Overview of the Current Research State on the History and Culture of the Gaya Confederacy

   This article presents a review of the current state of research on the history and culture of the Gaya confederacy, which engaged in centuries-long rivalry with Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE) in the territory of present-day Gyeongsang in the Republic of Korea. The history of the Gaya confederacy was marginalized due to the dominance of Silla, reflected in the “Samguk sagi”, which primarily focuses on the histories of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, largely ignoring the significance of Gaya. In Japanese chronicles such as the “Nihon shoki”, the Gaya confederacy is depicted as a territory under the control of Yamato state of ancient Japan. These descriptions, based on the accounts of fleeing Baekje aristocrats and colonial prejudices of Japan, do not consider its actual history. After World War II, American military governments in Japan and Korea initiated a review of Japanese and Korean history textbooks, eliminating aggressive and discriminatory narratives. However, instead of restoring historical justice, there was an ignoring of the Gaya confederacy, exacerbated by the lack of information available to Korean historians. The situation began to change in the 1970^s with the start of excavations of Gaya tombs by Korean archaeologists. The artifacts discovered, comparable in quality to those found in Silla, laid the foundation for new research on the Gaya confederacy, correcting previous inaccuracies based solely on textual sources. As a result, new in-depth studies of the history and culture of the Gaya confederacy
became possible.

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