Province, circuit or island group · Goryeo under King Sinjong and the Choe house · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Gyeonggi

Gyeonggi is the capital district round Gaegyeong, set apart as a district in 1018 [not yet checked against the source].

It takes in the old Gaeseong lands, Jangdan, Paju and the hills to the Imjin, with Ganghwa island at the river mouth and the capital's river port Byeokrando; Heungwangsa, Gukcheongsa and Yeongtongsa stand in it, and the royal tombs lie in its hills. Its land is where the officials' stipend lands lie [not yet checked against the source], and its people supply the capital with fuel and food. In 1200 it is the best-governed and the most heavily taxed ground in the kingdom, and it is Choe's backyard.

There is no assembly of the circuit. The tax is rice, cloth and local goods by county, carried by the river granaries and by sea, and the clerk families (hyangni) of each county keep the registers.

Who holds it

Title
The Gaegyeong governor and the district officers (names not known)
Confidence
low

No source we could read names the officer in 1200

Overlord

The king at Gaegyeong, in fact Choe Chung-heon

What it holds

  • Gaegyeong and its hills
  • Ganghwa island
  • Byeokrando and the Yeseong mouth
  • The great temples of the capital district

How things stand that morning

Quiet. The capital is calm; the slave plot of 1198 was in the city and is over.

Threats

  • A palace plot against Choe
  • A rising of the capital's slaves, as in 1198

Places of note

  • Gaegyeong: The capital
  • Ganghwa: Island county
  • Byeokrando: The river port

Where the sources disagree

  • The campaign board's 'Gyeonggi (capital region)' is the same district; its Namgyeong and Beopjusa belong to Yanggwang in 1200.

Evidence: The names and the make-up of the circuits are from the Chinese Wikipedia article on Goryeo's divisions and the regional brief; the details of 1200 are recollection.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: Polygon drawn from modern districts; the edge towards Yanggwang is approximate.

Primary sources for Goryeo

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Essentials of the History of Goryeo, Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (1452). The chronological companion to the Goryeosa, finished a year after it and drawing on the same lost records, sometimes with entries the Goryeosa omits. Read online
  • Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Bi Yuan (畢沅), completed by Feng Jiwu after his death (late eighteenth century, finished after 1801, from Song and Yuan sources). A Qing scholar's continuous month-by-month chronicle of the Song and Yuan centuries, compiled from the Song shi, the Liao, Jin and Yuan histories, Li Tao, Li Xinchuan and other Song sources. Read online
  • History of Goryeo, Jeong Inji (鄭麟趾), Kim Jong-seo (金宗瑞) and the Joseon history office (completed 1451, from the Goryeo veritable records and earlier drafts). The official history of Goryeo, compiled by the Joseon state from the lost Goryeo veritable records. Read online
  • History of the Jin, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office, with Ouyang Xuan among the chief compilers (1343 to 1344, from the Jin veritable records and the Jin national history). The official history of the Jurchen empire that ruled north China and Manchuria in 1200. Read online
  • History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
  • Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
  • Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
  • Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country (Yi Gyu-bo), Yi Gyu-bo (李奎報) (poems and prose from the 1190s to 1241; collected and printed by his son in 1241, with a supplement in 1242). The collected poems, letters, memorials and essays of a Goryeo scholar who was thirty-two and still seeking office in 1200. Read online

2 more in the sources library for Korea and Japan.

Sources and studies

  1. Goryeo administrative divisions 高麗行政區劃 (Chinese Wikipedia)
  2. Sheet brief KJA_BRIEF.md and the OMNIA board notes (leads, not sources)
  3. Goryeosa, Goryeosa jeoryo, Samguk yusa, Lee Ki-baik, Shultz: not opened in this run (Wikisource could not be reached); facts marked recollection come from these as remembered

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.