Empire · 1392–1897 · East Asia

Joseon

Also known as Korea

General Yi Seong-gye overthrew Goryeo in 1392 and founded the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea for five centuries from its new capital, Hanyang, today's Seoul. Joseon adopted Neo-Confucianism as its guiding philosophy, governing through a scholar-bureaucracy selected by examinations and dominated by the yangban aristocracy, while Buddhism lost its privileges.

King Sejong the Great sponsored science and in 1443 created Hangul, a simple phonetic alphabet. Joseon survived devastating Japanese invasions in 1592 to 1598, when Admiral Yi Sun-sin's turtle ships won famous victories, and Manchu invasions in the 1620s and 1630s, after which it became a tributary of the Qing and limited foreign contact, earning the name Hermit Kingdom. Forced open by Japan in 1876, it became the Korean Empire in 1897 and was annexed by Japan in 1910.

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Years

1392–1897

Capital

Hanyang (Seoul)

Greatest extent

1450, about 220,000 km²

Region

East Asia

The whole peninsula up to the Yalu and Tumen rivers