Gates roofed.... superstition.... sorcery interdicted.... a
plebiscite.... wine-bibber executed.... a female Buddha.... growth
of Roman Catholicism.... sanitation.... a senile king.... suspicions
against the Crown Prince.... plot against him.... an ambitious
woman.... the prince’s trial.... a painful scene.... the prince
killed.... law against wine relaxed.... sacrifice.... census....
various changes.... party schism.... emancipation proclamation.... a
dangerous uncle.... a new king.... literary works.... justice....
study of Christianity.... various innovations.... rumors of
war....“birthplace” of Roman Catholicism in Korea.... opposition....
terrible scourge of cholera.... conspiracy.... women’s coiffure....
Roman Catholic persecution.... Roman Catholic books declared
seditious.... prosperity and adversity.... a Chinese priest enters
Korea.... types made.... literary works.... suggestion as to
coinage.... Chinese priest asks that a Portugese embassy be sent to
Korea.... the king not violently opposed to Christianity.
In the year 1743 the king put roofs upon the West and North-east Gates.
Before that time they had been simply arches. He set on foot an
agitation against the use of silk, and ordered that no more banners be
made of that material. He utterly did away with the last remnant of the
Soron party by an edict in which he stated that all who would go by that
name were traitors. There was a popular superstition that the third and
sixth on the list of successful candidates at the government
examinations would soon die; so the examiners were careful to substitute
other names, in case a friend or relative found himself in this awkward
predicament. The king happened to see this done once and upon inquiry
found that the names of two Song-do men were being substituted in place
of those of some friends of the examiners. In anger he ordered the names
to be all mixed up again, and that each man be made to run his chance of
sudden death. One of his most salutary reforms was the doing away with
the _mudang_ or sorceress class, who did and still do so much to corrupt
the morals and degrade the manners of the Korean people. This period
beheld the invention of the one-wheeled chair, but its use was always
confined to the third official grade. A step backward was taken when it
was decreed that no one above the ninth official grade could be beaten
as punishment for crime. It tended to build up another barrier between
the upper and lower classes. And yet it was not an unmixed evil, for a
public beating must inevitably lower the dignity of the office that the
culprit holds. There was such universal complaint against both the land
and the poll taxes that the king put it to vote at a plebiscite called
in Seoul in 1750, and the people voted unanimously for a house tax
instead, and the king complied. The next year a grandson was born to
him, who was destined to be his successor. He found it necessary to
police the four mountains about Seoul to prevent the trees all being cut
down. He built for the first time a fortification at the Im-jin River.
In 1751 famines in different localities drove crowds of people to Seoul
and the government was obliged to feed them; then the king’s mother
died; then the queen died. The king said there must be some
extraordinary cause for all these calamities. He believed it was because
wine was being secretly used in the palace. It was denied, but he was
incredulous and ordered that even in the ancestral sacrifices the use of
wine be dispensed with and that water be used instead. The provincial
general of Ham-gyŭng Province was convicted of having used wine and the
king went outside the South Gate to see him executed. The culprit’s head
was set on a pole in view of the populace. Following up the good work of
doing away with sorcery, the king banished from Seoul all the blind
exorcists.
The year 1753 was marked by two events of importance. A woman created a
great disturbance in Whang-hă Province by claiming to be a Buddha and
inciting the women everywhere to burn up the ancestral shrines. The
trouble ended only when the king sent a special officer to seize and
execute her.
We are told that by this time the secret study of the tenets of Roman
Catholicism had resulted in its wide diffusion in the provinces of
Whang-hă and Kang-wŭn. There was uneasiness at court on account of the
rumor that the people were throwing away their ancestral tablets, and
the king ordered the governors of those provinces to put down the
growing sect. This was more easily ordered than done, and as no deaths
followed it is probable that the governors did little beside threaten
and denounce. Two years later a work of importance was completed. The
great sewer of the city was quite inadequate to carry away the sewage of
the city and every time a heavy rain fell the sewer overflowed and the
street from the great bell to the East Gate became a torrent. The king
gave two million cash out of his private purse and the sewer was
properly cleaned out. He also appointed a commission on sewerage and
ordered that there be a systematic cleaning out every three years.
We have now arrived at the thirty-eighth year of the reign,
corresponding to the year 1761 A. D. Up to that time the reign had been
a brilliant one, not because of military successes but because of
social, economic and other reforms. So far, it stands side by side with
the reign of Suk-jong Tă-wang, who with the aid of the illustrious Song
Si-ryŭl, effected such far-reaching reforms. We have yet seen but few
signs of that growing senility which forms such a marked characteristic
of the remainder of this reign. The king was now over seventy years old
and he had lost that vigor of mind which characterized the earlier years
of his reign. But he still possessed all that imperiousness of will
which likewise characterized him. Good judgment and will power should
decline together or else the results may be disastrous, as is
illustrated in the remaining years of his reign.
We will remember that his first son had died and his second son had been
made heir to the throne. He in turn had a son who was now eight years
old. The evils which we are about to relate grew out of the fact that
the heir was not as strongly attached to the Noron party as its
adherents desired and they feared that his accession might result in a
resuscitation of the defunct Soron party. The truth is the son carried
out in fact what his father commanded, but did not live up to—namely the
obliteration of all party lines. The old man, while always preaching the
breaking up of party clanishness, remained a good Noron to the end of
his days and the Norons had all the good things in his gift. The king
perhaps thought that party lines had been lost sight of, but it was only
the overwhelming ascendency of the Noron party, which made comparison
absurd. Instead of destroying party lines he did the very opposite in
putting all the power into the hands of a single party. This suspicion
against the Crown Prince on the part of the party in power was the main
cause of the disturbance which followed, but its immediate cause was the
ambition of a woman, a not unusual stumbling-block in the path of
empire. This woman was the sister of the Crown Prince who desired that
her husband be made king. Her name was Princess Wha-whan Ong-ju. One of
the palace women also hated the Crown Prince. All these people desired
his removal from the field of action and all had different reasons. The
Noron party wanted to save themselves; the Princess wanted to become
queen, and the palace woman wanted revenge; why, we are not told.
It did not take long to find a way. Hong Kye-heui, Hong Pong-han and Kim
Sang-no, three choice spirits came together and began laying plans for
the overthrow of the Crown Prince. They first instructed the soldiers
about the person of the Prince to steal women or goods and, when
questioned about it, claim that it was at the order of the Prince. One
day when the king was taking a walk behind the palace he came across a
shallow excavation in the earth, covered with thatch. Looking in, he
found it filled with mourners’ clothes and other objects of mourning.
Inquiring what it meant, he was told that the Crown Prince was impatient
to have him die and that he had prepared the mourners’ garments in
advance. This aroused the anger of the king. He never stopped to think
that it might be a trick against the Prince. Every thing lent color to
the suspicion. Again, one day, the king found the palace woman, above
mentioned, weeping bitterly. She said it was because the Crown Prince
had offered her indignity. So by degrees plotters, bringing apparent
evidence from several sides, which could not but seem conclusive,
gradually estranged the king from his son and at last caused the removal
of the latter to another palace, the one called the “Old Palace.” These
things preyed upon the mind of the Crown Prince and made him ill, but to
add to this, it is said they administered drugs to him which tended to
unbalance his mind and make him violent toward those about him. Then the
Princess his sister arranged a trip to P’yŭng-yang for his health. It
was intended that while he was there he should be charged with plotting
to bring a force to overthrow the king and usurp the government. On his
return, as he was approaching the city near night, an official came in
to the king and announced that the Crown Prince was outside the gate and
intended to come in that night and seize the scepter. This threw the
king into a frenzy of rage. He immediately had all the gates put under
double guard and sent out demanding the reason of the Prince’s
treasonable actions. The latter denied all treasonable intentions, but
it was too late. The old man was unable to reason calmly about the
matter. On the fifteenth day of the fifth moon the king went down to the
“Old Palace” to sit in judgment on his son. It was an exceedingly hot
day. When the Crown Prince came in and bowed before his father, the
latter said “Do you realize how you have sinned?” The Prince replied
that he was not conscious of having sinned against his father in any way
whatever. As the king had already decided in his mind that the Prince
was guilty, this denial made him simply furious. He screamed “If you do
not die it will mean the destruction of the dynasty. So die.” He then
ordered all the assembled courtiers to bare their swords but they
hesitated, for they knew the Prince was innocent; but when the king
leaped up and drew his sword they had to do likewise. The Prince calmly
said “I am no criminal, but if I am to die it ought not to be before the
eyes of my father. Let me return to my apartments and then do with me as
you will.” The king was too far gone with rage and excitement to care
for the dignity of his high station or to care for appearances. “No,” he
screamed, “It must be here before my eyes.” Thereupon the Prince undid
the girdle about his waist and proceeded to strangle himself. The whole
court were horrified, excepting the king, who could no longer be called
sane. They rushed forward, undid the cord and dashed water in his face
to bring him back to consciousness, in spite of the king’s loudly
vociferated commands to the contrary. They joined with one voice in
asking the king’s clemency, but they might as well have asked a maniac.
He threatened to kill them too if they persisted in thwarting him. He
then ordered a heavy plank box to be brought in and the Prince was
commanded to get into it. But at the moment he was trying to beat his
brains out against a stone and did not hear the command. One of the
officials ran to him and spread out his hands on the stone and received
the blows that were intended to end the life of the unhappy Prince.
Being dissuaded from this, the Prince arose and went to his father and
said “I am your only son, father, and though I may have sinned, overlook
it and forgive me. You are not like my father now. You will recover from
this passion and lament it.” This enraged the king to such an extent
that he could hardly articulate as he ordered the Prince to get into the
box. At this moment they brought up the little grandson to plead for his
father’s life, but the king raised his foot and gave the child a kick
that sent it reeling back into the arms of those who had brought it. It
was evident that there was nothing to be done; so the Prince proceeded
to climb into the box. It was now dark and when the cover was nailed on
it was not noticed that there was a large knot-hole in one side of the
box. One of the officials came and spoke to the Prince through this
hole. He was overcome by the heat and asked for water and a fan, which
were passed in to him. One of those who were interested in the Prince’s
death told the king what was going on, and he hurried out and ordered a
heavy plank nailed over the hole, and banished the man who had helped
the Prince. The assembly broke up, but the Prince was left in this
narrow prison day after day to starve. Each day one of the palace
servants gave the box a heavy blow with a stone. At first it elicited an
angry protest from the Prince but the fourth day he only said “I am very
dizzy. Please leave me in peace.” On the seventh day there was no
response, and the servant bored a hole and put in his hand and felt the
cold body of the dead Prince. The body was wrapped in grave-clothes and
taken away for burial. He received the posthumous name of Sa-do. It is a
singular fact that from that day to his end, some fifteen years later,
the king never expressed sorrow for this act of cruelty. It is also
significant that the Princess never tried to carry out her plan of
having her husband become king. The horror of this scene seems to have
turned her mind away from its purpose. At any rate she drops from the
page of history without being given an opportunity to atone even in part
for the terrible crime for which she was largely to blame. The king
still looked upon his grandson as the heir to the throne, but he made
him disown his dead father and take his uncle as father. He likewise
made the boy solemnly promise never to change his mind in this. We see
from this that the king continued to the very end to think that the
Prince was guilty and his deed justifiable.
The year 1764 found an octogenarian on the throne. From this time on,
the king was exceedingly feeble, but he clung to life with a tenacity
that was amazing, and was destined to encumber the throne for a full
decade still. His increasing weakness made it necessary for his
physicians to prescribe a little wine. He acquiesced, and from this time
the laws against the use of wine were relaxed somewhat. Its use was soon
resumed in connection with the ancestral worship, but only at the
importunity of the princess.
These declining years are by no means barren of interesting events. The
annual sacrifice in behalf of the country had always been made at Pi-băk
Mountain in Ham-gyŭng Province, but it was told the king that as Păk tu
Mountain stood at the head of the country and dominated the whole, as it
were, the sacrifice should be made on or near that mountain, So it was
decreed that from that time on the sacrifice should be performed at
Un-ch‘on Mang-dŭk-p‘yŭng, eight _li_ beyond Kap san and in full view of
the great Păk-tu-san or “Mountain of the White Head.” And it was further
decreed that those who took part in the service should be secluded for
four days before the event, should bathe often and put on clean clothes
and forego all commerce with women.
In 1767 the king ordered a full census of the country. It was found to
contain 1,679,865 houses, containing 7,006,248 people. In other words
there had been an increase of over 800,000 since the year 1657. He also
ordered the making of a new rain gauge. The first one is said to have
been made by King Se-jong. He did away with the punishment that consists
in beating the tops of the feet until, frequently, the toes drop off. On
account of the danger of ship wreck in rounding the corner of Whang-hă
Province the king ordered the discontinuance of annual naval tactics at
Chang-nyŭn, excepting for the boats regularly stationed there. He built
a palace in Chŭn-ju in Chŭl-la Province and had sacrifices offered
there, for although Ham-gyŭng Province is said to be the birthplace of
the line, the family really originated in the south. The king also
revived the ancient custom of having a bell hang in the palace gateway,
to be struck by anyone who had a grievance to lay before the king.
A split occurred in the Noron party in the year 1771. The two factions
were called respectively the Si and the Pyŭk. The former held that the
father of the Crown Prince was an innocent man and had been unjustly
punished, while the latter held the reverse. It is evident that those
who claimed he was innocent were making a bid for favor with the
prospective king.
At the time of which we write the great sewer of the city had a line of
ancient willows extending the whole length. This was found to be a
disadvantage and they were hewn down and the sewer was walled in as we
see it today. Two more factions arose about this time. They were called
the Nak and the Ho. Their differences were caused by conflicting
theories as to the interpretation of the Confucian classics.
The greatest act of this king, and the one that casts the greatest
luster on his memory, was reserved for the twilight of his reign. What
led to it we are not told, but in the eighty-ninth year of his life, by
a single stroke of the brush, he emancipated all the serfs in Korea. Up
to this time all the common people had been serfs of the _yang-bans_ or
noble class. In every district and in every ward each man of the common
people owed allegiance to some local gentleman. It took the form usually
of a tax or tribute in kind and was very loose in its application; but
on occasion the master could call upon all these people for service and
he could even sell them if he so desired. This is the reason why it is
exceedingly rare that a family removes permanently from any locality, at
least nominally. A man may go from place to place, or may live
permanently at the capital, but when asked where he lives he will
invariably name the exact spot where he originated and where the seat of
his family is still supposed to be. When the common people were serfs
they could not move at will, and the custom became so ingrained in them
that to this day its effects are plainly seen. This aged king put forth
his hand and decreed that this serfdom should cease once for all. It was
different from slavery. That institution still continued and has
continued to the present day. This serfdom included all the people who
did not belong to the so-called _yang-ban_ class. It is quite plain that
the line of demarcation between the common people and the nobility was
very much more clearly defined than at the present day. We find no
indication that the order was resisted in any part of the country. It is
probable that the serfdom had gradually become largely nominal and the
people only gradually came to realize what the edict realty meant. Even
to this day the spirit of serfdom is a marked characteristic of the
people.
His ninetieth year beheld the complete mental and physical collapse of
the king. He could not attend to the ancestral sacrifices; his mind
continually wandered from the subject in hand. He would order a meeting
of his councillors and then forget that he had ordered it, or forget
what he had ordered it for.
Hong In-han hated the young Crown Prince. It had long been his ambition
to see on the throne the son of the princess who had given up the
project of becoming queen. He worked with all his might to have the
fatal day put off, when the royal seals should be put in the hands of
the prince. He was all the more dangerous as he was the prince’s uncle,
and therefore more difficult to handle.
When the aged king insisted upon giving up, this man said, “Not yet, you
have many years more to reign,” and he succeeded in delaying the matter,
hoping that something might intervene to prevent the consummation that
he dreaded. At one time when the king called a clerk to record his
decree that the Crown Prince, from that day, should assume the reins of
power, Hong violently pushed the clerk away and prevented it. The
officials were all in a state of trepidation over these high-handed
proceedings, fearing that they might become compromised, but help was at
hand. Sŭ Myŭng-sŭn memorialized the king and set forth this Hong in such
a light that the king with a last effort asserted himself and the young
prince became king. A near friend of Hong was banished as a hint that
Hong himself might expect punishment if he persisted in making trouble.
Early the next year more of Hong’s friends were banished. The aged king
took the newly appointed King to the shrine of his foster father and
made him swear that he would ever consider himself the son of that man
rather than of his real father. The young man asked that the record of
his father’s death be expunged from the official records and so they
were taken outside the Northwest Gate and “washed” in the stream.
In the third moon of 1776 the old man died. The new king is known by his
posthumous title of Chöng-jong Tă-wang. He immediately raised his
adopted father to the rank of Chin-jong Tă-wang and gave his real father
the title Chang-hön Se-ja.
The reign just ended had been rich in literary products. The names of
same of the books published are: “How to deal with the native fever,”
“The evil deeds of the Soron party,” “Conduct and Morals,”
“Fortifications and Military Tactics,” “A Catechism of Morals,” “A
reprint of the Confucian work So-hak-ji,” “An Abstract, in 100 volumes,
of five important historical and geographical works.” This last was
called the Mun-hön Pi-go.
In spite of the oath that he had taken, the young king built a separate
shrine to his father and worshiped at it in the same manner as at the
ancestral temple. This was in accord with the letter of the oath, for he
religiously refrained, from calling his father by that name. He likewise
honored the memory of his father by decreeing that if anyone mentioned
the fact that he had been enclosed in a box and starved to death it
would mean death. He banished the son of the princess who had
encompassed his father’s death. The high-handed Hong In-han who had
worked so hard to prevent his accession was first banished to Yö-san and
enclosed in a thorn hedge, and then was poisoned by royal edict.
His first year of rule was marked by an attempt to assassinate him and
put his brother on the throne, but the assassin was taken, knife in
hand, and upon his confession Hong Sang-bom and his whole family were
seized and put to death. At last in sheer self-defense the king was
obliged to put his brother to death. At the same time he forbade the
presence of sorceresses in the capital and banished many who had been
instrumental in his father’s death. From this it would appear that there
was a powerful clique in Seoul who were trying every means to accomplish
his overthrow.
Being without issue, the king, at the instigation of his mother, took a
concubine, the sister of one of his favorites, Hong Kuk-yung. This
resulted very unfortunately, for when this concubine died her father was
drawn into treasonable operations.
Many of the present customs of Korea date from this reign. The king
first made the law that after the closing of the gates, they could not
be opened except by special permission from himself.
It was in his first year that the scholar Kwŭn Chŭl-sin gathered about
him a company of disciples and went to a mountain retreat to study. They
possessed one copy of a Christian work. This they diligently studied,
and one and all determined to adopt the belief there inculcated. So far
as they understood it, they practiced its teachings in secret.
Two years later the king took as a second concubine the daughter of Yun
Ch‘ang-yun, and Hong the father of the first concubine, because of his
opposition to it, was banished. Up to this time very few officials had
been drawn from the northern provinces or from Song-do, but now the king
decreed that they were as worthy to receive office as any others and
said that they should share in the gifts of the government. He ordered
that, a record be kept of all the decisions in council and that they be
preserved in a book called the Il-deuk-rok. Those were days of severe
famine in the land and the king did all in his power to relieve the
distress, giving from his private treasure large quantities of silver
bullion, black pepper and dyewood, things of great value in Korea.
In the year 1783 strange rumors were afloat. It was said that war had
been declared against Korea by some foreign power which was about to
throw an immense army into the peninsula. No one knew where it was to
come from, but many believed it was Japan. The excitement grew so strong
that crowds of people fled to the country, and so great was the influx
into the southern provinces that real estate rose rapidly in value. Such
was the haste of these deluded people that on the road families became
separated and children were lost. Out of pity for the latter the king
founded an asylum in Seoul for their maintenance.
Yi Tŭk-cho of Kyöng-ju was one of the men who had accepted the teachings
of the Roman Catholic books and in this year he induced a young attaché
of the embassy to Peking to look up the missionaries there and get such
light as he could on the subject. This young man, Yi Sŭng-hun, met at
Peking the Portugese Alexandré de Govea of the Franciscan order. He
accepted Christianity and was baptized under the name of Pierre. He
brought back with him many books, crosses, images and other religious
emblems. Some of these he gave to Yi Tŭk-cho who redoubled his studies
and at the same time began to do some proselyting. Two of his most
celebrated converts were two brothers Kwŭn Ch‘ul-sin and Kwŭn Il-sin of
Yang-geun, thirty miles from Seoul. This town is called the birth-place
of Roman Catholicism in Korea. Yi Tŭk-cho took the baptismal name of
Jean Baptiste and Kwŭn Il-sin that of Francois Xavier. The propagation
of the Christian faith soon began in Seoul and from there rapidly spread
in the south.
In 1785 the Minister of Justice began active operations against the new
faith and in the third moon of that year a courtier memorialized the
king on the subject. This caused the defection of many of the converts.
In 1786 Kim Yi-so informed the king that when envoys came back from
China they brought in their train many Catholic books, which caused a
“conflagration” in the country, and he denounced it as a bad religion.
He said the books were flooding the land and that the only way to stop
it was to make Eui-ju, on the border, a customs port and have all
baggage strictly examined before being allowed to pass.
Many Chinese had settled on Sin Island off Eui-ju but the Koreans on the
adjacent mainland resented it. They collected a considerable band of men
and crossed to the island where they burned all the houses of the
settlers and destroyed all their property. When the king heard of it he
condemned it as a brutal outrage. This year was marked by one of the
most destructive scourges that ever visited the country. Cholera swept
the land from end to end. It is asserted that 370,979 people perished,
among whom was the infant Crown Prince. The government found it
necessary to undertake the work of interment. The king gave out from the
dispensary 29,000 pills, and in Seoul alone there were 8,149 recoveries.
Knowing as we do the frightful ravages of this disease when it takes a
virulent turn, the fact that there were over 8,000 recoveries in Seoul
indicates that there must have been at least 60,000 deaths. Probably
this was more than half the population of the city at that time. It was
during this same year that the great mound in Kang-dong, P‘yŭng-an
Province, was found. It is some 680 feet in circumference. It was
called, from the first, the grave of the Tan-gun, though there is of
course no evidence to show that this is more than the merest fancy.
The king had a half brother named Prince Eun-ön for whom he had a great
affection; but Hong Kuk-Yŭng whose daughter had been the king’s first
concubine and had violently opposed a second union, now conspired with
two other choice spirits with a view to putting Prince Eun-ön on the
throne. The vigilant Queen Mother discovered the plot and the
conspirators were executed. All likewise demanded the death of the young
prince but to this the king would not listen. He was forced to banish
him to Quelpart, but a short time after had him brought back as far as
Kang-wha, where comfortable quarters were provided for him.
The king interdicted the use of silk excepting by very high officials
and by very old people. He set up stones to mark the place where the
great-grandfather of T’ă-jo Tă-wang had lived, where his grandfather had
fished and where that king himself had once lived, in Ham-gyŭng
Province. Someone found in P’yŭng ch’ang, Ham-gyŭng Province, the grave
of T’ă-jo Tă-wang’s great-grandmother and the king had it repaired and
guarded.
Up to that date the women had been accustomed to wear the hair in a
great bunch on top of the head as female professional mourners do to-day
in Korea. Large amounts of false hair were used and it was decorated
with long pins and with flowers. It is said that a full headdress cost
as much as the furnishings of a house. The king ordered a change in this
expensive custom, and since that day only mourners and palace women have
been allowed to wear them.
The city of Su-wŭn dates its importance from the year 1789, for at that
time the king removed his father’s grave to that place and went there
several times to sacrifice. He secretly called his banished brother from
Kang-wha, but when his mother learned of it she made such an ado about
it that he was fain to send him back. At Ham-heung, near the ancestral
seat of the dynasty, there was an immense tree, so large that ten men
holding each other’s hands could but just encircle it. The shadow which
it cast was “A hundred furrows wide.” So goes the story. The king had it
enclosed in a wall, as being the place where his great ancestor
practiced archery.
The year 1791 will always be memorable for the persecution of the Roman
Catholics. During the preceding year the Roman Catholic converts had
sent a man to Peking to arrange for the coming of a priest who could
administer the sacraments, for the Koreans had been strictly forbidden
by the Catholic authorities in China to administer them among themselves
without the services of a regularly consecrated priest. At the same time
certain important questions about ancestor worship were asked. A priest
was promised to the Korean church but the answers to the questions about
ancestor worship were very unsatisfactory to the Koreans and in
consequence there were many defections. It is much to the credit of the
Roman propaganda that from the very first it set its face hard against
the practice of ancestor worship. In the fifth moon it is said the
“flame of Roman Catholicism burned high.” In other words it was
discovered then what had been going on quietly for many years. Two men
of Chin-san in Chŭl-la Province were caught and killed because they had
burned their ancestral tablets. It was only after long discussion and
with great hesitation that the order was given for their decapitation,
and at the very last moment, after the men had already been carried to
the place of execution, the king changed his mind and sent a reprieve;
but it was too late. The king called the new religion not Ch‘ŭn-ju-hak
or “Religion of the Lord of Heaven,” but Sa-hak or “The Deceiving
Religion.” The Minister Choă Che-gong advised the king to annihilate all
Roman Catholics, but the king answered, “We must do it by elevating
Confucianism.” He had found the only rational way to deal with religious
differences. He said, in substance, let the fittest survive. This is all
that Christianity asks in any land, and the opposition of it by force
always has been and always will be an acknowledgment of inferiority. The
king knew well that China was the source from which the new influences
came and he made a very strict law against the bringing across the
border of Christian books. An edict was promulgated threatening with
punishment all who did not deliver up their Christian books within
twenty days, and the prefect of Chin-san, where the two men had been
working, was cashiered and forty-five other prefects were degraded one
or two degrees, because Christian converts were numerous in their
districts. The Roman Catholic writers attribute the numerous defections
at this time to the entire lack of pastoral care, the absence of the
sacraments and the paucity of Christian literature.
The king did not live up to his advanced ideas about using physical
force to combat Christianity, for in the eleventh moon of this year four
high officials who had embraced Christianity were seized and put to
death, together with a considerable number of the common people.
In 1792 the pope formally put the care of the Korean church in the hands
of the Bishop of Peking.
Sacrifices were offered at the tombs of Tan-gun, Ki-ja, Su-ro-wang (the
founder of Karak) and of T’ă-jo Tă-wang. Whether this was done to aid in
combatting Christianity we are not told but it is not improbable. This
was a time of general prosperity among the people and it witnessed a
rapid increase in the population of Korea. These things were evidenced
by the strong colonizing spirit which sprang up. Thousands flocked
northward to the banks of the Yalu and to the islands on the coast, and
the area of arable land was largely increased. Two years later this
period of prosperity terminated in a terrible famine in all the southern
and central provinces, and the government was obliged to dispense
280,000 bags of rice among the sufferers. This same year envoys from the
Liu Kiu Islands were well received. The King told them that two hundred
years before Liu Kiu officials had been given honorary titles by the
king of Korea. In view of the friendly relations that had always existed
between Korea and these islands, the envoys were feasted and sent off in
grand style. Late in this same year, 1794, the Chinese Roman Catholic
priest Tsiou crossed the Yalu and entered Korea. The government was
aware of it and his arrest was ordered, but he escaped from Seoul in
disguise. Two of his companions were taken, and as they refused to give
information as to his whereabouts they were immediately put to death. At
the time of his coming the Catholics estimate that there were 400
believers in Korea, but within a very few years the number increased to
6,000.
The year 1796 was signalised by a most important event in the field of
letters. In the beginning of the dynasty a fount of 100,000 pieces of
moveable copper types had been cast, and these had been supplemented
soon after by 200,000 more. Now the king began to add to them. First he
put out 50,000 and a year later he added 150,000 more; then 80,000 more
were made, and moveable wooden types were made to the number of 320,000.
Already during this reign the following works had appeared. “The
Gradation of Penalties,” “A Commentary on the Chinese Classics,” “The
Proper Conduct of the king,” “The Record of the Decisions in Council,”
“On Korean Customs,” “On Military Tactics,” “On Forms of Official
Correspondence,” “On the Science of Government.” These were now followed
by several editions of military and Confucian works, one of which was a
digest of all the Confucian Classics in ninety-nine volumes. The King
was a great lover of books and gathered all the best books that could be
procured. One work whose publishing he superintended in person reached
the modest number of 191 volumes.
The Minister of Finance advised the minting of five-cash pieces but all
the officials united in a protest against it and advised retrenchment as
the alternative. In this they were right, for the policy of meeting a
deficit by minting money could not but be disastrous.