Inventor who learned to make gunpowder, built cannon at the Hwatong Dogam and burned the pirate fleet at Jinpo
He repeatedly argued that gunpowder was needed against the Japanese pirates, leading to the founding of the Hwatong Dogam in 1377, where he made a range of gunpowder weapons. In 1380 his cannon burned some 500 pirate ships at Jinpo (the Battle of Jinpo). His son Choe Hae-san carried on gunpowder weapons development in Joseon.
From about 1350 Japanese pirates (wokou) raided Goryeo’s coasts and interior year after year; commanders such as Choe Yeong, Choe Mu-seon, Yi Seong-gye and Jeong Ji drove them off, and a new military elite rose in the process.
At Choe Mu-seon’s urging, Goryeo set up an office to make gunpowder and firearms, producing eighteen kinds of weapons, including the daejanggun cannon, for use against the pirates.
A Goryeo fleet under Na Se, Sim Deok-bu and Choe Mu-seon burned some 500 pirate ships at Jinpo with cannon — the first naval battle in Korean history fought with gunpowder artillery.
King Munjong had the hwacha built — a cart that launched rocket arrows (singijeon) or guns all at once.
Thirty-second king of Goryeo, who ordered the Liaodong expedition and was deposed after the Wihwado retreat
General who fought the Red Turbans and Japanese pirates, won at Hongsan in 1376, and was executed after the Wihwado retreat
Founder and first king of Joseon, formerly a general who fought Japanese pirates and the Red Turbans
The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon
From Cheomseongdae to the Daedong yeojido — instruments and maps that measured the sky, kept time, gauged rain and charted the land