The Koreans are commercial and scientific. They start the game with Alphabet and Bronze Working and build Hwach'a instead of cannon. Long before 3000 BC, the tribal immigrants of Manchuria and Siberia settled along the coasts and river valleys of the modern-day Korean peninsula. These settlers were the original founders of what we know today as the Korean civilization. The immigrant tribes solidified into three rival kingdoms: Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla; and nearly simultaneously, the kingdoms achieved a complete centralization of power through wars of expansion, organized military systems, training institutions, and tribal aristocracies assembled within the capital cities. The maturation of monarchies in the kingdoms eventually eliminated the influence of the aristocracies, however, and the balance of power waxed and waned as each kingdom endeavored to unite Korea under their exclusive rule. By 935 AD a general named Wang Kon established the Koryo dynasty, which ruled the Korean peninsula until 1392 AD. Koryo, from which the western word "Korea" is derived, was proclaimed as the successor to all of the conquered kingdoms and states. It was during the Koryo dynasty that Korea began to construct its own distinct cultural identity among the rest of the East- Asian civilizations. A bureaucratic system was created in order to replace the archaic tribal system that had previously governed the country, and civil service examinations were utilized as a means to select only the most capable officials and provincial magnates. The new bureaucratic force reaped by the civil service examinations held the applied precepts of Buddhism in disdain however, and with the assistance of Confucian-scholar General Yi Song-gye, the disgruntled officials seized power and established reforms that brought about the end of the Koryo dynasty, replacing the Buddhist-based system with Confucianism. The Yi dynasty named Hanyang (modern day Seoul) as the new capital of Korea, and operated from it for approximately 500 years until the Japanese annexation of Korea occurred in 1910. During the reign of the Koryo and Choson / Yi dynasties the advent of popular arts, as well as the introduction of Roman Catholicism in the 17th and 18th centuries, propelled Korea even closer to the modern state that exists today. A series of changes transpired that