Her father was the king of the Silla kingdom, which had emerged in the south about 250 and 350 AD, and by the end of the 7th century would manage to unify the whole peninsula. Having no sons, he chose as his heir his daughter Sondok, which was no great surprise for a number of reasons.
One was that women in this period had a certain degree of influence already as advisers, queen dowagers, and regents. Throughout the kingdom, women were heads of families since matrilineal lines of descent existed alongside patrilineal lines.
The Confucian model, which placed women in a subordinate position within the family, was not to have a major impact in Korea until the fifteenth century. During the Silla kingdom, women's status remained relatively high.
