Military Coup of 1170
Generals including Jeong Jung-bu, Yi Ui-bang and Yi Go, long slighted by civil officials, struck at Bohyeonwon, killing civil officials and deposing King Uijong; military regimes ruled for the next century.
Goryeo exalted civil over military officials, and even the top army commands went to civilians. Resentment boiled over after incidents such as the young official Kim Don-jung burning Jeong Jung-bu’s beard and, during a royal outing to Bohyeonwon, the civil official Han Roe slapping the aged general Yi So-eung when he lost a martial-arts bout. Rank-and-file soldiers who went unpaid in land were equally aggrieved.
In the eighth month of 1170 the generals cried "Kill everyone who wears a civil official’s cap, down to the clerks, and leave no seed", massacred civil officials, exiled Uijong to Geoje and enthroned Myeongjong. Power at first lay with the generals’ council, the Jungbang, then passed from Jeong Jung-bu to Gyeong Dae-seung, Yi Ui-min, four generations of the Choe family, Kim Jun and finally Im Yeon and Im Yu-mu, lasting until 1270.
The aristocratic order collapsed under military rule, and as the generals expanded their estates and exactions, peasant and slave uprisings broke out across the country.