Kim Bang-gyeong was the first Goryeo official ever to receive a Munsan-gye title from the Yuan imperial government, and the Jungbong Daebu title he received signals his position and status at the time. Following him, numerous Goryeo officials came to receive Yuan Munsan-gye titles, and as a result it is highly likely that such Goryeo officials would have come to enjoy a new status in both the Goryeo and Yuan society. For example, Goryeo officials like Jeong Ga-shin and Jo In-gyu received the Ga’eui Daebu title in the latter half of the 13th century, and that must have been because of their vibrant activities inside Yuan which could have earned them the reputation as no longer being ‘just a foreign[Goryeo] official.’ Coming into the early half of the 14th century, higher titles began to be given to the Goryeo officials, and the types of those titles became more diverse as well. All these various and glorious Yuan Munsan-gye titles bestowed upon the Goryeo officials might have affected their perspective on Yuan institutions as well as the life as an official inside the Yuan empire.
In the meantime, individual examples reveal that in terms of the relationship between a Goryeo official’s newly bestowed Yuan Munsangye title, his previously secured Goryeo rank and position, and positions of the other Yuan officials who shared the same Yuan Munsan-gye title, there was a difference between the latter half of the 13th century and the early half of the 14th. In the former period the Yuan government, while bestowing Yuan Munsan-gye titles to Goryeo officials, neither considered the Goryeo official’s position and rank inside Goryeo, nor considered the usual practice inside Yuan, as defining perimeters. In this period, in the eyes of the Yuan government, Goryeo officials were still ‘foreign officers.’ But in the following periods, the Goryeo officials came to receive Munsan-gye titles and positions inside the Yuan government of which the ranks were very much similar to those of the titles and positions allowed to other ordinary Yuan officials, while the Yuan Munsan-gye titles they received had significantly lower ranks than those of the Goryeo Munsan-gye titles they originally had. In other words, the Goryeo officials were no longer being considered just as foreigners. The Goryeo officials became less alien in the eyes of the Yuan imperial government, but were not completely homogenized either.
