T’aejo Wang Kon had an advantage in the war of the Later Three Kingdoms through his marriage alliances with powerful regional forces all across the country. Even after the unification of the Later Three Kingdoms, T’aejo Wang Kon was unable to exclude them and monopolize authority. In other words, T’aejo Wang Kon did not repeat the mistake in which the Chin’gol aristocrats monopolized authority even after Silla unified the Three Kingdoms and thereby brought about the division of the Later Three Kingdoms. The Goryeo Dynasty recognized the territorial control of the strong regional walled-town lords and generals even after the dynasty’s establishment and it was inevitable that their rituals and the traditional culture that they had enjoyed and inherited were also recognized. This fact is yet another example of the internal conditions that brought about the formation of Goryeo’s pluralist society.
The Goryeo Dynasty accepted into its world order different peoples amidst the social upheaval of the change in leadership in northeast Asia. The Goryeo Dynasty made them all subjects(臣民) while designating dependency subjects(藩臣) in the Goryeo world order and assumed the position of the Son of Heaven of the in the state of the Son of Heaven. This state system could not exclude the inherited cultures and traditions of groups who submitted. It was inevitable that their traditions and cultures were recognized and policies that allowed for coexistence with Goryeo’s culture and traditions were implemented. Goryeo’s pluralist society formed together with the appearance of Goryeo’s worldview that emerged from the great changes within and without the country.
The conceptual foundation that came to connote the Goryeo Dynasty’s system of a country of the Son of Heaven was the consciousness of a ‘great unification.’ This is another different ideal that expressed a Goryeo-centered worldview. This concept on which the Goryeo Dynasty was based came to be the sense of pride in uniting as one the diverse aspects and cultures of the former Three Kingdoms and finally establishing a system of a state of a Son of Heaven. Pluralist society had formed from the system of a state of a Son of Heaven and its supporting ‘great unification’ consciousness. Thus the consciousness of a ‘great unification’ came to be the conceptual origin for the formation of a pluralist society. In the Ten Injunctions that T’aejo Wang Kon compiled in 943 (the 26th year of King T’aejo), the concept of pluralism was integrated with the characteristics of a pluralist society.