A Queen huntress.... general tax.... a jealous Queen.... tribute.... a
thrifty Queen.... lack of filial piety.... a termagant.... Mongol
influence at its zenith.... second invasion planned.... corrupt
court.... preparations for the invasion.... expedition sets sail....
difficulties .... terrible catastrophe.... survivors.... retreat....
new preparations.... the plan given up.... corruption.... famine in
China.... northern cannibals.... at last driven back.... a son’s
rebuke.... Timur Khan makes changes.... king abdicates.... family
difficulties.... an abject king.... new slave law.... king goes to
Peking.... Ch‘ung-sŭn ascends the throne.... a disgusted
courtier.... a kingless country.... eunuchs elevated....
reconstruction.... king of Mukden.... pander to the Mongol court....
king’s father banished.... silver coin.
The sporting proclivities of the Mongol queen of Koryŭ were an object of
wonder and disgust to the people, for she was accustomed to accompany
the king in his expeditions and was as good a horseman as any in the
rout. It may well be imagined that the finances of the country were in
bad shape, and it was found necessary to reconstruct the revenue laws to
meet the constantly recurring deficit. For the first time in the history
a general tax was levied on all the people, high and low alike. Hitherto
taxes had been levied only on the better class of people. This tax was
called the _hop‘o_ which means “house linen,” for the tax was levied in
linen cloth. This shows that although coin circulated, barter was as yet
the main method of interchange of commodities.
The custom of dressing in white must be a fairly ancient one for we
learn that at this time the government ordered the use of blue instead
of white, as blue is the color that corresponds to east. The birth of a
son to the king’s Mongol consort was the signal for great rejoicings and
festivities. Everyone offered congratulations, even the discarded queen.
It is said that the king paid some attention to this former queen and
that it aroused the fierce jealousy of the Mongol queen. She declared
that she would write and complain to the emperor that she was being ill
treated. She was dissuaded from this by the earnest entreaties of the
officials. At the same time a further concession was made to the
Mongolizing tendency by changing the names of official grades to those
in use among the Mongols.
The emperor had not given up his plan of subduing Japan, and for this
purpose he began the preparation of boats in the south of Korea, calling
upon the Koreans to supply all the requisites. But this was not the only
use to which he put his Koryŭ vassal, for he also demanded women and
pearls; the former were taken from the men and the latter from the
women; and both were sent to the Mongol court.
The Mongol queen of Koryŭ was a thrifty woman and let no small scruples
stand in the way of the procuring of pin-money. She took a golden pagoda
from one of the monasteries and melted it down. The bullion found a
ready market. She also went into the ginseng raising business on her own
account, taking people’s fields by force and marketed the crop of
ginseng in Nanking, where it brought a good price. She thus turned an
“honest” penny. But it all went against the aristocratic tendencies of
the king. That the queen was not without a touch of superstition is
shown by the fact that she desisted from accompanying the king to the
grave of Wang-gön when told that the spirit of the founder of the
dynasty was a strong one and that if she went she might be attacked by
some dangerous disease.
When some one hinted to the queen that the former queen was plotting
against her life she promptly had her seized and put to the torture, and
it would have cost her her life had not the officials interfered and won
the inquisitors over to clemency. But her oppression of the people went
on unchecked and she sequestered so much of their property that hundreds
of people were driven into actual mendicancy. Even when news of her
mother’s death reached her she stopped feasting but a short time, to
shed a few conventional tears, and then resumed her revels. This was
perhaps her greatest offence in the eyes of the people of Koryŭ. But her
affection for her husband was very real for we learn that when he was
taken sick and she was told that it was on account of her lavish use of
money, she stopped building, sent away her falcons and restored a gold
pagoda to the monastery from which she had taken it. She had ideas of
her own as to the proper treatment of women by the sterner sex, for when
the king preceded her in one of the processions she turned back and
refused to go. The king went back to pacify her but she struck him with
a rod and gave him a round scolding. She was meanwhile doing a stroke of
business in sea-otter skins. She kept a large number of men hunting
these valuable animals, but when she found they were “squeezing” half
the catch she imprisoned the offenders.
It was not till 1279 that all the officials, high and low, military and
civil, had adopted the Mongol coiffure and dress. It was now that the
Mongol influence was at its zenith in the peninsula. In this year the
whole royal family made a journey to Peking and it was the signal for a
grand festival at that capital. It put an end once for all to the
suspicions entertained by the emperor relative to the loyalty of the
king of Koryŭ. The busybodies therefore found their occupation gone. On
their return the queen resumed building operations, seized over 300 of
the people’s houses and had a thousand men at work erecting a palace.
Meanwhile what of the Mongol envoy who had been sent to Japan with his
daring demand that the Japanese sovereign go to Peking and do obeisance?
He had been promptly killed, as might have been anticipated. When the
king sent word to Peking that the emperor’s envoy had been killed,
another invasion was immediately decided upon; and the king was charged
with the duty of preparing 900 vessels to transport a great army of
invasion across the straits. The king was hardly prepared for such an
undertaking. He was spending his time in revelry and debauchery. He
called to Song-do all the courtezans, sorceresses and female slaves and
had them join in singing obscene songs for the delectation of his
guests. His manner of life was in no sense worthy of his position. It is
not surprising therefore that famine found its way to Koryŭ the
following year, and the emperor had to give aid to the extent of 20,000
bags of rice.
The king wanted to lead the army of invasion, and so the emperor called
him to Peking to discuss the matter. But Hong Ta-gu talked the emperor
over and secured the post of general-in-chief himself. He raised 40,000
regular troops and another general raised 100,000 more among the vassal
tribes. The king advised that only the men from the dependent tribes be
sent, but that their number be increased. To this the emperor did not
consent, and soon the king came back to his capital where he went to
work preparing the 900 boats, 15,000 sailors and 10,000 bags of rice,
together with many other things that would be needed. The emperor sent
Hong to superintend these preparations and the king, being thrown
completely into the shade, could do nothing but obey orders. Hong was so
obnoxious to the king that he requested the emperor to remove him and
let Gen. Kim Pang-gyŭng superintend the work of preparation. To this
consent was given.
[Illustration: _CARRYING GOLD ORE TO THE MILL._]
It was in the next year, 1282, that all the troops rendezvoused at
Hap-p‘o, now Ch‘ang-wŭn, and prepared to embark. The king went down from
the capital to review the whole array. There were 1000 boats in all. Of
Koryŭ soldiers there were 20,070, of Mongols there were 50,000. The
soldiers from the dependent tribes, of which there were 100,000, had not
yet arrived. It is hard to say just who these 100,000 men were. The
records say they were from Kang-nam but they are also designated by
another character in the records which would imply a different origin.
Then the whole flotilla sailed away to the conquest of Japan. They made
for Tă-myŭng Harbor where the first engagement with the Japanese took
place. At first the invaders were victorious and 300 Japanese fell, but
when the latter were reinforced the Mongols drew back with great loss.
The allied forces then went into camp where it is said that 3000 of the
Mongols died of fever. Gen. Hong was very anxious to retreat, but Gen.
Kim said, “We started out with three month’s rations and we have as yet
been out but one month. We cannot go back now. When the 100,000
contingent arrives we will attack the Japanese again.” Soon the
reinforcements came.
The invading army now pulled itself together and sailed for the mainland
of Japan. As they approached it a storm arose from the west and all the
boats made for the entrance of the harbor together. As it happened the
tide was running in very strong and the boats were carried along
irresistibly in its grip. As they converged to a focus at the mouth of
the harbor a terrible catastrophe occurred. The boats were jammed in the
offing and the bodies of men and the broken timbers of the vessels were
heaped together in a solid mass, so that, the records tell us, a person
could walk across from one point of land to the other on the solid mass
of wreckage. The wrecked vessels contained the 100,000 men from the
dependent tribes, and all of them perished thus horribly, excepting a
few who managed to get ashore. These afterwards told their story as
follows: “We fled to the mountains and lay hidden there two months, but
the Japanese came out and attacked us. Being in a starving condition, we
surrendered, and those of us who were in fair condition were made slaves
and the rest were butchered.”
In that great catastrophe 8,000 Koryŭ soldiers perished, but the
remaining Koryŭ and Mongol forces, beholding the miserable end of the
main body of the invading army, turned their prows homeward and furled
their sails only when they entered a Koryŭ harbor.
At first the emperor was determined to continue the attempt to subdue
the Japanese, and immediately sent and ordered the king to prepare more
boats and to furnish 3,000 pounds of a substance called in the records
_tak soé_. The character _tak_ means a kind of wood from whose pulp
paper is made, and the character for _soé_ means metal, especially such
as is used in making money. Some have conjectured that this refers to
paper money, others that it simply meant some metal.
A Koryŭ citizen, Yu Ju, advised the emperor to use only Koryŭ troops and
the men from Kang-nam in his next invasion of Japan and to provide in
advance 200,000 bags of rice in the peninsula. The emperor thereupon
ordered the king to lay aside 40,000 bags with this end in view. The
king answered that if all his officials could get but ten thousand bags,
this greater number was surely out of the question. So he was told to
set aside as many as he could.
The following year, 1283, changed the emperor’s purpose. He had time to
hear the whole story of the sufferings of his army in the last invasion;
the impossibility of squeezing anything more out of Koryŭ and the
delicate condition of home affairs united in causing him to give up the
project of conquering Japan, and he countermanded the order for the
building of boats and the storing of grain.
The record of the next few years is hardly worth writing. The royal
family went to Peking with 1,200 men as escort and remained there six
months. Returning, they spent their time in trampling down good
rice-fields in the pleasures of the chase and in seeking ways and means
of making government monopolies of various important commodities,
especially salt. On a single hunting expedition 1,500 soldiers
accompanied the royal party afield. The queen developed a strange
propensity for catching young women and sending them to her people in
Peking. A law was promulgated that before a young man married he must
notify the government. This was done for the purpose of finding out
where marriageable girls lived so that they could be the more easily
seized and sent to China. One official cut off his daughter’s hair when
he found that she was to be sent to China. The king banished him for
this and beat the girl severely. It is said that these girls upon
arriving in China became wives, not concubines.
In 1289 a famine in China resulted in a demand for 100,000 bags of rice
from Koryŭ. The king was at his wits end but by great exertion and
self-sacrifice on the part of the officials 60,000 bags were collected.
They were sent by boat, but 6000 were destroyed in a storm and 300 men
were lost.
But now in 1290 a new element of danger appeared in the shape of the
wild tribe of T‘ap-dan across the northern border who began to ravage
the outlying Koryŭ towns. When they had penetrated the country as far as
Kil-ju the king sent an army against them, but more than 20,000 came
swarming down from the north and seized two districts in Ham-gyŭng
Province. They ate the flesh of men and dried the flesh of women for
future consumption. The Koryŭ troops held them in check at first. The
emperor sent 13,000 troops to reinforce the Koryŭ army. In spite of
this, however, the king felt obliged to take refuge in Kang-wha for fear
of surprise. The following year the T‘ap-dan savages came as far south
as Kyŭng-geui Province and all the officials and many of the people fled
before them. It was a literary man of Wŭn-ju who was destined to be the
first to bring them to a halt. Wŭn Ch‘ung-gap gathered about him all the
strong men of the neighborhood and drove back the van of the invading
force. Then the great body of the savage horde came and surrounded the
town. Wŭn killed the messengers they sent demanding surrender, and sent
back the heads as answer. A desperate attack was made but the little
garrison held firm till by a lucky chance a rumor of some kind caused a
panic among the attacking forces and in the stampede that followed every
man’s sword was at his neighbor’s throat. While this was going on Wŭn
and his fellows made a sudden sally and captured the savage chief To
Cha-do, and sixty of his attendants were cut down. The rabble then took
to their heels and from that day never dared to attack any considerable
town. The spell of terror which had held the people of Koryŭ was now
broken and they found no more difficulty in keeping these savages at
arm’s length. Ten thousand Mongol troops arrived and began a campaign
against these freebooters and in Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province had a splendid
victory over them, leaving, it is said, a line of thirty _li_ of dead as
they pursued the flying enemy. When the Mongol troops went back home,
their general told the emperor that the war had destroyed the crops of
Koryŭ and that 100,000 bags of rice must be sent. The emperor consented,
but when the rice arrived the officials and men of influence divided the
rice among themselves, while the people went without.
All this time the crown prince was suffering a lively feeling of disgust
at the sporting propensities of his father, and now that he was about to
return from Peking he wrote his father a very sarcastic letter saying,
“As all the public money has been used up in hunting tournaments you
must not lay an extra expense upon the treasury by coming out to meet
me.” The king was ashamed and angry but went as far as P‘yŭng-ju to meet
his son and took advantage of the occasion to hunt along the way.
That Kublai Khan harbored no ill-will against the Japanese on account of
his failure to conquer them is shown by his sending back to their
country several Japanese whom the Koreans had caught and carried to
Peking. Two Koryŭ men carried them back to Japan; but the Japanese did
not return the courtesy, for the two Koryŭ messengers were never seen
again.
The king and queen were both in China when the emperor Kublai died and
they took part in the funeral rites, although the Mongol law forbade any
outsider to participate in them. Timur Khan succeeded Kublai. He
apparently had no intention of invading Japan, for of 100,000 bags of
rice which had been stored in Koryŭ for that purpose, he sent 50,000 to
the north to relieve a famine-stricken district. He also gave back to
Koryŭ the island of Quelpart which had been in Mongol hands since the
time when the Mongol and Koryŭ soldiers had put down the rebellion. From
this time dates the use of the name Ché-ju, which means “District across
the water,” and by which the island has ever since been known.
The king had now completed his cycle of sixty-one years and the
soothsayers were appealed to to read the future. They said evils were in
store and he was advised to give amnesty to all but capital criminals,
repair the tombs of celebrated men, give rice to the poor and remit
three years’ revenue. But gray hairs had not brought wisdom to the king.
His time was spent in frivolity and sensuality. The crown prince looked
with unfriendly eye on these unseemly revels and when, in the following
year, 1297, his mother, the Mongol princess, died, he claimed that her
death was due to one of the favorite concubines, and as a consequence
the suspected woman was killed. The prince had married a Mongol princess
in China and now at her summons he went back to China. The old man,
bereft of both wife and concubine, wrote the emperor that he wished to
surrender the reins of power into the hands of his son. The emperor
consented and in the following year the prince was invested with the
royal insignia, while his father was honored with the title “High King.”
The new queen was a Mongol and as she came to the Koryŭ capital a new
palace was constructed for her. But her royal husband saw fit to follow
the example of his forebears and take to himself a concubine. The queen,
by her frequent exhibitions of jealousy, lost what little love her lord
had ever felt for her. She was not long in letting the state of affairs
be known at Peking and soon an imperial mandate arrived consigning the
concubine and her father to prison. Then another came remanding both to
China. Then a high monk came to mediate between the king and queen. This
proved ineffectual and the emperor commanded both king and queen to
appear before him in Peking. It was done and the royal seals were put
back into the hands of the aged king. The prince and his unhappy queen
were kept in China ten years.
The close of the century beheld an old dotard on the throne of Koryŭ, so
incapable of performing the duties of his high office that the emperor
was obliged to send a man to act as viceroy while the old man spent his
time trifling with mountebanks and courtesans. The records state that he
had lost all semblance to a king.
The viceroy whom the emperor had sent was named Whal-yi Gil-sa, and one
of his first proposals was to do away with slavery; but objection was
raised that then a slave might become an official and use his influence
to wreak vengeance upon his former master. So a law was made that only
the eighth generation of a manumitted slave could hold office.
In 1301 an envoy was sent to Peking to make the audacious proposal that
the crown prince’s wife should be made the wife of a Korean official
named Chong. This was because the Koryŭ officials believed she had been
criminally intimate with him and they were anxious to get the prince
back on the throne. An official originated the scheme of having this
Chong take the prince’s wife and ascend the throne himself, but the
emperor ordered him thrown into prison. When this had been done the aged
king sent an envoy pleading that the prince be sent back to him. As this
was not granted the king himself went to Peking where he lodged at first
at his son’s house, but after a quarrel with him moved to the house of
the discarded princess, his daughter-in-law. The emperor tried to
mediate between father and son but without effect. Then he tried to send
the old man back to Koryŭ; but rather than go back the aged king took
medicine to make himself ill and so incapable of travel. He was fearful
that he would be assassinated on the way by his son’s orders.
The emperor died in 1308 and was succeeded by Guluk Khan. This young man
was the friend of the prince, and as a consequence the old king was
thrown into prison, his nearest friends killed or banished and the young
man was raised to a high position under the Chinese government and his
friends, to the number of a hundred and eighty, were made officials. But
it was the old man that the emperor finally sent back to Koryŭ to rule
at the same time he making the prince king of Mukden. Though so far away
from the capital of Koryŭ the prince was the one who really ruled Koryŭ,
so the records say. The father soon died and the prince immediately
proceeded to Song-do and assumed the throne in this same year 1308. His
posthumous title was Ch‘ung-sŭn.
He had been kept out of his own so long that he now proceeded to make up
for lost time, and vied with his father’s record in revelry and
debauchery. It is said that a courtier took an axe and went to the
palace, where he asked the king to decapitate him as the sight of these
excesses made him hate life. The king was ashamed, though we are not
told that he mended his ways.
In his second year he revived the government salt monopoly and put the
money into his private purse. Heretofore it had been divided between
certain monasteries and officials. The Mongol empress made him furnish
large quantities of timber from Păk-tu Mountain, floating it down the
Yalu. It was used in the building of monasteries. The whole expense was
borne by the king. The latter was now spending most of his time in
Peking. The Koryŭ officials earnestly desired him to come back to
Song-do, but he refused. There was a constant flow of eunuchs and
courtesans from Koryŭ to Peking and it would be difficult to imagine a
more desperate condition of affairs in the king-deserted country. How it
was being governed we do not know. It was probably governing itself. The
rural districts, which had been laid waste by the Mongol armies and
which had been deserted by their occupants, were probably being
gradually occupied again and the less they heard of Song-do the better
they liked it.
In the third year of his reign the king killed his son because some
busybodies told him that the young man was conspiring to drive him from
the throne. This shows the depths to which the court had sunk, when
kings were not sure but that their own sons were their worst enemies.
Orders kept coming from Peking to make certain eunuchs Princes. These
orders could not be disregarded. These eunuchs had doubtless been in
Peking and were known to be devoted to Mongol interests. All this time
the king was in Peking where his presence began to be something of a
bore. The mother of the Emperor urged him to go back to Koryŭ. He
promised to go in the following autumn, but when the time came he
changed his mind and abdicated in favor of his second son.
The new king, named To, posthumous title Ch‘ung-suk, came to the throne
in 1314. One of his first acts was to take a thorough census of the
people. Unfortunately the result is not recorded. The revenue laws were
also changed and a new measurement of the fields was ordered with a view
to a more effective collection of the revenue. The king likewise had
ambitions along religious lines, for he sent 150 pounds of silver to
Nanking to purchase books; and 10,800 were secured. The emperor also
gave 4,070 volumes. These were doubtless Buddhist books and it is more
than likely that many of the books in the Sanscrit or Thibetan
character, still found in the monasteries in Korea, are copies of the
works introduced into Koryŭ during these times.
The king who had abdicated was sent back with his son, though he had
abdicated solely for the purpose of being able to live permanently in
Peking. He spent his time in attending Buddhist festivals, but when he
saw into what ruins the palaces in Song-do had fallen he said, “If my
father had feasted less I should have had better palaces.” He soon
returned to China where he devoted himself to letters. The emperor
offered to make him his Prime Minister but he declined the honor. He
mourned over the lack of letters in Koryŭ and came to realise that it
was Buddhism that had proved the curse of the dynasty. He accepted the
post of King of Mukden and later became Prime Minister to the emperor.
The young king went to Peking in 1317 to marry a Mongol Princess, and
like his father was very loath to come back. We infer that the position
of king in Song-do was so hedged about by priestcraft that it was much
pleasanter for the king to reside at the Chinese court. Koryŭ must have
been exceedingly poor after the desperate struggles she had been through
and life in Peking with his hand in the imperial exchequer must have had
its attractions.
At the end of a year however the king and his bride came back to
Song-do. The records say that in order to induce him to come they had to
bribe the soothsayers to tell him that if he did not come he would be
involved in war. As soon as he arrived he began to search for unmarried
women to send to Peking. He had turned pander to the Mongol court. The
men of the upper classes hid their daughters and denied their existence
for fear they would be seized and sent to Peking. He himself put in
practice the principles he had imbibed at the Mongol court, and spent
his days in hunting and his nights in high revelry.
The king’s father who had been made king of Mukden, made a trip into
southern China, or at least as far south as Chŭl-gang and Po-ta San
where he engaged in Buddhist worship. Two years later he asked
permission to repeat the visit and the emperor consented. But he was
suddenly called back to Peking and ordered to go straight to Koryŭ. He
refused and the emperor compelled him to cut his hair and to become a
monk. He was banished to T‘o-bŭn or San-sa-gyŭl in the extreme north.
This was because one of the Peking eunuchs, who had formerly been a
Koryŭ man and hated the king, told the emperor that the ex-king had on
foot a scheme to raise a revolt in China.
At this time there was silver money in Koryŭ in the form of little
bottle-shaped pieces of silver, but it was much adulterated by an alloy
of copper. The king gave thirty of these bottles and the officials
contributed a number more; and with them a silver image of Confucius was
made, indicating a slight reaction against Buddhism.
1322 the emperor, being deceived by the lying representations of the
king’s cousin who wished to secure the throne of Koryŭ, ordered the king
to Peking. The latter was glad to go, but was obliged to get away
secretly by night for fear of being prevented by his officials. When he
got to Peking the emperor took away his royal seal and ordered him to
remain there, which he doubtless was nothing loath to do. The officials
of Koryŭ joined in a letter begging the emperor to send him back, but
without success, till in 1324 the emperor died and his successor
proclaimed a general amnesty, of which the aged ex-king took advantage
to return to Peking from his place of banishment in the north. The king
and Queen returned to Koryŭ in the following year. No sooner were they
settled in their palace again than they went on a pleasure trip to the
Han River; but the trip ended disastrously for while away on the journey
the Queen was confined and died in giving birth to a son. This shows to
what extremes the passion for the chase led the court.