Choi Yong was born in 1316 in Ch'orwon, Kangwon Province. His beginnings were humble, and his lifestyle would best be described as spartan. He paid little heed to his own clothes and meals, and eschewed fine garments or other comforts even when he became famous and could easily have enjoyed them. He disliked men who desired expensive articles, and he viewed simplicity as a virtue. His motto, inherited from his father, was “Do not be covetous of gold”.

Such a man was well suited for military service, and Choi quickly gained the confidence of both his men and his king during numerous battles with Japanese pirates who began raiding the Korean coast around 1350.

At 36 years of age he became a national hero when he successfully put down a rebellion by Cho, Il-Shin after his insurgents had surrounded the palace and killed many officials and Cho had proclaimed himself king. Then, in 1355, an armed rebellion took place in the troubled Mongol Yuan Dynasty that occupied part of China. Choi Yong was sent to help the Mongols quash the rebellion, and his success in nearly thirty different battles won him even more fame and favour at home. Upon returning to Korea, he dutifully reported to King Kongmin the internal problems experienced by the dying Yuan Dynasty, which gave the king the idea that the time was right to reclaim some of the northern territories previously lost to the Mongols. Choi commanded his troops well and recovered many towns west of the Yalu River, to the great delight of his king.

He served briefly as the Mayor of Pyongyang, where his efforts at increasing crop production and mitigating famine won him even more attention as a national hero. Then, in 1363, he distinguished himself further when a powerful government official named Kim, Yon-An tried to take control of the government and Choi was forced to defeat a 10,000-man Mongol force that attacked Koryo in support of the rebellion.

Meanwhile, following a dream that he thought predicted that a Buddhist monk would save his life, King Kongmin promoted a monk named Shin Ton to a lofty position within his court, and allowed him considerable influence. Shin Ton , though, was ruthless and corrupt, and Choi – who vigorously opposed corruption in the kingdom – found himself at odds with him. Shin Ton engineered false accusations of misconduct against Choi that resulted in a punishment of six years in exile, and brought him dangerously close to the death penalty. When Shin Ton died, though, Choi Yong was restored to his previous position and was immediately asked to prepare a fleet to fight the Japanese pirates and eliminate the remaining Mongol forces on Cheju Island. He engaged the Mongols first, who fought tenaciously, but Choi's forces eventually freed the island. Then, in 1376, the Japanese pirates advanced into Koryo and captured the city of Kongju. Chong, Mong-Chu (Po-Eun) secured assistance from the Japanese Shogun to eliminate these pirates, but the Japanese were of little help and General Choi Yong and his subordinate Yi, Sung-Gae managed to rout and eventually defeat them and reclaim Kongju.

The Ming Dynasty in China had become powerful during the 14th Century, and had driven back the Mongols and occupied part of north-eastern Koryo. In 1388, General Yi, Sung-Gae was ordered to use his armies to push the Ming armies out of the Korean peninsula. Knowing of the support he enjoyed both from high-ranking government officials and the general populace, however, he decided to return to the capital, Kaesong, and secure control of the government instead of possibly destroying his army by attacking the Chinese. When Yi returned, the loyal Choi Yong put up a gallant fight at the palace but was overwhelmed. Records differ as to what happened next, although it seems likely that he was banished to Koyang and later beheaded.

Choi Yong is remembered as a great general who was wholeheartedly devoted to the protection of his country. He risked his life many times for Koryo, and his unswerving loyalty eventually cost him his life.

Yon-Gae Somoon was a famous general who lived in 7th century Koguryo.

Koguryo was an aggressive and warlike nation with wide territories. It had developed a horse-riding culture and placed great emphasis on its military. These circumstances led to the formation of the Koguryo “Sunbae”, an organisation of strong warriors that served to protect and strengthen the state and its centralised authoritarian ruling system. Both Yon-Gae Somoon and his son Namsang were known to have been members of the Sunbae.

In 612, Sui China had attempted to invade Koguryo, and would have done so if it had not been for the efforts of the great General Ul-Ji Moon Dok. The Sui Dynasty in China was overthrown by the Tang Dynasty in 618, and the new regime held greedy expansionist ambitions. When Emperor Taizong took over the Tang throne in 627 he dispatched troops to northern Koguryo to dismantle Koguryo monuments at the sites of Sui Dynasty soldiers' mass graves.

In 642, General Yon-Gae Somoon seized power from King Jianwu, and over the next few years the Chinese attacks grew more and more successful so that by 645 they had conquered a number of fortresses and towns, including Liaodong, the main base on the frontline. Taizong was serious enough about his conquest to have had 500 ships built to support it. In 645, though, the Tang offensive reached the fortress at Ansi.

At the fortress the army and general population of Koguryo, led by Yon-Gae, made a great stand and fiercely confronted the invading Tang, managing to resist the concentrated attack for 60 days. They fought valiantly, injuring Emperor Taizong himself, and the combination of their valour and the inclement winter forced the Chinese to retreat.

Taizong continued his campaign against Koguryo for two years, but was unable to deal the killer blow and, in 647, he withdrew. His death in 649 and the subsequent confusion in the Tang Dyasty allowed Yon-Gae to consolidate his forces and retake much of the territory conquered by the Tang.

After the death of Yon-Gae Somoon in 654, bitter dissent gradually began to arise amongst the leading Koguryo generals. When Silla and Tang came to learn of this internal turmoil, they took advantage and attacked Koguryo. After resisting the attack for a year, Pyongyang fell and the Kingdom grew weaker and weaker, until it was eventually destroyed in 668.

It is not known exactly when or where this great man was born, and unfortunately it is also not known exactly when he died. The best that can be said is that he was born in the mid-6th century and died in the early 7th century, sometime after 618.

He was born and raised in the kingdom of Koguryo, in a turbulent era of Korean history. It was a powerful and warlike kingdom, constantly warring with its neighbours, Silla to the southeast and Paekche to the southwest. The balance of power was roughly equal between the three kingdoms, however, and it took the injection of an outside influence to tip the balance. This influence was supplied by the kingdoms’ much larger western neighbor, China. In 589 China had been united under the Sui Dynasty, and this new dynasty, hungry for power, would be the deciding factor in the struggles between Paekche, Koguryo and Silla. This was the background for Ul-Ji Moon Dok as he grew up.

He was an educated man, and eventually became a Minister of Koguryo, with skills in both the political and military sciences. He was called upon to render service as a military leader, however, when the very existance of the kingdom became threatened by alliances between its rival neighbors.

The Sui Dynasty was suspicious of Koguryo and saw its aggressive ways as threatening, so in 612 Sui Emperor Yang Je decided to subdue this dangerous neighbour and prepared to attack. He mustered an army of over one million men and personally led them against Koguryo. They quickly overran Koguryo outposts, camped on the banks of the Liao River and prepared to bridge it. General Ul-Ji Moon Dok was called upon to assist in the defence of the nation, and so he prepared to meet the superior Sui forces with a strategy of false retreat, deception and attack.

After the Sui forces crossed the Liao River, a small contingent was sent to attack the Koguryo city of Liaotung, but General Ul-Ji sent his forces to meet them there and drove them out. As the rainy season progressed, the Sui forces tried other probing attacks, but these were not really of any significance, as they were mainly biding their time until the rainy season passed.

When the rains stopped, Yang Je moved his forces to the banks of the Yalu River in northwestern Korea and prepared for a major assault. General Ul-Ji visited the Chinese camp under the pretense of surrender in an attempt to discover any Sui weaknesses. Emperor Yang Je listened to General Ul-Ji and allowed him to leave the camp, but shortly after changed his mind and set out after him. But it was too late – the general had discovered what he needed to defeat the force. He had learned that the Sui forces were short of provisions and had overstretched their supply lines, and so he decided to pursue a strategy of gradual retreat, hoping to lure his enemy deeper and deeper into hostile territory. He drew the Sui on, fighting a kind of guerrilla warfare, picking when and where he fought and allowing the Sui forces to feel as though victory was close at hand, all the while luring them deeper into his trap.

A Sui advance force of over 300,000 men was sent to take the city of Pyongyang. General Ul-Ji continued to lure them closer and closer to the city, but led them to a strategic point where he could strike. His forces attacked from all sides, driving the Sui troops back in utter confusion. His troops pursued the retreating army, slaughtering them almost at will, so that it is said that only 2,700 troops successfully made it back to the main body of forces. This was the great battle of Salsu, and it has come to be known as one of the most glorious military triumphs in Korea's history. Following this defeat, winter began to set in and the Sui forces, short on provisions, were forced to return home.

The Sui Dynasty was beginning to disintegrate and Yang Je decided that he urgently needed to expand his empire in order to regain power, but the two more desperate attacks on Koguryo by Yang Je following spring met with similar disaster, and eventually internal rebellion in China forced the Sui to give up its desires on Koguryo. By 618, the relatively short-lived Sui Dynasty was replaced by the Tang Dynasty. General Ul-Ji Moon Dok's strategy and leadership had saved Koguryo from the Chinese.

Probably the most distinguished military leader of the Koguryo period and one of the most well-known generals in Korean history, General Ul-Ji Moon Dok's leadership and tactical acumen was the decisive factor in saving Koguryo from destruction at the hands of the invading Chinese. He faced forces of far superior numbers and not only turned them back but was able to pursue and destroy them with such vigor that they were not able nor inclined to return. His life was filled with enough spectacular success to earn him a permanent place among Korea's most remembered. He is still celebrated as a great Korean hero, and a main street in downtown Seoul, Ulji-ro, is named after him.

Moon-Moo was born Prince Bubmin, and was the son of King Mu-Yal, 29th king of the Silla Dynasty. He took the name Moon-Moo when he succeeded his father to the throne in 661.

He ascended to the Silla throne in the midst of the long conflict against Paekche and Koguryo, shortly after General Ge-Baek and Paekche had been defeated at Puyo by General Kim, Yoo-Sin. The first years of his reign were spent trying to defeat Koguryo, following an abortive attempt in 661. Finally, in 667, he ordered another attack which led, in 668, to the defeat of Koguryo. After the small isolated pockets of resistance were eliminated, King Moon-Moo was the first ruler ever to look upon the Korean peninsula and see it completely unified.

King Moon-Moo ruled over unified Silla for 20 years, until he fell ill in 681. On his deathbed, he left his last will and testament, and abdicated to his son, Prince Sin-Moon. Before he died he said

“A country should not be without a king at any time. Let the Prince have my crown before he has my coffin. Cremate my remains and scatter the ashes in the sea where the whales live. I will become a dragon and thwart the Japanese invasion.”

King Sin-Moon did as his father asked and scattered his ashes over Daewangam (the Rock of the Great King), a small rocky islet a hundred metres or so off the Korean coast. Moreover, King Sin-Moon built the Gomun Temple (the Temple of Appreciated Blessing) and dedicated it to his father, he built a waterway for the sea dragon to come to and from the sea and land, and he built a pavilion, Eegun, overlooking the islet so that future kings could pay their respects to the great King Moon-Moo.

In a dream, King Moon-Moo and the famous general Kim, Yoo-Sin appeared to King Sin-Moon and told him that blowing on a bamboo flute would calm the heavens and the earth. King Sin-Moon awoke from the dream, rode out to the sea and received the bamboo flute Monposikjuk. It was said that the blowing of the bamboo flute invoked the spirits of King Moon-Moo and General Kim, Yoo-Sin and would push back enemy troops, cure illnesses, bring rain during drought and halt the rains in floods.

Little is known of the early life of Choi, Hyong Ung, other than that he was born in 1520 and that he became a monk. As was common for monks in this time, he travelled from place to place, living in a succession of monasteries. Buddhist monks had been forced to keep a low profile since the end of the Koryo period, as General Yi, Sung-Gae had been forced to eject Buddhism from its state of total permeation of government, in order to gain the support of Neo-Confucian scholar-officials to consolidate his position against his Buddhist political opponents when he overthrew King Gongyang in 1392. This was the beginning of the suppression of Buddhism, which came into full flower during the succeeding Lee Dynasty.

Before ever having tested his hand as a military commander, So-San was a first-rate Seon (Korean Buddhism) master and the author of a number of important religious texts, the most important of which is probably his “Seon gugam”, a guide to Seon practice which is studied by Korean monks even today. Like most monks of the Lee Dynasty, So-San had been initially educated in Neo-Confucian philosophy. Dissatisfied, though, he wandered through the mountain monasteries. Later, after making a name for himself as a teacher, he was made arbiter of the Seon school by queen Munjeong, who was sympathetic towards Buddhism. He soon resigned from this responsibility, returning to the itinerant life, advancing his Seon studies and teaching at monasteries all around Korea.

The mountains where the monasteries were located were dangerous, and so the monks had to learn to defend themselves. So-San recognised that the development of armour made striking and kicking much less effective, but he also noticed that wherever the armour bends, so does the body. He saw that by manipulation of these joints one could defeat an armoured opponent on the battlefield. He also applied this same principle to the use of a rope or belt as a weapon, which he discovered can be wrapped around the body of your attacker, trapping weapons and, when necessary, breaking joints as it wraps. It was used by So-San and the soldiers he trained to immobilise, carry and even kill their opponents. Wrapped around the mouth and nose the rope would prevent the opponent from breathing, bringing about unconsciousness and allowing them to be taken as a prisoner. Many of these techniques were adopted and developed to give birth to the modern art of Hapkido.

At the beginning of the 1590s, Japanese Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, after stabilising Japan during this era of warring nations, made preparations for a large scale invasion of Korea. Korea was unaware of the situation in Japan, however, and was unprepared for the Japanese aggression. In 1592, after rebuffing Japan’s request for aid in conquering China, approximately 200,000 Japanese soldiers invaded Korea, and the Waeran (Japanese War) began. At the beginning of the invasion, King Sonjo fled the capital, leaving a weak, poorly-trained army to defend the country. In desperation he called on Master So-San to organise monks into guerilla units. Even at 73 years of age he managed to recruit and deploy some 5,000 of these warrior monks, who enjoyed some instrumental successes.

At first, the Korean armies suffered repeated defeats, and the Japanese marched north up to Pyongyang and the Hamgyong provinces. At sea, however, the Korean navy, under the command of Admiral Yi, Soon-Sin, enjoyed successive victories. Throughout the country, loyal volunteer armies formed and fought against the Japanese together with the warrior monks and the government armies of Korea.

The presence of So-San’s monks' army, operating out of the Heungguksa temple deep in Mt. Yeongchwisan, was a critical factor in the eventual expulsion of the Japanese invaders in 1593 and again in 1598.

So-San died in 1604 leaving behind some 1,000 disciples, 70 of whom were monks and nuns, and many of whom held a prominent role in the later transmission of Korean Buddhism. One of the most important reasons for the restoration of Buddhism to a position of minimal acceptance in Lee Dynasty Korea was the role of So-San’s monks in repelling the Japanese invasion. So-San is also known for his efforts in the continuation of the project of the unification of Buddhist doctrinal study and practice, and in his works strong influence can be seen from Won-Hyo. He is considered the central figure in the revival of Korean Buddhism, and most major streams of modern Korean Seon trace their lineages back to him through one of his four main disciples, all four of whom were lieutenants of his during the war with Japan.

Se-Jong was born Yi Do on the 15th of May 1397, the third son of Prince Chong-An and a grandson of Taejo (Yi, Sung-Gae), who started the Lee Dynasty in 1392. He was born near the royal palace in the capital Hanyang (now Seoul).

Yi Do’s older brother was in line to become king, which suited him, as the young Yi Do was apparently not concerned with becoming king. He was instead interested from an early age in learning and spent most of his time reading books, although at the age of just 12 he found the time to marry Sim On, a young girl two years older than himself.

Prince Chong-An ascended to the throne in 1400 and took the name Taejong. He watched his young son grow in wisdom as he continued his studies, and by the time Yi Do was 22 years old King Taejong decided to make him Crown Prince and successor to the throne over his older brother. Soon afterward, his father decided to abdicate in favour of his son. Many in the king's court (including Yi Do himself) protested that the young man was not yet ready to shoulder such responsibility, but the king insisted and so in 1418 Yi Do became king and took the name Se-Jong.

King Se-Jong believed that good government could only come when a king recognised and trained talented men and installed them into influential governmental positions to administrate the various branches of government. To this end he established the Chipyonjon (Jade Hall of Scholars), an amalgamation of the Hall of Art and the Hall of Literature that he made sure included an extensive library. King Se-Jong then chose twenty of his most able scholars and made them Masters of Learning, a position that freed them to devote themselves full time to advanced learning. He also set up a system that encouraged local governors throughout the country to report to the king any individuals who distinguished themselves. These individuals were then given the chance to become government officials, or other positions according to their talents.

One of King Se-Jong's goals – the one for which he is most famous – was to make his people more educated by making it easier for them to become literate. At that time the Koreans used the Chinese script to document their spoken language, but Chinese writing consisted of thousands of individual characters that takes significant effort to master. King Se-Jong recognised that this was a barrier to learning, and threw his efforts into developing a system of writing that was simple and effective, and by 1443 he had completed the Hangul alphabet. He was so concerned with its perfection that he kept it for another three years so that he could test and modify it until he was satisfied. There was much resistance to the language, when it was first unveiled, from scholars who thought it would, among other things, limit the scholarly study of the Chinese classics. The king insisted, however, and ordered many of his scholars to begin translating classic books and Buddhist scriptures into Hangul. This greatly increased the ability of the layperson to become educated. In addition, he ordered that books be written that would be of help to the common man, such as the Farmers’ Handbook, which provided guidance on farming methods and techniques to increase production. He also ordered more technical books to be written, such as a complete medical dictionary, and an 85-volume pharmaceutical encyclopaedia that contained medical therapies, acupuncture techniques and herbal prescriptions to treat 959 different diseases.

King Se-Jong also had some impressive political achievements. It was during his reign he was able finally to subjugate the Japanese pirates who had been raiding the Korean coastline for so many years. He extended the territory of Korea as far north as the Yalu River, and, domestically, he tried to control corruption and raise the moral standards of the entire country.

Towards the end of his life, King Se-Jong tragically (and somewhat ironically) became afflicted by a paralysis that prevented him from speaking more than a few words at a time. He later developed a cancer and died in 1450 at the age of 52, after nearly 30 years on the throne.

He is proudly remembered as a king who was concerned for his people and fully committed to their intellectual advancement. Today, the main thoroughfare running north to south in front of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul bears his name. In addition, two holidays are related to him: Hangul Day (9 October) and King Se-Jong Day (15 May).

After Japan occupied Korea in 1910, the country remained part of the Japanese Empire until 1945. Following Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, Korea was liberated from the Japanese. As it was liberated by both Soviet and US forces, the responsibility for overseeing the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Korea was divided between the two sides, and the country was divided along the 38th parallel. The USSR occupied Korea north of this line, the USA occupied the south.

Under the auspices of the UN, a democratic government established the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in 1948, with its capital in Seoul. The Soviets established the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) with its capital in Pyongyang. The peninsula remains divided in this way to this day.

Korea has not been truly free since Japan started to encroach in 1876, and has been divided since 1945, not just in terms of being two separate states - the ideologies and politics of the two countries are also vastly different.

It was the dream of General Choi, Hong Hi to see a unified Korea.