Warband Cohesion in Thirteenth Century Korea: Northeast Asian Influences on Sinitic Military Models

Abstract

The medieval state of Koryŏ (918-1392) relied on a heavily sinicized military structure to protect the peninsula from its foes across the border.But with the collapse of civil rule and the ascent to the highest offices of the state by the military in 1170, this system also collapsed, giving way to highly personalized and often improvised army structures. Northeast Asian influences combined with the spreading popularity of the warriors from the north (such as the Mongol), coalescing into the import of the warband to the Korean peninsula. It quickly established itself as the preferred way of organizing it soldiers in the military administration. The adoption of the warband is historically important, because of the political power it came to possess in the 13thcentury. As important is the fact that an important element of a larger Northeast Asian cultural complex entered Koryŏ through the northern. The warband was a Northeast Asian inflection in terms of warfare, but also in terms of the exercise of political power. Evidence showing the popularity of Northeast Asian models and ideals of warriorship among Koryŏ warriors did not stop at the individual level of clothing, armor, and weaponry or at the purely tactical level of fighting techniques and strategies. Strategic and organizational changes were added to what had been a military organization in the Sinitic mold. As such, the warband became the most important and prevalent military organisational principle in 13th-century Korea, ultimately becoming the institute that would decide the fate of the country – and certainly the life and death of its rulers – until the Mongols took over the governing of Koryŏ in the second half of the 13thcentury.