Settled: Choe Chung-su is dead on 1 January 1200.
He fought in the coup of April to May 1196 and shared in the Ten Articles. Soon after Sinjong's accession he asked for his daughter to be crown princess to Wang Yeong, drove the princess then in the palace (a Wang-clan girl b. 1185, Chinese Wikipedia) out, and fixed a wedding day; the king was unwilling and Chung-heon forbade it; Chung-su pushed his own mother aside, lost the fight with Chung-heon's men and was killed by pursuers at Papyeong (坡平 county, modern Paju) while fleeing; his head was sent to Gaegyeong, and Chung-heon is said to have wept, 'we only meant to take him; why kill him so fast?' (Chinese Wikipedia).
The Chinese page gives no month and places the story before Manjeok's plot (Sinjong 1, 1198); the English infobox says 1197; the English narrative's 'Sinjong's 3rd year, 1200' is out of order with every other account. We take: late 1197 or early 1198, exact month not pinned. The English page's infobox birth-and-death years (1151 to 1197) are the same reading.
Who he is
- Name
- Choe Chung-su
- Title
- Dead before 1 January 1200: formerly co-leader of the coup and a general of the capital
- Born
- about 1151 (English infobox)
- Family
- Younger brother of Choe Chung-heon
- Confidence
- medium
English, Chinese Wikipedia
What it holds
- Nothing: his household and followers were purged.
How things stand that morning
Dead. His affair is why the crown prince hates the Choe brothers and why Choe Chung-heon has no sharer in power.
Where the sources disagree
- English Choe Chung-heon text puts Chung-su's death in Sinjong's 3rd year (1200); its infobox puts it in 1197; the Chinese page puts it soon after Sinjong's accession: we adopt 1197 to early 1198.
Evidence: Two modern pages agree on the sequence and disagree on the year of the English narrative: we decide by the order of events in the Chinese page and by the English infobox.
On the map: No land drawn.
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
- Choe Chung-heon (English Wikipedia)
- Cui Zhongxian 崔忠獻 (Chinese Wikipedia)
- Huijong of Goryeo (English Wikipedia)
- 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.