Baekje Absorbs Mahan

King Geunchogo marched south, conquering the remaining Mahan states down to the south coast of Jeolla.

Mahan, once the largest of the Three Han, was made up of 54 small states. Baekje grew out of one of them and absorbed its neighbours one by one, starting from the Han River basin. Around 369 Geunchogo is thought to have pushed south as far as the Yeongsan River.

The campaign is not in the Samguk sagi; it is reconstructed from a Nihon shoki entry (the conquest of Chimmi-darye) reread as Geunchogo’s southern expedition. Some scholars hold that local powers burying their dead in large jar coffins survived in the Yeongsan basin until about the 6th century.