고구려의 ‘부여’ 계승과 그 실체

초록

This article critically reexamines prevailing interpretations that reduce Goguryeo’s “Buyeo succession” to a mythological fiction or a later political rhetoric, and analyzes how Goguryeo perceived Buyeo as a historical entity and how this perception was concretized in the process of state formation and institutional consolidation. To this end, it examines the character of the Buyeo-origin tradition embedded in Goguryeo’s foundation myths and conducts a comparative analysis of the Goguryeo Annals of the Samguk sagi, Chinese historical records, and epigraphic materials such as the Gwanggaeto Stele and the Moduru epitaph. As a result, this study demonstrates that the “Buyeo” referred to by Goguryeo did not consistently denote a single political entity, but rather functioned as a conceptual framework encompassing different political realities and layers of memory-such as Northern Buyeo and Eastern Buyeo-depending on period and context. It further argues that, amid the decline of Buyeo from the third to the fifth centuries and Goguryeo’s northward expansion, Buyeo-affiliated political groups and populations were gradually absorbed and integrated into Goguryeo’s ruling order, and that Buyeo’s political and institutional traditions exerted a certain influence on the reorganization and advancement of the Goguryeo state system. In this regard, the “Buyeo succession” of Goguryeo should be understood not as a simple genealogical claim or a symbolic narrative, but as a historically grounded process of perception and integration formed through dynamic historical change.

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