Richard Iii and Korean Politics

A medieval king seldom makes 21st century front pages, but one who breathed his last on Aug. 22, 1485, has managed it. The discovery of a mutilated skeleton beneath a car park in central England has refocused interest on one of history and literature’s most notorious figures.

Richard III, last king of the House of Plantagenet, died in a murderous hack-a-thon at Bosworth Field, the culminating battle of an uncivil war known today as “The Wars of the Roses.” Though slender, with a deformed spine, Richard was a respected warrior, and he met a warrior’s death.

Betrayed by a key ally, Richard launched a desperate attempt to reverse fortune: He led his bodyguard detachment in a mounted charge into his opponent’s center, aiming to kill his enemy, Henry Tudor. Lances splintered as Richard’s knights crashed home, then the tactical battle disintegrated into hand-to-hand carnage.

For our “civilized” generation ― used to pull-trigger and push-button warfare ― the gruesome realities of medieval battle are harrowing to visualize: Men confined inside claustrophobic steel suits piercing and smashing each other’s armor with the equivalent of outsized butcher’s knives and huge fire axes.

In the melee, Richard cut down Henry’s standard bearer and another noted knight. Then Henry’s reinforcements counterattacked. Outnumbered, Richard’s force was compressed.

Under a storm of flailing blades, Richard’s standard bearer went down. The hideous power of the halberd - a massive, spiked ax-head mounted on a pole - is illustrated by the manner of his death: He was chopped in half. With both legs severed, he clung to the standard before being cut to pieces in the mud and blood.

With his bodyguards overrun, Richard ― unhorsed, helmetless ― battled on alone. His skeleton displays ten wounds, including eight traumas to the skull. He suffered two (probably near-instantaneous) lethal blows, consistent with being surrounded: A stab through the temple, and a halberd strike that chopped away the back of his head.

Thus, in a blaze of gory, fell Richard III.

Yet the Plantagenets ― wiped out in war and its collateral vortex of treachery, murder and execution ― found no James Fennimore-Cooper (“The Last of the Mohicans”) to mythologize their lost dynasty. Instead, pro-Tudor writers blackened Richard’s name for posterity, their most credible allegation being that he “disappeared” two teenage princes.

Still, there is an upside to this grim story. With Richard, Shakespeare gave English literature a most...