Source of iron and bronze technology on the continent

The role of the Korean peninsula at the time as a source of iron is recorded in the Chinese histories such as Sanguo ji:

“Pyonhan produces iron. Han, Ye and Ancient Japan [Wa] all come to buy it. Iron is used for buying and selling and Pyonhan also supplies iron to the two Chinese commanderies of Lelang and Daifang.”  

Many iron objects, both weapons and tools, from the tombs of this period have been discovered but experts find it difficult to tell whether they are Chinese or Korean products. 

The Chinese records suggest that iron technology was introduced from China into Korea through the establishment of Chinese commanderies in the north of the Korean peninsula. And until recently, most experts believed that ironworking in East Asia was introduced via that route at least before the 4th century BC since full-scale usage of ironware was seen in China. Chinese iron technology was already advanced by this time –  China’s oldest excavated iron foundries on the Yangtze River date to the 7th century B.C.

Korean experts, on the other hand, believed that indigenous development of iron technology in the south happened before the commanderies were established, beginning around the time of the founding of the Chosun state. The Han Chinese had attacked Chosun as part of its expansionist policy and in its search for more sources of salt and iron. 

Russian archaeologists as well, have maintained that iron technology came into central Asia at a relatively early time, when the inhabitants began to use ironware without first passing through the Bronze Age.

Recent events have clarified the history of iron technology. Archaeologists have recently discovered another source of Korean ironworking technology apart from the Chinese one. 

In 2007, 2000 artifacts were excavated from the Barabash-3 settlement site, including earthen vessels and nine iron artifacts, such as an ax and an arrowhead. (Barabash village is 70km away from the border between Korea and Russia in a direction of Vladivostok.)

Among those artifacts, the excavated ironware is made of gray cast iron, which predates the Chinese ironwork by 2 to 3 centuries. Scholars of the history of iron technology had previously believed that cast iron first appeared in China as gray iron. (Gray iron, which is made by adding graphite, requires more sophisticated technology than white iron.) This technology first appeared during the 2nd century BC in China and had spread all over the country by the 1st century BC.

 Archaeologists have recently finished excavating at Barabash an iron manufacturing workshop from sometime between the 7th and 5th centuries BC.  Nearby the prehistoric iron manufacturing site,  artifacts from the Bohai culture (or Parhae) related to those in the Korean peninsula were discovered in two places. The experts found when examining the iron relics, that stone axes had already been replaced by iron axes at this period. Archaeologists also uncovered a crescent-shaped stone knife (半月形石刀; 반월형석도), a relic that marks the rice-growing culture on Korean peninsula.  There were signs at recently excavated site that the workers destroyed on purpose their iron manufacturing workshop  when they migrated elsewhere.

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In the far north, the Puyo (Fuyu in Chinese) people famous for exporting horses to the Chinese, then located between the Xianbei and Koguryo had peaked in power in the 1st century A.D. but surrendered to Koguryo in A.D. 493.  At the Puyo capital at Jilin, excavation of the Mao’ershan and Laoheshan cemeteries brought the discoveries of gold earrings and bronze cauldrons with pierced stands. These are thought indicate the Puyo culture as the early source of metalwork (as well as ceramics) technology for Korea of the Three Kingdoms period. 

The earliest bronzes are the “Liaoning daggers” found both in Liaoning in northeast China and in Korea, but the earliest of the daggers found at Shuangfang, eastern Liaoning date from the 13th -11th century B.C. and are found in the Liaodong peninsula in the Bohai bay area and in Korea, but nowhere south of the Great Wall of China. Between the 8th to 4th centuries, early types of Liaoning bronze daggers were found at several Korean sites but they are not thought to have been made in Korea because of the absence of moulds.

Sometime in the 4th century however, around the time of the expansion of the northern Chinese state of Yan into the Liaodong peninsula, Daggers with the early Liaoning blade shape but with a notch win a part of the hilt were found in the southwest at Songguk-ri and are thought to have been produced in the south, along with the bronze spear-heads and fan-shaped axes which were definitely being produced in the south as their stone moulds have been discovered. At this time, slender daggers came to be produced and original shapes of bronze objects are seen from this period onwards. 

The Korean indigenous bronze culture in the southwest of the peninsula is believed to have taken off during the 3rd century with a great many Korean-style slender daggers being produced in the Kum river valley in southwest Korea.

The 2nd century B.C. was a time of a great increase in Korean bronze production and many moulds have been discovered in the southwest, particularly in the Yongsan river valley. Not just bronze daggers, but also spear-heads, halberds (with narrower blades than Chinese ones), mirrors with fine geometric designs, sword-sheaths, horse-and tiger-shaped bronze belt hooks and jingle bells and pommel rattles that have come to be distinct marks of Korean bronze culture. It is thought that this was the period that Korean-style bronze weapons and mirrors were brought over to Kyushu in Japan.