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Network analysis is a methodology that helps understand complex phenomena by visualizing member interactions. In the context of Eastern Jin, Sixteen Kingdoms, Song, Northern Wei period, network analysis can shed light on the position of Paekche and Koguryŏ by analyzing negotiation networks. While existing studies have focused on negotiations between these states and China, few have visualized the entire negotiation network or compared the positions of Paekche and Koguryŏ within the broader East Asian network. This paper explores the network analysis methodology for ancient East Asian negotiation data and conducts a pilot analysis of specific periods. The methodology for applying network analysis to ancient history involves several steps, including evaluating its suitability, quantifying the data, verifying data reliability, and analyzing and visualizing the data. Limitations of using network analysis to study ancient history include obtaining sufficient data and verifying data reliability. Ancient East Asian negotiation data is relatively more abundant than other records, making it a good candidate for network analysis. However, because negotiation data is recorded from the perspective of various actors, it is essential to verify the reliability of the data by ancient history researchers. This paper theoretically analyzes the negotiation data of the Eastern Jin, Sixteen Kingdoms, Song, and Northern Wei periods. The negotiation network analysis reveals that Eastern Jin is the most centralized country, with Koguryŏ actively engaging in negotiations and Paekche focusing on diplomacy with Eastern Jin. The centrality analysis on the negotiation frequency data during Song and Northern Wei period shows that the Song and Northern Wei had the highest centrality in negotiation frequency among 28 countries, with Koguryŏ, Tuyuhun, and Paekche also prominent. The negotiation route analysis reveals the flow of information, with the Song having the highest betweenness centrality, Koguryŏ serving as a conduit to Shilla, and Paekche controlling the route to Mahan, Kaya, and Wa. Paekche plays a crucial role as a conduit between various regions, despite having lower centrality than Koguryŏ. In conclusion, this paper explored the methodology of applying network analysis to ancient East Asian negotiation data and attempted to understand the structural structure of ancient East Asian negotiation networks by analyzing negotiation data from a specific time period.

The Kingdom of Koguryŏ was one of the so-called Three Kingdoms of Korea in the 1st millennium AD. According to the Samguk Sagi (Historical Records of the Three States), it was founded on what is now North Korea and northeastern China. Not only are the archaeological remains a cultural asset that should not be underestimated, they are powerful enough to be claimed for political purposes today. Overland connections from the Chinese mainland east to Japan and Korea are long recognised. These empires were extremely rich and powerful at the time of the Tang (617/18–907 AD) – Nara in Japan, as well as Koguryŏ, Silla and Paekche on the Korean Peninsula. This paper considers the impressive remains of the Koguryŏ culture, not least in China's Jilin Province along the North Korean border and explores the historical and archaeological legacy and power of the Koguryŏ Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of Paekche, one of the ancient states established on the Korean Peninsula, during the Hansŏng Period was one of the major historical archaeological research topics. Many studies were conducted under the premise that the boundaries of Paekche during the Hansŏng Period as recorded in historical documents had existed in real life, and scholars believed that the boundaries and territory of Paekche at the time spatially expanded in concentric rings around the core. These studies were unable to provide an adequate explanation of the diversity or the significance of archaeological resources acquired from the regions surrounding Paekche during the Hansŏng Period, as the expansion of Paekche was understood to have occurred uniformly throughout the surrounding areas. However, it is important to note that, unlike the boundaries of modern states, boundaries of ancient states were flexible and not clearly defined. In addition, it is necessary to take into consideration the possibility that the expansion of ancient states occurred in different ways throughout different regions due to political, geographical, and economic factors as well as their physical distance from the center. This study takes into account these possibilities and compares the regions to the south and north of the Han River by examining the excavated Paekche pottery from the Hansŏng Period in the central region of the Korean Peninsula to better understand Paekche’s expansion process. It also demonstrates that Paekche expanded its influence in the region south of the Han River during the Hansŏng Period while it only maintained several bases in the region north of the Han River, thereby explaining that the expansion of Paekche differed in the two regions due to the differences in the regions’ geopolitical dynamics.

Since the 1950s, most Korean scholars have believed that Paekche King Kŭnch'ogo (r. A.D. 346-375) expanded his territory southward from his base in the Han River basin (present day Seoul) to encompass the entire southwestern Korean peninsula in A.D. 369. Although the nature of his southern conquest has been debated by scholars, the conquest itself has rarely been questioned. Upon closer inspection, however, we find that the sole historical source, the Nihon shoki (compiled A.D. 720), does not describe a Paekche conquest but a punitive military expedition from the Japanese archipelago. This account was later used to justify Imperial Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910. This article explores the twisted historiographical journey of this ambiguous passage from an early Japanese hagiography and its transformation from a tool of Japanese imperialism into an unquestioned Korean narrative of Paekche territorial expansion. A critical examination of the original text and the archaeological context of this supposed Paekche invasion into the southwestern Korean peninsula suggests that such a dramatic southern Paekche expansion was unlikely to have taken place as early as the late fourth century A.D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surviving inscriptions from the Korean kingdom of Paekche百濟(ca. C.E. 250-660) are extremely few in number. Recent archaeological discoveries have uncovered an unprecedented cache of Paekche writing in the form of wooden tablets, known as mokkan 木簡, dateable to the period when the kingdom's capital was at Sabi 泗沘(C.E. -660). This article first looks at the distribution of mokkan finds within the Sabi capital and argues that mokkan were one material surface utilized in the context of a multi-faceted written culture that included other media such as paper and stone. This article proposes that because wood was a relatively cheap, reusable, and disposable medium, mokkan became the material surface of choice for the acquisition of literacy and experimentation with Sinographic script. This meant that mokkan were not only a space for learning individual characters (calligraphic practice), but also for practicing composing sentences according to the rules of Sinitic syntax and in established Sinitic literary forms (composition practice). As a result, mokkan offer a unique window into the development of literary writing among Paekche elites during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. This article explores four examples of Paekche mokkan containing inscriptions that fall into the category of "composition practice," and argues that these compositions suggest literary form was an increasingly valued component of inscriptive practice in Paekche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keyhole-shaped tombs were originally thought to only exist on the Japanese archipelago and to mark the hegemony of the early Japanese Empire. The discovery of keyholeshaped tombs on the southwestern Korean peninsula in the Yŏngsan River basin reignited the debate on the nature of the relationship between early "Korean" and "Japanese" polities between the fourth--seventh centuries CE. Questions about the identity of those buried in the "Korean" keyhole-shaped tombs became a hot topic: Were they Paekche? Japanese or Wa? Or Mahan? These tombs only appeared for a single generation in the late fifth--early sixth century in a region that was quickly adopting influences from Paekche and the Japanese archipelago until the region was absorbed by Paekche by the early sixth century. Based on the limited textual evidence, I argue that Paekche's move south in 475 and the instability of the Yamato court in the late fifth and early sixth centuries created opportunities for the local elites in the Yŏngsan River basin to make connections with both Paekche, Yamato, and other regional elites in northern Kyushu to create an eclectic and multicultural environment that gave rise not only to keyhole-shaped tumuli but also to other burial innovations in the Yŏngsan River basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms), exchanges between the kingdoms of Koguryŏ and Silla commenced with military engagements in the middle of the third century. The broader interregional circumstances of the time, evidenced by both historical and archaeological data, make such an early encounter between these two polities highly unlikely. In this paper I examine data from historical and archaeological contexts to identify contradictions in accounts of the mid-third-century circumstances of the Korean peninsula, demonstrating the anomalous nature of the early depictions of Koguryo-Silla relations found in the Samguk sagi. Further, I will discuss how the issue at hand points to a much more pervasive problem with the early chronology of the Silla records in the Samguk sagi, demanding a considerable degree of caution for scholars who use that resource for the study of the history of the Korean peninsula. Lastly, I will discuss briefly how current trends in Korean academia (involving forces that are not limited to the academic realm) pose a challenge for an open and critical evaluation of the chronology of the Samguk sagi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recapitulates some old evidence for the Japonic linguistic substratum in Silla and Paekche in and for the lack of thereof in Koguryǒ. It also introduces some new evidence for the same linguistic distribution. The new evidence for Koguryǒ comes mainly from words recorded in Chinese dynastic histories and from additional Korean loanwords identified in Manchu, the new evidence for Paekche from Liang shu, while the new evidence for Silla is based on the analysis of Silla placenames recorded in the Samguk sagi, which are traditionally considered to be opaque. The present article identifies a number of them as Japonic. Finally, I present the Japonic etymology for the former name of Chejudo island, T'amna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]