Four Commanderies of Han
The Four Commanderies of Han (Chinese: 漢四郡; pinyin: Hàn-sìjùn; Korean: 한사군; Hanja: 漢四郡; RR: Han-sagun) were Chinese commanderies located in the north of the Korean Peninsula and part of the Liaodong Peninsula from around the end of the second century BC through the early 4th AD, for the longest lasting.
[6] Later, Goguryeo, founded in 37 BCE, began conquering the commanderies and eventually absorbed them into its own territory by the early 4th century AD.
Nan Lü (Hanja: 南閭), who was a monarch of Dongye and a subject of Wiman Joseon, revolted against Ugeo of Gojoseon and then surrendered to the Han dynasty with 280,000 people.
Once he became administrator, Du carried out his vendetta against the wealthy by publicly flogging to death the Magistrate of Xiangping and extirpating the gentry.
Gardiner says that this is because the Samguk Sagi sought to reverse the reality of defeat in a number of instances and questioned both the existence of Gyesu and his victory.
[22] Gongsun Kang took some territory in 209 and Goguryeo was forced to move its capital further east to the Yalu rivery valley near Hwando.
Although the king evaded capture and eventually settled in a new capital, Goguryeo was reduced to such insignificance that for half a century there was no mention of the state in Chinese historical texts.
[30][29] Afterwards, the Lelang, Daifang, and Xuantu commanderies were ruled by Cao Wei, the Jin dynasty, and the Murong Xianbei until they were conquered by Goguryeo in the early 300s.
Due to civil war, the Jin dynasty was unable to send officials to govern its territory in northern Korea.
The leaders of Liaodong and Lelang led over one thousand households to break away from Jin and submitted to the Xianbei warlord of Former Yan Murong Hui.
[35][36][37] The stigmatization of colonial Japanese historical and archaeological findings in Korea as imperialist forgeries owes in part to those scholars' discovery and promotion of the Lelang Commandery—by which the Han dynasty administered territory near Pyongyang—and insistence that this Chinese commandery had an impact on the development of Korean civilization.
[38] Until the North Korean challenge, it was universally accepted that Lelang was a commandery established by Emperor Wu of Han after he defeated Gojoseon in 108 BCE.
[39] To deal with the Han Dynasty archeological remnants such as tombs, jewelry and laquerware North Korean scholars have reinterpreted them as the remains of Gojoseon or Goguryeo.
[46][better source needed] Ri Ji Rin (Lee Ji Rin), a respected North Korean historian who obtained his Ph.D. in history from China's top university Peking University in 1961, in his published Research on Ancient Korea suggests that based on the initial records of Chinese texts and archaeological findings in Liaodong, the Han commanderies were located in Liaodong Peninsula.
[47] Another historian from South Korea, Yoon Nae-hyun also published a similar research in 1987, suggesting the Han commanderies were not in Korean peninsula.
