It stands near the tomb of Gwanggaeto in the present-day city of Ji'an along the Yalu River in Jilin Province, Northeast China, which was the capital of Goguryeo at that time.

It has also become a focal point of national rivalries in East Asia manifested in the interpretations of the stele's inscription and the place of Goguryeo in modern historical narratives.

An exact replica of the Gwanggaeto Stele stands on the grounds of the War Memorial of Seoul[3] and the rubbed copies made in 1881 and 1883 are in the custody of China and Japan.

[7] When the Manchu conquered China in 1644 and established the Qing dynasty, they instituted a "closure policy" (fengjin 封禁) that blocked entry into a vast area in Manchuria north of the Yalu River, including the stele's site.

It was around 1876 that a local Chinese official named Guan Yueshan,[b] who also dabbled as an amateur epigrapher, began collecting such tiles and discovered the mammoth stone stele of Gwanggaeto obscured under centuries of mud and overgrowth.

[d][14] Almost every inch of the stele's four sides were found to be covered with Chinese characters (nearly 1800 in total), each about the size of a grown man's hand.

[f] In 1883, a young Japanese officer named Sakō Kageaki [ja] (or "Sakao Kagenobu"[16]) traveling disguised as a civilian kanpo (Chinese medicine) herbalist while gathering intelligence in Manchuria.

Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office invited leading sinologists and historians to decode the text, later publishing their findings in Kaiyoroku 會餘録, volume 5 (1889).

1) Foundation myth of the Goguryeo kingdom; 2) the military exploits of King Gwanggaeto; and 3) personal record of the custodians of the monarch's grave.

[26] The first part details the legend of the Goguryeo's founder and his lineage while the second outlined Gwanggaeto's martial accomplishments, beginning with the conquest of Paeryo (稗麗) in 395.

[25] The record of the king's conquest was outlined in the form of a list of the castles he occupied and the surrender of the states conquered such as Paekche's in 396.

[g] Of old, when our first Ancestor King Ch'umo laid the foundations of our state, he came forth from Northern Buyeo[h] as the son of the Celestial Emperor.

Endowed with heavenly virtue, King Ch'umo [accepted his mother's command and] made an imperial tour to the south.

Upon the mountain-fort west of Cholbon in Piryu Valley established his capital, wherein his family would long enjoy the hereditary position.

[30] The sinmyo passage as far as it is definitively legible reads thus (with highly defaced or unreadable characters designated by an X): Disagreement in the "sinmyo passage" of year 391 is whether it states that the Goguryeo subjugated Baekje and Silla, as Korean scholars maintain, or whether it states that Wa had at one time subjugated Baekje and Silla, as Japanese scholars have traditionally interpreted.

The Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office, which learned about the stele and obtained a rubbed copy from its member Kageaki Sakō in 1884, became intrigued over a passage describing the king's military campaigns for the sinmyo 辛卯 year of 391 (sinmyo being a year designator in the sexagenary cycle that characterizes the traditional Sino-oriented East Asian calendar).

Most Japanese scholars, notably Masatomo Suga, interpreted the passage as follows (brackets designating a "reading into" the text where the character is not legible): And in the sinmyo year (辛卯年) the Wa (倭) came and crossed the sea (來渡海) and defeated (破) Baekje (百 殘), [unknown], and [Sil]la (新羅) and made them (以爲) subjects (臣民)They presumed that Wa referred to a centralized Japanese government at the time that controlled the entire western part of Japan.

Then Baekje [allied with Wa] and subjugated [Sil]la[33][34] In 1959 the Japanese scholar Teijiro Mizutani published another important study.

Thus, when taking into consideration the major absence of characters and lack of punctuation, the passage reads: And in the sinmyo year the Wa (Japanese) crossed the sea.

According to his books, Sakō altered the copy and later the Japanese General Staff thrice sent a team to make the falsification of the stele with lime.

He considered 倭 ("Wa") word meaning is not a country but a pirate group, and he also denied Japan dominated the southern part of Korea.

[32] Today, most Chinese scholars deny the conspiracy theory proposed by Lee Jin-hui in light of the newly discovered rubbed copy.

[32][47][48] In the project of writing a common history textbook, Kim Tae-sik of Hongik University (Korea)[49] denied Japan's theory.

Further, Japanese arbitrarily assert the Korean interpretation which claim Goguryeo as the subject that conquered Baekje and Silla as an inconsistency with the preceding phrase "crossed the sea."