first attack in 598 was wrecked by floods and storms; Emperor Yang's invasion of 612, with an army recorded as 1,133,800 men, failed to take Liaodong and its 300,000-man strike force was annihilated by General Eulji Mundeok at the Salsu (Chongchon) river, with only 2,700 returning. Further campaigns in 613 and 614 collapsed amid rebellion and exhaustion; Goguryeo offered nominal submission. The cost of the wars and the Grand Canal helped bring the Sui down in 618. Goguryeo fell only in 668 to the Tang and Silla.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Sui strike force at the Salsu, 612

Timeline of the Goguryeo-Sui War

1. 598
   First Sui invasion fails
2. 611
   Emperor Yang musters at Zhuojun
3. 612
   Siege of Liaodong; Battle of the Salsu
4. 613
   Second invasion; Yang Xuangan's revolt
5. 614
   Third invasion; nominal submission
6. 618
   Sui dynasty falls

598 and the build-up

Goguryeo, ruling Manchuria and northern Korea, refused Sui demands for submission and raided Liaoxi in 598. Emperor Wen sent 300,000 men by land and sea; monsoon rains, disease and a storm that wrecked the fleet forced retreat with heavy losses, and Goguryeo's king sent a humble apology. Emperor Yang, having built the Grand Canal partly to move grain north, conscripted enormous forces at Zhuojun (Beijing) in 611.

The Salsu

In 612 the Sui army, said to take 40 days to march out of camp, crossed the Liao and besieged Liaodong fortress in vain. Yang detached nine armies, 305,000 men, to march directly on Pyongyang with a fleet in support; the fleet was ambushed after entering the city, and Eulji Mundeok, feigning surrender and retreat, lured the exhausted land army to Pyongyang and back. As it recrossed the Salsu river, tradition says he released a dammed flood, and the Goguryeo army fell on the survivors; the Chinese history says 2,700 of 305,000 reached Liaodong.

613, 614 and the fall of the Sui

Yang invaded again in 613 but the revolt of Yang Xuangan behind him forced withdrawal; in 614 his fleet defeated Goguryeo forces and the king offered submission, which Yang accepted to save face, but the tribute never came. Rebellions swept China; Yang was strangled at Jiangdu in 618 and Li Yuan founded the Tang. The Tang's Taizong also failed against Goguryeo in 645; only the alliance of Silla and the Tang, after Yeon Gaesomun's death, took Pyongyang in 668.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Sui dynasty (581 to 618)
• Tang dynasty (618 to 907)
• Northern Zhou (557 to 581)
• First Turkic Khaganate (552 to 603)
• Eastern Turkic Khaganate (603 to 630)
• Tibetan Empire (618 to 842)

Wars of the same era and region

• Japanese invasions of Korea (Imjin War) (1592 to 1598)

8 surprising things about the Goguryeo-Sui War

1. The Sui army of 612 is recorded as 1,133,800 men with twice as many porters, one of the largest forces claimed in pre-modern history.
2. Eulji Mundeok's taunting poem to the Sui general, telling him he had won enough glory and should go home, is a Korean classic.
3. The Salsu is generally identified with the Chongchon river in North Korea.
4. Emperor Yang's Grand Canal, built partly for the war, is still China's great north-south waterway.
5. Goguryeo's fortress line along the Liao river held off China for 70 years and its ruins are in Manchuria.
6. Emperor Yang, one of China's byword tyrants, was assassinated by his own guards in 618.
7. South Korea named a destroyer class and a park after Eulji Mundeok, and his statue stands in Seoul.
8. The Tang emperor Taizong reportedly regretted his own failed Goguryeo campaign on his deathbed.

Sources

• Goguryeo-Sui War Wikipedia
• Sui dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Goguryeo World History Encyclopedia
• David A. Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900 (2002) Routledge

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