Koriya, also spelled as Korea, was a princely state

Princely state

A Princely State was a nominally sovereign entitity of British rule in India that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule such as suzerainty or paramountcy.-British relationship with the Princely States:India under the British Raj ...

 of British Empire in India. After Indian Independence in 1947, the ruler of Koriya acceded to the Union of India on 1 January 1948 and was made part of Surguja District

Surguja District

Surguja District is a district in the northern part of the state of Chattisgarh in India. The district headquarter is Ambikapur.The district borders on the states of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, and overlaps the southeastern part of the Vindhyachal-Baghelkhand region of peninsular...

 of Central Provinces and Berar

Central Provinces and Berar

The Central Provinces and Berar was a province of British India. The province comprised British conquests from the Mughals and Marathas in central India, and covered much of present-day Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra states. Its capital was Nagpur. The Central Provinces was formed in...

 province. On January 1950, “Central Provinces and Berar” province was renamed Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh , often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal and Indore is the largest city....

 state. After November 2000, it along with princely state of Changbhakar

Changbhakar

Changbhakar was one of the princely states of British Empire in India in the Chhattisgarh States Agency. It had an area of and a 1941 population of 21,266 people. Bharatpur was the capital of the princely state.-History:...

, became Koriya district

Koriya District

Koriya district, also commonly spelled as Korea district, is a district in the north-western part of the Chhattisgarh state in Central India. The administrative headquarter of the district is Baikunthpur.-History:...

 of Chhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh is a state in Central India, formed when the 16 Chhattisgarhi-speaking South-Eastern districts of Madhya Pradesh gained separate statehood on 1 November 2000....

state.
It had an area of 1,631 sq. m. and a population of 126,874 as on 1941.

Location

The state of Koriya, which includes 400 villages, is in Chhattisgarh. It borders to the north on Rewa; to the east on Suruguja; to the south, on the British district of Bilaspur (Province of Central provinces); to the southwest, on Rewa again; and to the west, on Changbhakar.

History

The ruling families of Korea are Chauhan Rajputs who came to Korea from Rajputana in the 13th century and conquered the country. Before the coming of the Marathas, it is alleged that the rajas of Korea “lived in perfect independence, and never having been necessitated to submit to the payment of any tribute, they had no occasion to oppress their subjects.” This situation changed in 1790, and Korea had to pay tribute to the Marathas. It also seems to have had some indefinite feudal relations with Surguja, but the British government ignored them when it was ceded to them by the Bhonsla raja of Nagpur in 1818. Upon the extinction of the direct line in 1897, a distant collateral branch of the ruling family was recognized by the government of India.
In 1891, the government decided that the five states of the Surguja group (Surguja, Udaipur, Jashpur, Korea, and Changbhakar) plus Bonai and Gangpur and Seraikela and Kharsawan, formerly known as the Tributary Mahals of Chhota Nagpur, were not part of British India, and revised sanads were issued in 1899 formally recognizing them as feudatory states and defining their relations with the British government.

The rulers of the state have apparently always held the title of raja and were so recognized by the British as early as 1819.