Downfall
Gung Ye changed the country's name to Majin in 904, and moved the capital to Cheorwon in the following year. Since Cheorwon was a fortress located in a mountainous area, he moved people from the populous city of Cheongju and expanded his rule into the Chungcheong region, taking control of almost two-thirds of the land once controlled by Silla. In the same year Gung Ye took over Pyeongyang and called for total destruction of the state of Silla.
However, Gung Ye started to lose favor of many of his previous supporters. He decided what was needed to unite people under his power was religious faith, and using his previous occupation as Buddhist monk, he referred to himself as Maitreya Buddha, who came to the world to guide and save the suffering people from all hardship, and became an authoritarian tyrant. He changed the name of his kingdom to Taebong in 911.
In his later days, Gung Ye started to doubt almost everyone's loyalty toward him. He accused anyone for treason and sentenced death to anyone opposing him, including his own wife Kang and his two sons. As a result, in 918 four of his own top generals – Hong Yu (hangul:홍유, hanja:洪儒), Bae Hyeongyeong (hangul:배현경, hanja:裵玄慶), Shin Sunggyeom (hangul:신숭겸, hanja:申崇謙) and Bok Jigyeom (hangul:복지겸, hanja:卜智謙) – overthrew Taebong and throned Wang Geon, the previous chief minister, as king. Soon thereafter, the Goryeo dynasty was proclaimed, and Wang Geon went on to defeat the rivaling Silla and Hubaekje to reunite the three kingdoms in 936.
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Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)