On a beautiful day in the year 42 CE, villagers sang and danced for the spring festival. As they sang, six golden eggs descended from heaven. Six boys hatched from those eggs and one became the first king. Or at least so says one of the foundational myths of Korea (Koo, 10).

The story comes from the Samguk yusa or The Remaining Records of the Three Kingdoms, a chronicle written by Buddhist scholars in the 13ᵗʰ century when the three kingdoms were no more (Lee, 24). We also have the Samguk sagi or The History of the Three Kingdoms written in the 11ᵗʰ century by Confucian scholars (Lee, 24).

According to these records, plus Chinese records, and more or less confirmed by archaeological evidence, the Korean peninsula in the first half of the first millennium CE was split between three kingdoms of which Silla was the farthest east, right along the eastern coast of the great Eurasian continent.

Silla was no minor, poverty-stricken outpost. The Great Tomb of Hwangnam has the spectacular burials of a king and queen. The solid gold crown and belt set are stunning. Most stunning of all is that these items were found in the queen’s grave, not the king’s (Metropolitan).

Enormous quantities of beads, earrings, necklaces, jade ornaments, etc., have also been found, in multiple graves. Even some things they call chestlaces because they are tied around the shoulders and chest, rather than the neck (Metropolitan, Lee, 6)

This great wealth and opulence was fueled in part by the Silk Road. I was always taught that the Silk Road ran between Europe and China. Actually there was no reason for merchants to stop in the Chinese capital. The trade routes kept right on going up and around and down the peninsula to the Kingdom of Silla, where a land route could go no farther because there is no more land.

The royal family of Silla definitely possessed objects imported from the Roman and Byzantine empires. Glass vessels, for sure, and in particular, a cloisonné dagger that if it was not actually made in Byzantium. was at least made by someone who had learned Byzantine techniques (Lee, 35, 131, 139).

On the other side of this trade, there are sources from Arab and even Norman French conquests that refer to Silla as the country of gold. Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote that “travelers who visit Silla do not think of returning home. Gold is too common” (Lee, 31).

Silla reached its peak political power in the 600s, when it teamed up with Tang dynasty China to conquer those other two kingdoms, thus unifying the peninsula in 668. Predictably, the Chinese then thought they should be in charge. Silla disagreed, so the erstwhile allies battled each other and amazingly, Silla won (Moody, 7; Choy, 34).

Longtime listeners may be interested to know that the Chinese emperor who gave up on controlling the Korean peninsula was Gaozong, who had already effectively handed power over to his wife Wu Zetian (episode 2.3). Wu was more than capable of insisting on proper respect for China in good times, but China had bigger fish to fry at the moment, So Silla lucked out.

Empress Wu was not the only female ruler worth mentioning. The 7th century was just a good century for female Asian rulers because Silla had already had two: Seondeok and Jindeok. It was Jindeok who had teamed up with Tang China in the first place, though she didn’t live long enough to see the final conclusion.

The unified Silla enjoyed a golden age. They built many Buddhist temples, monasteries, and pagodas, some of which still exist and can be visited by tourists today (Choy, 36).

They instituted land reform too. Every peasant (by which I am 99.9999% sure they meant every adult male peasant) received a plot of land to cultivate (Choy, 38).

So far so good. What eventually was less good is that those peasants had to return the land to the government when they turned 60. It was like an enforced retirement age. Hopefully, you had adult sons who would support you by then, but no guarantees (Choy, 40).

The aristocracy, in contrast, was allowed to bequeath their land to their children. The Buddhist temples didn’t ever have to give their land grants back either. Theoretically, all of these groups were supposed to pay taxes. But in reality the large landowners were more interested in spending their money on private armies, with which to harass their neighbors. The peasants got tired of being the only ones who actually paid up, so they revolted and invaded the capital. That was put down and smothered, but all in all, the glory days were long since over and things were looking mighty shaky when King Jeonggang looked around and realized he had no heir.

Jeonggang receives my stamp of approval as an enlightened man because when he looked around at his options, he thought to consider his sister. Most rulers would never have thought of that. But he did, and he asked the court of nobles to approve her as the next sovereign. He had two main arguments in her favor. First, there was precedent, which really helps. Silla had done well under its previous two queens 200 years earlier in the golden age. And second was Jinseong herself, who, according to her brother had “a sagacious disposition and a strong physique, like a man” (Paeyong, 145).

Okay, maybe not the best and most enlightened compliment by modern standards, but he presumably meant well. What he was saying was that Jinseong could be trusted to rule, and the council must have agreed because Jinseong ascended the throne of unified Silla in 887 CE.

Let’s talk about the good stuff first. According to the Samguk sagi, Jinseong’s major accomplishment was not a military conquest, but a cultural one. She ordered and oversaw the compilation of an anthology of Silla folk songs, which was a new concept here. I could not approve more.

I knew it was too much to hope for any melodies from Jinseong’s anthology to survive. Probably they weren’t even written down in the first place. But lyrics had a chance. Sadly, it turns out that the entire anthology (all 1000-1500 poems of it) went missing during the succeeding dynasty. There are no details about this tragic loss, but it probably happened during the Mongol invasion. Or maybe the Japanese invasion. Or maybe the Manchu invasion. There are plenty of potential vandals to choose from (Koo, 17-18).

So much for Jinseong’s great achievement. However, there are fourteen surviving Silla poems that were written down in other books. While I don’t know for sure that these were included in Jinseong’s anthology, I think it’s likely. So we’re going to go with that assumption and I’m going to read you one. Two actually because they are connected by a little prose story, all of it composed between 742-65, or about 140 years before Jinseong’s reign. It would have been classic literature to her.

The story goes that a monk was offering sacrifices to the spirit of his dead sister. Sacrifice meant to burn paper money as an offering, something that some Asian cultures still do today. As the monk sacrificed, he sang the following words:

The road of life to death

Was in front of you, hesitating;

Did you leave this world

Without saying “Good-bye” to me?

Like leaves falling here and there

By the early autumn wind,

We don’t know where to go,

Though born from the same branch.

Building a road to the Amitabha Pure Land,

I will wait for you till we meet again there.

The monk also played the flute and one night he played so well that the moon stopped in her journey for him. This made him and the village where it happened famous and a second poem was composed for him, which reads:

Winds blew the paper money to pay for sister’s journey.

The flute moved a bright moon to stop Heng-o.

Do not say that the Tisita Heaven is far away!

(Koo, 473)

Just a couple of notes, in the first poem, the poet plans to meet his sister in the Amitabha Pure Land. In traditional versions of Buddhism, women could not get to that paradise, but he clearly thought she could (Koo, 506). In the second poem, Heng-o refers to the spirit of the moon (Koo, 507).

According to the histories, Jinseong faced plenty of challenges. Natural disasters like drought, hailstorms, and a lunar eclipse plagued the kingdom in the second year of her reign. In the third year, the treasury was exhausted and thieves roamed the land in droves.

In the fifth and sixth years, bandits from the east attacked with cavalry and took some counties away from Silla.

In the seventh year, the Minister of War was lost at sea.

Quite honestly, if this list of calamities was all that was going on, it’s a wonder that Jinseong was still on the throne at all. Surely she must have been doing something right. But the Samguk sagi gives her no credit at all. On the contrary, it criticizes her for her choice of advisors, saying she gave the important positions to young men who looked hot. She secretly seduced two or three of them and committed adultery.

It occurs to me to wonder about the marital fidelity of Silla kings. Kings in general get a lot of free license that way. Queens not so much. The specific words regarding Jinseong are “as a result, nefariousness and unbridled ambition, bribery and bribery, unfair rewards and punishments, and lax discipline” (Samguk sagi).

I’m gonna admit that’s a Google translation there and that means it is sketchy, but I especially love the bribery and bribery part. Which is why I’m quoting it, even though my two years of college Chinese lead me to suspect that part could be translated more accurately. (And yes, I do mean Chinese. Korean wasn’t yet a written language at this point. All the records were in Chinese, even when they were written by Koreans (Koo, 9).)

Perhaps it is true that Jinseong liked a good-looking man. I certainly don’t want to claim that a queen couldn’t have made bad choices regarding advisors or marital vows. However, I will point out that the account might be biased. Not only was it written a couple hundred years later, but it was also written by a Confucian scholar. They are not likely candidates for approving of female rulers. Confucius is, after all, the one who only mentioned women once in his Analects. That once is where he said: “Women and servants are hard to deal with. If you are familiar with them, they lose their humility. If you maintain a reserve towards them, they are discontented” (Analects 17.25).

A queen regnant is probably the ultimate in a woman without sufficient humility, according to him, so bear that in mind regarding his followers’ opinions of Jinseong.

The handsome young men who were so unfit for important positions were probably hwarang. This was a class of noble warriors, which sounds pretty good, but their name translates to flower boys, which sounds … well … not so warrior-like, you know? Anyway, the hwarang were your standard rich young men, with time on their hands for being decorative. They trained in horses, martial arts, dance, music, math. They took pilgrimages for their spiritual development (Lee, 150).

They probably were the type of people a princess of the royal house actually knew. They were the type of people who hang around in court ingratiating themselves. Jinseong’s own father had been a hwarang himself. He got to the throne by marrying the princess (Yi, 145).

So while it is certainly possible that Jinseong made her appointments based on her personal assessment of just how good the guy looked in a silk robe, it is also possible that she appointed them because these were the people she felt comfortable with. She knew them, they knew her, and she thought they would be loyal. Not a trivial consideration for a female ruler with an unstable country.

It is even possible that a few of them were qualified to do the job. Surely, among the flower boys, there were a few who had brains and morals, as well as looks? Things didn’t go that well, but the rot had set in long before Jinseong ever took the throne. That fact was at least as important as anything her advisors did.

Jinseong did try to turn things around. In the eighth year of her reign, she had an advisor prepare a list of Ten Urgent Points of Reform. She accepted all of the suggestions (Samguk sagi; Park, 73).

But it was too little too late. Thieves, bandits, and others continued to prey on Silla and its people.

In the eleventh year of her reign, Jinseong had had enough. She decided to step down in 897 CE. She cited the thieves and the poverty and declared that it was not virtuous for her to remain on the throne. Instead, she left the throne to her nephew (Samguk sagi; Yi, 147).

If you want proof that her gender was not really the problem, look no further than the subsequent kings of Silla. The kingdom continued to hemorrhage counties, the peninsula was never again unified under Silla rule, and in 935 the last king of the tiny fragment of Silla that remained, voluntarily gave it to the leader of the rising Goryeo Kingdom.

The Goryeo Kingdom is the one from which we get the name Korea. As far as I can tell, the Goryeo never had a queen regnant. And neither did the Joseon Dynasty that followed them. Then there was a brief Korean empire (with no empress regnants), and then Korea was annexed by the Japanese.

That brings us over 1000 years after Jinseong’s death, all the way up to 1945, when the World War II Allies had to figure out what to do with Japan’s former empire. They decided to temporarily split Korea into north and south divisions. I imagine you may have heard one or two things about just how well that temporary, administrative split has gone.

But for today the point is that Jinseong was not just the last queen regnant of Silla, she was the last queen regnant of any Korean Kingdom.

Selected Sources

Choy, Bong-youn. Korea: A History. Tuttle Publishing, 4 Sept. 2012.

Chung, Hae-Jean. Kyongju: Old Capital of Shilla Dynasty. Seoul, Korea, Woojin Press, 2008, archive.org/details/kyongjuoldcapita0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. Accessed 9 Feb. 2024.

Koo, Henry. The Silla Hyangga : Stories, Songs, and Poems of Ancient Korea. Vista, California, Parchment Press, 2010, archive.org/details/sillahyanggastor0000kooh/page/n5/mode/2up. Accessed 9 Feb. 2024.

Lee, Soyoung, et al. Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom. United Kingdom: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Silla/mpanKmU_ckYC?hl=en&gbpv=0. Accessed February 11, 2024.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Treasures from Silla Tombs.” Metmuseum.org, 2020, http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/koreas-golden-kingdom/about-the-exhibition/treasures. Accessed 11 Feb. 2024.

Moody, Peter G. Gale Researcher Guide For: History of Early Korea. Gale, Cengage Learning, 28 Sept. 2018.

Park, Eugene Y. Korea : A History. S.L., Stanford University Press, 2022.

Yi, Pae-yong. Women in Korean History. South Korea: Ewha Womans University Press, 2008.

维基媒体项目贡献者. “三國史記/卷11 (Samguk Sagi, Book 11, in Chinese).” Wikisource.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 20 Sept. 2009, zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E5%9C%8B%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B711. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.