Unified Silla

Unified Silla, also called Later Silla or Greater Silla, is the name given to the Korean kingdom of Silla after it took Goguryeo in 668, an event that closed the Three Kingdoms period. A Silla-Tang alliance had destroyed Baekje a few years earlier, and in the wars of the seventh century Silla annexed the southern part of Goguryeo and so unified the centre and south of the peninsula, while Balhae held the north in the period historians call the Northern and Southern States. The people of Unified Silla thought of themselves as the Samhan-iltong, the unity of the three Han, a phrase the general Kim Yu-sin used in a letter to King Munmu as he lay dying. Munmu is counted as the first monarch of the period, and his successors maintained the same idea: King Sinmun set up nine counties and nine legions to run it. Silla of the unified period lasted 267 years, a kingdom of the ancient Sinosphere, until it fell to Goryeo in 935 under King Gyeongsun.