Gwanggaeto the Great spent his life as a commoner in poverty.
Under Gwanggaeto, Goguryeo began a golden age, becoming a powerful empire and one of the great powers in East Asia
 Gwanggaeto dispatched 50,000 expeditionary troops, crushing his enemies and securing Silla as a de facto protectorate; he thus subdued the other Korean kingdoms and achieved a loose unification of the Korean peninsula under Goguryeo

