THE KOREAN TODAY
History Lives On
The Baekje Chronicle
Episode 26: The Baekje Diaspora – Scattered Across East Asia
When a kingdom falls, its people do not vanish. They walk, sail, and settle, and in doing so they carry a civilization into other lands.
In 660 CE, the Baekje capital of Sabi fell to a Tang-Silla alliance. In the years that followed, the people of Baekje were split three ways: thousands were taken across the Yellow Sea to the Tang heartland, many stayed on the peninsula and became subjects of Silla, and after the naval defeat at Baekgang in 663, others sailed to the Japanese archipelago.
This is one of the earliest well-documented refugee movements in East Asia. Like the Byzantine scholars who later reached Italy, or the Huguenots who left France, Baekje’s exiles became bridges between cultures. What did they carry, and what did it become?
🌍 Western Historical Parallel
In the same decades, the Sasanian Persian Empire had fallen to Arab armies, and members of its royal house sought refuge at the Tang court. In England, the Greek-speaking scholar Theodore of Tarsus arrived in 669 to reorganize the Church and its schools. Across Eurasia, displaced elites and learned men were reshaping the societies that received them.
◆ The Ancient Landscape
In March 660, a Tang expeditionary force crossed the sea from the Shandong Peninsula and coordinated with Silla’s army to strike Sabi, in today’s Buyeo, South Korea. King Uija withdrew toward Ungjin (modern Gongju), where a local commander, Ye Sik, reportedly handed him over. The king, Crown Prince Hyo, three other princes, 88 officials and generals, and 12,807 commoners were sent to the Tang capital.
A restoration movement led by Boksin, Dochim, Heukchi Sangji and others held out until the allied fleets crushed the Baekje-Wa force at Baekgang in 663. Japan’s chronicle, the Nihon Shoki, records Baekje people being settled in Omi and in the eastern provinces. Dates and numbers differ from passage to passage, so it is safest to say “several thousand people over the mid-660s.”
“The king, Crown Prince Hyo, Princes Tae, Yung and Yeon, eighty-eight ministers and generals, and 12,807 commoners were sent to the Tang capital.” (paraphrased summary)
◆ Same Era, Different Worlds
🏛️ China
Tang under Emperor Gaozong set up commanderies over Baekje’s former lands and gave captive royals and nobles court titles, using them in frontier and diplomatic roles.
🗿 Byzantine Empire
Under Constans II, Constantinople was on the defensive against Arab expansion, long after Heraclius’s great campaigns.
⚔️ Western Europe
The Frankish kingdoms were fragmented, and in 664 the Synod of Whitby aligned the Northumbrian Church with Rome.
🕌 Islamic World
The Umayyad Caliphate was taking shape under Muawiya, absorbing the former Sasanian lands.
[Image: Conceptual map of Baekje migration routes after 660-663 CE]
⚔️ Scene from That Day
“The ships slipped out at dawn through the mist. On deck sat court musicians, scribes and tile-makers, one clutching a sutra scroll, another a bundle of tools. No one looked away from the shrinking coast.”
“‘We may never return, but what we know goes with us.’ (A reconstructed scene, imagined from the sources.) It was less a flight than the moving of a whole craft tradition, as if a monastery’s library had boarded a boat.”
◆ Uncovering Historical Truth
Exiles in Tang China. Crown Prince Yung (Buyeo Yung) was appointed Governor-General of Ungjin by Tang and served as a mediator with Silla; he died in Luoyang in 682 and was buried on Mount Beimang. Heukchi Sangji, a restoration leader who surrendered in 663, became a Tang general on the frontier, much as a conquered Gallic noble might have served in a Roman legion, but he was executed in 689 after a false accusation. Their tomb inscriptions are first-hand evidence of life after the fall.
The Ye Gun epitaph. The epitaph of Ye Gun (died 678), found in China, narrates the collapse of Baekje and King Uija’s surrender from the viewpoint of a Baekje-born Tang official. It also contains the word “Nihon” (Japan), which has fed active debate over when that name first appeared; some scholars have even suggested it may refer to Baekje.
In Silla and Japan. Silla integrated Baekje people with restricted ranks (by some studies, up to about the tenth of its seventeen grades), and its royal guard units, the nine “seodang,” included Baekje-based formations. In Japan, Gwisil Jipsa (Kishitsu Shūshi) rose to a senior educational post, and descendants of Uija’s son Seon-gwang (Zenkō) were granted the surname “Kudara no Konikishi” (Baekje Royal clan), a kind of imported aristocracy somewhat like the Norman families in England after 1066. The Shoku Nihongi states that Emperor Kanmu’s mother, Takano no Niigasa, descended from King Muryeong of Baekje, a connection Emperor Akihito referred to publicly in 2001.
Period
Later 7th century CE (660s-690s)
Key Figures
Buyeo Yung, Heukchi Sangji, Ye Gun, Gwisil Jipsa
Scale
12,807 commoners deported in 660; several thousand to Japan
Legacy
Cultural transfer to three states, like Byzantine scholars in Italy
🔍 International Academic Perspectives
Korean/Asian Scholars
Most agree that the exiles dispersed into Tang, Silla and Japan, and that those in Japan were a skilled group in the low thousands, not a mass migration.
Western Historians
English-language scholarship stresses continental influence on the Asuka-Nara state, while cautioning that some Japanese estimates (up to 100,000 arrivals) lack source support.
📖 Key Terms Explained
- Baekje (百濟)
- Ancient Korean kingdom (traditionally founded 18 BCE, fell 660 CE; some resistance lasted to 663), one of the Three Kingdoms.
- Tang Dynasty
- Chinese empire (618-907 CE), contemporary with the Byzantine Empire and the early Caliphate.
- Diaspora
- A people dispersed from their homeland yet keeping a shared identity.
- Nihon Shoki / Samguk Sagi
- Japan’s chronicle (720 CE) and Korea’s History of the Three Kingdoms (1145 CE), the main literary sources for this episode.
◆ Lessons for Today’s World
Displaced people tend to survive in three ways: they assimilate, they blend, or they trade what they know for a place. The Korean diaspora of today, around seven million people abroad, has walked all three roads, from Central Asia to the Americas.
Modern refugee policy, from the post-1945 order to today’s European debates, still wrestles with a question the Baekje exiles posed: are newcomers a burden or a bridge? History suggests that societies that welcome skilled arrivals and give them dignity are often transformed for the better.
| Aspect | Baekje Era | Modern Parallel |
|---|---|---|
| Geopolitics | Forced exile after conquest | Refugee flows after wars, and global diaspora policy |
| Military/Diplomacy | Exiles as links among Tang, Silla and Yamato | Diaspora communities as public-diplomacy assets |
| Culture | Buddhism, architecture and crafts carried abroad | K-culture spread through overseas Koreans |
[Image: From an ancient kingdom’s exiles to the modern Korean diaspora]
📚 Diving Deeper
- Visit the UNESCO-listed Baekje Historic Areas in Gongju, Buyeo and Iksan, and in Japan the Kishitsu Shrine in Hino, Shiga, associated with Gwisil Jipsa.
- Epitaphs of Buyeo Yung and Ye Gun, comparable in value to the Sutton Hoo finds as windows on a vanished court.
- Further reading: The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 1 (Ancient Japan), and The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3 (Sui and T’ang).
The Voice of Living History
Baekje ended as a state in 660, but its people did not end. They lived on in Luoyang’s stone inscriptions, in Silla’s regiments, and in Japan’s surnames and shrines. Exile was a wound, and also the road along which culture traveled.
“A kingdom may fall, yet what its people carry blooms again in new soil. The spirit of Baekje endures.”
Previous Episode
Episode 25: The Battle of Baekgang – East Asia’s Great Naval War
Next Episode
Episode 27: Rediscovering Baekje’s Heritage – Gongju and Buyeo
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The Baekje Chronicle (30 Episodes)
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