About the First Koguryo Capital

Abstract

The article presents the formation problem of the early Koguryo state’s capital in the early medieval time. This subject has not been a particularly hot issue in Russian historiography. The main Korean and Chinese written and epigraphic sources were considered to resolve this background about the early capital. It categorically said, that in the 1st century BC, Koguryo developed as an established real state with an obligatory element as the capital. At the same time, information about the localization and structure of the early capital is uninformative and convoluted. Therefore, written sources were supplemented by archaeological data on the Wunu mountain city located in the Liaoning province, since in historiography, this site is correlated with the location of the first Koguryo capital. According to its characteristics, it represents a sparsely populated fortified settlement located in a hard-to-reach mountain valley on top of a high mountain. Different locations of the surrounding area are considered as the location of the valley settlement (including Xiàgǔchéngzi plain city). Several early Koguryo cemeteries were located in the neighbourhood. The Koguryo state system was finally organized only after several centuries, thus, the location indicated in written resources as the early capital, should be attributed as the leaders' military centre of the early Koguryo population group.