The Goryeo Period

The Goryeo Period, 918 to 1392 CE, takes its name from the dynasty founded by Wang Geon, whose kingdom name is the direct source of the modern English word "Korea." Goryeo completed the unification of the Later Three Kingdoms in 936 and developed a sophisticated centralized bureaucracy recruited partly through Chinese-style civil service examinations, alongside a lasting Buddhist cultural flowering that produced the Tripitaka Koreana, over 81,000 carved wooden printing blocks of the Buddhist canon, and celadon ceramics prized as among the finest produced anywhere in premodern East Asia. The kingdom endured repeated Khitan and Jurchen incursions before facing catastrophic Mongol invasions beginning in 1231, which after decades of resistance from a relocated capital on Ganghwa Island ended in Goryeo's submission as a Mongol tributary state by the 1270s. Goryeo also produced the world's earliest known movable metal type printing, used to print the Jikji in 1377, predating Gutenberg's European press by decades. The dynasty ended in 1392 when General Yi Seong-gye seized the throne and founded the Joseon dynasty.