Wiman Joseon

Wiman Joseon
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese衛滿朝鮮
Simplified Chinese卫满朝鲜
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinWèimǎn Cháoxiǎn
Korean name
Hangul위만조선
Hanja衛滿朝鮮
Transcriptions
Revised RomanizationWiman Joseon
McCune–ReischauerWiman Chosŏn

Wiman Joseon (194–108 BC) was a dynasty of Gojoseon. It began with Wiman's (Wei Man) seizure of the throne from Gija Joseon's King Jun and ended with the death of King Ugeo who was a grandson of Wiman. Apart from archaeological data, the main source on this historical period comes from chapter 115 of Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.[1] Wiman was originally a Chinese military leader from the Kingdom of Yan under the Han dynasty.[2][3][4][5][6]

  1. ^ Sima & Watson 1993, pp. 225–230.
  2. ^ Peterson & Margulies 2009, p. 6: "The term was used again by a refugee from the Han dynasty named Wiman, who about 200 B.C.E. set up a kingdom in Korea called Wiman Choson."
  3. ^ Cotterell 2011, Imperial Crisis: The Failure of the Later Han: "The earliest documented event in Korean history involves China. After an unsuccessful rising against the first Han emperor Gaozu, the defeated rebels sought refuge beyond the imperial frontier and one of them Wiman, took control of Choson, a Korean state in the north of the peninsula."
  4. ^ Kim 2012, p. 10: "For instance, Wiman, a refugee from the Yan dynasty, which then existed around present-day Beijing, led his band of more than 1,000 followers into exile in Old Chosŏn in the early second century bc."
  5. ^ Tennant 1996, p. 18: "Retaliation by the Han then brought in refugees from Yan, the most notable of whom was a war lord, Weiman ('Wiman'in Korean), who somewhere about 200 BC led his followers into the territory held by Choson."
  6. ^ Xu 2007, p. 220: "Here, Wiman was described as a "Gu Yanren 故燕人"or a person from former Yan. It is confusing because there were two Yans around this period. The first was the Yan state, which was one of the seven states during the Warring States period, and the second was the vassal state of Yan of the Han dynasty."