A Review of the Aspect of the Yuan Dynasty Kings’(諸王) Exile to Goryeo

This study examines the exile of the kings of the Yuan Empire as recorded in Goryeo history. The surviving records from Goryeo are very short and provide only bland information about who went into exile, when, and where. The “why” of the exile is less specific or not recorded at all, so we need to look at the political situation along with the records of the Yuan Empire, such as the Yuan History, to understand or estimate the reasons why such a high-profile figure as the Kings went into exile in Goryeo. In the Yuan empire, the Kings was a member of the “golden clan” of Chinggis Khan and was not a “commoner”, so the exile of the Kings to a foreign country(Goryeo) was often the result of political turbulence or disturbances within the empire. In the cases analyzed in this article, except for a few cases where the reason for the exile is not clear, we can see that all of them were involved in rebellions within the empire or were involved in succession disputes. During Qubilai’s reign, rebellions challenging his authority often broke out, especially in the northern regions, and Sirigi himself led a rebellion, while the kings who participated in the Nayan-Qadan rebellion of the late 1280s and early 1290s also left their mark on Goryeo history through their exile. After Qubilai’s death, the succession dispute over the position of Qa’an(emperor) within the Yuan empire became increasingly intense, and the Kings involved in the dispute often went into exile in Goryeo. Examining the exile of Kings of the Yuan Empire, which remains very fragmentary in Goryeo history, in connection with Chinese records such as the Yuan History, is an inevitable task in order to understand the background of the emergence of Goryeo records about exile of Yuan Kings. It is also a task that allows us to more specifically confirm and supplement the vague accounts of exile to the sea islands in Chinese records through Goryeo history. While this article focuses on the exile of a Kings of Yuan Empire and compares the records of both Goryeo and Yuan, this methodology can also be applied to examine various phenomena or figures that emerged due to the specificity of the Goryeo-Yuan relationship.