Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 54

“Korea in Global Perspective: The Mongols and Korea”
From Michael Seth’s A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present (2016)
The following selection from Michael Seth’s A Concise History of Korea offers global
perspective on the impact of the Mongol invasions and particularly the Mongols influence on
Korea. One of the great merits of Seth’s book is the presentation of each stage of Korean history
within a global context; subsequently, readers will have a deeper understanding of social,
cultural, and political history not only in East Asia, but also with other parts of the world. The
book is a valuable and enlightening resource for educators who teach World History and Asian
Studies.
“Korea was greatly impacted by the Mongols in two main ways. First, the Mongol invasions
devastated the country. The repeated attacks and especially the scorched-earth tactics they
employed that systematically destroyed cities, towns, and temples resulted in a horrendous loss
of the country’s cultural heritage. Very little in the way of physical remains survives from pre-
Mongol times. In this, Korea shared the fate of many other parts of the world. The Mongol
invasion of Iraq in 1258, for example, led to the utter destruction of Baghdad, the greatest city of
the Islamic world. The Tigris River, legend has it, turned black from the ink of the many books
the Mongols dumped into it as they destroyed the city’s great libraries and numerous bookstores.
Even the elaborate irrigation system that made Mesopotamia a highly productive agricultural
region was destroyed. As a result, little remains today of Iraq’s legacy as the former center of
Islamic civilization. Similar destruction was heaped upon many of the great cities of Kwarezm
and other parts of central Asia, and across much of China and Russia. This contrasts with
Western Europe and Japan, which were largely spared this devastation.
The other legacy of the Mongols was Korea’s unprecedented integration into the larger Eurasian
world. Once the Mongols had created their great steppe-based empire, they set in on the task of
extracting revenue from it. This involved promoting trade. Nomadic peoples had always been
dependent on trading as well as raiding the settled agricultural societies they bordered. They
provided meat, skins, and horses, and they traded plunder for metal goods such as swords,
knives, and pots; for grain; and for other items they could not produce themselves. In addition to
encouraging trade, the Mongols, with their control over most of the steppe and adjacent lands,
were able to ensure safety and stability for long distance merchants and were concerned with
maintaining good communications. They also searched for and hired or drafted talent – clerks,
administrators, and skilled craftsmen – from the lands they conquered, having them serve in their
capital or other administrative centers. As a result, the period from the late thirteenth century,
when the Mongols’ conquests were largely completed to the collapse of the Mongol Empire in
the mid-fourteenth century was a period of unprecedented cosmopolitanism in much of Eurasia.
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