Heavy tax remitted.... a _tendens_ novel.... the wheel of fortune
turns.... the queen restored..... sorcery.... Puk-han built....
mourning.... a weak king.... a lucid interval.... terrible
reprisals.... a desecrated tomb.... contact with the West.... king’s
suspicious death.... enemies killed.... party strife put down....
seals for Japanese.... prohibition of manufacture and sale of
wine.... a powerful conspiracy.... preparations for defense....
Ch’ung-ju falls.... rebellion put down with a heavy hand.... honors
distributed.... mining prohibited.... incipient rebellion....
reforms.... reservoirs.... use of wine interdicted.... bureau of
agriculture.... important secret service.... dress reform.... cruel
punishments stopped.... a new war vessel.... honest measurement....
imperial tombs.... monument to the dead political parties....
musical instruments.
Each year a large Chinese embassy visited Seoul, and it was customary to
feed them from silver dishes, which were given them as presents when
they returned to their own land. This expense was met by a tax on the
people of Song-do. While the king was making a small tour in the country
he arrived at Song-do and there he asked about this tax. The people
replied that they had to sell their very children to meet it, for it
amounted to 1,200 bags of rice, 900,000 cash, 3,000 bags of other grain,
3,000 pieces of cloth as well as other things. The king listened to
their petition and remitted the tax.
Only five years elapse before we find the king making another complete
change in his household, by driving out the new queen, who had been the
concubine Chang, and reinstating the old queen in her rightful place
again. These sudden and complete changes of face in the king would have
been amusing had they not been accompanied by the shedding of so much
innocent blood. The king had tired of his new queen. He seems to have
been one of those men who require a periodical outbreak of some kind,
but who in the intervals are perfectly quiet. The time had come for such
an outbreak and Kim Ch‘un-t‘ăk was the instrument by which it was
brought about. He had bought himself into the good graces of the palace
women, and as a first step toward the accomplishment of his plans he
wrote a book in which was illustrated, in romance form, the evils of
putting away the true wife for a concubine. The copy of this book which
was given to the king materially hastened the catastrophe. The Nam-in
were in power but they looked with concern upon the king’s growing
antipathy toward them and they urged him to put the too bold novelist
out of the way; but the leaders of the No-ron party, knowing that all
depended on a quick, decisive blow, went in a body to the king at night
and urged him to follow the evident bent of his inclinations. This he
proceeded to do by banishing the brother of queen Chang, and with him
the leaders of the Nam-in party. Then once more the No-ron stepped to
the front and prepared to enjoy the good things. High posthumous honors
were given to Song Si-ryŭl and to the deposed queen’s father and to many
others of the No-rons who had perished during the last outbreak. The
king, to save his “face,” called the deposed queen back little by
little. He first put her in a little palace in An-dong; then he
transferred her to the “Mulberry Palace,” and finally brought her to the
palace proper. The woman Chang was again reduced to her former place and
a stringent law was made that henceforth no royal concubine should ever
be raised to the position of queen. The martyr Pak T‘ă-bo was given
posthumously the title of Prime Minister. The reinstated party tried to
induce the king to kill the concubine, but, as she was the mother of the
heir apparent to the throne, he could not consent. A slave of this
concubine’s resorted to a clever trick in order to turn the tables on
the No-ron party. Enticing to his house a slave of one of the leaders of
the No-ron party, he got him intoxicated and then stole from him his
name tag, a piece of wood which each person was supposed to carry and on
which his name was written. This he took and dropped beside the grave of
the father of the concubine where it was discovered that a fetich had
been buried. This was to show that a No-ron leader had resorted to the
black art to win back his way to power. The king, however, looked into
the matter, discovered the fraud and killed the prime mover in the plot,
a Nam-in leader. Many others were also banished.
Four years passed without any events of importance, and then the queen
became afflicted with boils and expired. The records tell us that that
night the king dreamed that the dead queen came to him with her garments
covered with blood. To his enquiries she made no answer except to point
toward the apartments of the concubine Chang. The king arose and went in
that direction, and his ears were greeted with the sound of laughter and
merriment. Wetting his finger in his mouth he applied it to the paper
window and soon made a peep-hole. There he beheld the concubine and a
large company of sorceresses engaged in shooting arrows into an effigy
of the queen and making merry over having done her to death by placing a
fetich under her room. This was the signal for another of the king’s
periodical outbreaks. In spite of her being the mother of the Crown
Prince, he poisoned her and killed all her sorceress companions. A host
of the Nam-in party also met their death. The almost incredible number
of 1,700 people are said to have met their death as a result of this
disturbance. There must have been in connection with it a sort of “star
chamber,” or secret tribunal where many went in but none came out, for
we are told that a few years later a secret prison in the palace was
abolished.
The year 1711 was marked by the building of the great mountain fortress
of Puk-han among the mountains immediately behind Seoul. There had been
a fortress there in the ancient days of Păk-je. It is an almost ideal
place for a place of retreat, being surrounded with very steep
mountains.
When this king died in 1720 the custom was first inaugurated of having
the whole people put on mourning clothes, and wearing them for three
years in honor of the dead king.
The new king, known by his posthumous title of Kyöng-jong Tă-wang, was
the son of the disgraced and executed concubine Chang. By this time the
so-called Nam-in party had practically passed off the stage of history;
its leading men had all been killed and it had left the field to its two
great rivals the No-ron and So-ron, although as we have before said the
No-ron was overwhelmingly predominant.
King Kyöng-jong was a man of feeble intellect and he took no interest in
the affairs of government. He merely served as a center about which
factional fights went on. It is said that his mother, the concubine
Chang, when about to be led to execution, said to him, “If I am to die
you must die with me,” and at that she struck at him with an improvised
weapon, a piece of wood. She succeeded only in wounding him, but it was
in a portion of the body that rendered it impossible for him ever to
have an heir. He swung like a pendulum back and forth between the Noron
and Soron parties, agreeing with whichever happened for the moment to
gain his ear. This caused the Noron party some uneasiness and they
desired to see the reins of government in more responsible hands. They
warmly favored the king’s brother as a candidate for the throne. The
king was always ailing, for he never thoroughly recovered from the wound
which his mother had inflicted, and he was unable to perform the
ancestral rites. He was also afflicted with sores on his head, so that
for months at a time he was unable to wear the headband which is such a
distinctive mark of the Korean. The Noron leaders induced someone to
memorialize the king asking him to make his brother his heir. They all
added their advice of the same tenor, and finally induced him to consult
the Queen Mother about it. She entered heartily into the plan and the
decree went forth that the king’s brother was heir apparent. This was
like a thunder-bolt among the Soron ranks. The whole transaction had
been carefully concealed from them, and now a man who could not, under
the circumstances, be other than a warm friend of the Noron party was
heir to the throne, and every Soron was in danger. They stormed and
protested and memorialized but to no avail. The appointment of an heir
was like the laws of the Medes and Persians, unalterable. But the Noron
people knew the weakness of the king and they feared what might take
place in some unguarded hour when the enemy might get the king’s ear,
and so they played a bolder game still. They asked the king to resign in
favor of the heir. He promised to do so, but the unguarded hour which
the Norons feared came, and the promise was not kept. Not only so, but
when it was whispered in the king’s ear that the Norons were trying to
usurp the power the worst fears of that party were realized. They were
driven from power and the Sorons came up smiling. But the king who liked
quiet and repose had one lucid interval when he said, “There is no love
of country in all this; it is simple party prejudice and thirst for
blood.”
At the head of the triumphant party were Cho T’ă gu, Ch’oé Kyu-sŭ and
Ch’oé Sŭk-hang. They began the performance of their official duties by
bribing the palace women and eunuchs to kill the heir to the throne. The
plan was to shoot him “by mistake” while pretending to hunt for a white
fox which they said was haunting the palace. The heir was informed
however and took measures to insure his own safety. He asked to have two
of the palace women killed and two of the eunuchs, but the king himself
was in mortal fear of the Sorons, whom he had brought back to power, and
he dared not do so. Thereupon the heir said “I will resign and go out
from the palace and become one of the common people.”
The Noron party were not idle. They knew that the Sorons would soon be
hunting their heads, and so they attempted to take the offensive by
assassinating the king; but, as usually happened, they were betrayed,
and terrible reprisals followed. Twelve of the Noron leaders were
beheaded and hundreds were beaten to death or banished. It is gravely
stated that in this one connection eighteen hundred men lost their
lives.
The close of the king’s second year witnessed a severe famine on the
island of Quelpart and the king sent thither 7,000 bags of grain and
remitted the tax of horses, for which that island has been from time
immemorial celebrated.
The desperate state of affairs at this juncture is well illustrated by
two incidents. First, the king was so enamored of the Soron party that
he took Mok Ho-ryong, their leader, outside the gate one night and
sacrificed a white horse and, tasting its blood, swore that until time’s
end Mok Ho-ryong’s descendants should hold high office under the
government. Second, the Soron officials went to the shrine of the great
Song Si-ryŭl and tearing the tablet from its place, dragged it through
the filth of a dung-hill. Meanwhile we hear nothing about the people and
the country. The government was not for them and they probably cared as
little for it as it did for them.
But even these sanguinary scenes could not entirely stop the march of
enlightenment, for we learn that at this very time foreign clocks,
barometers and water-hose were being brought into Korea from Peking
where they had been introduced by foreigners. This was done by the envoy
Yi I-myŭng who met missionaries in Peking. He had a conversation with
them on the subject of religion and professed to find great similarity
between Christian doctrines and those of the Chinese classics.
The fourth year of this unfortunate king, 1724, opened with a reform
that augured well. It consisted in the destruction of all the convents
outside the city gates, especially outside the West Gate which was at
that time about half a mile west of the present New Gate. The reasons
are not specifically given, but these convents had obviously become
dangerous to the morals of the people, and hot-beds of sedition. But the
king was not permitted to continue his reforms, for he died in the
eighth moon, of poison, it is said, administered in a shrimp salad. It
is further alleged that it was the work of his brother, probably on the
principle that he was the one to gain most by the king’s death. But we
may well doubt the truth of the rumor, for nothing that is told of that
brother indicates that he would commit such an act, and in the second
place a man who will eat shrimps in mid-summer, that have been brought
thirty miles from the sea without ice might expect to die. Of course all
the Soron officials were willing to believe the heir did it and one of
them advised that a silver knife be stuck into the king’s dead body, for
it is popularly believed that poison in the system will tarnish silver;
but it was not done. There was no way to prevent the hated heir assuming
his royal prerogative, which he did the same year, 1724.
The new king, known by his posthumous title of Yŭng-jong Tă-wang, now
entered upon the longest and one of the most brilliant reigns in the
annals of the present dynasty; a reign which proves, so far as
circumstantial evidence can prove, that he was not guilty of the murder
of his brother. As may be surmised, his deadly enemies, the Sorons, were
driven from office and the Norons reinstated. It is probable that the
king found it impossible to restrain the Norons from taking revenge upon
their enemies and we are told that a thousand men were killed each year
for some years. That this was done in spite of the king, rather than by
him, will be seen from the strenuous efforts which he made to destroy
the lines of party demarcation.
He began his reign with a statement of his inability to rule the people
rightly, and blaming himself for the sufferings of the people from
famine and plague. He immediately proclaimed his son crown prince, so
that from the very first there might be no question as to the
succession. He had to give way to the importunities of his councillors
and decapitate Kim Il-gyŭng who had charged him with the murder of his
brother.
On the very first day of the new year he proclaimed that all party
strife must cease; that men must think and plan for the good of the
whole country rather than for a particular party. As he was returning
one day from a royal tomb a man beside the road shouted “There goes the
man who poisoned his predecessor with shrimps.” Recognizing in this
nothing but an attempt to keep open the old party sore, the king handled
the man severely together with certain others of the Soron party who had
instigated him to the outrage.
From that day to this the Noron party has been uniformly in power. Party
strife practically ceased, not by the dissolution of the other parties
but because one party obtained such an overwhelming ascendency that the
others died of starvation. Several things led to this result. A series
of unsuccessful conspiracies on the part of the Soron party, each of
which weakened it to the point of exhaustion; and secondly the extreme
length of the reign, during which, with one short interval, the king
held firmly to the Noron party. The closing act of his first year was a
reform which he forced in the government dispensary. It had long been a
rich morsel for conscienceless officials to fatten upon, but now the
whole personnel of the institution was changed and it again performed
its normal function of dispensing medicines for the public health. The
king’s forbearance is seen in the fact that when a thief was caught,
bearing upon his person a letter from two of the palace women asking him
to procure for them a deadly poison, the king executed the thief but
refused to proceed against the women, on the ground that they had no
possible cause for wishing his death.
We here meet the curious statement, not mentioned heretofore, that from
the earliest times the Lords of Tsushima received seals from the king of
Korea. At this time the daimyo of that island sent and asked the king to
renew the custom, which had probably been discontinued for a short space
of time. The king complied with the request and had the seal cut and
sent. It is not possible to conclude from this that the daimyo of
Tsushima considered himself a vassal of Korea, for it is not mentioned
elsewhere in the Korean annals. We can form but one theory that will
account for it. This seal may have been only for the purpose of
identification to vouch for the authenticity of letters that might pass
between Korea and Tsushima. The time may come when, in the light of
facts not yet discovered, this incident may throw light on the early
relations between Korea and Japan.
A striking feature of this king’s reign was the promulgation and
enforcement of the principle of the prohibition of the manufacture and
use of spirituous liquors. We venture to affirm that this king was the
first in history, if not the only one, to boldly assert and rigidly
enforce the principle of total abstinence from the use of wines and
liquors. His three commands were (1) Party strife must cease. (2) Luxury
must be curtailed. (3) The making, selling or drinking of fermented
wines or distilled liquors is a capital offense.
But this and other reforms were about to be eclipsed by the great
upheaval of 1727, after the relation of which we will return to them.
The Norons made such desperate attempts to induce the king to continue
the persecution of the Soron party that he underwent a revulsion of
feeling and for a short time punished the Norons by calling back into
power many of the opposition. It may be that this short respite awoke
the slumbering ambition of the Soron party so that when they found it
was but partial and temporary their chagrin drove them into sedition.
There appeared at Nam-wŭn in Chŭl-la Province an insulting circular
asserting that the king had killed his brother and that the whole Noron
party were traitors. It called upon all good men to oppose the
government in every way possible. The governor sent a copy to the king
who simply said “Burn it up.” But he greatly miscalculated the amount of
sentiment that lay behind that circular, and his enemies took advantage
of his unsuspiciousness to work up a wide-spread and powerful conspiracy
against the government. It was headed by Kim Yŭng-hă.
This conspiracy was headed by the son of the executed Kim Il-gyŭng, by
Mok Si-ryŭng the brother of Mok Ho-ryŭng and by the sons and other near
relatives of the killed and banished leaders of the Soron party. A large
force was collected in Kyŭng-sang Province and Yi In-jwa and Chöng
Heui-ryang were put in command. The conspiracy honeycombed the whole
country, for we are told that in P‘yŭng-an Province Yi Sa-sŭng took
charge of an insurrectionary force, while at the capital Kim Chung-geui
and Nam T‘ă-jung worked in its interests. It was agreed that on the
twentieth of the third moon Seoul should be entered and that Prince
Mil-wha be put on the throne. But there was a weak point in this as in
all such ventures. One of the leaders in the south, An Pak, had a friend
living at Yong-ju, in the direct line of the approach to Seoul and he
warned him to move, as something was about to happen. The friend coaxed
him into telling him the whole affair, and then brought the story
straight to Seoul. This informer was Choé Kyo-sŭ. Immediately the king
sent out a heavy guard to the river and also manned the wall of the
capital. Troops were thrown into Yang-sŭng, Chin-wi, Su-wŭn, Yong-in,
Chuk-san and Ch‘un-ch‘ŭn, and were told to seize anyone who made the
least disturbance. The brother of An Pak being caught, he gave the
details of the position of the rebel troops and other important
particulars. The king appointed O Myŭng-hang of the Soron party as
general-in-chief of an expedition against the seditious people of the
south. He took with him 2,000 soldiers, but gathered more as he
proceeded south. Strong bodies of troops were also sent north along the
Peking road and to Puk-pawi outside the East Gate, to guard the
approaches to the city. In the south loyal troops were in force at
Mun-gyŭng Fortress near Cho-ryŭng Pass and the governor of Whang-hă
Province also took soldiers and stationed himself at Whang-ju, near
P’yŭng-yang. Others were stationed in the defiles of the mountains just
beyond Song-do. It is quite evident from these extensive precautions
that the plot was a wide-spread and dangerous one and that it had
powerful leaders, not only in the country but at the capital itself.
In the south, the great rebel leader, Yi In-jwa, with banners flying,
led his powerful army northward to the town of Chöng-ju. Here was stored
a large amount of government provisions and arms. It was taken not by
storm but by strategem. Arms were sent into the city on litters covered
with vegetables and other things and soldiers went in, disguised as
coolies. Once inside, they soon put the small garrison out of the way
and killed the commandant. Yi then resumed the march on Seoul,
appointing prefects in the districts through which he passed and
assuming the title “Great General-in-Chief.” The claim was that the
uprising was in behalf of the dead king. All the soldiers were in
mourning for him and they carried in their ranks a shrine to his memory,
before which they offered sacrifices.
The road from the south coming up to Seoul divides at Mok-ch‘ŭn, one
branch proceeding by way of Chik-san and the other by An-sŭng, but they
unite again at Su-wŭn. The rebels arrived at Mok-ch‘ŭn just as the royal
troops arrived at Su-wŭn. It was of prime importance to the rebels to
know by which road the royal army, under O Myŭng hang, were coming.
Whichever way they came the rebels must take the other road and so evade
an action. Gen. O was astute enough to surmise this but he did not
propose to let the rebels steal a march on him in this way; so he sent
forward a small part of his force toward Chik-san, but with the main
body of his troops he took the road by way of An-sung. His calculations
were correct, and when he neared An-sŭng he found that the enemy were
encamped there in fancied security. Taking a picked band of 700 men Gen.
O made a detour and came around the hill on whose slope the rebels were
encamped. In the night he made a wild charge down from its summit into
the camp. The effect was instantaneous. A moment later the whole rebel
force was in full flight, racing for their lives, while the pursuers cut
them down at pleasure. Yi In-jwa was captured and brought to Seoul.
Meanwhile Pak P‘il-pön the prefect of Sön-san opposed the remaining
rebels in Kyŭng-sang Province, capturing and killing a great number of
them, especially the leaders Ung Po and Heui Ryang, whose heads he sent
to Seoul in a box.
When Gen O Myŭng-hang returned in triumph to Seoul the king went out to
meet him, and after the traitors’ heads had been impaled on high, they
all adjourned to the palace where a great feast was spread, at which the
king gave Gen. O a sounding title and to Ch‘oé Kyo-sŭ, who betrayed the
plot he gave the house near the present English Church, which has in
connection with it a memorial shrine. The king had a book printed giving
in details the evil deeds of the Soron party. Since that time there have
been no great party struggles. Sacrifices were offered for all who had
been killed by the rebels. The king showed his clemency by liberating
the five-year-old son of one of the traitors. He had been imprisoned
according to the law of the country, to be kept until his fifteenth
year, and then he would be led out to execution.
Hand in hand with the king’s prejudice against the use of wine went a
similar prejudice against mining, so that not only did he peremptorily
forbid the mining of silver at Au-byŭn but hearing that copper was being
mined near the same place he sent and put a stop to it.
In 1727 the heir apparent died and was given the posthumous title of
Hyo-jang Se-ja. Two years later another incipient rebellion broke out in
the south having as its object the placing of Ha Keui, a relative of the
king, on the throne. It is said that with him died several hundred more
of the doomed Soron party.
The next thirty-two years were crowded full of reforms and their mere
enumeration throws much light on the social and economic conditions of
the time.
A map was made of the northern boundary and a fortress was built at
Un-du; the law was promulgated that the grandson of a slave woman should
be free; on account of drought the king ordered the making of numerous
reservoirs in which to store water for irrigation, and a commission was
appointed with headquarters at Seoul, under whose supervision these
reservoirs were built; the king had a new model of the solar system
made, to replace the one destroyed by the Japanese during the invasion;
at last China amended that clause in her history which stated that
Kwang-hă was a good man and that In-jong Tă-wang had usurped the throne,
and the king presented one of the corrected copies at the ancestral
temple; the cruel form of torture, which consisted in tying the ankles
together and then twisting a stout stick between the bones, was done
away; a granary was built on the eastern coast, to be stocked with grain
each year by the people of Kyŭng-sang Province, for use in case of
famine in the northern province of Ham-gyŭng; the king claimed that the
scarcity of rice was due to the fact that so much of it was used in the
making of wine and again threatened to kill anyone who should make, sell
or use that beverage; in fact he placed detectives all about Seoul,
along the main roads, whose business it was to smell of the breath of
everyone whose face or gait indicated indulgence in the flowing bowl!
A boatload of men belonging to the overthrown Ming dynasty appeared on
the southern coast and asked aid in an attempt to wrest again the
scepter from the Manchus, but they were politely refused; the king
abolished that form of punishment which consisted in applying red hot
irons to the limbs; he built the Chung-sŭng, or inner wall at
P’yŭng-yang in order to cut off the view of a _kyu-bong_ or “spying
peak,” which in Korea is supposed to bring bad luck. Any place from
which may be seen the top of a mountain peak just peeping above the
summit of a nearer mountain is considered unfit for a burial or building
site.
About the year 1733 famines were so frequent that the king appointed a
bureau of agriculture and appointed inspectors for each of the provinces
to help in securing good irrigation; a man named Yi Keui-ha invented a
war chariot with swords or spears extending out from the hubs of the
wheels on either side. He was rewarded with a generalship. The king
established a special detective force differing from the ordinary
detective force in being more secret in its operations and in holding
greater powers. The rules for its guidance were as follows, and they
throw light upon existing conditions.
(1) After careful investigation they may close up any prefectural office
and send the prefect to Seoul for trial.
(2) This does not apply to prefectures where animals are being reared
for use in ancestral sacrifices.
(3) In order to maintain their incognito they shall not demand food for
nothing at the country inns but shall pay the regular prices.
(4) For the same reason they shall not stop long in the same place.
(5) They must look sharply after the district constables and
thief-catchers and see that they are diligent and effective.
(6) They must put a stop to the pernicious custom of prefects’ servants
taking money in advance from farmers as a bribe to remit in part future
government dues.
(7) They shall prevent the sending in of incorrect estimates of the area
of taxable land.
(8) They shall see to it that prefects do not receive extra interest on
government seed loaned to the people and payable in the autumn after the
crop is harvested.
(9) They shall prevent prefects appropriating ginseng which they
confiscate from illegal sellers.
(10) They shall prevent the king’s relatives and friends seizing
people’s land.
(11) They shall stop the evil custom of prefects withholding the
certificate of release from pardoned exiles until they have paid a
certain sum of money.
(12) They shall prevent the enlistment of too many men, who thereby
claim their living from the government granaries.
(13) They shall see to it that the prefects do not keep the good cloth
paid by the people for soldiers’ clothes, and hand over to the soldiers
a poorer quality.
(14) They shall prevent creditors compounding interest if a debtor fails
to pay on time.
(15) They shall stop the making of poor gun-powder and of muskets with
too small a bore.
(16) They shall enforce the law that the grandson of a slave is free.
(17) They shall see to it that the prefects in P‘yŭng-an Province do not
receive revenue above the legal amount.
Each of these specifications might be made the heading of a long chapter
in Korean history. We have here in epitome the causes of Korea’s
condition to-day.
The governor of Kang-wŭn Province stated that on account of the frequent
famines he could not send three men annually as heretofore to the island
of Ul-leung (Dagelet), but the king replied that as the Japanese had
asked for that island, it would be necessary to make the annual
inspection as heretofore.
In the year 1734 the king made his second son heir to the throne; he did
away with the punishment of men who sold goods in competition with the
guilds or monopolies established at Chong-no, the center of the capital.
There had been so many royal deaths that the people had become
accustomed to the use of white clothes, and had forgotten all other
custom. But the king now declared that white was the worst of colors
because it soiled so easily, and he ordered the use of blue, red or
black, but giving the preference to the first as being the color that
corresponds with east. In the early years of the dynasty King Se-jong
had made a gauge of the size of whipping rods. It was shaped like a gun
barrel, and no one was to be whipped with a rod that could not be put
into this gauge like a ramrod. The king revived this law and had many
gauges made and sent all about the country to the different prefectures.
He also forbade anyone but a properly authorised official to administer
a whipping, and he abrogated the law by which thieves were branded by
being struck in the forehead and on each cheek with a great bunch of
needles after which ink was rubbed into the wounds. He next did away
with the clumsy three-decked war-vessels which were slow and unseaworthy
and in place of them substituted what he called the “Sea Falcon Boat”
which had sails extending from the sides like wings, and which combined
both speed and safety. These he stationed all along the coast.
While on a trip to Song-do the king paid a compliment to the people of
Pu-jo-gă, the ward in that city where dwell the descendants of the men
of the former dynasty, who do not acknowledge the present dynasty, and
thus show their loyalty to their ancient master. At the same time he,
for the first time, inclosed in a fence the celebrated Sön-juk Bridge,
where still shows the blood of the murdered statesman Chöng Mong-ju.
Since the days of King Se-jong, who determined the length of the Korean
yard-stick, that useful instrument had shrunken in some measure and its
length differed in different localities. So now again the king gave
strict orders about it and required all yard-sticks to be made to
conform to a pattern which he gave. Previous to the days of King
Myŭng-jong men of the literary degrees dressed in red, but white had
gradually taken its place; and now the king ordered them to go back to
the good old custom. The official grade called _Halyim_ became such an
object of strife among the officials that the king was constrained to
abolish it, though it has since been revived. Two of the emperors of the
Sung dynasty in China have their graves on Korean soil in the vicinity
of Kap-san. The duty of keeping these graves in order was now placed in
the hands of the governor of Ham-gyŭng Province. The king anticipated
the death of all party strife by setting up a monument at the
Song-gyun-gwan in memory thereof and he ordered the people of different
parties to intermarry and become good friends. During the Manchu and
Japanese invasions all the musical instruments had been either destroyed
or stolen, and as yet they had not been wholly replaced, but now there
were found in a well at the palace a set of twenty-four metal pendants
which, when struck with a hammer, gave four various musical notes. The
inscriptions on them indicated that they had come down from the time of
King Se-jong. This aroused the king’s interest and he set skillful men
at work making various instruments, notably a small chime of bells to be
used at the royal ancestral worship.