Goryeo - Part 7

-Goryeo felt like it was finally at peace, but this was not so.
   -Kublai Khan had Koreans that had been exiled from Goryeo and were living in his empire, or even acting as his courtiers.
      -Some of these Koreans hated Goryeo (probably for exiling them), probably for exiling them, and convinced Kublai Khan to distrust King Wonjong.
-1261- Mongol envoys arrive to demand a ludicrous amount of copper as tribute in order to pick a fight.
   -Goryeo successfully scrapes together enough money to buy the copper required as tribute to the Mongols.  Soon the Mongols return again and demand that Goryeo conduct a census of the land, set up a horse relay system, and get soldiers and provisions ready to incorporate into the Mongol horde for their impending invasion of Japan (among other things).
   -After some initial difficulty, the Mongols finally were able to arrive in Japan with a diplomatic meeting, claiming that Kublai Khan wanted to befriend the Japanese, and if the Japanese were to accept the Mongol Empire as their patrons, then that would be a good thing since the Mongols were inevitably going to take over the world.
      -The Japanese didn't know how to respond, so they just...didn't.  Instead, they began to fortify the coasts, knowing the the horde was going to invade ASAP.
         -Looking for an excuse to dominate Goryeo further, Kublai Khan blamed Goryeo for the Japanese refusal to talk (among other things), so he sent a general to summon the Goryeo court to Khanbaliq/Dadu (modern-day Beijing).
            -Goryeo knew that Kublai Khan was going to execute them, so they killed the general envoy instead!  Surprisingly, the Mongols didn't punish them for this, as they were distracted with another diplomatic mission that got fucked up in Japan.
-1267- Japanese fishermen are captured for being too close to Goryeo, and are sent to Khanbaliq for Kublai Khan to decide their fate.  Kublai Khan then decided to show off the splendor of the Mongol Empire by sending them back to Japan so that they could hopefully tell the Japanese shogun, Hōjō Masamura, what was up.
-1269- Meanwhile in Goryeo there was a military coup, and King Wonjong was dethroned!  General Im Yon was the mastermind behind this coup, and he placed some noob on the throne as his puppet.  King Wonjong was exiled.  However, Kublai Khan found out about what happened, and ensured that King Wonjong was reinstalled to the throne in 1271.
   -While King Wonjong had been exiled, he was in the court of Kublai Khan.  There he married a Mongol princess (or had his son marry her, it's unclear), thus cementing an alliance between the royal families of Goryeo and the Mongol Empire, now known as the Yuan dynasty, and all Goryeo kings were to be given the posthumous title of "loyal"("충").
-Following the example set by the Chinese, the Mongols set up commandery states north of Pyeongyang to monitor Goryeo.
   -All Goryeo officials had their titles downgraded and subordinated to Mongol officials.
-King Wonjong was enthroned back in Gaeseong, but he faced a rebellion by Goryeo nationalists, led by the former bodyguards of the Choi military dictatorship.
   -They were quickly defeated by King Wonjong, and they fled to the south to an island, Jindo.  However, the Jindo defenses were soon crushed, so they then fled to Jeju-do where they tried to make an alliance with the Japanese to get them in on on the fighting.  However, it looks like they were unsuccessful because they were finally defeated in 1273.
-1273- By now, Kublai Khan had crowned himself as a Chinese emperor of the Yuan dynasty.
   -He immediately began to plan for the invasion of Japan, and used Korea as his giant factory for military production.
-1274- The Mongols set up an initial force of 20,000 Mongol/Chinese troops, 6,000-8,000 Korean troops, 900 ships, and 15,000 naval crew.
   -This was actually surprisingly small for a Mongol invasion.
      -It's possible the Mongols assumed that the Japanese were weak.
   The force set sail from Busan and stopped at Tsushima Island, which was a Japanese outpost, and was easily conquered.  They then conquered the island of Iki before arriving at their main destination, Hakata Bay.
   -The Japanese apparently weren't expecting the Mongols to arrive so soon or so efficiently, most likely because they knew that the Mongols were lousy sailors, but they didn't realize how much of an aid the Koreans would be for the Mongols in terms of sailing.
      -Also, the Mongols had an advantage as warriors.  They were out to kill, and were efficient and brutal.  The samurai were proud and skilled fighters, but were all about the glory and ritual of combat.
         -Kind of like brutal technical death metal vs. symphonic power metal.
         -The Mongols had explosive/poisoned arrows, horse archers, war drums used for communication, and grenades lobbed by slings that scared the fuck out of the enemy, especially horses!  Also, the Mongols had gunpowder.  They were an essentially an alien race.
            -The Japanese were able to hold back the Mongol army, and luckily for them a typhoon began to start up.  The Mongol forces quickly tried to retreat to the ships, but unfortunately for them they lost a couple hundred ships at least in the chaos.  The Japanese then attacked the ships, as this was their area of expertise as a seafaring people, and the Mongol army was forced to retreat with about 2/3 of their initial number.
-King Wonjong died in 1274, replaced by his son, King Chungnyeol.
   -He was the first Goryeo ruler to be called "king" (왕 or "wang" (ha)).  As all the rulers before this were called "revered ancestor" (조 or 종, "jo" or "jong"), which was reserved for what were considered to be the "emperors" of Korea.  So that means that the king was now truly just a king in name only, and was truly a puppet of the emperors of the Yuan dynasty.
-King Chungnyeol, upon ascending the throne, went north to meet his Mongol princess wife, meeting her near Pyeongyang.  She was a daughter of Kublai Khan, and thus was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan.
   -She immediately redecorated the palace with sheepskin wall hangings and designated huge tracts of land for hunting.  She was apparently also insanely good at horseback riding.  She melted down Buddha statues and golden pagodas from the temples to create more gold for herself, designated other tracts of land to grow ginseng for trade with China, and started a successful sea otter fur trading business.
      -She didn't give a fuck about paying respects to King Taejo (founder of Goryeo) at his tomb.  She also publicly humiliated the king by beating him with a rod during a march, and made the entire Goryeo court go and visit her family in Khanbaliq.  Upon returning, she demanded that Goryeo change its ways and customs to better reflect Yuan dynasty culture.  Obviously, the conservatives weren't down with this, but King Chungnyeol went ahead and enforced the queen's wishes and made everyone dress and do their hair the Yuan dynasty way.
         -The conservatives also feared that Korean blood would be tainted by Mongol blood due to the lack of Goryeo men (due to all of the invasions and wars).  They thought about allowing men to have multiple wives, but this didn't pan out.
-1275- Kublai Khan again sent an envoy to try and get the Japanese to submit.  The Japanese DGAF and beheaded the envoy when he wouldn't leave.  In 1276, the exact same thing happened again.
   -Finally, Kublai Khan had had enough.  He wrapped up his conquest of the Song dynasty in 1279, uniting China under the almighty Yuan dynasty, and then began amassing an epic force to go conquer Japan.
       -The Yuan dynasty now had access to all of the Song dynasty's huge naval fleet and resources too.  He hoped to make it a 2-pronged attack, one from Goryeo and one from China.
          -Also in preparation, the Mongols used the forests of Jeju-do for a lot of the timber to make ships, and this caused the island to be deforested and thus a great place for ranch land.  As such, a shitload of war horses were raised there.
           -The Yuan dynasty also imposed heavy taxes on Goryeo to help pay for their armies.  The Goryeo population was also forced to pay in-kind since they had gone back to a barter system for some reason.
-1281- the Second Mongol Invasion of Japan!  The Yuan dynasty raised a horde of 30,000-40,000 Mongols and 10,000-15,000 Koreans (who set sail from Masan Fortress in Busan) as the northern prong.  The western prong was made up of 100,000 Chinese conscripts.
   -The ships that were made during this time were about double the size of contemporary European ships!  However, it's possible that the quality wasn't very good.
   -Some Mongol generals sensed that this was a goofy plan because it would be extremely difficult to have both fleets of ships land at the same time.  The alternative of having the Chinese fleet land in Busan first wouldn't work because the south coast of Korea during this time didn't have the infrastructure to support such a massive force.
   -The north prong began by invading Tsushima and Ika again, but encountered unexpectedly tough resistance this time.  Also, they were just trying to raid and keep busy while they were waiting for the western prong, but of course the western prong didn't show up when they were supposed to, which made the northern prong feel like they were running out of time, so they just decided to go ahead and attack mainland Japan.  The northern prong landed at Hakata Bay again, and a few weeks later the western force finally landed at Imari Bay.  While they were able to initially overcome the Japanese resistance and establish a beachhead, the Japanese were tenacious defenders.
      -Finally, the northern prong was destroyed by the kamikaze ("divine wind")!!  Then the survivors were killed by the Japanese forces, and Japan was saved!