• Gyeon Hwon: The Rise and Fall of Later Baekje | A 1,000-Year-Old Korean History Sleep Story
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An old record tells a strange story. In a village north of Gwangju, there lived a wealthy man whose daughter was known for her beauty. She told her father that, every night, a man in purple robes came to visit her and shared her bed. Her father instructed her to thread a needle and pin it secretly to the man's clothing. The next morning, they followed the thread — and found it leading to a giant earthworm lying beneath the garden wall, the needle still fixed in its side. Not long after, the daughter found she was with child, and gave birth to a son. That boy, grown, would come to call himself Gyeon Hwon.

Another account tells it differently. As an infant, Gyeon Hwon was left beneath a tree while his parents worked the fields — and a tiger appeared and nursed him. The villagers, hearing of it, long told the story of the unusual child.

Grown into manhood, Gyeon Hwon was powerfully built and full of vigor, and he rose through the ranks of the army. He slept with his spear as a pillow and always fought at the front of his men, and for this he was promoted, while still young, to the rank of vice-commander.

It was an age when the kingdom of Silla was already crumbling. The king surrounded himself with favorites and neglected the affairs of state, and famine swept the land, scattering the people. As the hungry rose up as bandits across the country, Gyeon Hwon too gathered a following and began seizing towns in the southwest. Astonishingly, within a single month, five thousand men had joined him. Arriving at last in Wansanju, he is said to have turned to those around him and declared:

"It has been more than six hundred years since Baekje was founded, and its downfall at the hands of Silla and Tang forces left a wound unhealed. Shall I not now avenge it?"

And so the kingdom of Hubaekje was born.

What followed was a life woven endlessly through war, alliance, and betrayal. Gyeon Hwon's forces once stormed the Silla capital itself, humiliating the king and queen and installing a new ruler in their place. But to the north, another power was rising — Wang Geon, founder of the kingdom of Goryeo.

The two men contended with one another for decades. They exchanged hostages and struck truces, only to fall back into suspicion and renewed war whenever a hostage died unexpectedly. Gyeon Hwon once sent Wang Geon a long letter boasting that he would hang his bow in the towers of Pyongyang and water his horses in the Paesu river. Wang Geon answered in kind, cataloguing the atrocities Gyeon Hwon had committed and warning him not to grow careless. These letters, tradition holds, were composed on Gyeon Hwon's behalf by the celebrated scholar Choe Chiwon — a sign of just how fierce the war of words between the two powers had become, down to every line.

On the battlefield, fortunes swung back and forth. In some years Gyeon Hwon won great victories, costing Wang Geon several of his generals. In others, thousands of Gyeon Hwon's own soldiers were lost in a single blow, and whole regions in the north surrendered of their own accord. When Gong Jik, one of Gyeon Hwon's most capable officers, finally defected to Wang Geon, an enraged Gyeon Hwon seized the man's two sons and daughter and had the muscles of their legs burned through with fire — a cruelty so severe that it began to erode the loyalty of even his own followers.

But in the end, it was not his enemies who brought down Gyeon Hwon — it was his own sons. Among his many children, his fourth son, Geumgang, was tall and unusually clever, and Gyeon Hwon favored him above the rest. When word spread that the throne might pass to Geumgang, his eldest son Singeom and his brothers grew fearful. They conspired together, imprisoned their father in a temple on Mount Geumsan, and had Geumgang killed. That day, still half-asleep, Gyeon Hwon heard shouting rise from the palace courtyard and asked what it meant. Someone answered him: "The king is old and no longer fit to attend to the affairs of state, so the people rejoice that the eldest son now takes his place." A song is said to have spread through the land at the time:

"Poor child of Wansan, having lost his father, weeping tears like flowing wine."

Imprisoned for nearly three months, Gyeon Hwon at last got the thirty soldiers guarding him drunk on smuggled wine, and escaped by boat. He fled to the one place no one expected — the side of his lifelong enemy, Wang Geon of Goryeo. To strike down the sons who had betrayed him, Gyeon Hwon chose to place himself in the hands of his oldest rival. Wang Geon received him with great honor, granting him the title of "Sangbo" and bestowing on him a generous estate, servants, and horses.

Meanwhile, Gyeon Hwon's son-in-law, General Yeonggyu, found his own loyalties wavering. He confided quietly to his wife: the achievements their king had built over forty years of struggle had collapsed overnight because of a family feud, and he could not bring himself to serve the son who had turned traitor. His wife agreed, and together they secretly sent word to Wang Geon, offering to act from within. Wang Geon was overjoyed, and promised that he would one day honor Yeonggyu's wife as he would an elder sister.

At last, Wang Geon raised a great army to conquer Hubaekje — and Gyeon Hwon rode with him. He found himself facing the very kingdom he had founded, and the very army led by his own son. It is said that clouds that day formed themselves into the shapes of swords and spears, drifting toward the Goryeo forces — a sign of how thoroughly the tide had turned. One by one, Hubaekje's generals laid down their armor and surrendered, and in the end, Singeom himself knelt along with his two brothers. Wang Geon spared nearly all who surrendered — sparing even Singeom — but had Neunghwan, the minister who first plotted the coup, put to death for his role in it.

Having watched it all unfold with his own eyes, Gyeon Hwon succumbed at last to his grief. A boil broke out on his back, and he died in a temple at Hwangsan. He was seventy years old — forty-five years after the founding of the kingdom he had built and, in the end, outlived.