It didn't take much effort, but Wei Mingtong finally took all the information about North Korea since the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. And Zhu Qizhen carefully picked out some and handed them to Shi Heng's hand, while scratching angrily according to these materials. "Look, you all see, these things are ironclad evidence."

During the Ming Dynasty, the border between China and North Korea shrank sharply, and when Zhu Yuanzhang was in power, he strongly demanded to take Tieling as the boundary, and as a result, North Korea still regarded the Northern Yuan as the suzerain, and it was not until after the death of Zhu Yuanzhang that Li Chenggui Korea officially paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty. The main body of the border between the Ming Dynasty and Korea was the same as that of later generations, except that the Jianzhou Left Guard on the south bank of the Tumen River was still the territory of the Ming Dynasty at that time.

In the 25th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, the Goryeo general Yi Chenggui ousted the last king of Goryeo, Gong Rang Wang, seized the power of Goryeo, and established a new royal power - the Yi dynasty. The relationship between the Joseon Dynasty and the Ming regime in the early days of the founding of the Joseon Dynasty was of course extremely important in the relations between Korea and China, but the relationship between Korea and the Jurchens occupied an even more important position in the history of Korean diplomatic relations at that time.

Among them, during the reigns of King Taejong, King Sejong, and King Sejo of Joseon, they pursued an active policy of expanding northward, and the northwest and northeast regions of the peninsula where Korea expanded were where the Jurchens lived for generations, so a series of relations occurred between Korea and the Jianju Jurchens, who were the frontier ethnic groups in the Ming Dynasty.

This was an important part of the relations between Joseon and the Ming Dynasty during that period. At the beginning of the establishment of the Li Dynasty, Taizu Li Chenggui pursued the diplomacy of "great things", and served the Ming Dynasty as "Zhengshuo", and paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty, saying: "I should be consistent, sincere in the matter, hundreds of millions of years, Henggong Zhu Li's sincerity", Li Chenggui even "please change the name of the country" to "North Korea";

However, in terms of territory, Li Chenggui continued the northward expansion policy of the Goryeo Dynasty, taking advantage of the unstable rule in the early Ming Dynasty and having no time to take care of the Jurchen region, he intensified his appeasement of the Jurchen tribes, and vigorously expanded his territory to the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula and the Jurchen region in the middle and upper reaches of the Yalu River, forcing the Jurchens in the region to submit to Korea.

The policy towards the Jurchens in the early days of the Li Dynasty inherited the tradition of Wang's Goryeo, which included both the means of suppressing and conquering by force and the policy of granting official positions to recruit An Huairou, so some Jurchens in the former Yuan Dynasty Halan Province (present-day Hamheungnam Wuli in South Hamgyong Province, North Korea) and other jurisdictions successively attached themselves to the Li Dynasty.

"Li Dynasty Records" recorded: "Since the ascending (Li Chenggui) to the throne, the savage chieftains have come to the long term, and they have all come to serve, often wearing bows and swords to enter the guards and conquer." If the Jurchens are the Jurchens, they will be divided into Douman, Wen Meng, Brother Timur, and Huo'er Dou will be mang, and Aha will be out of the ancient ...... And so on also. ascended to the throne and awarded the positions of 10,000 households and 1,000 households, so that Li Doulan recruited Jurchen.

The custom of being haired, wearing the crown belt, changing the behavior of birds and beasts, and learning the teaching of etiquette. Marrying a countryman and serving in the army is tantamount to making up a household, and disgracefully serving the chief, all of whom are willing to be citizens. From the north of Confucius to Jiashan, set up a town to govern civil affairs, to train soldiers, and build schools to train scriptures. The politics of civil and military affairs, so he was completed.

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Stretching for thousands of miles, all of them are included in the edition, with the Douman River as the boundary. As for Guzhou, those who hear the wind and admire righteousness, or come to the court in person, or send their children, or entrust hostages, or ask for orders, or migrate to the mainland, or enter the land, follow one after another......"

On the one hand, Li Chenggui expressed his submission to the Ming, but on the other hand, he was not willing to meet the huge concessions made by the Ming Dynasty - the Ming Dynasty unilaterally ceded all the territory in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula that originally belonged to the Chinese side, from the Han Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, the northern part of the Korean Peninsula was China's territory, and Ming Taizu expressed his gratitude and support for Li Chenggui's overthrow of Wang's Goryeo from the inside, thus supporting an "anti-Yuan pro-Ming." The North Korean regime, and the permanent surname of this region was ceded to the DPRK.

It can be said that the concessions made by the Ming Dynasty for the sake of "peace and security" were the largest in the history of the Chinese dynasties against the Korean side, but despite this, Li Chenggui, who started as a rebel, was still not satisfied, and took advantage of the Jurchens' ignorance of the new dynasty and the cultural similarity of the Korean and Jurchen tribes to vigorously win over and buy the Jurchen tribes, take them as their own, make them filial and loyal to themselves, and try to obtain a kind of "de facto suzerainty of the Jurchen tribes" and gain the ambition of conquering the whole of the northeast.

After Li Chenggui's death, his fifth son Li Fangyuan used conspiracy to overthrow Dingzong, who had reigned for only one year, that is, the throne of Taizong. After King Taizong ascended the throne, on the basis of his father, he actively pursued the policy of northward expansion, expanding a large area of the territory under his actual control to the north, and in order to let the Ming Dynasty recognize the ownership of the expansion territory of Korea, he continued to annex the territory that originally belonged to the Yuan Dynasty by means of military conquest or money bribery.

In the early days of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, because in order to concentrate on the war of the Northern Yuan, it was necessary to ensure the existence of a force in the northeast that clearly supported him, so he had always adopted a policy of tolerance towards Li's Korea, and Li Yuanfang took advantage of this favorable condition to expand his influence to infiltrate the Jurchen tribes in the northeast.

In the third year of Taizong of the Li Dynasty of North Korea, in the first year of Yongle of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, ascended the throne. At this time, the Ming Dynasty was already in an absolute overwhelming advantage over the Northern Yuan, and basically established its position as the orthodox dynasty of China, and could no longer sit idly by and watch Korea encroach on its territory and population.

Ming Chengzu began to restore the establishment of officials and local political axes in the northeast region, in an effort to restore the actual control of the central dynasty over the northeast region. It can be said that this move of the Ming Dynasty is completely reasonable and legitimate, and the Ming Dynasty has sovereignty over the Northeast region, and it is natural for the Ming Dynasty to exercise actual management here, but because of this practice, there was a conflict of interest with the Korean Li Dynasty, which led to the final intensification of the contradictions between the two countries.

Here I also want to mention the aforementioned Jurchen Huli reform leader Aha out, this person and Ming Chengzu relationship is extraordinary, Aha out of the daughter, when Zhu Di was the king of Yan, in the nineteenth year of Hongwu that married Zhu Di as a concubine, Zhu Di is the emperor, and his daughter is crowned as the third queen, and Aha out is also known as the "father of the three queens".

Therefore, Zhu Di and Aha are really sons-in-law. With this layer of in-law relationship, Aha out is extraordinary in the eyes of Zhu Di, after Zhu Di ascended the throne, he rewarded Aha out, and Ha Ahout has the Ming Emperor as the backstage, and is no longer afraid of the coercion and temptation of North Korea.

In June of the first year of Yongle, Taizong Zhu Di, who ascended to the throne as emperor, officially issued an edict requiring the Jurchen tribes to restore the system of tribute to the central dynasty, as the beginning of the restoration of the Ming Dynasty's exercise of sovereignty over the Jurchen tribes. It is equivalent to the feudal lords of the world who declared the Ming Dynasty's ownership of the Liaodong region.

The North Korean side immediately resisted this, openly declaring that "the Jurchens and others belong to me" and openly argued with the Ming Dynasty. In November of that year, the Ming Dynasty reformed the Ministry in Huli, set up the Jianzhou Wei Military and Civilian Command Department, and appointed the "father of the three queens" Aha Chu as the first Jianzhou Wei Commander Envoy, in charge of the military, government, law, and power of the Jianzhou Guard, and set up a layer of feudal political institutions headed by Aha Chu, and quickly restored the central dynasty to exercise actual control over the Huli Reform Department.

In the second year of Yongle, the Ming Dynasty added Aha to participate in politics, which further improved the important position of the Jurchen Ministry in the political system of the Ming Dynasty.

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The Ming Dynasty's initiative to set up Jianzhou Wei won the hearts of the Hus in Liaodong, so a large number of tribes located in Liaodong came to vote. By the seventh year of Yongle, the Ming Dynasty had set up a total of 130 Liaodong alien guards, thus basically restoring actual control over the northeast region. In this regard, although the North Korean side is extremely dissatisfied, it is helpless, after all, the small Korean state cannot compete with the Ming Dynasty. However, with the return of some Jurchen tribes located in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, the rulers of the Joseon Yi dynasty finally could no longer do it. Li Yuanfang declared: "The northeastern part of the country, from Gonglang Town, Likong Prefecture, Jizhou, Duanzhou, Yingzhou, Xiongzhou, Xianzhou, and other prefectures, are all the land of the country."

Li Yuanfang believed that the Ming Dynasty should not accept the Jurchens who had been included in the territory of Korea, because they had "integrated into Korea", and even claimed that their ancestors lived in the northeast region of the Ming Dynasty, and their ancestral tombs were still in the northeast.

In short, on the border issue between the Ming Dynasty and the DPRK, it has always been in a situation of open and covert struggle. In addition to the inevitable land of Liaodong, Zhu Qizhen's eyes like a hungry and greedy wolf are even more focused on another treasure: Tamna Island.

Before 938 AD, Tamna was the kingdom of Reading, and then during the Yuan Dynasty, Tamla has always been under the jurisdiction of the Yuan Dynasty, and Goryeo became a vassal state of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty, and the Chinese Yuan Dynasty political axe set up the Tamna Military and Civilian Administration Office on Jeju Island, which governed the affairs of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty troops and island residents stationed on Jeju Island, and set up some political axe institutions, such as the Chinese Yuan Dynasty stationed in Tamna Island Muma Province, the highest official of the Mamak Province was the Chinese Zuo Hengsu, but it was not until decades after the fall of the Chinese Yuan Dynasty that the Yuan Dynasty officials on the island surrendered to Goryeo.

For that island, Zhu Qizhen has been coveted for a long time, not only because it is a fertile place for raising horses, but also because it is located in the southern corner of the Korean Peninsula.

And if Zhu Qizhen wants to make Daming a maritime colonial power, then, first of all, he must control the islands around Daming, and let these places become the territory of my Daming, where people can migrate and survive here, so that the people of Daming can gradually go to a foreign land.

"No matter whether it is reasonable or not, if my brother likes something, don't want to escape from my brother's palm, and I don't want to think about who my brother is." Zhu Qizhen stared at the map of the Korean Kingdom and thought viciously.

(To be continued)