Projecting Power: Goryeo, the Mobile Court, and the Hunt in Eurasian Empire, 13th–14th Centuries

How do we locate Korea in the Global Middle Ages? How did the Mongol Empire (1206-1368)–and Inner Asia more broadly–shape the Korean peninsula and the kingdom of Goryeo’s (918-1392) global connections during the 13th and 14th centuries? Can we speak of a premodern Hallyu, a“Korean wave,” driven by networks of connectivity? In response, my first monograph project utilizes the idea of political mobility as a practice of power to investigate the synergy between the Goryeo and Mongol courts in the peninsula’s larger integration into the Mongol Eurasian world. The opening chaptersexamine how Goryeo adopted the mobile court form and the hunt in adapting to the distinctly Inner Asian world of Mongol imperial politics. I systematically review the Goryeo and Yuan dynastic records of the Yuanshi, Goryeosa, and Goryeosa jeolyo for instances of royal courtly mobility and hunting activities. I contextualize them with contemporary Persian chronicles, Goryeo Chinese textbooks, and European travelogues. I argue that Goryeo engaged in unprecedented political mobility by dispatching envoys and even the royal court itself to fulfill its obligation for physical presence at the itinerant Mongol imperial court. Goryeo further adopted an Inner Asian hunting tradition that modulated and sustained its relationship with the Mongol Empire. Through this process of adaptation, Goryeo leveraged new patterns of political mobility to project its own power and interests into the heart of the imperium. Second, Goryeo internalized courtly itinerance and the hunt domestically to augment royal power vis-à-vis landed bureaucratic powerholders, project power over domestic geographies, and manage crises of invasion. In all these respects, Goryeo displayed a mode of political mobility that was characteristic of the broader Eurasian landscape and yet idiosyncratic in its domestic application. The lecture concludes with a reflection on how this core political mechanism facilitated the global dissemination of Goryeo’s material culture through objects–ginseng, paper, and celadon.