Gwiju

Gwiju was the older name of the Kusong country in northwestern Korea. Its strategic position between Pyongyang and Uiju had made it important long before the Joseon dynasty. In 1455, the court separated the former Gwiju territory from distant Chongju and established Kusong county. Neighbouring lands were added two years later. The new jurisdiction brought a strategically important inland district under an administration closer to its inhabitants.

Kusong was promoted to a dohobu prefecture in 1464 and, after a reversal, again in 1466. In 1484, people from the abolished northern districts of Yoyeon, Muchang and Chasong were resettled here. The local governor combined civil office with responsibility for defending the town. An eighteenth-century geographical record lists military officers, beacon personnel, clerks and government bondservants among the establishment. Gwiju's later history therefore joined population transfers and territorial reorganisation with the everyday institutions through which Joseon governed and defended its northwest.