Korea resists first Mongol invasion

1232

The Goryeo court, pressed by a Mongol army, evacuated the king and bureaucracy to the island of Ganghwa just off the peninsula. From this refuge, invisible to steppe cavalry without a navy, Korea would defy Mongol demands for decades while the mainland burned. The court commissioned the carving of eighty thousand wooden printing blocks of the Buddhist Tripitaka as a prayer for divine deliverance.