The continuous battles with Baekje and Goguryeo have taken a heavy toll on Silla and its people.

Drought, famine and disquiet is recurrent.

Different political views within the ruling nobility are frequent; when King Jinpyeong names his daughter Princess Deokman as his heir, the division grows even deeper, as many nobles are opposed to the idea of a reigning queen.

Political dissension peaks in May 631, when Ichan Chilsuk and Achan Seokpum plot an uprising.

The revolt is discovered in advance and both are executed; Chilsuk is beheaded in public and his relatives executed, while Seokpum, who had fled, is captured by soldiers and executed.

With the rebellion quashed, the power is left mainly in the hands of the King's supporters, the most important of whom is Kim Yushin, commander in chief of the royal army from 629, and it was in this political atmosphere that Princess Deokman is able to become queen.

Emperor Taizong sends envoys to the Xueyantuo, vassals of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate, bearing gold and silk in order to persuade the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners who had been captured during the transition from the Sui to the Tang Dynasty from the northern frontier.

The embassy succeeds in freeing eighty thousand men and women who are safely return to China.

The Xueyantuo repulse an army of Si Yabgu Qaghan from the Western Qaghanate in 632, then subjugate the Karluks at the Ulungur and Irtysh River, and the Yenisei Kyrgyz tribes.

The battle of Wogastisburg occurs in 631 between Slavs under King Samo and Franks under King Dagobert I, according to the contemporary Chronicle of Fredegar.

The Frankish armies advance into the area of the Slavic tribal union in three streams—Alamanni, Lombards, and Austrasian Franks.

The first two are quite successful, but the main fighting force is defeated in a three-day battle near Wogastisburg. possibly modern Trenčín.

King Dagobert I is forced to retreat; the Franks with their allies are slaughtered.

Samo invades Thuringia and undertakes looting raids.

Hormizd VI proclaims himself king of Persia in Nisibis; he will reign until 632.

Xuanzang, arriving in Kashmir in 631, meets a talented monk, Samghayasas, and studies here for a year or so.

Emperor Heraclius appoints Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, with power to act as viceroy (dioikesis) of Egypt.

He begins a ten-year persecution against the non-Chalcedonian Coptic Christians.

Benjamin I, Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, escapes during the persecutions of his fellow Christians and …

…hides in the monastery of St. Macarius in Upper Egypt.

Emperor Heraclius enlisted the Croats, according to a tenth-century Greek source, to expel the Avars from imperial lands.

The Croats overrun the Avars and other Slavs in Dalmatia in around 630.