Southern Expansion
In 472, King Gaero of Baekje sent a letter to the emperor of Northern Wei. He stated that he was having trouble interacting with Wei because of frequent Goguryeo intervention, thus calling for military action against Goguryeo.
King Jangsu sought for the chance to invade the southern kingdoms of Korea, Baekje and Silla, while the Chinese kingdoms of Northern Wei and the Song Dynasty were fighting each other. As a result, King Jangsu secretly planned to attack Baekje, which despite its losses against Gwanggaeto of Goguryeo's invasions, still held a significant powerbase in the peninsula. To disarm Baekje, he sent a Buddhist monk named Dorim. Dorim went to King Gaero's court, with the secret objective of corrupting the country before the invasion of Goguryeo. King Gaero began to favor Dorim, and played baduk (the board game) with him every day, and the was able to talk Gaero into spending large sums of money on construction projects, which weakened the national treasury.
In 475, King Jangsu launched a full-scale invasion from both land and sea against the now politically unstable kingdom of Baekje. Dorim was successful in gaining information about Baekje and consequently King Gaero was not at all prepared for the assault formulated by Goguryeo and King Jangsu. With momentum now in his favor, Jangsu then proceeded toward the capital and easily captured the city of Wiryesong, and slew King Gaero while Dorim safely escaped from the city. Soon after, King Jangsu burnt the capital to the ground, along with several cities that he conquered from Baekje (Baekje moved its capital to Ungjin (present day Gongju) to keep the kingdom alive). The war gave Goguryeo more or less total control of the Han River valley, the region essential to commercial and military power in the Korean Peninsula; Baekje was able to be a superior nation on the peninsula because it had the control of the region for almost 500 years, but since the ruler of the area changed, it lost the control of the peninsula.
After successfully concluding his campaign in Baekje, the Goguryean King then turned his attention toward the second peninsular kingdom of Silla and with its addition, erected a stone monument in present-day Chungju, praising the accomplishments of his father and himself. This monument marked the border between the southern kingdoms and Goguryeo and remains in the same site.
Read more about this topic: Jangsu Of Goguryeo
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