THE
History of Korea
HOMER B. HULBERT, A. M., F. R. G. S. Editor of The Korea Review
VOJ^UME TWO
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THE HISTORY OF KOREA
VOLT^MK II Chapter I.
China's reply to Ihe Japanese. . . the Chinese army . . .the Chinese com- mander interview.s the Kint^ ...inarch on P'rung-yang. .. .Chinese treachery .... the new year .. .Chinese help not all a blessing ... P'\-ring-yang invested . . . .the Chinese force an entrance. . . .Japanese driven to ba}-....hovv they escape. .. .they retreat ...they mass at Seoul . . .Chinese stop at Song-do. . . .Koreans bridge the Im-jin ... Chinese retire to P'yung-yang. .. .Korean victory in the north . . great victory at Hing-ju . . .the Japanese sue for peace . con- ference on the Han . . .Japanese evacuate Seoul . . .the terrible con- dition of the city ...Chinese enter Seoul .. .they prevent pursuit . . Japanese desecrate a royal tomb . . . Chinese accused of bad faith . . .Japanese line of camps. . . .Chinese reinforced . . .the great battle of Chin-ju . . .a loyal dancing-girl . . .admiral Yi still active . . Chinese troops retire.
We must now return to the north and witness the final struf^gle which was to begin the Japanese retreat from the whole north. It was not till long after the fifty days had ex- pired that Gen. Sim Yu-gyung returned from Nanking. The Japanese had sent time and again, asking why he did not make his appearance, but now on the sixth day of the twelfth moon he entered the city of P'yung-3'^ang. making no excuses for his tardiness but delivering his message as follows : "I have seen the Emperor and he says that if you wish to become vassals of China you must first give up all the territory taken from Korea. You must also give up the two princes whom you have captured. If yon do not see fit to comply with these demands the Emperor will send a million men and destroy you." He then gave to each of the Japanese leaders an or- nament for the hat. from the Ivmperor. This was a trick to
2 KOKKAN IirSTOKV.
discover how large the Japanese force might be. It was de- termined tliat tliere must be about 20,000 Japanese troops in the city. What reply the Japanese gave to the Emperor's demands is not told, but that it was a negative one seems sure from what followed.
The Chinese army of counter-invasion lay just beyond tlie Va-lu River. It was an enormous host and, as armies went in those days, it was a thoroughly efEcient one. In connec- tion with this army was an official who held the rank of "Military Adviser," bj' the name of Song Kuno-ch'ang. The office carried no active power in the field but it seems to have been a sort of check upon the commander-in-chief, for the duties of the office were to keep the Emperor informed of what was going on at the seat of war. The actual General- in-chief was Yi Yu-song. Under him were three generals, of the right, left and center respectively. The General of the Left was Yang \Vun and under him were Generals Wang Yu- jung. Yi Yu-n;a, Yi Yo-o. Yang So, Sa Ta su. Son Su-ryum, Yi R\' ling and Kal Pong-ha. The General of the Center was Yi Yu-bak and under him were Generals Im Cha-yang. Yi Pang- jin, KoCh'ak, Cb.o.i Su-jong, Ch'iik Keum, Chu Hong-mo, Pang Si-whi, Ko Seung and Wang Mun. The General of the Right was Chang Se-jak and under him were Generals Cho Seung-hun, O Yu-ch'ung, Wang P'il-jiik, ChoChi-mok, Chang Eung-eh'ung, Nak Sang-ji, Chin Pang ch'iil, Kok Su and Yang Sim. The rear guard was under the command of Gen. Pang Si-ch'an and the engineering corps was com- manded by Generals Yu Whang-sang and Wun Whang. The main arn)y was composed of 43.000 troops, while in the rear was a reserve force of 8,000. This army crossed the Ya-lu on the twejity-fifth of the twelfth moon, the dead of winter. It is said tliat when on tlie march this army stretched along the road a thousand li (tliree hundred miles and more) and that the .sound of their drnmis was continuous along the whole line.
General-in-chief W YT-song, dressed in crim.^on robes and riding in a crimson chair, arrived in Eui-jii and immedi- ately sought an interview with the king. The latter said, "I have governed this country badly. The Emperor hr.s been put to a grtat deal of troublt t)n my account and all these
.MoDI'kN KokKA, 3
good men have come a long, cold road to fight for tis. Though I lay open my vitals with a sword I cannot repay you all for this kindness." Gen. Yi smiled and said, "The Kmperor's might reaches to the heavens. For the sake of Your Majesty's happiness we have been sent, and all your enemies will soon be put to flight." To this the king rejoined, "Our nation's life hangs by a thread, and the result lies with you." Gen, Vi raised his two hands in salute and answered, "1 am come at the Emperor's orders and life or death are all one to me. When I started out my father said to me, 'Fight valiantly for Korea and return victorious,' and so how can I do less -than my best?" The Koreans say that this man's father was a native of F^un-san in the province of P'yung-an, Korea, but that for some offence he had fled to China and together with many of his relatives was enjoying high position under the Emperor.
Gen. Yi started for P'yung-yang with his whole army, 80,000 bags of rice and 20,000 pounds of powder. His troops were not provided with muskets but they had small cannon. The Japanese on the other hand had muskets but no cannon. I'pon the arrival of the Chinese at An-ju they were met by the Prime Minister, Yu SQng-nyung, who laid before Gen. Yi a map showing the roads leading to P yiing-yang. Gen. Yi took red ink and indicated on the map the various routes b}^ which he intended to lead his forces to that city. Calling Gen. Sa Til-su he sent him forward to deceive the Japanese by saying that a few Chinese had come to effect a peaceful solution of the difficulty. The Japanese were pleased at this and sent twenty of their people to meet, as thev supposed, Sim Yu- gyTrng at Su-an. Gen. §a feasted thetn there but meanwhile had the place surrounded and in the midst of the banquet the Japanese were treacherously assaulted and cut down, only three escaping. From these the Japanese learned of the hos- tile intentions of the Chinese and'were greatly disturbed, but being forewarned they jiut themselves in readiness for an assault.
And so the old year died — the terrible Im-jin year which witnessed the indescribable horrors of the ruthless invasion which swept it from end to end : which .saw, too, the gradual awakening of the dormant military spirit of the people, until
4 K()K)-AX HISTORY.
nt its c'.cjst; the wavt of invasion had not onl^- broken and spent itself but had left the remnant of the invaders cut off from their home land by one of the "freatest naval j^eniuses of his own or an>- other ao;e. surrounded on all sides and hemmed in by forces whicli thouo^h perhaps unable to cope with them in the open field in a pitched battle could yet harrass atid cut them off on every side. It must be clearly borne in mind that tlie Chinese did not raise a hand to help Korea until the in- vasion virtually collapsed. The Koreans without the aid of China could probably have starved the Japanese out of P'yung- yang and driven them southward, cutting them off on the left and right till they would have been glad to take ship for home. In a sense the Chinese counter-it] vasiou was an extremelv un- fortunate thing for Korea, for the dormant energies of the peo- ple were just rousing themselves to action. Armies were be- ing levied, every day saw the Japanese forces melting away and there was a magnificent oj^portunity for Korea to turn upon her devastators and drive them headlong into the sea. It would have given a tremendous impulse to patriotism and national self-respect, and it might have been a stepping-stone to a strong national life : but the coming of the Chinese sol- diery immediately threw everything into Chinese hands and they reaped all the benefits of the situation. Even the Kor- eans themselves did not realize how they were playing into the hands of China. The Japanese in P'yiing-yang were weary and sick, and at heart glad of any excuse for retreating if it could be done without too great a loss of dignity. It was ai just this monent that the Koreans put the game, already \vr)n, into the hands of China to reap all the credit and all the prizes of success. The Koreans leaned back upon China and relapsed into their old self-complacent "fool's paradise."
With the beginning of the new year Gen Yi moved southward toward P'yvmg-yang as far as Suk-cliTln where he intended to halt for the night, as the winter days were short, but hearing of the ma.ssacre at Snn-an and wishing to give as little time for preparation as possible, pushed on by night, and in the morning planted his banners before the ancient city of l">ang-yang. The city was forthwith surrounded. The Japanese could be seen covering the slope of the hill within the wail with their blue and white flags, and ioon they open-
MODERN KOREA. 5
ed fire on the besiegers. At the same moment they rushed to the walls and manned them. The Chinese Generals of the Left, Center and Right were stationed with their respective forces before the three gates Ch'il-sung, Ham-guand Po-t'ong. The General-in-chief Yi, with a banner in one hand and a drum-stick in the other, rode swiftly from one division to an- other encouraging the men. His forces could hardly be held in check, they were socager, in spite of their long, cold night march, to rush at the wall and scale it. They were not long kept from their desire, for at eight o'clock word was given for the whole assaulting force to advance to the wall. The can- non thundered, the fire-arrows flashed throught the air, the very ground fairly trembled with the noise of battle and the tramp of eager feet. One of the fire-arrows alighted in the quarters of the Japanese general-in-chief and it was soon in flames, which rapidly spread to all the surrounding buildings. The Japanese guarded the walls with the greatest gallantry, and with spear and arrow, hot water aud stones they made it quite impossible for the Chinese to effect an entrance. The wall bristled with weapons, so that in the words of a native chronicler it was "a hedge-hog's back." So it happened that the Chinese forces fell back from the fierce defense of the Japanese. Many of them contemplated a general retreat and started to leave the field, but Gen. Yi, who was always found where most needed, saw the defection of his men and, pursuing them, struck off the heads of a few as an example to the rest. Then he turned and cried, "Fifty ounces of silver to the first man to set foot upon the battlements of P'yung-yang." This was doubtless a more powerful appeal than he could have made had he called upon their patriotism or love of glory. Im- mediately the tide of battle turned. A Chinese captain, Nak Sang-ji, a man well along in years and whose proportions were so ample that the Korean chronicler says of him that he weighed a thousand pounds, led on a company of men and by a mighty effort succeeded in reaching the lop of the wall. He held his ground there while others could scale the wall at his back, and so an entrance was effecttd. The Japanese began to desert the wall, and soon the Chinese entered by the Po- t'ong and Ch'il-sung gates, while Korean allies entered by the Ham-gu Gate. By this time the Japanese had entirely
'6 KORE\N HISTORY.
left the wall and had massed themselves as best they could in various parts of the city, determined to make a desperate stand. The Chinese infantry and cavalry both swarmed in on every side and all Japanese stragglers were cut off, while the fight throughout the city became general. Before the Japanese could firmly establish themselves upon the hill and in otht-r defensible parts of the town they lost two captains, 2,285 men, and 45,002 weapons of various kinds, besides 1,051 Koreans whom they had held as captives.
Manj' of the Japanese had taken refuge in various gov- ernment buildings which they had barricaded as best they could. The Chinese went to work systematically to burn these down, and in the few hours remaining before the fall of night nearly half of the entire Japanese force succumb- ed to the weapons of Chinese. One instance will suffice to il- lustrate the method of procedure. Many of the Japanese had taken refuge in a large building on the wall, well up on the side of the mountain and looking directly down upon the waters of the river. Gen. Yi had it surrounded with piles of wood, the timbers of houses and hewn logs, and these were set on fire. The entrapped Japanese then bad the choice of roasting to death or leaping down upon the ice of the river. Hundreds chose the latter alternative, but the ice was not strong enough to stand the tremendous strain and they were all engulfed in the river and carried under the ice below. As for those that remained, it is said that the smell of burning flesh could be discerned a quarter of a mile away. Gen. Konishihad taken refuge with a large body of troops in a building called the Yun-gwang-jung, very near the Ta- dong Gate which opens directly upon the water front. Night had fallen and the fight had lulled for a time. What took place at this time may be open to some doubt. The Korean account says that the Chinese commander sent a message to Konishi demanding the surrender of his whole force and that Konishi replied, "Our remaining force is small and we wish to evacuate the city and retreat if we may be allowed to leave quietly." It is affirmed that Gen. Yi consented to this and left the Ta-dong Gate unguarded, and in the dead of night the Japanese troops passed swiftly out and crossed the river. On the face of it this statement is hardly credible, but judging
MODKKN KOKKA. * 7
from future events the Koreans believe that Gen. Yi received a large ):)ribe from the Japanese as the price of this act of leniency. It is true that future events justified the Koreans in suspecting some such thing, but as the Japanese were im- mediately beside the Ta-dong Gate and, under cover of night, might easily have forced tlieir way out, especially as the Chinese were exhausted by their long forced march and the fight about the city, we may well believe that the Japanese did not need to appeal either to the pity or the avarice of the Chinese in order to effect their escape. It may be, too, that Gen. Yi did not wish to be hampered with so many prisoners of war and was rather glad than otherwise to let them get away. Of course the Koreans who had suffered .so terribly at the hands of the Japanese would have been glad to see every one of them massacred, and their anger at seeing them escape may have led them to impute wrong motives toGen. Yi. Subsequent events, however, gave some color to these suspicions, as we shall see.
This retreat from P'yung-yang in the dead of winter was lik; Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, on a small .scale. The Japanese were without provisions or proper clothing. Many of them threw aside their arms and luggage and, turning from the main road, begged their way from house to house. When at last they reached the city of Seoul and found food and safe- ty they were in a savage humor. Most of the Koreans who had fled from the capital had now returned, and on them these half-famished and wholly disappointed Japanese wreaked their vengeance. They seized hundreds of the unoffending people and put them to the sword. Scores of them were taken out- side the South Gate and slaughtered like oxen.
Gen. Kato, who had led an expedition eastwards into Ham-gyung Province, hearing of the evacuation of P'yung- yang, immediately put his troops in motion and hastened down to Seoul, burning and ravaging as became. And in a short time all the remnants of the Japanese army were congregated in the capital.
The Japanese retreat from P'yung-yang was not without its casualties. A Korean general, Ko On -bilk, met a body of the Japanese, probably a part of the retreating army, at P'a- ju, seventy //out of Seoul, and punished them severely, taking
8 KORKAN lllSlOkV.
as it is said, seventy heads ; not h great achievement when we remember that the Japanese were practically- nnarmed.
But by this time the Chinese Gen. Yi was on his way south from P'yung-yang, rather tardily as the Koreans thought, but hearing of this engagement of Gen. Ko. he quickened his pace. Coming to He-on Pass, some seventy // out from Seoul, his horse slipped, throwing him heavily on his face. He was severely though not dangerously hurt. At that mo- ment a company of Japanese was sighted on the mountain side and Gen. Yi ordered instant pursuit. The Japanese, probably a foraging party from Seoul, closed with them and as the Chinese were on a marshy piece of land, where they sank to their knees in the mud, and had no other \Aeapons with tlicm but their swords, the Japanese inflicted severe punishment on them, killing eighty of their number. Gen. Yi was so weak from loss of blood that he did not dare to prolong the fight. So he called a retreat and the next day went into camp at Tong-p'a, a hundred // from Seoul. From that point he im- mediately despatched a letter to the Emperor saying : "There are 20,000 Japanese firmly intrenched in Seoul and with my present force I dare not attack them. I am also ill and can^ not fight. I would be glad if you would send someone to re- lieve me of the command." Then he retreated fiftv // further, to Song-do, in spite of the earnest entreaties of the Koreans. The Korean General Yi Pin said. "You came to render aid to our country. Why is it that you now retreat?" whereupon one of the general's staff promptly kicked him out of the house.
Gen. Yiordered Gen. Sa TS-su to go and guard the ferry at the Im-jin river which was now partly frozen but impass- able for boats and ordered the Koreans to go to work buildins: a bridge for the transport of the Chinese army. Here was a piece of wovk that might have daunted a better engineer than the average Korean general. But the way the Koreans went about it and the brilliant success they achieved show what the Korean was capable of when really in earnest. And it shows as well how thoroughly they were determined to see chastisement inflicted upon the Japanese. A swift broad river partly frozen, no possibility of driving piles nor of erect- ing my supports from the bed of the river itself. It must be a suspension bridge or noue at all. On either side of the
MOliKKN KOKKA. 9
river heavy timbers were planted firmly in the ground some twenty feet apart. Behind these horizontally were laid heavy logs. Then between these supports on either bank were stretched fifteen heavy strands of the tough fibrous vine call- ed chik by the Koreans It is tht pneraria lhu7ibergiana. Of course these sagged in mid-stream so that they swept the water, To remedy this, stout levers were inserted between the strands and twisted until tlie cables swung clear of the water by many feet. Tlie foundation having thus been laid, willow branches were spread thickly upon the cables and finally a heavy layer of earth was added and the whole was packed down tight by the treading of many feet. And so was completed the first suspension bridge which history records. We see that dur- ing this war the Koreans had originated three important things, namely the iron-clad, the mortar and bomb, and now the suspension bridge. And on this bridge the whole Chinese army crossed in safety.
But Gen. Yi was tired of the war and was extremely anxious to get back to China. So when he heard that Nato was crossing the peninsula he said, "He may come to P'yiing- yang and in that case I must hasten back to that place and hold it against him." So he started back toward that city, leaving Gen Wang P'il-jiik in charge of the forces that were advancing on Seoul.
At this point mention must be made of the victories of Gen. Chong Mun-bu in Ham-gyung Province. In three suc- cessive fights he had defeated a large, though not the main, body of Japanese and seems to have entirely cut it off from forming a junction with Gen. Kato as he retreated toward Seoul with his dwindling though still formidable army. After the departure of the Japanese, Gen. Chong went to the far north, even to the far Tu-man River and inflicted severe punishment on all those who had aided the Japanese or had sided with them in the betrayal of the two princes. This done, he pacified the disturbed province as much as he could and then disbanded the militia and sent them to their homes.
Kwun RyHl, the governor of Chul-la, of whom we have heard before, took 4000 men and marched on Seoul, not by the main road but b)- way of Yang-ch'un. Crossing tl.e Han
lO KORKAN HISTORY.
at that point he went into cam]-) at HSn^-ju and surrounded it with a paling^ of heavy log^s. The Japanese in Seoul ridi- culed it but sent a strong body of troops to attack it. A long^ fierce fight ensued and the result was doubtful. At last the Japanese succeeded in setting fire to the wooden paling and had it not been for the tnost strenuous efforts on the part of the Koreans they would have been burned out. But they .«:ucceeded in quenching the flames. When their arrows were gone their outlook was again apparently hopeless, but in the very nick of time Admiral Yi Pin of Chul-la Province came up the river by boat with 20.000 arrows and as the camp was immediately on the river bank the Koreans were saved, atid soon the Japanese were driven back. KyTni RyDl took the bodies of the Japanese who had fallen, cut them in pieces and impaled the fragments on the top of the stockade. The next daj' the Chinese general Sa TS-su arrived and, seeing these trophies of victory, praised Gen. Kwu;i highly and sent him to P'a-ju to guard against any possible northward movement of the Japanese. At the same time small companies were sent in all directions to cut off foraging expeditions of the enemy. In this way the Japanese in Seoul were cut off from all supply of fuel. The Japanese general who had suffered defeat at HSng-ju thirsted for revenge, and he led many a fierce sally from Seoul, but always with great loss.
In the third month confidence was so far restored in the north that the king began to think of returning toward the capital. The first stage of this journey was as far as Yong- yu. At this same time the Japanese sent a letter to the Ko- rean general Yu Sfing-nyong saying that they wished to con- clude a treaty of peace. Gen. Yu as in duty bound sent this message on to the Chinese Gen. Yi in P'yung-yang. He in turn despatched Sim Yu-gyfing, who had before acted as an emissary of peace between the Japanese and the Emperor, to take charge of the negotiations and with instructions more or less definite. When this commissioner arrived in the vicinity of Seoul a meeting took place between him and the two Japanese leaders, Konishi and Kato, in mid-stream off the village of Yong-san. Gen Sim opened the conference by saying, "If you had listened to my advice in P'yung yang you would have saved yourselves all this trouble. The Chinese,
MODI'KN KoRKA. 1 1
40,000 strong, are all about you. They have gone south to fortify the Cho-ryung Pass and thus cut off your retreat. The Han River is guarded so thoroughly that you cannot cro.ss ; Gen. Yi Vti-song is returning from the north with 300,000 fresh troops (an unblushing lie) and I am prepared to offer vou the only possible way of escape. You must give up the two princes ; you must leave the capital and move south to the coast of Kyung-sang Province. Then and not till then will we conclude peace and the Kmperor will recognize your king as his vassal." The vanquished invaders saw that there was nothing to do but comply, and so in the name of the tliirty-seven Japanese generals thej' engaged to evacuate Seoul on the nineteenth day of the fourth moon. It was further agreed that they should leave untouched 20.000 bags of rice which were stored in the government granaries. The two princes were to accompany the Japanese as far as Fusan and were to be handed over to the Korean authorities there. In accordance with their promise, the Japanese evacuated the city on the very day appointed, and Gen. Yi Yu-song, who seems to have recovered his health rapidly after he found that the Japanese did not mean fight, entered the city the following day. The condition in which he found things is almost indescribable. The Ancestral Temple and three palaces had been burned. Only the Nani-pyul-gung, wViich the in- vaders had used as headquarters, was standing. The country all about was lying fallow and a great famine stared the Ko- reans in the face. A thousand bags of rice were hastily brought and made up into soup or gruel, mixed with pine leaves, and a few of the starving thousands were fed. As Gen. Sa Ta-su was passing along the street he saw a young child tryitjg to suck milk from the breast of its dead mother. The sight arou.sed his compassion and he carried the child to his quarters and ordered it to be cared for. Rice was .so scarce that a whole piece of cotton cloth could be purchased with about three (juarts of it. A horse cost but three pecks of rice- Famishing men fought and killed each other, the victors eating the vanquished, sucking the marrow from the b(Mies and then dying themselves of surfeit. It is even .said thai when a drunken Chinese soldier vomited, half starved uK-n would crawl to the place and fight over the posse.ssion of
12 kOKKAN llISTokV.
this liorrible substitute for food. This state of things natnr- iiUy brought on an epidemic of the native fever, a species of typhus, and the dead bodies of its victims lay all along the road, thf head of one being jjillowed on the breast of another. The dead bodies in and immediately around Seoul were gathered and piled in a heap outside the Water Mouth Gate and it is affirmed that the pile was ten feet higher than the wall.
It was on the twentieth of the fourth moon that Gen. Vi entered Seoul. He took up his quarters in the Nam-pyOl- gung. He seemed to be in no haste to pursue the Japanese, so Gen. Yu Siitig-nyong hinted that as the Japanese were in full flight it might be well to hurry after them and cut them down as occasion offered. The Chinese general had no in- tention of leaving his comfortable quarters that .soon, but he gave consent to the project of pursuit and detailed 1 0,00a men under the lead of Gen Yi Yu-bak. A day or so later this doughty warrior returned saying that he had a pain in the leg. So ended the first attempt at pursuit. Then the Korean Gen. Kwrin Ryiil came in from P'a-ju and urged that there be immediate pursuit, but for some unexplained reason the Chinese commander forbade it, and the native accounts even add that he sent secretly and had the boats on the Han destroyed so as to render pursuit of the Japanese impossible.
After crossing the Han River, the retreating Japanese seem to have been in very ill humor, for they did not confine their exhibitions of temper to the living alone but even at- tacked the dead. They dug open the royal tomb at Chung - neung a short distance the other side of the river. Digging fifteen measures deep they found some rags and a few bones. These they scattered about on the ground. They then filled in the hole with rubble. Another royal tomb was opened and the casket and remains were burned.
In the beginning of the fifth moon a letter arrived from the Military Commissionei, Song Kung-ch'ang, in P'yung- yang, ordering a general pursuit of the Japanese. The Kor- eans believe this to have been a mere blind, for the Japanese had twenty days the start of them and pursuit was of course out of the question. At this point again the Koreans nnke a
MOUKKX KOkKA. 1 3
serious charge against the Chinese, asserting thit the Japan- ese, before leaving Seoul, sentlirge sums of nione_v toward P'yung yang for Gen. Yi Yn-song and Song Eung-cli'ang, and that by this means they secured immunity from pursuit. The delay was a cause of great wonderment to the Koreans and it is not unlikely tb.at this theory of a bribe explained for them most fully the actions of the Chinese. And it must be confessed that there is little in the temperament or antecedents of the Chinese on which to base a refutation of the charge. An instance is cited to bring home the charge. A Korean who had come upon a Japanese straggler and killed him was severe- ly beaten by order of the Chinese general in charge.
Finally, when all too late, Gen. Yi made a pretense of pursuit, but after crossing Cho-ryfing Pass and still finding himself no nearer the enemy than before, he turned back and resumed his comfortable quarters in vSeoul. If he thought the Japanese would hasten to take boat and return to their native land, he was much mistaken. It may be that they wished to do so. but the terrible punishment that Admiral Yi Sun-sin had inflicted upon the army of reinforcement made them wary of approaching the coast, and so the Japanese forces in the south found themselves practically entrapped. I.'ad the Kor- ean land forces been led at this time by a man of the skill and bravery of old admiral Yi the country would have been spared long years of war.
The Japanese in their flight south were brought face to face with this stern fact, and like the soldiers that they were they set themselves to solve the problem. They wanted to be near the sea, perhaps with a view to taking advantage of any opportutiity that might present itself of slipping across to Japan, and yet they were so numerous that, living as they must on forage, it would be impossible for them all to encamp at the .same place. So they adopted the plan of fortifying a long strip of the southern coast, reaching from the harbor of So-sang in' the district of Ul san in Kyung-sang Province to Sun-ch'un in Ch'iil-la Province, a distance of over two hundred and seventy miles. There were in all between twenty and thirty camps. Being thus about ten miles apart they had room for forage and still were near enough each other to render assistance in case the Koreans or their allies the Chinese should besiege them
14 K()K);a.\ iiisTokv.
at any point. These fortified camps were all of the same jjeneral kind, overlooking the sea from a bluff and on the land side surrounded by a moat and earthworks. These prep- arations were made with the utmost care, for there was no hope of immediate succor and the Japanese foresaw stirring times.
In course of time the Chinese court was informed of these events and the success of their generals in the north seems to have given them some enthusiasm for prosecuting the war; .so additional troops were sent to the front under the command of Generals Yu Chung and Hu Kuk-chTing. These troops numbered 5,000 and were from southern China. Among them there are said to have been many "ocean imps," or sav- ages from the southern islands. These men could enter the water, it is said, and scuttle the enemy's ships from beneath. We are told that there were also in this army some men of immense stature who came in carts rather than on foot. These forces went into camp at Siing-ju in Kyung-sang Province. At this place there was also a large Korean army under Gen- erals Kim ChTni-il, Kim Sang-gon, Ch'o<^' Kyung-whe, Ko Chong-hu. Yang San-do and Yi Chong-in. Under them were large numbers of militia and raw recruits, and this accounts in p.irt for the speedy fall of the town and the terrible slaugh- ter that ensued. The Japanese laid siege to the place and after nine days, during which time the Japanese made a hun- dred separate assaults, the latter were reinforced and the de- fenders, exhausted by the long struggle, were finalh' driven from the wall and the Japanese effected an entrance. But even after they got in, the Koreans fought desperately and sold their lives as dearly as possible. Of this most sanguinary battle only one incident is preserved in the Korean accounts. When the Japanese entered the city and had advanced to a point on the wall which overlooks the waters of the Nam-gang (river), a desperate encounter took place, in the midst of which the Korean general, Yi Chong-in, seized two of the Japanese about the waist and, dragging them to the brink of the precipice, threw himself and them into the water below, Korean accounts say that in this battle the almost incredible number of 70,000 Koreans were killed and that an equal num- ber of the Japanese perished. This latter must be an exag-
MODKRN KORKA. I5
geration, for the loss of that number must have swept well-nigh the entire Japanese army from the country. We must" re- member that the Japanese army had received practically no reinforcements from the time it first landed on Korean soil, and it is safe to say that what with the losses by sickness and accident, together with the thousands who had fallen at the hands of the Koreans and Chinese, the original force must have dwindled to 150,000 or less ; in which case the loss of 70,000 men must have put them hors de combat at once. This battle is called the greatest in the whole war, by the Koreans, though it is not considered the most important.
An interesting story is told of a dancing-girl of this town. When the Japanese took possession of the place she was ap- propriated by one of the Japanese generals. One day while they were feasting in a summer-house on the wall overlooking the river, she began to weep. He asked her the reason and she replied, "You have come here and driven away our people and our king. I do not know whether my sovereign is liv- ing, and yet I sit here and feast. I can hardly claim to be better than the beasts, to sit here and make merry. I must put an end to my life." Thereupon she threw her arms about her paramour and flung herself and him over the edge, thus ending her weary life and helping to avenge her native land at the same time. For this reason she was canonized at a later date and her spirit was worshiped at this place each year by royal edict.
All this time the great Admiral Yi was in camp at Han- san Island off the coast of Kyung-sang Province. His force was not large, but during his enforced idleness he prepared for future work. He set all his men to work making salt by evaporating sea water, and by this means he got together a great store of provisions. Needing barracks for the soldiers, he offered to the carpenters and workmen about a bag of salt for a day's work. His energy and patriotism were so con- tagious that many worked for nothing, and the barracks were soon built. At this point the king conferred upon him the admiralty of the three provinces of Ch'ung-ch'ung, Chul-la aud Kyung-sang.
In the ninth moon the Commissioner Song Eung-ch'ang and Gen Yi Yu-song collected their forces and started back
l6 KOKKAN HISTORY.
for China. They evidentl)- coiisiderfcd the back bone of the invasion broken, and so it was ; but like most spinal diseases it was destined to linger on for years before it came to an end. When these generals set out on their homeward way they left 10,000 Chinese soldiers in the hands of the Korean gererals Yu Chung and O Yu-ch'ang to act as a bodyguard for the king. In spite of their suspicions of the corruptibility of Gen. Yi Yu-song, the Koreans speak in high terms of him. The\- de- scribe him as a young man of thirty, of handsome person, broad mind and possessed of great skill in the art of war. When he was on the eve of returning to China he bared his head and showed the Koreans that his hair was alreadj' turn- ing gray. He told them it was because he had worked so hard for them, which piece of bathos seems to have impressed them deeply.
Chapter XI.
The King re-enters Seoul. .. .temporary palace. .. .a royal lament ...a prrfligate prince. . . .imperial rebuke. . . ."The Flying General" . . . uneasiness in Seoul. . . .revenue reform . . .reforms in the army . . . Kingrefuses to make peace with the Japanese. . . .the Chinese retire . . . .plot against Konishi ... Japanese envoy in Nanking. . . .robbers put down ...a good man ruined. .. .Japanese trickery a patient envo}'. . . .he absconds . . .his flight covered b}' his second. . . .home- sick Japanese . . Konishi sarcastic . . .Chinese envoy in Japan. . . . Korean envoy ... .Japanese army leaves Korea .. .prince refuses the crown. . . .rebellion. . . death of a Ipj-al general. . . .envoj's ill- treated in Japan. . . .return . .a new invasion determined upon comparison of Japan and Korea . . .Japanese scheme to get Admiral Yi into trouble. .. ..Admiral Yi degraded ...second invasion ... Cho-ryung pass fortified .. Chinese give aid. .. .Admiral Yi's suc- cessor a failure. . . great naval victory for the Japanese. It was on the fourth day of the tenth moon of the year 1593 that the king reentered the gates of Seoul after his long hard exile in the north. But he found the city almost a desert. The palaces were burnt and the ancestral temple was level with the ground. Under the circumstances he decided to stop for some time in that part of the city which is called
MODKRN KOREA. I7
Chong-dong, the present foreign quarter, near the West Gate. Here there had been the grave of one of the wives of the founder of the dynasty, but her body had long ago been dis- interred and removed to a place outside the Northeast Gate. So the king took up his quarters at the Myung-ye-gung. It is the exact spot where the King of Korea lives today. A considerable tract of land about it was surrounded by a stake fence with a gate at the east and at t^-e west. This royal res- idence was named the Si-o-sa or "Temporary Residence." Here the king lived thirteen years while the palace now known as "The Old Palace" was being built. The king was desirous of rebuilding on the spot where his palace had stood before, the Kyong-bok-kung, but he was told by the geo- mancers that that Vv^ould be an unpropitious site. In order to build the new palace a tax of half a piece of cotton cloth was levied upon each man throughout the country. In some cases rice was accepted as a substitute.
After the king had entered the city, one of his first acts was to go to the site of the ancient Confucian Temple and, standing on the melancholy spot, utter tlie following lament ; *'The spirit of Confucius permeates space as water permeates the soil beneath our feet. If my faithfulness isgreat enough, let the spirit of Confucius rest down upon this spot." He noticed that none of the people were in mourning and so or- dered that all those who had lost parents in the war should assume the mourner's garb.
At this time a strong faction arose whose wish was to see the king lay aside his royal prerogative in favor of his son. This prince was a son by a concubine, for the queen had no children. He was an ambitious but profligate fellow and had in his heart no loyalty for his father. Some of the courtiers went so far as lo memorialize the King to the effect that it might add to the contentment of the people if the king should put the reins of government into the hands of his son. He hesitat- ed to do this, for he knew the young man and how unfit he was to rule. At the suggestion of Song Eung-ch'aug, the emperor sent to the king appointing the Crown Prince to the governorship of the southern provinces in conjunction with the Chinese general, Yu Chung. The prince was delighted at this and hastened to his post at Chun-ju. He practicall\- took
1 8 KOKKAN HISTC3RY.
the whole jurisdiction of the south out of the hands of the king and even held the competitive examinations for literary- degrees, which was an exclusively royal prerogative
Another of the Chinese generals accused the king b2fore the emperor of effeminacy and love of luxury and suggested that one of the best of the Korean generals, be elevated to the throne in his place, but Gen. Suk Sung, who was very loyal to Korea, induced the emperor merely to send a letter upbraiding the king for his love of luxury and claiming that this was the cause of Japanese successes in the peninsula. The letter ended with an exhortation to arouse himself, work up a competent arm}', and complete the work of driving out the Japanese. The envoy bearing this missive was met at P'a-ju by Gen. Yu Sung-nyong and an escort. The China- man told him that his arrival in Seoul would be the signal for some verj'' important disclosures. General Yu and Gen. Chuk conferred together about this matter and decided that the king must in any event be prevented from abdicatJ:ig. for their official heads depended upon his retention of the reins of power. They also persuaded the envoy to their view, so that when the king read the letter and declared his intention to abdicate, the envoy objected that this could not be done until he had sent a letter to the emperor and obtained his consent.
Meanwhile there was going on in the south a sort of geu- rilla warfare against the Japanese. It was led principally by Kim Tuk-nyung, a self-made man who had the confidence of the prince. This man had put his whole fortune into the cause and had hini.self fitted out 5.000 men. His method was to pass from place to place with great rapidity and strike the enemy when they were least expecting attack. In this way he earned from the Japanese the name "The Flying General." He is said to have been uniformly successful.
Of another ilk were Song U-jin, Yi Neung-su and Hyiin Mong. These gathered about them bands of desperate men and went about the country looting and burning. In Seoul there was consternation. At any moment one of these band.s might enter the city and work tlieir will. T.ie Crown Prince, a cause of gr-at uneasiness, was still at Chiin-ju and for aught anyone knew he might be plotting the overthrow of the gov-
MODKRN KOREA, I9
eriiment. In fact this impression was so strong that the high- waymen dared to write to him complaining of the king and asserting that they were going to make a clean sweep. The implication was plain, that they intended to put the prince upon the throne. The .solicitude of the people in vSeoul took form in the rumor that Yi Tri-hyfing himself, the Minister of War, was in league with th^ rebels. For forty successive days this injured minister went and knelt at the palace gate and begged that t'le king would have him executed, as he could not endure the charge of unfaithfulness.
It was customary for the emperor to nominate an heir apparent for the Korean throne, but at the beginning of this war it had seemed necessary to appoint one immediately and so the king had informally promised the prince that he should be king. The latter now demanded that this be confirmed by the emperor and a messenger was sent to the Chinese court for that purpose ; but as the emperor had no son himself except by a concubine and was loath to put him on the throne of China, .so he was unwilling to see this prince put oti the throne of Korea. The result was that he sent back a prompt refusal, which for the time dashed the hopes of the ambitious prince.
It appears that the rebuke which the emperor adminis- tered to the king was in some senses des irved . The king after all his wearisome exile in the north, probably paid more at- tention to the pleasures of peace that was for his own good or the good of the countr\^ If so the rebuke had its effect, for the king immediately roused himself and set to work reorganiz- ing the finances of the country and putting the army on a better working basis. Hitherto the revenue had all been col- lected in rice but now he allowed the revenue to be collected in any kind of produce, and the collection of it was farmed out to various individuals, a practice which at the time may have had its good points but which at the same time had within itself very bad possibilities. The reorganization of the army was a matter of great importance ajid the king set himself to it with a will. Heretofore each general had had his own following and there was no central power nor seat of authority. Each body of troops followed the caprice of its leader with no reference to any general plan. Before the
20 KORKAX HlSroKY.
Chinese general Vi ViVsong left he put into the hands of the kino: a hook treating of the art of war, a work written by Cli'uk Kye-gwang. Tliis book the king put into use and ap- pointed Cho Kyiing and Yu Sung-nyong to have charge of the whole matter of military reorganization. In order to put the new plan into operation a large number of poor and des- titute soldiers were gathered. They had to pass a physical test which consisted in lifting a rics bag full of earth, and of leaping over a wall as high as their heads. In ten days two thousand men were found, who endured the test. The drill consisted' of thrfee parts, (i) firing with gtins, (2) shooting with bow and arrow. (3.) using the battle axe. In time these men became the royal guard and escort. The number gradual- ly increased to to. 000, 2.000 being attached to each of the government departments. The whole force was divided into two parts and while one part was drilling in the city the other was set to work farming in the suburbs. In this way ihey raised the food necessary for the sustenance of the whole forje. The plan was extended to the country, and teachers were sent to practice the country soldiers. It became a species of militia. From-this time the quality and discipline of the Korean army improved in a marked degree.
It appears that the Koreans were not the only ones who suspected Gen. Yi Yu-song of showing favors to the Japanese, for the emperor took notice of it and deprived him of his high rank. He was supplanted b)' Gen. Ko Yang-gyiim. This new appointee advanced toward the border of Korea as far as Liao^tnng and from that point sent a letter to the king saying that the Chinese had already lost enough men and treasure in the war and that the king had better hasten to t;nake friends with the Japanese and induce them to come and do obeisance to the emperor. It appears plain that this man wanted peace to be patched up before he should be called upon to do active work in the field. When the king saw this letter he said, *'When the Crown Prince becomes king he can do, as he pleases but as for me I will never make peace or friendship with the Japanese." But Yu Sfing-nyong urged the helplessness of Korea alone and the need of securing China's help at all hazards. Sung Hon urged the fact that the new Chinese general had a large force in hand and he
MODERN KOREA. 2T
must be conciliated at any cost. So the king reluctantly sent an envoy to China asking that overtures of peace be made with the Japanese. Even while this envoy was on the way, the emperor, apparently thinking the war at an end. sent an order commanding the immediate return of Gen. Vu Chung, with all his forces, from the province of Kyung-sang. The Crown Prince sent begging liim not to go. The people all about the coun*:ry were in distress about it. He was believed to be the onh- hope against the Jap:inese. The command of the emperor however was law and the general was forced to obe}'. Taking his armj', together with the wives and chil- dren of those who had been married to Korean women, he went back to Liao-tung. It is said that ever 10,000 of the Chinese took back their Korean wives to China, but six years later they all returned to their native land.
Kato was desirous of meeting and having a talk with the Korean general Kim Eung-sfi, the geueral of Kyung-sang Province. To this end he sent a Japanese named Yo-si-ra to arrange a meeting, and in course of time they met at the town of Ham-an and had a conference. Kato opened the confer- ence as follows: "If Korea will help us to become the vassals of China we will remove all our troops from Korea immediate- ly and we will also consider it a great favor." But G^n. Kim, who knew of the enmity which existed between Kato and Konishi, waved the main question by asking, "Why is it that you and Konishi cannot agree? It is plain that so long as he is here such a plan as you recommend cannot be carried out." Kato answered, "I have long wished to make an end of him, but can never get a chance. If in some way we could work up a charge against him and circulate it among the troops we might be able to get all the army removed to Japan." As to the further deliberations of these two men we are not inform- ed, but we judge from this passing glimpse that Konishi the younger man was so firmly intrenched in the affection of his troops that Kato despaired of making head against him until that affection was in some way alienated. In this Kato ac- knowledges his virtual defeat at the hands of his youthful rival.
The emperor was not as anxious as his generals to make peace with the Japanese, and when he heard that his new ap-
22 KOKKAX HISTORY.
pointee to the peninsula was in favor of a treat}' with the in- vaders he promptly ordered his retirement, and Gen. vSon Kwang was sent to take his place. Hardly bad this happened when the envoy Ho Ok. from the Korean court, arrived, asking that a treaty be made with the Japanese. When his message was delivered all the court was in favor of the plan ; but the Prime Minister said that as they had been deceived once by the Japanese general So Siibi, who had accompanied Gen. Sim Yu gyung from Pj'ung-yang on a similar errand before, it would be well to test them with three propositions, "(i) We will give the king of Japan the royal investiture. (2) Every Japanese soldier must leave Korea. (3) The Japanese must promise never to disturb Korea again." This plan pleas- ed the emperor and Gen. So Si1-bi was sent for, that he might appear before the emperor and accept these conditions. On arriving at Peking the Japanese readily acceded to the terms and exclaimed, "We will gladly agree to this and will swear by heaven to abide by the terms." Thereupon Sim Yu- gyring, who had always had a strange leaning toward the Jap- anese, now exclaimed, "Japan now evidently desires to be- come China's vassal. An envoy must ht sent to invest Hide- yoshi with the royal insignia, and all this trouble will end." But Hu Hong-gang haa a truer estimate of the visitor and remarked, "The Japanese are a subtle people, and all this talk of becoming vassals of China is mere pretense. There is no use in sending an envoy to Japan." Gen. Suk Sung said, "This man seems to be honest in what he says. Gen. Sim Yu-gyung should accompany So Su-bi back to Korea and there confer with the Japanese leaders and then arrangements can be made for investing the king of Japan." The emperor so ordered and at the same time appointed Yi Chong-siSng as envoy extraordinarj' to Japan to perform the ceremony of in- vestiture. Yang Pang-hyung was appointed his second. These events all occurred in the latter part of the year 1593. As the new year opened the political sky was dark enough. Not only were the Japanese intrenched in the south but pre- datory bands infested the country and the government troops had all they could do to hold them in check, let alone any offensive operations against the Japanese. However, after a hard chase a large band of the miscreants were brought to bay
MODKKX KORKA. 23
at Hoe-nuiii Mountain and cut to pieces. At this time also the king sent again to Nanking asking that his successor be nominated, but again he was refused.
The career of Gen. Kim Tuk-nyruig whom, as w.e have seen, the Japanese had dubbed "The Fl5'ing General," affords us another example of the fatal weakness of Korea, in the envy excited against any really successful man ; for even while Gen. Kim was successfully combatting the Japanese in his own way, his very successes aroused the spleen of Gen. Yun Keun- su who accused him to the king of having killed plenty of Koreans, but never a Japanese. On the strength of this groundless charge, and without questioning its truth, the king brought Gen. Kim to Seoul and imprisoned him a year. And so a man of highest loyalty, of such unselfish patriotism as to devote the whole of his private fortune to the fitting out of soldiers to fight his country's foes, was dragged away from a successful field of work to languish in prison, simply because a less successful man begrudged him his fame.
And now began an amusing comedy between the Chinese, who took the Japanese seriously, and the latter who were merely playing off the Chinese in order to save time.
In the fourth moon of 1395 the embassy from China to Japan arrived in Seoul, and immediately Gen. Sim Yu-gyiing posted southward to see Kato and tell him that the Chinese embassy had already come and that he must hasten to get all the Japanese troops out of the country before the embassy should arrive at Fusan. To all this the wily Kato answered gravely, "You had better stay here a few weeks while I take a run over to Japan and ask Hideyoshi about it, and if he gives the order to take the troops back, it can be done immedi- ately." When he came back, instead of answering the main question he said that it would be well for a Korean to accom- pany the envoy to Japan. Meanwhile the Chinese envoy Yi Chong-sting, in Seoul, sent messenger after messenger urging the speedy removal of the Japanese troops from tlie peninsula ; but Kato kept putting it off on one ground or another, and made no move to go. When, however, this part of the comedy had proceeded to such a point that the Japanese began to fear the Chinese would see that it was indeed a comedy, Kato took a few regiments of men from Ung-ch'iin and Ku-je and made
24 KOKKAN HI.STOKV.
preparations as if to depart, meanwhile sending Gen. Sim to Seoul to say that he was waiting for the envoy and his suite to come south and accompany the departing army to Japan. Five months had already elapsed since the envpj' had arrived in Seoul, and he therefore determined to accept this invita- tion. Moving southward, he cnme to Nam-wun in Chul-la Province where he stopped, fearing to go directly into the Japanese camp. Wliile there he gained the soubriquet of "frog-eater," for he was so fond of the flesh of that reptile that he compelled the people to hunt for and procure it for him.
Gen. Son Kwang, from his comfortable quarters in L,iao- tung, sent him a letter charging him with cowardice and ordering him to proceed at once on his way. Under this stimulus he proceeded to Fusan ; but Kato would not come to see him, saying, '"I must receive instructions from Jap- an before I can take you across the straits, so I will cross once more and find out the will of my royal master in regard to the matter." After an absence of two months he came back and opened another act of the comedy by asserting that he must first take Gen. Sim across to Japan and arrange the ceremony of investiture, and that the envoy proper might fol- low when all was ready. By this time, what with the fear of the Japanese and bewilderment at the intricacy of Japanese diploniac}' the poor envoj' was well-nigh distraught. When therefore, with the beginning of the new year 1596 a China- man r.amed So Hak-myilng came from Japan and informed him that Hideyoshi had not the remotest idea of becoming a va.ssal of China and that if the Chinese envoy should cross to Japan he would never comeback again, it capped the climax, and that very night the wretched envoy, taking only one ser- vant and a few clothes tied up in a cloth, made his escape from the Japanese camp and fled away northward. He traveled by night and hid by day, until at last he arrived at Seoul. And so the curtain drops on another act of the comedy.
When the Japanese found out that the envoy had made his escape they were in a quandary, fearing lest they might be punished for letting him go and so spoiling the fun. Thej' therefore gave chase, but not being able to overtake the light-
MODERN KOREA. 25
footed envoy, they contented themselves with surrounding the house of the vice-envoy Yang Pang-hyung. The latter knew ot" his chief's flight, but to draw away suspicion from himself he pretended to sleep late that morning and claimed to know nothing about the matter. When at last he was told of it by the Japanese general Kuroda, he said quietly, "Well, he was a young man and a little nervous. He should have gone to Japan long ago instead of waiting around here. It will be of no use for you to chase him." He then deliber- ately arose, went to the room lately occupied bj' his chief, took possession of the Emperor's letter and returned to his own apartments. By his coolness and presence of mind he allayed the excitement of the Japanese and perhaps saved his own life.
The Japanese soldiers who had been detailed to return to Japan were of course delighted to go back to their homes and were eager to set sail from Fusan. They had their bag- gage all on board and were hoping to start at any moment. But when they heard of the flight of the Chinese envoy they knew there would be a long delay and they were sorely disap- pointed ; so much so in fact that many of them wept aloud. It is probable that every Japanese soldier in the peninsula would have been glad of an opportunit}- to return to Japan. Only the severe discipline of the Japanese army and the lack of boats prevented them from deserting in large numbers : at least we may gather as much from the frequent references to the home-sickness of the Japanese soldiers.
Yang Pang-hyiing called the weeping soldiers before him and said, "We have waited here so long that my chief got tired and went back. But I remain and the imperial missive is with me. He has fled only to Nam-wun and if you send there you will doubtless find him." This led thera to believe that their fond hope of returning home would soon be grati- fied.
All this time the young Koni.shi, the rival of Kato, sat
disdainfully silent watching the empty game which his un- popular rival was playing with the Chinese. When he heard of the flight of the envoy he laughed and said, "I knew he was no genuine envoy from the Emperor, for if he had been he would not have dared to show his heels like this." Tliis re-
26 KOKKAX TIISTOKV.
mark was intended to imply that while Kato had been trying to hoodwink the Chinese, they, on the other hand, had hoodwinked him.
Yang Pang-hyung lost no time in informing the Emperor of the perfidy of his chief, and the Kmperor immediately ordered the recalcitrant official to be caught and imprisoned. He raised Yang Pang-hyang to the position of Chief of the Embassy and appointed Sim Yu-gyung as his second. We will remember that Sim Yu-gyung had already gone to Japan with Kato, bearing the imperial gifts, which consisted of a royal robe with the embroidered design of a dragon, a jade belt, royal head-gear, a n)ap of China, a book on war and various other kinds of treasures. He there married the daughter of a Japanese named Arima, and is said by the Koreans to have become a thorough Japanese. This may have been part of the game he was playing, and we may see the fruits of it later.
Kato was determined that a Korean envoy should accon)- pany the Chinese one to Japan and to this end he told one of the Korean officials. "If a Korean envoy does not accom- pany the Chinese embassy to Japan the peace will be only be- tween Japan and China, and Korea will have no part in it. This will lead to grave troubles." Gen. Sim also sent his ne- phew back from Japan to ask that a Korean etivoy accompany the Chinese embassy. So the king appointed two men, Whang Sin and Pak Hong-jang to this work, conferring upon them the title of T'cng-sin-sa or "Faithful Messenger/'
In the fifth moon of this year 1596 Gen. Konishi massed his troops in forty-six regiments on the southern coast and, leaving only four regiments to guard Fusan, set sail for Japan, With him went all the envoys, both Chinese and Korean.
Now that lasting peace seemed to be assured, the king no longer hesitated to hand over the reins of power to the Crown Prince. He accordingly sent the royal insignia south to him, and so doffed the responsibilities as well as the prerogatives of royalty. But. strange to say. the prince strenuously re- fused to accept them, insisting that he had no desire to take the scepter from his father's hand. Seven times he sent to his father protesting his unwillingness to have the honor thrust upon him. But the king would not listen. It was
moi)1-:kx k'ORKA, 27
only ;ifter the courtitrs liad asseinblt-d before the palace for twenty days 111 succession and besonj^ht him to retain the scepter that they finally prevailed and he consented to con- tinue in the exercise of the royal prerog^ative.
Yi Mono^-hak. an unprinci[)led ruffian, ig^norant but am- bitious, had joined the forces of Gen. Han Hyun and had fought during the war. Now he started out on an independent line. Gathering a force of over ten thousand men he at- tacked and took Hong-san in Clrung-ch'rnig Province, and he followed it up by taking Im-ch'un. Ch'ung-yang, Chong- san and Hong-ju. Yi Mong-hak had been deceiving his fol- lowers by saying that Gen. Kim Tuk-nyang was interested in this scheme. But now they found that this saine Gen. Kim was arrayed against them and they saw they had been duped. That night every man deserted the adventurer and the next day he fell into the hands of the loyal troops and his head was forwarded to Seoul. This shows the extremely unsettled ■ state of the country, and how any unprincipled man with money and effrontery could ofler serious opposition to the government.
Here again we find a striking example of that petty jeal- ousy whioh deprived Korea of most of her capable men. This Gen Kim Tuk-nyung was a celebrated man. He was known throughout the Korean army for his strength and prowess. It is said of him that single-handed he would attack a tiger and pin it to the ground with a spear. They also saj' that he rode into battle with an iron mace of a hundred pounds weight in each hand and he gave the Japanese so many hard knocks that they gave him the name, "The General from under the Rock." The ministers at Seoul were suspicious of his rising fame and went their ways to have him dragged down. They charged him with having been in league with Yi Mong-hak and won the king over. He was arrested and brought to> Seoul, where after a most disgraceful trial he was put to death. The Japanese had such a high opinion of this man's parts that Konishi sent and had a portrait made of him. Whet^ he .saw the picture he exclaimed, "This man is indeed a General." When his death was announced, the Japanese held a great feast in honor of the event. This vias just on the eve of their departure for home.
28 KOKKAN IIISTOKY.
As We have seen, it was in tlie suininer of 1396 that the Chinese and Korean envo\s crossed to Japan with the return- ing army of invasion. When they were hronglit into the presence of Hideyoshi lie treated them witli scant courtesy. When asked wli\- lie did not bow before tlie imperial missive he replied that he had a sore leg and could not. He treated the Korean envoy much worse than the Chinese, and said to him, "I sent back the two princes as I agreed, but your king never so mtich as thanked me. He has now sent as envoy a man of inferior rank on purpose to insult me. T believe the original Chinese envoy ran away at the instigation of your king. I will treat the Chinese envoj' civilly, but as for you I shall send another army and be avenged on you." After tbis there was but one thing to do. Both the envoys packed up their effects and started back home. When the Chinese envoy arrived at Nanking bringing insult instead of submis- sion from Japan the Emperor was in a terrible rage and charg- ed Sim Yu-gyung with having betrayed his country. The chief envoy was executed and the official who had advised the sending of an embassy was thrown into prison and starved to death, but Sim Yu-gyung in some way escaped with his head. .
Chapter II.
A new invasion determined upon. .. .comparison of Japan and Korea ... .Japanese scheme to get Admiral Yi into danger . Admiral Yi degraded .. second invasion .. Choryung Pass fortified . . Chinese give aid. . . .Admiral Yi's successor a failure. . . .great naval victory for the Japanese .. Admiral Yi reinstated .. siege and fall of Nam- wQn. .. .Korean naval ^nctories. .. .Admiral Yi's policy .. Japanese advance checked . . .rejoicing in Seoul . . .siege of Ul-san. . . siege raised . . Roman Catholic mis.sionaries . . the Japanese army . . . the "ear and nose mound" ...number of Chinese ... .a Japanese settlement. .. .Chinese admirals. .. .Admiral Yi's diplomacy ... . Gen. Yang Ho recalled . . .the King accused . . the defense. We have now reached the halfwaj' point between the two invasions, or rather between the two parts of the double inva- sion. Hideyoshi was still furious over the failure of his great plan of invading China, and he must needs find some way to
MODKKX KOKICA. 29
vent liis spleen. He determined upon a second invasion of Korea, not this time with a view to the invasion of China l)iit with the more modest desire to punish Korea, though what Korea had done to deserve punishment it would be hard to say. To be sure she had proved au obstacle to his vault- ing ambition, for had Hideyoshi's original army sailed straight for China instead of landing at Fusan, it probably would have overthrown the Chinese capital. We must notice the chang- ed conditions which existed between the two countries. Korea had now experienced the worst possible at the hands of the Japanese and knew what to expect. Their soldiers had felt the prick of Japanese swords and had in turn tasted the de- lights of victory. That terrible glamor which surrounded the dreaded islanders upon their first appearance had worn off and some sort of equality had been effected between them. The Koreans had meanwhile become possessed of firearms and were measurabh^ skilled in their use. They had learned never to trust themselves to open battle when geurilla warfare was feasible. They had demonstrated their great superiority on the sea in the person of the Admiral Yi. When therefore we remember that the Japanese had to leave their base of supplies and live on what they could forage in the peninsula, it ap- pears that in spite of their prowess they had not much advan- tage over the Koreans. But before making this second de- scent upon the shores of Korea it was necessary for the Japan- ese to get the redoubtable Admiral Yi Sun-sin out of the way. No fleet from Japan would risk an encounter with him in his "Tortoise Boat." The Japanese had seen how the mutual jealousies of the Koreans worked in their favor and they de- termined to use this in getting Admiral Yi removed. So one day a Japanese named Y<j-si-ra made his appearance at the camp of Gen. Kim Eung-sn, saying that he was tired of being a Japanese and that he wanted to become a Korean. He dressed in Korean clothes and kept going back and forth between the Japanese and Koreans, giving the latter what seemed to be much valuable information. He seemed to be devoted to the Korean interests. One daj^ he came in a state of great excitement and said that the Japanese General Kato was coming to Korea with a great fleet and that, as he was to pass a certain island off the coast, Admiral Yi ought to be sent
30 KOKKAN HISTOKV.
to lie ill wait there and drive the invading fleet back or to sink it. So Gen. Kim wrote to the king ai)out it and asked for orders. The king, trusting in the prowess of Admiral Yi, gave his consent ; but when that officer received these orders he promptly replied that it was a trick to entrap him and thus clear a way for a descent upon the mainland of Korea. He therefore; declined to run the risk, especially as the place men- tioned was studded with sunken rocks and was specially dan- gerous for navigation. But the Japanese Yo-si-ra kept urging Gen. Kim to see to it that the plan was carried out and at last the General wrote to the king saying that Admiral Yi declined to go. As may be supposed Admiral Yi had enemies at court who could not let such an opportunity pass of getting him into trouble. Consequently the iniquitous decree went forth that Admiral Yi be seized and brought to Seoul and that Wiin Kyun be put in his place. The king intended to put Admiral Yi to death, but one of the officials urged his former services in palliation of his present offense and so the pun- ishment was commuted to loss of position alone. So it was that Admiral Yi, the best soldier that Korea contained and to whom the king owed his crown twice over, was degraded to the ranks and became a common soldier. But most remarkable of all, he made no complaint, but went quietly about his work as if nothing had happened.
In the first moon of the year 1597 the Japanese fleet set sail from Japan. This army was led by Kato and Konishi al- though the nominal commander in chief was a lad of seven- teen named Hideyaki. It is said that it took a thousand boats to bring the army across the straits. Had Admiral Yi Sun - sin been at his old post this fleet would never have touched keel on the Korean coast but as it was there was no difficult}^ and the entire army landed safely at So-sang Harbor and im- mediately threw up fortifications and went into camp.
The first thought of the Koreans was to fortify Cho- ryimg Pass the one break in the mountain chain which the Japanese must pass if they wished to march on Seoul. Gen. KwCin Ryul with 23,000 men and other generals with troops hastily gathered from various districts hastened to that im- portant pass and put the fortifications in good order, and the king forthwith sent Kwiin Hytip as envoy to Nanking to
:su)i)HKX ;:()K)-:a. 31
implore the intervention of Cliina. And now we see the evil resnlts of Hideyoslii's ill-tre;it;iient of the Cliinese and Korean envoys in Japan ; for instead of niakin<Jj the Koreans send time and again asking for help the Emperor was eager to send troops into the peninsnla to avenge himself upon the Japanese, The Chinese army was put in cliarge of three men : Gen. Yang Ho with rank of Military Commissioner, Gen. Hyoiig Ka as general-in chief and Admiral Ma Gwi as commander of all the naval forces. Under these were Gen. erals Vang WOn. O Yu-ch'ung, U P3k-y6ng, Chin U-ch'ung, So Eung-gung, Chin H>'0 and Tong Han-yu. Gen. Yarig Ho came no further than P'yang-yang, his duties not requir- ing his presence on the field of battle. Admiral Ma Kwi and all the others came on to Seoul. From that point they branched out iu several directions, one going to Nam-wun in Chnl-la proviince. another to Song-ju in Kyiing-sang Pro- vince, another to Chun-ju, Chul-la Province, and another to Ch'ung ju in Ch'ung-ch'ung Province.
Admiral Wnn Kyun, who had supplanted Yi Sun-sin, went to Han-san where Admiral Yi had worked so diligently to build barracks with the proceeds of salt manufacture. His first work was to overthrow all the rules and regulations which his predecessor had so wisely promulgated. He then drove away all who had been at all intimate with the former admiral, who was now a common soldier under Kwun Ryul. He then built a paling about the council-hall that Yi Sun-sin had built and there he housed his harem and spent his time in rexelry and feasting. He would frequently have innocent men called up and severely punished for mere amusement. And thus he soon alienated the good will of all the troops stati(jned there.
But Kato, the astute Japanese general, through his tool Yo-si-ra, kept at Gen. iKm, urging him to have a fleet sent to intercept a fleet of Japanese boats. He named a day on which the Korean fleet would be sure to intercept a fleet of the enemy. At last the order was given for Admiral Wun Kyun to carry out this manoeuvre and though he had no stomach for the enterprise he could not well demur, for this was the very thing that had cost Admiral Yi his position. So he got his boats together and sailed out to Chul-yung
32 KOKKAN HISTOkV.
Island off Fusan. But a strong breeze sprang up and the sea was rather rough and in the darkness of night the Korean fleet became scattered . The next day the larger part of them rendez- voused at Ka-dok Island where they unexpectedly met the Japanese fleet and were vigorously attacked. Almost im- mediately all Admiral WTin's forces deserted him and his only recourse was flight. Beaching his boat on Ch'il-ch'un Island he landed and drew about him what remnants of his force he could find. When Gen. Kwfin Ryul heard of this he sent a stern order demanding that the admiral come out and fight. That valliant man first filled hemself with wine then sallied forth only to be deserted again by his men. So the doughty admiral again ran his boat aground and took to his heels. He was so fat however that he could not run far, so he sat down under a tree to get his breath. There the Japanese overtook him and carried away his head in triumph. The second in com- mand, Yi Yu-geui, fled by boat after burning all the barracks and provisions that were stored at Han-san.
When these events became known the whole country was in consternation. Yi Hang-bok, the king's trusted councillor, said, "Yi Sun-sin must be reinstated in his former position." It was a case of dire necessity and so the king sent and conferred upon that faithful man his former office. The trusty Yi set out on foot and rested not day nor night until he reached his former position, Han-san. On all sides he met the scattered and flying remnants of his former force. He rallied them about him, promising that the Japanese should still be held in check.
But before Admiral Yi arrived on the scene of action a tremendous force of Japanese both military and naval had landed on the southern coast. Their objective point was Nam-wnn. where the Chinese general Yang Wiln had pitched h:s camp. Upon the approach of the Japanese the latter burned all the houses outside the wall to prevent their offering cover to an attacking force ; but the Japanese soon built a rough fence or palisade about the town, from behind which they picked off the Chinese soldiers on the wall, at leisure. The Chinese attempted to make a sortie but in their eagerness to get out of the gate they became jammed in it and were mown down by the long swords of the besiegers. Unfor-
Uiiiately for the Clniiese and Koreans the following night was full moon and the Japanese cut down every man that at- tempted to escape. To the line of stakes which they had planted about the town the Japanese fastened swords, and when the people from the town tried to make good their escape they found themselves impaled upon these weapons. The Chinese commander. Vang Wini, rode at this barrier and his horse was so impaled, but he succeeded in getting over and making good his escape. The Japanese attacked the wall in its weakest point and forced an entrance. The massacre within the town beggars description. The Korean generals Chong Keui-wiSn. Yi Pong-nam, O Eung-jung, Kim Kyong- no. Sin Ho, Im Hyun, Yi Tuk-whe and Yi Wiin-ch'un were all killed, which indicates ho\\' sanguinary must have been the fight.
Immediately all northern Chul-la was in confusion and the troops everywhere began to fall back toward the north. In Seoul itself there was consternation. The king called his officials abotit him and asked what should be done. The}^ all urged that the king stay in the capital. The queen and the crown prince however were sent to Su-an in Ilam-gyung Province and the king prepared to move whenever it should seem necessary.
But by this time Admiral Yi was again on the stage of action and as alert as ever. He had as yet only ten boats under him, but he had no lack of men, for the people all along the coast, when they heard of his reinstatement, flocked to him. He drew up his little fleet of ten boats in the shadow of a mountain on Chin-do (island) and sent out reconnoiter- ing boats which returned just at night saying that the Japan- ese were approaching. As the moon dropped behind the mountain it left the Korean fleet in complete darkness and soon the Japanese boats came sailing along in single file. Admiral Yi deployed his boats in a long line and suddenly they all raised a loud shout and fired point blank at the un- suspecting Japanese. The latter thought they had run into a powerful fleet and soon scattered in all directions. The next day there was more .serious work, however, for a fleet of several hundred boats appeared. The Koreans were in some trepidation, but the fearless admiral made straight for the
^4 KORKAN nrSTOKV.
enemy and tlioiio^h soon surrounded he succeeded in sinkino^ thirty of the enemy's boats. The rest evidently recognized the master hand of Admiral Vi and turtied and fled. He gave chase, and before the battle ended the Japanese com- mander Ma-da-si was killed. Returning from this remarkable fight Admiral Yi proceeded to Han-san and set to work re- building the barracks and making salt. It is said that in two months time he stored awaj^ 20.000 bags of rice. His former captains and soldiers came back to him in "clouds." He also found another source of revenue. The wealthy men all through the south desired to get away from the disturbed districts and so loaded their effects upon boats and sailed away. Admiral Yi however stood in the way and made them pay a toll of from one to three bags of rice for each boat. From this source alone he collected above a thousand. bags of rice. He used this revenue in the purchase of copper for the casting of cannon, and for the building of boats. Thousands of people who feared to live on the mainland came and built huts about his camp, until the island actually became too small to hold more.
After the fall of Nani-wiin the Japanese, flushed with victory, started northward toward Seoul, thinking without doubt that they would haA'e as easy a victory as before. Yang Ho. hearing of the defeat of the Chine.se, came post ha.ste from P'yung-yang and severely upbraided the generals and charged them with lack of bravery. Without an hour's delay it was arranged that Generals Ha Sang, U Pak-yung, Yang Teung and P'a Sa should take a strong body of troops and move southward to Ch'ung-ch'Jug Province and intercept the Japanese. This was done and the army amV>ushed at Keum-o-p'yung in the district of Chik-san. Soon the Japan- ese came streaming along, neglecting all precautions, for they had no idea of meeting an enemy. When therefore the ambu.scade opened fire on them it took but a few moments to throw them into utter confusion. In the rout which ensued an enormous number of the Japanese were killed. On the following day the Japanese, who had mended their broken ranks as best thej' could, came on to the attack, but their losses had been so great that in spite of wonders of bravery which they showed they were again crushed. The remnant
of their force fled southward to Mokcli'iin and Ch'nno;-ju. This was one of the three gri-eat battles of the war and in im- portance it was exceeded bv none ; for, thongli the forces eno^aged were not so numerous nor the number of slain so great, it broke once for all the self confidence of the Japanese, and the>' never a^aiti had the hardihood to attemf)t tlie ap- proach to Seoul. By this batcl- the war was definitely confined to the southern provinces. The Commissioner Yau^- Ho su^j;- c:;ested to the kin.i^ that he g^o out and survc-y the battle held, and so the royal cavalcade rode out the South Gate. One of the Chinese generals suspected that the kino was something of a coward and .so, to test him, he gave the horse the king was riding a sharp cut with a whip. The horse leaped into the air with terror but th- king held his seat and showed no sign of fear. The Chinese were pleas-d at this and their re- spect for the king was visibly increased.
Seoul gave itself up to universal holidav in honor of the victory, for it was still fresh in the minds of many how Seoul had fared before at the hands of the invaders.
In the tenth moon Gen. Konishi built a strong fort on a bluff overlooking the sea at Ul-san in Kyung-sang Province. He named it To-san. The Chinese Yang Ho determined to cut the war short by attacking and taking this position and by so doing he expected to cut off the right arm of the invad- ing army. Collecting all the forces that were within reach, he started south to attack Ul-san. The army consisted of 40,000 men and it went in three divisions. The left or east- ern division being led by Gen. Yi Pang-chTni, the middle divi.sion by Gen. Ko Ch'ak and the western division by Gen. P ang U-dilk. Gen. Ma Kwi was sent on ahead and acted as avant-coiireiir. vStopping a few miles from the Japanese posi- tion he ordered Gen. P'a Sa to go and make a preliminary at- tack upon the fort to discover something as to the lay of the land, and if possible to discover the number and equipment of the enemy. The attack was made with fire-arrows. Almost immediately the Japanese made a sortie, but were driven back with a loss of four hundred and sixty men. Shortly after this the three grand army corps arrived. The Japanese were arranged in three divisions. In the middle was the fort pro- per. On the north was a fortif;ed caiupcalled the Paii-gu juu
3f^ KOKKAN HlSTOkV.
and olT tlie south was anotliL-r called the P'a-wha-u^.Tiij^. It was the first business of the Chinese and Korean allies to diive these outer divisions into the central fort. To this end the left division of the arnu' attacked the Pati-gu-juu and the rijjht division the 'P a- wha-yjans^. Gsn. Yan"^ Ho put on his armor ami went into the tiiick of the fi^ht and urged on his men. The air was filled with the noise of drums, musketry- fire and shouts of the cjnibitants, and a cloud of arrows concealed the heavens. Some of tlie Japanese huts were on fire and great clouds of smoke and dame rolled heavenward. Slowly the Japanese were forced bick and finally' they all en- tered the gates of the main fort of To-san. This fort was set on a rugged hill where it was difficult for an attacking force to manoeuvre, but there was little water in the fort and the Japanese were forced to come out secretly at night and draw water from a well nearby. Being aware of this. Gen. Kim Kung-sn. a Korean, placed an ambush about the well and caught upwards of a hundred of the enemy. They were bad- ly emaciated and said that surrender was a matter of only a few days. It came on to rain, and this was followed by severe cold, as it was now the beginning of winter. Many of the besieging army had their hands and feet frozen. One of Gen. Konishi's lieutenants w^rote repeatedly to the Korean general Song Yun-mun asking for terms of peace. Gen. Yang Ho answered, "Konishi must come out and surrender and he will be treated well." By this time the Japanese were well-nigh exhausted. They had neither food nor water, and every daj' they died in such numbers that it is said they had "a mountain of dead." Many a time Gen. Konishi meditated suicide but each time-was restrained by one means or another. As a last resort the Japanese threw gold and silver over the wall to bribe the soldiers without and keep them from making an attack.
But the tables were about to be turned. All the other Japanese forces in the south had become aware of the desper- ate straits to which their comrades were reduced at To-san. And so now at the last moment a large fleet appeared and the hard won victory was snatched from between the teeth of the Ch.inese and Korean allies. The exposure had greath- weak- ened the besieging force. Their provisions were almost ex-
MODKKX KORKA. 3/
hausted and they had used up all their arrows. The}' were far stronger that the beleagured Japanese but were not fit to cope with the fresh army which was burning with zeal to avenge their starving compatriots. So it was that Gen. Yang Ho was compelled to raise the siege and fall back toward Seoul. During this siege the Chinese loss was fourteen hundred, though many thousands were wounded.
From this time date the first efforts of the Roman Catho- lic Church to enter Korea. Japan had already many thousands of converts to Romanism and Hideyoshi was determined to leave no means untried to eradicate the foreign cult. To this end he sent many of the Catholic converts to Korea. But the most distinguished of them all was the young and vigorous Gen. Konishi who had received baptism at the hands of the Catholics and had received the name of Augustine Ariman- dano. It may have been because of Hideyoshi's desire to get the Catholics out of the country that Gen. Konishi was ap- pointed to the post in Korea. Kato was as pronounced a Bud- dhist as Konishi was a Christian and this of course intensified the hatred and rivalry between them. Gen. Konishi was desir- ous of having Catholic teachers come over to the peninsula and attend to the spiritual needs of the Christians in the army; and to this end the Vice-provincial of the Jesuits in Japan ap- pointed Padre Gregoris de Cespedes to this arduous and im- portant post. With him went a Japanese priest. The two first went to Tsushima and finding uo means of getting to the peninsula remained there over the winter and carried on a successful mission work. The next spring they made their way to Korea and finally reached Gen. Konishi's headquar- ters at a place that the Japanese call Comangai, which was without doubt the fort of Ul-san. Here they worked a year but finally, through the machinations of Gen. Kato, who work- ed upon the prejudices of Hideyoshi, both the foreign and na- tive priests were sent back to Japan, and this had no little to to with the return of Gen. Konishi, who went to clear him- self before his master.
To anticipate a little, V\"e might here say that many Ko- reans who were carried captive to Japan from time to time during this war, became Christians at Nagasaki and though slaves were so firm in their belief as to be willing to suffer
3^ KOKKAN HISTORY.
ni;irt\rdoni -Inriii"; llic Itrrihlj ])cT.st;ctitioiis which raged in Japan bttweeii 1610 and 1530, but with the departure of Ces- jMdes Ironi Korea tlie distinctive work in Korea was aban- doned.
Let us ])iuse a moment here to compare the two contend- ing armies. In this second iuva.sion the total number of Jap- anese tl;at reached Korean soil was 105,400, or about half as many as formed the first army of invasion. They were led by twent\-seven generals, prominent among whom were Kato and Koiiishi. As a mark of his spiteful spirit, Hideyo- shi ordered that in this second invasion the uoses and ears of all Koreans killed or captured should be cut ofif and sent to Japan. And so from time to time these half-savage soldiers sent loads of Korean noses and ears, pickled in salt, and they were buried in the monastery of Ta-bul-sa in the city of Kyo- to, there to remain to all ages a disgusting memento of the most unprovoked and wanton cruelty that ever disgraced the annals of a great people. Many of the Koreans who lost their noses or ears at that time survived many years, and it cannot be wondered at that the Koreans have never since cared to accept favors at the hands of their island neighbors.
The total number of Chinese was 210,000. With them came 2,000 000 ounces of silver to pay for their sustenance. From Shantung were sent by boat 200,000 bags of rice. There were also sent for the relief of the army 5,832,000 ounces of silver. And for the relief of the Korean famine sufferers an additional 3,000,000 ounces were sent. When we consider the vast number of men and the millions of wealth that China poured into Korea at this time it ma}' well be believed, as the Koreans affirm, that China, by so doing, impoverished herself so that she became an easier prey to the Manchus who, a few years later, wrested the scepter from her.
Large numbers of Japanese who had been in the country for years and were tired of the war deserted from the ranks, married Korean women and settled down to farming in vari- ous places in the south. At Mi-ryang in the Province of Kyiing-sang there was a whole settlement of them. It was called the Hang-wa or "Settlement of the Surrendered Jap- anese." Some of them were also to be found in Ham-gyung and P'yung-an Provinces. These had been left behind and
MODKKN KOkKA. 39
abandoned by their fellows for one cause or another when the Japanese retired from the north. They were all destined to be destroyed a quarter of a century later during the rebellion of Vi Kwal.
About this time there arose in the Chinese court a deter- mined enemy of Gen. Yang Ho named ChCing Eung-t'a who accused Gen. Yang to the Emperor in twenty-five specifi- cations, five of which implicated the king of Korea and which at a later date caused a deal of trouble.
We now enter upon a new phase of the war, the closing epoch. In the first moon of the following j^ear, 1598, the Emperor sent two admirals to Korea, the one being Tong II- wun and the other Chil Liu. The former was to have charge of the naval operations off the coast of Chul-la and the other of those oflf Kyung-sang Province. Chil Lin, under the title of Great Admiral came up the Han River with 500 boats as far as Tong-jak, the first village above Yong-san. The king and the court went down and reviewed this fleet and saw it start ofT to join Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the south. This ad- miral, Chil Lin, was a good soldier but inordinately vain. He would take no one's advice, and it looked as if stormy times were in store for the plain, blunt Admiral Yi. The king told Admiral Chil Lin that he was not sure about Admiral Yi, and this of course had its influence with the Chinese admiral. Admiral Yi was then at Ko-geum Lsland off Chul-la Province. When he heard that Admiral Chil Lin was coming he showed by his first act that he was as good a diplomat as .soldier. He may or may not have known what sort of man the Chinese admiral was but he knew that in any case it would not do to antagonize him, and he acted accordingly. He collected a great store of fish and game and wine and wetit out to meet the approaching fleet. Returning with the Chinese admiral he spread a great feast and the whole company got splendidly drunk and vowed that Admiral Yi was a royal good fellow. Admiral Chil Lin himself joined in the praise. Soon after this Admiral Yi had the good luck to take two score of Jap- anese heads, but instead of claiming the honor himself he handed them over to the Chinese admiral to forward as his own trophies. This finished Admiral Yi's conquest of Ad- miral Chil Lin's good graces, h'roin this time on it was Gen,
40 K OK HAN HISTORY.
Vi who suggested and planned and it was Admiral Chil Lin who assented and reaped the praise. This course of conduct was a master-piece of genius on the part of Admiral Yi, for by so doing he accomplished at least three important things. In the first place he kept himself, in his position, which he would have lost had he antagonized the Chinaman, In the sec- ond place he saved himself to his country at a time when she could not have spared him. He was willing to forego the praise and let others reap the commendation if only he might ward off the enemies of his country. In the third place he made the Chinese seem successful and so encouraged them and got out of them for Korea all that was to be hoped. He was willing to seem to be toadying to Admiral Chil Lin when in reality that gentleman was, to use a pregnant Korean phrase, "in his sleeve." Being'always near the Chinese ad- miral he could always see to it that no great blunders were made. At first the Chinese soldiery committed great excesses among the people of the country, stealing their valuables and otherwise injuring them. Admiral Yi quietly asked that the discipline of the army be put in his hands and from that day on the smallest irregularity was severely punished and the most perfect order prevailed. This did not escape the eye of Ad- miral Chil Lin, and he wrote to the king that Admiral Yi was a remarkable man and that the world did not contain another soldier like him. O i^i day as they sat in a summer-house overlooking the sea a fleet of Japanese boats appeared in the distance. Admiral Chil Lin was much excited and a little nervous but Admiral Yi laughed and said, "Sit hereand watch me give those fellows a whipping." He got out his boats and in an hour he had forty of the enemy's boats on fire and the rest fled. Admiral Chil Lin could not praise him enough after this and declared that the universe did not contain another man who could perform th^ feats that Admiral Yi apparently found easy.
In the seventh moon of this year the enemies of Gen. Yang Ho in Nanking were successful and he was called from Korea, much to the regret of the king who vainly sent an envoy to the Chinese court specially to plead that the decree be not carried out. Gen. Yang had been the best of all the generals that China had sent and his departure was a great loss to
M()1>|':k\ kokka. 41
Korea. Wlien be went, the kiii^ and a large number of the people accompanied him beyond the Peking Pass, and a stone tablet was raised there in his honur. All of this of course made Gen. Yang's enemies hate tlie king as well, and so that oflficial named Chung Eung-t'a fabricated some astonishing stories about liini. He claimed that while he had been in Korea he had found a manuscript which proved that the king liad received investiture from Japan. He also charged the Koreans with showing disloyalty to China by prefixing the word fa (great) to the posthumous titles of their kings. He also claimed that the first coming of the Japanese was with a secret understanding with the king of Korea that they would attack Liao-tung together. To these he added many minor charges. The Emperor apparently believed these things and immediately despatched an envoy, So Kwal-lan, to investigate the matter and report. When the king was informed of these charges he was dumbfounded. All his scrupulous care of the interests of his Chinese suzerain and the extremes of hardship which he and his people had endured, rather than grant the Japanese a free passage through Korea to strike China — all this was thrown back upon him and his devotion was counted treachery. He left his palace and took up his abode in a straw hut for one whole month as penance for having been even suspected of such baseness. The whole country was stirred to its depths by these unnatural and evidently baseless charges. The king immediately sent his most trusted councillors Yi Hang-bok and Yi Chung-gwi to Nanking with the following memorable reply to the charges which had been preferred :
"These charges which have been made against ine are very grave and if they are true I deserve death. In order to answer them I must repeat them, even though it defile my mouth. In the first place the origin of the Japanese is far in the eastern sea. The way thither by boat is exceeding far. They are such barbarians that heaven has separated them far from other men. They have always been bad neighbors, for they live b\^ piracy ; they come like a flash and are gone as suddenly. Since the time of the fall of the Koryu dynasty great uneasiness has prevailed in Japan. Law has been in abeyance and bands of freebooters have been allowed to de- vastate vniT southern shores until nothing but weeds and
v: .J
42
briers grow there.
KdKKW IIISTOKV
Tlie founder of our presciil vnasty drove
out for a time but they Rfew liold :i
them
their depredation?
and trade witli ns and we perm
The natives of TstiMi
itted it at the
i i
Japanese irom tlie
mo
re distant islands cauu
\ continued
! to come
• then
like
K>
birds. Our people never like<l thi-m but wt- -f united the trade, as it was mntnally profit;i' Wc jj;» m rice to
eat and treated them kind'.y. Wc built a honsin Seoul for the reception of their envoys. In the days of in}( Se jong they asked us to send an envoy to Japan and %»dki so. pri- marily to spy out the lai-d an<l discover win • mitry was rich or ixjor, strong or \%eak The cn^ tmrd the information ind we innncdiatelv reoiirted the »»uajr to China. We could not well refuse to M.Mid nn envoy to . • ii does not argue relation** of fnen<l'»hip. nn- In the days of the Kmperor Cbonn l onjf Un to ravage a cerain part oi Ihe ChiiMr-Mr cnn-st :i ■; ;
on the way. but we attacked and dr»»ve li; . "*
their leader alive to China to be ileiiU with. .\Is.mi lb of King Chung-JDug the J:ij»aiie«*c atlacke<l th^ Cbtfi rrvist at Vong P'a-bn. Thr\ kdled the Chintsr K then
made off. but we caught them am! M-nl them to Ir Chinese authorities. .Since ih.il time we huvr twice prevctcd Jnj»«n- ese attacks on the China Not once nor • ve we
received high oMumendadon iro»n the Chin :'»r for
ojir firm lovaltv. We have alw.ivs n«»e«l out yxm atid our
.fa in
AC
. U-
!IJ{ ffl
>, Ha
to
strength in the niterest-i of Chinii. Thi** ■ vassal and this we h;»ve done. We let * ■
the three iiarbors of Ch'e-p'o. Fn * ■
prescribed limits of five or ten A
go. On the whole then is seenin pLiiu that we called in the Japanese and aske<l them for t- a pure fabrication. .\g:un the b»i»k which claims to have found is ;in actual Iwok nnd ts n dong Keiii-rvak. It was written bv Sin - Japan, on his return from that cinintrv. and it • laws and mam.ers of the Japan*-*- I Japan, a genealogx .ind also the • ed toward the Japantse envov i Upon as a viTr siuii i>f ,.i.^ ^ •.•...... I
on**
p ul
nu c k»i?4
P
•I am
\m,
4,.-«
MODERN' KORK.A.
43
ed its nieaiiig to correspond to his theory. The Japanese have a diflfernt name for the year from that which we use, and the wrhr of this book put the Chinese name beneath the Japanesffiame as a sort of commentary, so that the reader could undertand what year was referred to. In a Japanese book one mst put the Japanese name of the year and if he wants to mae plain the meanincr he must put the Chinese name undereath or in the margin. As to the charge that we gave too hi^ a title to our deceased kings we can only say that we livoeyond the sea and are ignorant and secluded. From the dsfs of Sil-la until now we have been accustomed to name on dead kings in this way. The founder of the dynasty wa^crupulously careful not to overstep the recogniz- ed limits ofiis authority as a vassal of China atid we never for a momet have forgotten the gap which separates a vassal king from Is suzerain. The custom of giving these posthu- mous titles'iates from the days of Sil-la, so how could we be expected tcknow that it was wrong, especially as it has never been calledn question before? If we are blamed for ignor- ance and borishness we cry guilty, but if for lack of loyalty, we humbhdeny it. We have our calendar, our official dress and writinsall from China. This alone should speak for our loyalty, lie year before the beginning of the present war Hideyoshi lurdered his master and usurped his throne. Burn- ing with aesire to spring at the tliroat of China he sent u^ letters invang us to join in an invasion of that country. We sent his leier back with contumely. In all this we advanced solely theiterests of China. This is as clear as day. When the invadig army came it seemed as if all Japan had alighted upon our sores. They covered our whole eight pro\inces and ravagrd them. They seized our three capitals and dese- crated tw ro\-al tombs. They burned our ancestral temple and otlier-^acred places and then ^wept northward to P'yang Yang. W were unable to hold them in check or .save our capital frm their hands. We were driven to the verge of desperatio and were about to cross into the parent land to die. Is i conceivable that if we had the least friendship for Hideyosh we would have suffered all this at his hands ? If we look a nature do we find any nnnlogy for such a thing? If this carge is true why dil our forces join vvi-th youiS' iijs
t
42 KOKKAN IIISTOKV.
briers g^row tliere. 'I'lie founder of our present dviiasty drove them out for a time but they p;re\v bold again ,'ind continued their depredations. The natives of Tsushima liked to come and trade witli ns and we permitted it at their request; then Japanese from the more distant islands came in flocks like birds. Our people never liked them, but we permitted the trade, as it was mutually profitable. We gave llum rice to eat and treated them kindly. We built a house in vSeoul for the reception of their envoys. In the days of king Se-jong they asked us to send an envoy to Japan and we did so, pri- marily to spy out the land and discover whetlitr the country was rich or poor, strong or weak. The envoy obtained the information and we immediately reoorted the matter to Cliina. We could not well refuse to send an envoy to J ipm, hut it does not argue relations of friendship, much less of inlimicN-. In the days of the Kmperor Chong-t'ong the Japanese startcJ to ravage a cerain part of the Chinese coast and took Ouclpart on the way, but we attacked and drove them out and sent their leader alive to China to be dealt with. Also in the time of King Chung-jong the Japanese attacked the China coast at Yong P'a-bu. They killed the Chinese general and then made off. but we caught them and sent them to the Chinese authorities. Since that time we have twice prevented Japan- ese attacks on the China coast. Not once nor twice have we received high commendation from the Chinese Emperor for (iur firm loyalty. We have always used our wits and our strength in the jnterest.s of China. This was the duty of a vas.sal and this we have done. We let the Japanese live in the three harbors of Ch'e-p'o, Pn-san-p'o and Yuni-o'o but we prescribed limits of five or ten // beyond which they could not go. On the whole then is seems plain that the charge that we called in the Japanese and asked them for troops must be a pure fabrication. Again the book which Chung Enng-t'a claims to have found is an actual book and is named the Ha- dong Keui-ryak, It was written by Sin Suk-ju the envoy to Japan, on his return from that country, and it deals with the laws and manr.ers of the Japanese. It contains a map of Japan, a genealog>- and also the rules of etiquette to be observ- ed toward the Japanese envoy. This book our accuser seized Upon as a si:re sign of our leaning toward Japan, and he twist-
Mrn)Ki-;\ korka. 4.^
ed its meaning to correspond to his theory. The Japanese have a different name for the year from that which we use. and the writer of this book put the Chinese name beneath the Japanese name as a sort of commentary, so that the reader could understand what year was referred to. In a Japanese book one must put the Japanese name of the year and if he wants to make plain the meaning he must put the Chinese name underneath or in the margin. As to the charge that we gave too high a title to our deceased kings we can only say that we live beyond the sea and are ignorant and secluded. From the days of vSil-la until now we have been accustomed to name our dead kings in this way. The founder of the dynasty was scrupulously careful not to overstep the recogniz- ed limits of his authority as a vassal of China and we never for a moment have forgotten the gap which separates a vassal king from his suzerain. The custom of giving these posthu- mous titles dates from the days of Sil-la, so how could we be expected to know that it was wrong, especially as it has never been called in question before? If we are blamed for ignor- ance and boorishness we cry guilty, but if for lack of loyalty, we humbly deny it. We have our calendar, our official dress and writing all from China. This alone should speak for our loyaltv. The year before the beginning of the present war Hide>-oshi murdered his master and usurped his throne. Burn- ing with a desire to spring at the throat of China he sent n^ letters inviting us to join in an invasion of that country. We sent his letter back with contuniely. In all this we advanced solely the interests of China. This is as clear as day. When the invading army came it seemed as if all Japan had alighted upon our shores. They covered our whole eight pro\-ince.s and ravaged them. They seized our three capitals and dese- crated two royal tombs. They burned our ancestral temple and otlier sacred places and then r^wept northward to P'yang Yang. We were unable to hold them in check or .save our capital from their hands. We were driven to the verge of desperatio!! and were about to cross into the parent land to die. Is it conceivable that if we had the least friendship for Hideyos'ni we woukl ha\-e suffered all this at his hands ? If we loo!; at nature do we find any .innlogy for such a thing'' It this charge is true- why diil oui forces join with youv> xu
44 K OK HAN lIlsrOKV.
slriking the invaders and wliy have we been liangingj on their flanks and harassing them for years? Let the Emperor know that there is a reason wliy we have snffered this slander at the month of Cliuno; ICnno^-t'a. It is because we took Gen. Vang Ho's part wlien Clinn<? Ivnng-t'a desired his recall from Korea in disgrace. Gen. Yang Ho was with us a long time and he was a true friend of Korea. We all had the utmost confidence in him and it was a great pity that so good a man should have met the reward he did. It is a cause of poignant grief to us. We are a small people and our destruction is a matter of small consequence, but for a general of China to be treated in this manner is a serious matter. We are au outside people and we have never had the pleasure of visiting the Emperor's court, and so there is no one to plead our cause for us, but the Emperor will be able to judge our case with- out further plea. Chung Eung-t'a has called me a traitor, and I would rather die than live with such a charge upon me. even though it be untrue. Let the Emperor take this letter and sit in judgment on the case and if it appears that I am guiltv let my head pay the penalty, but if not then let the Emperor acquit me before the world and I shall again be able to endure the light of da}'."
This letter is clear, logical and to the point, and it breathes a spirit of self-respect which does credit to the king. It shows not a servile dependence but a true self-respecting loyalty, atid in the tirin denial of the charges and the final demand for condemnation or public acquital there -is the ri!:g of genuine manhood which would do honor to anv man in
o
When the Emperor read this letter his judicial mind found in it the ring of conscious rectitude and like the man he was he instantly acknowleged his error. He ordered the letter to be printed by the thousands and tens of thousands and scatter- ed broadcast over his empire, for he apparently felt it a per- sonal honor to have so true and genuine a man for a vassal. He answered the letter in the following terms:
"I believed the words of slander spoken by that small man Chung Eung-t'a, and doubted in my mind as to the loy- altv of the- king of Korea. I cannot now be oblivious to the unmerited sufferings of Gc;i. Vang Ho. Chung Eung-t'a is
M()I)};kn Koki-.A. 45
a radically bad man. 4; I was on the brink of a disastrous mis- take. I will now deprive him of rank and make him one of the common herd. Let him appear before me at once."
When Chung Eung-t'a arrived in Naking he was cut in two at the waist.
Chapter III.
Japanese mix with Koreans . Chinese and Korean advance . . Japan- ese victory . . .attempts at Imbery . . Admiral Vi Sun sin's last fight . . .a young Korean captive . . Hideyoshi poisoned . . .his character ... .Japanese recalled ...a Korean teacher in Japan .. a memorial temple . .party changes . Japanese envo}- .. posthumous honors . factional strife ...revenue . envoy to Japan a ^welcome heir . . .negotiations with Japan . . .a dark outlook . . .Chinese com- missioner duped ...treaty with Japan .. reign of terror ...the young prince murdered.
By this time the Japanese were becoming mixed with the Korean people among whom and near whom their camps were placed. They were probably good customers and the people doubtless felt that it was not their business to tight them ; so all up and down the coast for a distance of three hundred miles the Japanese lived in their "holes" as the Koreans call- ed them, and in many cases they took wives from among the women of the country and devoted themselves to farming, ex- cept at such times as the Korean or Chinese forces came into their vicinity. There were three Japanese military centers. One was at Ul-san on the eastern coast, held by Konishi. In the west was vSun-ch'un ni Chul-la Province where Kato had his headquarters, while half way between these two in the town of vSa-ch'un on the Si-jin River a third station was held by Gen. Sok Mang-ja. These three stations kept up regular communication with each other, and in case of need rendered each other assistance.
We now enter the last campaign of this eventful war. We are not informed as to the numbers of the Japanese at this time but it probably fell short of 100,000 men. The Chinese had as.sembled again in force at Seoul and in the ninth moon
46 KOKKAX HISTORY.
of 159S a grand move was made against the invaders. The Chinese forces were led by Generals Hyong KJ5 and Man Se- diik. The wliole army was divided into four grand army corps. Gen. Ma Kwi led the eastern division southward to attack Ul-san. Under him were eleven other generals and 24,000 men.
The central division, of 13,000 men, was led by Gen. Tong Il-wiin under whom were eight other generals. ' The western division was led by Gen. Yu Chung and six other gen - erals with a force of 13,000 men. The admiral of this cam- paign was Chil Lin who was already in the south with eight other commanders handling 13,200 men. It is said that the entire expedition numbered 142,700 men, buttheabove items sum up to less than half that and we must conclude that there were something less than 100,000 men in all. .
On the last day of the ninth moon, already well on to- ward winter, the three divisions deployed before the walls of Ul-san. Kato had not been idle all this time ; after the ter- rible scenes of the last siege he had made the best of prepara- tions. He had accumulated an abundance of food, increased the garrLson, strengthened the defenses, and he could laugh at any force that should try to sit out the winter before him. The Chinese soon discovered this and turned aside to work that promised better success. Gen. Tong Il-wun took a powerful force and advanced on Sa-chun, the central station of the Japanese. It is probable that the garrison here was smaller than those under either Kato or Konishi, for when its commander saw the force that was brought to bear upon him he hastilj- evacuated the place and crossed over to the island of Pom-neut and fortified it. Gen. Tong was over- confident and pressed after him. The Japanese craftily drew him on and on until his force was immediately under the wall, when a mine was exploded which, though it killed but a few hundred men, threw the whole attacking body into such con- fusion that the Japanese rushed out and found them an eas)'' pre>-. The Chinese lay in heaps where they had been cut down. Gen. Tong barely escaped with his life and fied to Sam-ga, being chased as far as the Nam-gang (river) where the Japanese contented themselves with making way with 12.000 bags of rice belonging to the Chinese commissariat.
MODKRN KOKKA. 47
Gen. Vn Clnintr was conniiissio:ied to take a strong body of men and attack the fortress at Sun-ch'fin in Chfil-la Prov- ince. Arriving at the neigliboring village of Wii-gyo he determined to overcome the old veteran Kato by treachery. He sent to that general a proposition to make peace. Kato was now an old man and the war in Korea was bringing him neither fame nor advancement, so he was ready to give up the contest, now that it had been demonstrated that the Jap- anese arms couhi not penetrate the north. He gladly as- sented and s-nt Gen. Yu a present of two handsome swords It was agrei'd that they should meet at a certain point, ac-. companied by only 3000 men each ; but Gen. Yu secretly placed an ambush in such wise that when the Japanese force should come out it could be cut off from return to the fort. A whistle was to be sounded as a signal when the Japanese came out. But Kato was too old a bird to be caught by such a child's trick- He had seen two or three of the Chinese lurking about in the vicinity of the gate and so delayed his coming out. By mistake the signal was given and the Chin- ese ambuscade rushed out only to become an object of ridicule to the Japanese. But even as it was some eighty or ninety Japanese stragglers were cut off and taken by the Chinese. Gen. Yu then surrounded the stronghold and at the same time sent an urgent letter to Admiral Chil L,in to come that very night and join in an attack on the Japanese. The admiral obeyed the sunuuous and hurried up with his fleet. Not knowing about the tides and supposing that the shouts that he heard were the shouts of battle, he sailed straight up under the walls of the fortress. But be found that there was no fight on for Gen. Yu had tailed to connect, an.d the ebbing tide left the astonished Admiral high and dry on the mud flats under the very noses of the enemy. In the morning the Japanese trooped out and burned forty-eight of the stranded shijjs and killed most of the men. Admiral Chil escaped in the early morning by boat and hurried to the camp of his tardy compatriot. Gen. Yu. In a rage he tore down with his own hands that general's dag and rent it in pieces, tueanwhile heaping upon liini every species of abuse for having gotten him into such a plight. Gen. Yu was exceedingly ashamed and his face, they say, war, "the color of dirt." He beat upon
4'S KokKAN nis'ioRv.
his breast and acknowledged that be deserved death. So Chil Lin went back to his decimated camp to nurse his wrath.
But Gen. Yu kn^w that Kato really desired to put an end to the war, and so he sent another messenger saying, "This time I really mean peace. If you will take all your forces and depart I will give you a clear path to escape. Our army numbers 140,000 men and you cannot hope to face that number." To this proposition Kato assented and began im- mediately to embark his soldiers to send them back to Japan . But as it happened they had to pass the position of Admiral Chil Lin who naturally sallied out and gave fight, sinking or burning a dozen or more of Kato's boats. The rest put back in haste to the starting place and Kato blamed Gen. Yu for having deceived him; but the latter claimed that he had mere- ly forgotten to inform x\dmiral Chil Liu of the agreement and that he would do so. At the same time he advised Kato to send Admiral Chil a slight cestimouial of regard, which he did in the shape of a hundred ounces of silver and forty-five swords. So Admiral Chil acquiesced. Again the Japanese fleet set out and succeeded in getting by Admiral Chil Liu's place ; but they had not reckoned upon Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his faithful warriors. Kato was again obliged to turn back and go to work to bribe that doughty leader. He sent him guns and swords in large numbers but the old gentleman remarked that as for weapons he was already pretty well sup- plied, and sent them back. He was then approached with an offer of [,000 ounces of silver if he would wink at Kato's pas- sage. This he likewise refused.
The Japanese were all embarked and it was determined to try and slip by the terrible xVdmiral in the graj^ of morn- ing ; but he was well aware of the intentions of the enemy, and before break of day he massed all the ships at his com- mand and came down upon the Japanese fleet as it lay at anchor before the fortress of Suu-ch'uu. .A.S he approached he is said to have uttered the following prayer to his gods ; "To-day I am to die. Give me but one more victory over these Japanese and I shall die content." He well knew that he had enemies at court who would eventually secure his dowufall and so he determined to make an end in one last
MODKRN KOKKA. 49
desperate strlio^i^le. 'Pile tight was short and fierce and when Iht; morning breeze swept th'i smoke of battle away it dis- closed fiftv of the Japanese boats in flames and the water fill- ed with struggling forms. The old veteran I'.ad taken up- wards of two thousand heads in tliat brief tir.ie. But Gen. Kato had slipped away in a small boat and made his escape. The work however was onlv begun. The sea was covered \\ith boats frantically endeavoring to escape from the dreaded arm of the merciless Admiral Yi. The good work went on and every hour added to the score that Admiral Yi had sworn to made before the night should fall. Notice reached him that a fresh Japanese fleet had come and was attacking Ad- miral Chil Lin's fleet. Hurrying thither he found that it was indeed true. He now changed his tactics and without com- ing to a hand to hand fight he circled round and round the Japanese fleet driving them closer and closer together. When all was ready he began playing upon them with a new machine of his own manufacture called the pun-t'ong or "spraying tube." What this was we can not exactly dis- cover, but in a short time it sufificed to set the Japanese fleet on fire. A wind sprang up and fanned the flame and ere long the Japanese fleet was one mass of fire. Hundreds of boats were consumed with all their occupants. After seeing this well under way Admiral Yi turned his attention to the fugi- tive craft that were striving; to make their escape. Stand- ing in the prow of his boat in an exposed position he urged on the chase. While he stood in the midst of one of the grandest victories of the war, he was pierced by a bullet. They caught him as he fell, and his last words were. "Do not let the rest know that lam dead, for it will spoil the fight." Then he expired — the man who maj'^ well be called the Nel- son of Korea.
Yi Wan, the nephew of the fallen Admiral, still urged on the battle ; but the work was almost done. The fugitive boats became fewer and fewer. .Admiral Chil Lin happened to come near the boat of the dead admiral and noticing that the sailors in it were quarrelling over some Japanese heads he exclaimed, "The Admiral must be dead." He entered the boat and found it even so. Throwing himself three times at full length on the deck he uttered this lament : "I th.ought
50 KORKAX HIST()H\'.
that lie would save nie and still live, but here he lies dead and there is no solditr now left in Korea."
We have now come to the end of actual hostilities in the peninsula but we must cross to Japan and inquire into the immediate causes which led to the final recall of all the Japan- ese troops. The Korean account of these events is ver)' re- markable and faith is to be put in it only in-so-far as it is not directly antagonized by the Japanese account. For events that transpired in Korea the Korean account must b^ taken as the standard, but for events that transpired in Japan the Japanese account must of course be accepted as the more trustworthy. The Korean account is as follows.
When the Japanese first invaded Korea, in the year 1592, it so happened that a youn.g Korean boy named Ymo Pn-ha. a native of Tono;^-n:1, became attached to the Japaiese army as a slave, and was eventually taken to Tsushima From there he made his way to the mainland of Japan and at last reached the court of Hideyoshi. That observant man spied him out and said, "Korean and Japanese boj's resemVjle each other strongly. Take this boy and teach him Japanese, and if he does not learn well cut off his head." With this in- centive it would be strange if a less intelligent boy than Yang Pu-ha would not learn rapidly. In the space of three mouths he could converse creditably in Japanese, and Hideyo- shi as reward made him one of his body-servants. For some years the bo}- performed the duties of this position, until at last the Chinaman Sim Yu-gyung arrived. That official was kept practically in confinement at the court of Hide5^oshi. One day the Korean servant asked his master to be allowed to see Sim Yu-gyfing. Permission was granted and the young man found the Chinese envoy in great perplexity, in fact in tears. This excited the pity of the young man and he secured the release of the Chinaman, who from that time was often called into the presence of Hideyoshi. with whom he soon became on fam- ilar terms. 0!)e day as he sat with the great Taiko he took out a pill and swallowed it. He did the same on several days in succession until at last the curiosity of Hideyoshi was ex- cited and he asked what it was. The Chinaman answered that it was an antidote to indigestion and that by eating it the strength and vigor of the body was preserved intact. Hid-
MODKRX KORKA, 5t
eyoshi took one iti liis hand and eyed it suspicionsly. On one side of the pill was written the Chinese character so meaning "hot." The Japanese deliberately took a knife and cnt the pill in two and handing half to Sim said, "Yon eat half and I will eat half. " Its immediate effects were stimulating and pleasant but in the end it proved a deadly poision for it slow- ly dried up the blood. Each day Sim shared one with his captor but upon retiring to his room swallowed a potion which entirely neutralized the effect of the poison. Before long Hideyoshi's hands began to grow hard and dry and one day when he happened to cut his hand he was astonished to find that no blood followed. He called for a moxa and ap- plied it to his hand and yet no blood came. Then he laughed aloud and cried, "I am a dead man. When. I cease to breathe take out my bowels and sew my body up again with horse- iiair ; and then preserve my body in wine and do not let the outsiders know that I am dead." He wanted to have the fact concealed for he feared it would have a dispiriting effect upon the troops in Korea. Shortly after this he died and his orders were minutely carried out. For two months no one outside the palace knew of his decease, but at last the stench became so great that they confessed that the great Hideyoshi had passed away. Such is the Korean story.
The Koreans sum up his character as follows: He was a crafty and cunning man, and by his talk, now sharp, now suave, now sarcastic, now bullying, he managed to sway the minds of all who came near him. He managed all his generals like puppets. He liked to take boys and girls under his pat- ronage and see them gruw up together and m irry them to each other and t'lus have them completely under his contrcjl. His two most powerful generals were Whi Wnn-and Ka Kang. They hated him and would have been glad of an opportunity to overthrow him, but it was out of the question. He knew them well, and for fear they might combine against him he made one of them governor of the east and the other of the ' west and ordered them to keep watch of each other.' By thn.s pitting them against each other he made himself safe. He loved intrigue and diplomacy and had a most restless temper- ament. He was ever on the lookoiu for some kind of excite- ment, (jen. Ka Kang was with iiiiu when he died, and,, fearing;
52 KORKAN HISTORY.
lest rebellion should break out, he filled the body with salt and so preserved it. He made a wooden form which would hold the body stiff in a sitting position and placing it in a place where the light was not very bright with the ej'es wide open, the people saw hitn sitting there day after day and sup- posed of course he was alive. It was in the eighth moon when the odor was so strong that the truth could no longer be con- cealed. Thereupon Gen. Ka Kang took the son of Hideyoshi and made him Shogun. He then threw into prison the wives and children of Generals Kato and Konishi and sent a mes- senger ordering them to collect all their troops and return im- mediately to Japan. The order was obeyed willingly and all that was left of the Japanese army of invasion set sail from Fusan, and the great invasion was a thing of the past.
The Korean annalists say that when the invasion began the Japanese arms were far superior to those of Korea ; also that th,_ Japanese displaj'ed tiger skins, pheasant feathers, gilded masks and plumes ; all which glitter and show terrified the Koreans. Thus at first the Japanese had an easy victor}^ but toward the last it was not so. The Koreans had improv- ed their arms and had learned not to fear the grand rush of the Japanese in their hideous masks which made them look more like demons than men.
At the time of the second invasion a Korean named Kang Han was caught and sent to Japan and, being unable to es- cape, he set to work learning Japanese. He became a teach- er of Chinese and had a large following of students who treat- ed him very well and supported him in comfortable style. At tlie end of the war they clubbed together and bought a boat into which they put tliis man with all his goods and sent him back to Korea. On his return lie wrote a book entitled Kang yang-rok or "Relation of Adventures among Sheep." a sar- castic plt-asautry.
The Chinese arms in Korea did not move till the follow- ing spring, and then the king sent to the Emperor askitig that Generals Man Se-dok, Ta Cham and Yi Sung-hun be al- lowed to remain in Korea for a time until things should be- come thoroughly settled.
In the early centuries of the Christian era there was a celebrated Chinese general named Kwan U. He was of
MODKKN KOKKA. 53
gigantic size and had a fiery red face, rode a powerful red horse, could walk a thousand li a day (!) and carried a sword that weighed 800 pounds (!!). It is said that while the Japanese were occupying Seoul the spirit of this great man appeared repeatedly near the South and East Gates and struck terror to the hearts of the Japanese. Now, as the Cliinese generals were about to leave for China, Admiral Chil Lin built a shrine to this same Kwan U outsiae the South Gate. In the thirty- third year of King Sun-jo, namely 1600 A. D., the Emperor sent four million cash to build a temple to this Kwan U and the present temple outside the South Gate was erected. The Emperor at the same time ordered another to be built by the Koreans outside the East Gate, and it was done. The two temples are exactly alike. When the king asked the Emperor to name the temple he said "Call it the Hyong-nyung-so dok- kwan-gong" which means "The great and bright appearance of the spirit of Kwan." The king also built shrines to him in Song-ju and An-dong of Kyung-sang Province, and at Nam-wun in Chul-la Province.
We have already seen that factious fights had been a great cause of weakness all through the years of the invasion, and from this time on party strife was destined to grow more and more fierce and determined until it brought the country to the very verge of anarchy a century later. We must note here briefly the changes which had taken place in the parties. We will remember that at first there were two parties, the Tong- in and the Su-in. During the war the court favorite was Yu Sung-nyung who gave office to so many men from Kyiing- sang Province that the name of Nam-in or "South Men" sprang up and a partj^ by that name quickly became organ- ized, but their opponents in order to preserve the political equilibrium instantly seized upon the name Puk-in or "North Men." At the close of the war the leader of the opposition, namely of the Puk-in, memorialized the king against Yu Sang-nyung the favorite, charging him with having desired to make peace with the Japanese, contrary to the honor of the country. The king listened to this and banished Yu, but his supporters turned the tables by a counter-memorial in which the charges were more than answered and Yu was restored to all his honors. With the rise of the Nam-in and Puk-in par-
54 K()Ki:\N insTOkv.
. ties the old party lines of the Tong-iii and Sri-in had not been broken np or lost. Durino^ the latter years of the invasion the X:ini-iu )iart\- lost its powerful grip and the Puk-in were often in power, but from the end of the invasion nntil far into the following reign the Tong-in held the ])0wer. and after that for a period of fifty years the Sfi-in had control of affairs. It may be asked what principles underlay these parties, what settled palicies they had that differentiated them either in domestic or foreign matters. We answer that the various parties had but one plank in their platforms, one settled plan of action, and that was to get the ear of the king and seize upon the ofBce- making power and put in every position one's own partisans. It was the spoils system sublimated, for there was absolutely no admixture of any other element.
Now that the war was over the Japanese on Tsushinici de- sired to open again commercial relations with Korea, which had alwavs been mutually profitable ; and so in the following year, 1601, an envov, Kuroda, catne from that island bringing with him three hundred men and women who had been carried awa\' captive during the war. This envoy asked that there might be reciprocity of trade. The king referred the matter to Nanking and the reply seems to have been in the affirmative, for we find that soon after this an envoy was sent over to Tsushuua with credentials; but after all the Japanese petition was not at this time granted. At the same time the Emperor gave orders for the return to China of all the re- maining troops, but at the earnest request of the king 8000 men were left to help guard the southern provinces. Post- humous honors were heaped upon Admiral Yi Sun-sin who had been the very salvation of Korea, but who had sought death in battle, knowing that if he lived his detractors would drag him dowu. Yi Hang-bok and eighty-five others received high commendation and additional honors also. The year ended with the unsuccessful attempt of an insurrection- ary party in the south which was nipped in the bud, the ring- leader being forwarded to seoul to be beheaded.
An unscrupulous man named Yu Yong-gj'ung was the court favorite at this time aud upon him devolved the task of appointing and dismissing ofl5cials ; consequently he was the recipient of countless presents, and on one occasion two men
MODKKN Kt>kK.\. 55
to whom he had sold the same office met at his gate and quar- relled over the matter, to the scandal of the court. The state of affairs at the capital was anything but satisfactory, the reason being that the strife of parties rendered honesty and fairness impossible. It was a constant fight to gain the king's ear and, having gained it, to turn out all enemies and put in per- sonal adherents. About this time a remeasurement of all the arable land of the country was ordered and it was discovered that the total revenue of the country was 1,515,500 kyu/oirice, each Ay/</ beiug about 120 pecks of rice, or over two hundred pounds. It also included 300,000 bags of other grains.
In they year 1605 the Japanese again asked that a treaty be made and that Korea send an envoy to the Japanese court. The king complied and sent the same monk, Yu Chung, ordering him to look carefully into the matter of the military strength of the Island Empire and the distance by boat. He returned the following year bringing with him, it is said, three thousand Koreans who had been taken to Japan from time to time during the invasion. The Korean accounts tell us nothing of the booty that the Japanese carried away to Japan during the war, nor of the transportation of Korean artisans and their employment in Japan in teaching the making of pottery and other works of use and art, but we may well believe the Japanese reports, that assert that im- mense amounts of treasure were carried away and that the making of the beautiful Satsuma ware was an outcome of the teaching of Korean artisans.
This year was also signalized by a fierce conflict between the savage tribe of Hol-cha-on, north of the Tu-man River, and the government troops under Gen. Song U-gil. The latter crossed the river by night and attacked the main settlement of the tribe and utterly destroyed it, and effectually broke up the tribe. Great quantities of goods which had been stolen from the border settlements were also recovered.
We are now on the threshold of events which led up to a very painful period in Korean history. It will be remembered that the king had no heir by the queen and had therefore nominated to the throne his heir by a concubine, the Prince Kwang-ha. This was a man of violent temper, bad instincts, corrupt, selfish, careless of the pubic good. When therefore
56- K(;kkax HisroKV.
the king, in tht fortieth year of his rcijjn. was presented with a son by his queen, his delijjht was as great as was the chagrin of the heir apparent. According to law it was im- possible to set aside the man already nominaf^d, but now that the king finally got the boy he had been looking for so long, his feelings got the better of his judgment and he was bent upon having the child receive all the honors due to the future wearer of the crown. So he sent out the order that officials should conje to the palace and do obeisance as when an heir to the throne is born. This was the most impolitic thing he could have done, for it aroused all the hatred there was in the Prince Kwang-hA. who had for so manj' years looked upon his eventual occupancy of the throne as fully assured, and who saw in these demonstrations of affection on the part of the king a latent desire to change the decree which had already gone forth. If the king really desired to set aside that decree he should have sent to Nanking and had the Emperor do it, but it was not so to be, and the i:ifant boy entered the world with one deadly enemy ranged against him. whose first act would be to put him out of the way. Nor was it the boy alone who gained the hatred of this prince. The queen herself became the object of his special hatred, and the official who sent forth the order that honor should be done to the infant
The Japanese kept urging their .point, that relations of mutual benefit be resumed, and kept protesting their good intentions toward Korea. The king had just received an envoy bringing gifts and a congratulatory lett-er from the king of the Liu Kiu Islands, in which grave doubts were cast upon the intentions of the Japanese, and an offer of assistance was made in case of another invasion. But the king seems not to have put faith in the.se doubts, and replied, to the re- iterated request of the Japanese, that an envoy would be sent to Japan, when the men who desecrated the royal graves be- yond the Han River should be sent to the Korean Capital for punishment. The Japanese went home, but returned late in the fall bringing two men bound, whom they delivered over as being the ones demandea. But these were mere boys who themselves urged the fact that the\- were still babes in arms when the deeds of which they were charged had been com- mitted. The Prime Minister urged the king to send them
MODKUX Korea. 57
back to Japan, but the favorite, Yu, persuaded the king to have them beheaded, after which Y-'* U-gil, Kyoug Sun and Chung Ho-gvvan were sent as an embassy to Japan. Mean- while lyeyasu in Japan had deposed the son of Hide- yoshi and usurped his place. So when the embassy arrived in Japan they were received with the utmost coldness, and the usurper said, "Who asked that envoys might be ex- changed between Japan and Korea ? But now that you are here we will receive you." The treatment that they received was bad almost beyond description. As a sample of the way the Japanese baited them it is related that the Japanese brought a dish filled with ordure sprinkled with something the color of gold-dust, and when the Koreans innocently put their hands in the dish, supposing that it was some form of food, the Japanese had a good laugh at their expense. The Koreans did not appreciate this sort of practical joke, and forthwith returned to Korea.
Late in the autumn the aged king was taken sick and all knew that the end was near. The conditions were not pro- pitious. The young prince was only two years old and Prince Kwang-hS was fierce in his resentments and jealous -of anyone who should attempt to block his path to the throne. The people were in a very uneasy frame of mind. The king had gone either too far or not far enough in the advocacy of the infant prince, and now he felt that he was leaving the child to the tender mercies of a relentless enemy. He there- fore called in the Prime Minister and said, "Everything looks dark ahead and 1 am dying. I suppose the Prince Kwang- ha must become king?" But the Prime Minister dared not answer the question as the king wanted it answered, and hung back. By so doing he sealed his own fate. There were only two things for him to do, either to boldly advocate the claims of the child or else boldly advocate those of Prince Kwang-hS. By doing neither he made an enemy of the one and spoiled the chances of the other, and thus signed his own death warrant. As it happened, Prince Kwang-ha had an elder brother, but why he had not been nominated to the throne we are not told. This prince, named Im-ha, was now induced to make the attempt to wrest the reins of power from his brother so as to save the people from what they feared at
58 KOKKAN inSTORV.
the hands of l*ritice K\vang-ha, but the latter got wind of the plot and the elder prince was summarily banished, together with all his coadjutors.
So matters w'ent on until one day in early spring of the following year, 1608, when a servant came from the king's private rooms saying that he was dying. All the officials assembled at the palace. It is said that Prince Kwang- hS had become impatient at the tenacity of life shown by the aged king and had assisted nature in taking him off. but this, we may surmise, is rather a general deduction from the character of the man than a proved charge, and this prince has so much else to answer for that we may well give him the benefit of the doubt and conclude that the king reached his end by nat- ural causes alone. The assembled noblemen snt in the room adjoining the one in which the king lay d\ing. I''resen!ly n eunuch brought out a note which read thus, "Wlien I aui dead let Prince Kwang-h?i be kind to the infant boy." When the ministers had read it they sent it to the prince. Soon an- other note came from the sick rtK»rn, "To the seven ministers of state ; I am dying. I have but one cause of anxiety ; the boy is young and I shall not be here to see him come to man- hood. Let him be tenderly cared for." This was the end, The king turned to the wall and expired.
Upon hearing the welcome news the Prince Kwang-hS hastened to assume the position he had coveted so long. His first act was to send the Prime Minister Yu Yong-gyung into banishment. Then he sent an embassy to China to announce his accession to the throne. The Emperor replied, "Why is not the elder son, Prince Im-ha, made king ?" and sent a commission to inquire into the matter. Prince Im was brought from Kyo-dong Island to which place he had been banished. One of the creatures of tbe newly crowned king advised that the head only of Prince Im be brought, but the aged Yi Hang- bok opposed it so strongly that the king dare not follow his in- clination ; but when Prince Im was brought he was "made up" for the occasion. He was unkempt and filthy, his clothes were in rags and the very sight of him decided the tinsmspicious commissioner and he ordered the wretched man to be sent back to his place of banishment at once. For fear of further complications and to satisfy his vengeful nature, the king sent
MODKKN KOKHA, 59
a secret messenger to the prefect of Kyo-dong" and had Prince Im poisoned in prison. He next proceeded to kill the banish- ed Prime Minister, and then had his body bronght to the center of the capital and cnt in half lengthwise.
The Japanese had for several vears been presNin^ for the resumption of the old-time relations, half diplomatic and half commercial, which had been carried on through the southern port of Fusan. Now in the first year of the reign of Kwang-ha, consent was gained and Yi Chi -wan for Korea and Genshoand Yoshinao for Japan met and worked out a plan for a treaty. The Japanese insisted that all three of the port> which had formerly been open should again be opened, but this was peremptorily refused and only Fusan was opened. The num- ber of boats that could come annually was reduced to twenty. Great diplomatic agents from the Shogun were allowed to stay in Korea one hundred and ten days. The agents from any daimyo of Japan could stay eighcy-five days and special ag_nts could stay fifty-five days. The strictness with which the Ko- reans bound down the Japanese as to nmmber of ships and men and length of stay, and the refusal to open three ports, show that Korea was doing this all more as a favor than by demand, and history shows that at any time she felt at liberty to withdraw support from them. The amount of nee and other food that Korea granted was hardly more than enough to support the embassy when it came.
It will be remembered that the king was the son of a con- cubine and not of the queen. He now went to wt)rk to de- pose the queen and set up his mother, though now dead, aS' real queen. He gave his mother the posthumous title of Kong-song Wang-ho and sent the deposed queen into semi- banishment to the Myung-ye Palace in Chong-dong, where the king now resides. This act was looked upon as utterly unfili- al and godless by the officials, and they almost unanimously censured his harsh treatment of this woman.
The next three years were spent in killing oflf all who had been specially favored under the last king, excepting the ven- erable Yi Hang-V)ok, who stood so high in the esteem of the people that even the wicked king did not dare to lay hands upon hnn. One method of getting nd of objectionable people was to promise release to some criminal if he would fewear that
6o KORKAN HlJ^rokY.
he had heard tlie men CDiispirir.s ajjaiiist the king ; but the king^'s thirst for blood cmld not bt; quenched so long as the young prince was living. The latter was now six or seven years old. No one dared to make a move against him openly, but the officials knew that if they wanted to become favorites with the king it could be done only by suggesting some plan whereby the boy could be killed without britigingon a gener- al insurrection. It was accomplished as follows. Pak Eung- su. a well-known resident of Vn-ju became a highwayman. He was captured and taken to Seoul for trial. .After he had been condemned, Vi I-ch'um the court favorite sent to him in prison and said, "Vou are to die to-morrow, but if you will de- clare that you and several other men have conspired to depose the king and place the young prince on the throne you will not only be released but rewarded as well." When therefore the king received the written confession of the wretch he feigned surprise but instantly caught and executed the prin- cipals named. His satellites al-so urged that he must kill the young prince and his mother, for they must surely be privy to the plot. And her father too must be beheaded. The king did not dare to go to these lengths all at once, but he began by beheading the queen's father, and banishing the boy to Kang-wha. When the men came to takfe him he hid beneath his mother's skirt but the brutal captors pushed her over and dragged the lad away. These acts enraged the people almost beyond endurance and memorials poured in upon the king from people who preferred death itself to permitting such acts to go unchallenged. The king however answered them one and all by killing the writers or stripping them of rank and banishing them.
As the boy had been separated from his mother and ban- ished to Kang-wha, he could be dealt with at pleasure. His death would remain unknown for a time, and the matter would pass by unnoticed. So in the following year, at the instigation of Yi I-ch'Gm, the magistrate of Kang wha put the boy in a small room, built a roaring fire under it and suffocat- ed him. an extreme of barbarity which the world can hardly parallel. The news soon spread among the officials. Scores of memorials poured in upon the king who answered them as before bv banishment and death.
MOriKKX KOKKA. (^ t
Chapter IV.
The king insulted . . .the "Mulberry Palace" . . .plot against the Queen Dowager . . .her indictment . she is degraded . . .inception of the Manchu power. . . .China summons Korea to her aid . . troops des- patched first battle with the Manchus . . . Korean treachery .
Koreans make friends with the Manchus. . . .the Manchu court . . .a Manchu letter to the king .. .its answer ...Manchu rejoinder ...
message to Nanking. .. .Chinese refugees a Korean renegade
the Queen intercedes for China . . .Chinese victory Manchu
cruelty .. .offices .sold ...plot against the king .. .king dethroned . .Queen Dowager reinstated ...reforms ...a thorough cleaning out.
With the opening of the year 1615 the king further re- vealed his hatred of the depo.sed and degraded queen by publishing broadcast the statement that she had gone to the grave of his mother and there, by practicing sorcery against him. had tried to bring evil upon him. This also brought out a loud protest from all honest men. and banishment followed. Even the children on the street spoke insultingly of the tyrant saying that he was afraid of the imps at the Myung-ye Palace, but had let his mother stay there with them though he him- self would not go near the place. The king feared everyone that was honest and upright even though they had nothing to say. His own cousin, Prince Neung-ch'ang, whose young- er brother afterward became king, was a perfectly peaceable and harmless man, but the king feared him and could not rest satisfied until he had gotten his satellites to accuse him of sedition and had suffocated him in a heated chamber on Kyo-dong Island. About this time a monk, named Seung-ji; gained the confidence of the superstitious king and induced him to build the In-gyung Palace which is commonly known among foreigners as the "Mulberry Palace." To do this, thou.sands of the houses of the common people were razed and heavy taxes were levied throughout the country ; and yet there was not enough money. So the king began to sell the public offices. JSome were paid for in gold, others in silver, others in irt)n, and still others in wood, stor.e or salt. The
/
62 KOKKAN HISTORY.
people derisively called it the 0-hanQ[, referring to the "Five Rules of Conduct" of the Confucian Code. The boys also made up a popular song which ran as follows, "Did you give gold, or silver, or wood for yours?" and they put the officials to shame by shouting it at them as they passed along the street.
Vi I-ch'iim, the favorite, could not rest until he had car- ried out his master's wish and had invented some vva}' to de- stroy the degraded Queen. Finding no other way to accomplish this, he at last descended to the following trick. He instruct- ed a man named Hu Kyun to write a letter to the imprisoned queen purporting to be from some party in the country, pro- posing a scheme for deposing the king. This letter was thrown over the wall of the queen's enclosure and there found by the servants of the crafty plotter. The king was ready to believe anything against her and this letter fanned his hatred into flame. Yi I-ch'um followed it up by joining with scores of others in memorials urgitig the king to put to death the hated Queen Dowager. The Prime Minister, Keui Cha-hon. stood in the wa3^ however, and it became necessary to banish him to the far north. In the eleventh moon the king finally decided to drive the woman from Seoul, and made all the of- ficials give their opinion about it in writfng. -Nine hundred and thirty officials and a hundred and seventy of the king's relatives advised to do so, but the aged Yi Hang-bok with eight others utterly refused their sanction of the iniquitous plan ; and so these nine men, the last of those upright men who had stood about the late king, were sent into banishment. The year thus closed in gloom and the new one opened with a memorial from the Prime Minister Hau Hyo-san enum- erating ten charges against the Queen Dowager; (i) that she had had the officials do obeisance to the young prince al- though the successor to the throne had alread)^ been appoint- ed ; (2) when the king was dying she asked him to set aside Prince Kwang-ha in favor of the young prince ; (3) she pre- vented, as long as possible, the king from handing over the scepter to Prince Kwang-ha; (4) she wrote the letters purport- ing to be from the dying king asking that the young prince be carefully nurtured ; (5) she instigated her father to conspire against the king ; (6) she sacrificed in the palace and prayed
MDDKRN KORKA. 63
for the death of Prince Kvvanoj-ha; (7) she prayed for the same at the grave of his mother ; (8) she corresponded with outside parties with a view to raising an insurrection; (9) she sent to the Emperor asking to have Prince Kwang-ha set aside, (10) she sent to Japan asking that an army be sent to overthrow the government.
The king feigned to be very loath to believe all these charges and to act upon them ; he called heaven to witness that the very thought of it was terrible to him and averred that he would rather be banished to some distant shore than even to mention such a thing. But after a great deal of urg- ing he was prevailed upon, and said he could no longer be deaf to the entreaties of his subjects and the welfare of the country. So he took away her title of Ta-bi and decreed that she should be called Su-gung "West Palace," and that she should receive no part of the government revenue, that officials should no more do homage to her, that her marriage certifi- cate be burned and that all her wedding garments be taken from her. lie determined also that in the event of her death no one should assume mourning, that her name should be in- scribed in no ancestral temple, and that she should be shut up in her own apartments and strictly guarded.
And now there appeared in the northwest a cloud which was destined to overspread the whole of Korea, and China as well. Norach'i was chief of the Mancliu tribes. He was from the wild tribe of Kon-ju which, as we have seen, was broken up by a Korean military expedition. His grandfather's name was Kyu-sang and his father's name was Hapsiri. These had both been put to death by a Chinese general, A-t'a, and to the unquenchable hatred caused by this must be ascribed the ter- rible reprisals the young Norach'i made on China, where his descendants occupy the imperial throne to this day. At the time of his father's death he had fled eastward beyond the reach of China's arm but gradually gaining power he crept slowly westward again until he had a footing on the great Mauchu plains. But he was not yet ready to carry out his plans against China, and when the Mongol, Hapuigeukosip, entered the great wall and overthrew the Chinese general Yu Pu, Norach'i caught him and sent his head to Nanking. The Kmperor was pleased at this and gave him the rank of "Dra-
64 KOKKAN HISTOkV.
gon Tiger General." Having thus disarmed suspicion, the hardy norlhman began gathering and training troops until there stood about him 10,000 skillful archers. Some years before this he had killed his younger brother for fear of com- plications and now in the year of the events of which we are writing he had overcome the three great Chinese generals Yi Youg-bang, Chang Seung-yun and Yang Yo-gwi. The rul- ing dynasty of the Ming in China became well aware of the gravity of the situation and saw that it was necessary to square themselves for a desperate fight with the great Manchu lead- er The first act of the Emperor was to send a summons to the King of Korea ordering him to send generals and troops at once to join the Chinese forces against Norach'i, The king responded by sending a man to find out the exact state of af- fairs, whether China was weak or strong and whether it would pay to help her in the coming struggle. This was pay- ing China back in kind for her delay in sending aid when the Japanese invaded the peninsula, but Korea was thoroughly loyal to the Ming power. She may be criticised in many ways but there was never shown a deeper loyaltj- or devotion than Korea showed the Mings during the years of struggle against the Manchus, a devotion that always worked against her own selfish interests.
The Chinese general Yang Ho sent back to the king and said, "When we ask for aid do you merely send a spy to find out how matters stand? This war is as much in your interests as ours, so you had best send an army at once to form a junction with us in Liao-tung." However little stomach the king had for the war this appeal was too strong to be set aside. Even this base king could not overlook the tremendous obligation under which Korea lay on account of aid rendered by China against the Japanese. He therefore appointed generals Kang Hong-rip and Kim Kydng-su as first and second in command and under them three other generals, Chung Ho-su, Yi Chung- nam and Chung Eung-jung. These men were put in com- mand of 20.000 troops drawn from the five provinces of P^N'ung-an.Ham-gyung, Kyuug-keui.Ch'ung-ch'ung and Chul- la, and they were ordered to the northern border. This was toward the close of the year, but before its end the Chinese sent a messenger to hurry forward the Korean troops, as it
MODKRN KOKKA. 65
was intended to make a g:raiid demonstration with the opening of the new year.
In the first month of 1619 the troops went forward to the seat of war. It was in the middle of winter and most of the soldiers were going from a comparatively warm climate into the rigors of a semi-arctic region. The Chinese Gen. Yang Ho was advancing upon the Manchu position by four different roads. The whole army rendezvoused at Sim-ha in L,iao-tung not far from the Korean border town of Eui-ju. The com- bined forces were led by four generals, Yang Ho, Yu Chung, Kyo Il-geui and the Korean Kang Hong-rip. Meeting a small body of five hundred Manchu troops they drove them back in- to the hills with considerable slaughter, and fondly supposed that all the Manchus could be put to flight as easily. In this prelirainar3' skirmish the Koreans took a leading part, and one general was killed and another was wounded in the hand. The next day the whole force advanced to a place called Pu- go. The right and left flanks of the army were composed of Chinese and the center was held by Gen. Kang Hong-rip with his Korean troops. Suddenly, almost without warning, ten thousand Manchu horsemen swept down upon the right flank. The impetuositj' of the charge carried everything before it, and almost instantly the whole right wing was thrown into confusion and took to precipitate flight, in which both Gen. Yu Chung and Gen, Yang Ho were killed. Then the Manchu chief Kwi Yung-ga with 30,000 men came across the Ka-hap Pass and fell upon the left flank, and that too was routed in short order. The center under Gen. Kang had not yet been attacked and stood unmoved by, and not unlikely unconscious of, the terrible destruction being meted out to their allies to the right and left. Now, Gen. Kang had been instructed by the king to watch the turn of events and if the Chinese could not hold their own to go over to the Manchus and make friends with them. This indeed does not look much like loyalty to China, but it must be remembered that we are dealing now not with the Korean sentiment as a whole but with the wretch who occupied the throne at the moment, and who had no more real loyalty toward China than he had love for his own country.
Gen. Kang followed his instructions and sent to the Man-
66 KORKAN JI[ST<)K\'.
chu leader and said, "We are not enemies. There is no cause for hostilities between us. We have been forced into this un- pleasant position no;ainst our wills. As the Chinese showed us favors during the Japanese invasion we have had to make some show of interest in order to reciprocate the favor, but as things have turned out we should be glad to make friends with you."
The Manchu chieftain was willing enough to come to this agreement and so the whole Korean contingent went over ai masse to the Manchus. Gen. Yang was brought before Nor- ach'i to make his obeisance. That powerful man was seated upon a throne, clothed in yellow silk, and on either side were many young women with jewelled pendants in their ears. Gen. Kang was told to stand some distance away and bow, but he said that \\\ his own country his rank w.i> sufficiently high to warrant a nearer approach. So he was led nearer. He then made only a slight gtiuuflection. This did not please the choleric Norach'i and the general was compelled to make a proper obeisance. Gen. Kim Kyong-su likewise went through this humiliating ceremony.
It appears that Gen. Kang had decided that it v*'as to his interests to join himself permanentl}' to the Manchus, for when soon after this Gen. Kim tried to despatch a letter to the king, giving a carefully detailed account of the Manchus and their strength, the letter was intercepted by Gen. Kang who gave it to Norach'i and advised that Gen. Kim be killed. This was immediately done.
Three months later the Manchu chief sent a letter to the Korean king, couched in the following terms, "I have seven causes for hating the Ming dynasty and it is impossible for me to keep my hands off them. Now you and I are not enemies. To be sure you have injured us more or less in the past, but we will waix^e all that. It will be necessary for you however to break off all connection with China and stop aiding her in any way." Gen. Kang also wrote at the same time saying, "The Manchus are training all their youth to war, and soon they will have the whole of lyiao-tung." When the king received these letters he referred them to the governor of P'yung-an Province to answer. The answer ran as follows, "For two hundred years both yon and we have
.\rODKKN KOF^KA, 67
been the subjects of the Ming power and now that tronble lias arisen between >on and the autliorities at Nanking it will be bad for you ard us as well. China is like a parent to us and how can we refuse to aid her? We cannot listen to your demand and abstain from helping her. If von will make peace with us and clearly define our boundaries and abstain from conquest, China will not b^only glad but will reward us both with gifts." To this the Manchu replied, "If von think that China will give presents you have been grievously de- ceived by her. They are all liars and cheats and I hate them. Put away this idea and stand shoulder to shoulder with us, We must take an oath and sacrifice a white horse to heaven and a black bullock to the earth. After -that I will .<-end back all your generals and soldiers. Let there be no more weapons used between us, but only horse-whips." This latter refers to friendly intercourse by means of horses. Gen. Kang also wrote. "Norach'i has takan Pnk-kwan and Gen. Kim T'a- suk is dead. PHk Yang-go has surrendered. Norach'i has joined the Mongol forces to his own atid is advancing on Yo- gwang. His two sons Mangoda and Hongtasi advise him to first seize Liao-tung. P^very day there are long debates to dis- cuss whether it were better to strike Liao-tung or Korea first. This is a secret but I am sure of what I say. They are mak- ing great numbers of ladders and I am sure they are intend- ind to invade Korea first."
This letter troubled the King, for it interfered with hi.s own personal comfort. So he sent a swift messenger to Nanking begging the P^mperor to send a large force to "guard your eastern territory" which meant that the king wanted China to stand between him and this Manchurian scourge.
The relatives of Gen. Kang were kept informed by him of the state of affairs in the north, and they sent large sums, of money to Norach'i to buy him off and prevent him from in- vading Korea ; and it may be that it was this, at least in part, that delayed it for sonje time. The king's messengers found the road to Nanking blocked by the Manchus and so had to turn back. Tiie king thereupon sent envoys one after an- (jther by boat, but a.i the Koreans were poor sailors, they fail- ed to land at the right place and fell into the hands of the Manchus or were wrecked bv storms.
68 KOkKA.N HISTORY.
The Matichus now, in 1621, held the whole of Liao-tiing and the Chinese residents were tieeing in all directions. Thousands of them crossed into Korea and many crossed over to the islands of Ok-kang and In-san near the mouth of the Yalu River and there, huddled tog^ether in wretchedness and want, bewailed their pitiable condition.
The prefect of Eui-ju implored the king to forward troops to hold the Manchus in clieck and the Chinese Gen. Wang wrote the king demanding a contingent of Korean troops to oppose the wild horde that threatened the Ming power. But the king was utterly incompetent, and all Seoul was in a fer- ment. The king thought only of himself, and looked to it that a comfortable place was arranged for him on the i.sland of Kang-wha, in case it should become necessary for him to leave Seoul. In the early summer a Korean named Vi Y<>ng- bang. who had gone over to the Manchus body and soul, and had become son-in-law to Norach'i, took a body of Manchu cavalry, crossed over to the islands of Ok-kang and In-san and massacred all the Chinese refugees he could lay hands on. This again struck terror to the heart of the king, and it threw Seoul into a fever of excitement. The king collected nine thousand troops from the southern provinces and stationed them at Su-wfin, but there was no one whom he could appoint general-in-chief ; so he had to recall from banishment Han Chun-gyum and confer this honor upon him. Han MyTing-yun was made second in command. He was a man of low extrac- tion but had acquired a certain amount of fame in the Jap- anese invasion.
In the following year, 1622. the Manchus entered China and were everywhere victorious. They wanted to make a treaty with Korea, but the king could decide neither one way nor the other. His envoys had not reached China and he had no word from the Emperor. The queen memorialized the king in the native script and said, "Those northern savages want to make peace with us, not because of any feeling of friend- ship for us but because they think they cannot handle China and Korea both at once. So they do this to keep us quiet until they finish with China. The king should make up his mind one way or the other and act. Think of what the Chinese did for us during the late invasion ! We were on the very
MODERN KOKHA. 69
edge of destruction and they succored us. Both king and people should be of one mind and hasten to send soldiers to oppose this common enemy. Kven if we do not succeed we shall have clear consciences, for we shall know that we have done what we could to aid China in the hour of her distress." In the third moon a letter arrived from the Manchu headquar- ters which read as follows, "You say that you arc the child and China is the parent. Well, I am now striking your parent, but you seem not to be able to help her. There is no use in trying to do so." In answer to this grim pleasantry the craven king sent an envoy with gifts to the Manchu camp, but the gifts and envoy were both spurned with insults.
The Chinese general Mo Mun-nyfing fled from Liao-tung by boat and landed at Yong-ch'un in Korea. Finding there many Chinese fugitives, and among them not a few soldiers, he organized a little army and marched against the Manchus. In his first fight he was quite successful, coming from the field with the head of the Manchu general, T'ung Yang-j5ng. He then made his headquarters a*- Ch'ul-san. With the ap- proach of winter the Manchus crossed the Ya-lu in force and he was outnumbered and had to flee. He sent a letter to the king saying, "I am now here in your territory with a small force, let us unite and drive back this Munchu horde. But nothing came of it.
The Manchus were exceedingly cruel toward their cap- tives. Having collected a large number they made them sit down in rows and then the Manchu braves went along the line and shot arrows into their victims. If the wound was not instantly mortal the victim was compelled to pluck out the arrow with his own hands and give it back to his execu- tioner.
Meanwhile Korea was going from bad to worse. For many years all official positions had been sold to the highest bidder. Governors and generals paid 30,000 cash, prefects 20,000 and clerks paid 3,000. No office could be procured without an immediate cash payment. The price put upon the office of Prime Minister was so great that for many years no one could afford to take it, and so the place remained vacant, perhaps to the benefit of the people. The king was ruled by a favorite concubine and she made use of her power to enrich
70 KOKKAN HISTORY.
lier relatives ar.d those attached to her. She and other con- cubines sent men to the country to peddle offices. Half the money they kept themselves and the other half went to the pockets of tlie concubines. Such was the desperate condition of affairs when the year 1622 came in ; and we must now re- cord the downfall of this wretched parody of a king.
A man by the name of Yi Kwi had desired for a long time to find some way of ridding the land of the desperate tyrant, and at last he found five men who were willing to engage with him in the good cause. They were Sim Kyong-jin, Sim Keui- wun, KimCha-jum, Ch'oe Myung-gil, Kim Nyu. After think- ing the matter over and discussing it, they decided that if their plan succeeded they would put on the throne the grand- son of Siin-jo Tii-wang. Kim Nyu was made the leader in this plot. Collecting money they fitted out a small but select body of soldiers and put Gen. Yi Heung-ip at their head, and the day for the event was set. But one of the men connected with the plot turned traitor and told the king the whole plan. The conspirators learned of it immediately and decided to car- ry out their program in spite of all. As it happened, the king was in a drunken carouse at the time this interesting bit of information was given him and he forgot all about it. That very night the band of conspirators met at the appointed ren- dezvous beyond the Peking Pass. But there was trouble, because some soldiers who were expected from Chang-dan had not yet arrived ; so a swift messenger was sent to find them. They were met twenty li out and hurried forward. Yi Kwal, with several other generals, went to meet these troops beyond the pass and lead them into the city. They found several hundred soldiers ready for the enterprise ; but a man named Chang Yu came in haste from the city and said, "The king has been told. The government troops are coming out to seize us." Yi Kwi seized Yi Kwal by the hand and said, "Kim Nyu who was to lead us has not arrived and you must be our leader." So he consented. He gave each soldier a piece of paper to fasten to the back of his collar so that they would be able to recognize each other and not be thrown into confu- sion. At the last moment Kim Nyu arrived and then there was a quarrel between him and Yi Kwal as to the leadership ; but as day was about to dawMi thev let Kim Nvu take charge.
MUDKK.N KORHA. "] I
Having heard that the government troops were coming out of the West Gate they hastened around the mountain and enter- ed the Northwest Gate. When the government troops learn- ed by the great noise and tumult in the city that they had been outwitted, they returned only to find the insurrectionary troops before the palace. They had cut their way through the gates with axes and were setting fire to everything inside. As they entered the king's apartments he slipped out the back dooi and scaling the back wall found refuge in a monk's room. From that place he made his way to the house of one An Kuk- sin where he secured a suit of mourner's clothes and then went to the house of a physician, Chong Nam-su. This man how- ever informed the new government as to his whereabouts and he was seized. This occurred in the year 1622.
Prince Neung-yang, the nephew of the deposed king, was elevated to the royal position and crowds of people came and bowed to him as he sat in state before the palace. His post- humous title is In-jo Ta-wang.
His first act was to send a chair to bring back the queen dowager from the Myung-ye Palace ; but she, thinking that it might perhaps be a trick on the part of the wicked king, re- fused to go. She said, "The king himself must come and take me out." So he came and showed her that the good news was indeed true. She sat on the throne just as she had done in the days of King Sun-jo, and when the new king came in he prostrated himself before her and wept ; but she said, "Do not weep ; this is a day of deliverance, and you should rather re- joice." Then they brought in the depraved and fallen crea- ture who had tried to play at king but had made a lamentable failure. The queen dowager exclaimed. "This arch-traitor and bloody man has come, and he must be judged here and now or 1 cannot leave this place. For ten years I have been im- prisoned here. Day before yesterday I dreamed that the aged king Sun-jo came and said, 'In a few days you will be deliver- ed.' " The eunuchs brought the royal seals and the insignia of royalty and gave them to the newly appointed king. He banished the deposed king to Kang-wha and his son to Kyo- dong Island. He then gave posthumous honors to Princes Im-ha. Neung-chang, Yun-heung, Pu-won and Yong-ch'ang whom the tvrant had caused to be murdered. He also called
-J 2 KOKKAN HISTOKV.
the queen dowager's mother from exile on tlie island of Qnel- part.
He found the government in a profoundly wretched con- dition and he forthwith began a systematic house-cleaning. He appointed new ministers to the six departments and a pro- clamation was sent to the eight provinces saying that every prefect who had bought his place should be driven from office and that all the land that had been stolen from the people should be returned to them ; also that every prefectural clerk should pay up the arrears of revenue which he had withheld from the government. He drew up a company of soldiers at Chong-no, the center of the city, and there executed the former favorite Yi I-ch'um and seventeen other men who had aided and abetted the deposed king in his monstrosities. Sixty more were banished to distant places where they were confined in small enclosures surrounded with brier hedges, and their food was handed them through small holes in the hedges. Pang Yfip, the governor of P'yiing-an Province, and two others in the countrj-, were executed by special messengers sent down to the country for the purpose. This Pang Yfip was a most desperate villain. As he had .something of a body- guard, resistance was anticipated, but the special messenger of death managed to draw oft" the guard on some pretext or other and then the work was done swiftly and surely. This governor was so detested b\' the people that they cut his bod\' into small pieces and each man carried away a small piece "to remember him by."
The king made Yi Kwi General-in-chief, conferred upon his father the title of Prince Chong-wun and upon his mother that of Pu-pu-in and gave her a palace to live in where the government hospital now stands. He drove out from the palace all vile women, all musical instruments, and he burned at Chong-no the wooden semblance of a moun- taiti which the former king had caused to be made and which was always carried in his procession. This "mountain" was covered with growing shrubs and flowering plants. He made Gen. Cliaug Man commander of all the provincial forces, with his headcjuaters at P'yuiig-yang. He beheaded the brother of the deposed queen and also the prefect who had suffocated the young prince at Kang-wha. Spies were sent
MODKKN KORKA. 73
tlirouo^hont the country to ascertain the actual state of affairs. This king was a deadly enemy of Buddhism, and he it was who ordered that no monk should set foot inside the gates of Seoul. The law was promulgated that whenever a common person entered the gates of Seoul he must dismount from his horse. Sacrifices were offered by the king in person at the tomb of Ki-ja and at the blood-marked stone at Song- do, the spot where Chgng Mong-ju had been murdered when the dynasty was founded. It was decreed that revenue should be collected to the extent of a tithe of the grain, which was much less tl;an before, but was collected more reg- ularly. We cannot but sympathize with the wife of the son of the deposed king, who had been banished to Kyo-dong Island. She followed him into exile arid attempted to secure his escape by digging with her own tender hands a tunnel seventy feet long. She had no other implement than a piece of iron resembling a common fire-poker. At the very moment of his escape the plot was discovered and the poor wife banged herself ovit of grief and disappointment. When the king heard of this he ordered that honorable burial be given her remains and he put the young man out of misery by administering poison. That same year the deposed queen died and the king gave her the burial honors of a princess. She had been a devoted Buddhist and had endowed many monasteries with wooden or clay images. But she was not happy as queen and prayed that when, according to ^the Buddhist doctrine, she should take on another life it might not be that of a que^u.
Chapter V.
Yi Kwal's grievance. . . .he raises an insurrection . , civil war . . .rebels victorious. . . .the king leaves Seoul . . .the rebels enter the capital ... .fight outside the West Gate....Yi Kwal flees. .. .and is slain . . . .the king returns to Seoul.... a royal proclamation.... tiled houses in P'yilng-yang . . sons of concubines. . . .the Manchus again . . .an unsuccessful envoy ...death of Norach'i . . . Nain-han completed . . . .the Manchus enter Korea. . . .efforts at resistance. . . .fall of An-
74 KdRI-. \N" ^lfST^/K^'.
ju. . . .the kinji retires to Kang-wha . . . Manchu comlitions . . panic in Seoul. .. .an interesting; jjanie ni chess ... Kore:ui hostage and tribute. .. .oath at the altar .... Koreans firm in their loyalty to China.... the ]Manchus praise them Manchn cruelties . the
^lanchu garrisons ...opposed bv the Koreans ... sound argument . . . .Japanese assistance declined.
The Story of Vi Kwal'.s rebellion shows how grent n mat- ter a little fire kindles. The king wished to honor in a spec- ial manner the men who had been instrumental in putting him on the throne. Among tliem were two especially deserv- ing men, Kim Nyu and Yi Kwal. Kim was from a higher family than Yi but was less deserving of praise in this affair. When all knelt before the king and Yi Kwal found that he was given second place, he was enraged and refused to kneel, but stood glaring about him. He was p>aci6ed, but was still ver}- sore at heart. He was given the position of governor of P'j'^ung-an where there was a considerable force of soldiers ; among them three hundred Japanese, who had become nat- uralized and who where excellent swordsmen. With the opening of the new year Gen. Yi Kwi, who knew the calibre of Yi Kwal, obtained the post of military instructor at Song- do. This he sought that he might have an opportunity' to stand between the king and any treachery that Yi Kwal might attempt. A courtier, Mun Whe. told the king that Yi Kwal was gathering an army with bad intent, and the king hastily called a council. Kim Nyu did not believe it possible that Yi Kwal shoitld revolt, but Ch'oe Myung-gil insisted that it was true, and in the high words that followed Kim Nyu was charged with being privy to the plot. But the re- mark passed unnoticed. We shall see however that Kim had little to do in putting down the insurrection. Perhaps it was because of a lurking suspicion that he might be impli- cated. A large number of men known to be intimate with the disaffected general were arrested and thrown into prison. Two executioners were sent to kill Han Myung-yon who was said to be in league with Yi Kwal, and to catch Yi Kwal's son. Arriving in P'yung-yang the messengers went boldly into the presence of Yi Kwal and announced their message. As Yi was already on the point of marching on Seoul he answered by taking ofl the heads of the messengers. Hastily
MODKkX KOKHA. 75
suminonitig all the neighboring prefects he addressed them as follows : "The king is surrounded by bad men and I propose to go up to Seoul and clean things out a little." Then put- ting in motion his 20,000 troops with the Japanese swords- men at their head, he marched toward the capital. The whole country instantly burst into a fl ime of excitement. The king appointed Gen. Yi Wfin-ik to lead an army in defense of the capital, and he put Vi Si-bal second in command. Yi Su-il became general of P'yTing-an Province, and the combined forces marched northward to block the rebel's path. Gen. Wan P'ung-gun fortified Song-do in preparation for an at- tack, O Yong-su fortified the banks of the Im-jin River at the ferry. The eight provinces were all requisitioned for troops. Kang Kak was placed at Su-an with militia from Su-an and So-heung to check the advance of the enemy. Gen. Chnng Ch'ung-sin who had been stationed at An-ju north of P'yung-yang, together with other leaders, moved southward on the rebellious city, to take Yi Kwal in the rear. Chang Man asked him what he thought were the chances of Yi Kwal's success, and he answered, "If Yi Kwal goes straight to Seoul and the king stays there till he arrives the result will be doubtful, but if he delays a while in Whang-ha Province, or if the king retreats southward and Yi Kwal de- lays in vSeoul we will kill him like a dog."
Gen. Chang Man then called about him all the forces within reach, led by fifteen captains and prefects. When he saw how small his army was compared with that of Yi Kwal he despaired of doing anything, but some-one said, '"Many of those under Yi Kwal are not faithful to him. Let us send and call out the loyal ones from among his army." So they sent a slave of Gen. Yi Yun-sii, who followed Yi Kwal, and told him to go and bring his master out of the rebel ranks.. They offered him a hundred thousand cash but he refused it saying "I will go and save hirn from rebellion if I can, and if I succeed it will be time enough to reward me." The slave entered the rebel ranks and that night the sentries heard the voice of Gen. Yi Yun-su calling aloud from outside the lines saying, "I am going over to the side of the king." Arriving at the camp of Chang Man, the penitent general burst into tears at the thought of how near he had come to being a trai-
7^ KORKAX HISTORY.
tor. Yi Kwal sent eight assassins to kill Chano; Man but they were cauo;ht and brono^ht before their intended victim, who, instead of punishinof them, .g;ave them a good dinner and sent them away. Yi Kwal himself was so fearful of assassination that he not only slept '.n a different tent each night but moved from one tent to another several times during a single night.
Gen. Chang Man started for Seoul, the advance guard being led by Chong-sin, the skirmish line by Pak Yong-su, the right and left flanks by Yu Hyo-gul and Chang Tun. the sap- pers by Ch'o'e Eung-il, while the commissariat was in charge of i.\n Mong-yun. The whole force consisted of 1800 men. The first day was spent in getting the army across the Ta- dong River. The next three days brought them to Whaug- ju. where they fell in with part of the rebel army. After a brisk skirmish, two companies of cavalr\' were seen riding out from the robel ranks as if to surrender, but when they had come close to Gen. Chang Man's forces they made a sudden charge which threw the loyal forces into confusion and soon the entire army was routed. Turning from this complete victory, Yi Kwal led his forces toSu-an. It was his intention to approach Seoul by way of Sak-wuii but as the government had a strong force there he changed his plan and came by Keui-rin which is an exceedingly rough road. Meanwhile Gen. Chang Man had collected the scattered remnants of his army and followed as far So-heung where he was joined by Gen. Yi Su-il and together they proceeded southward to P'yung- san. There they were joined by Soo more troops. On the sixth of the moon Yi Kwal arrived at the Cho-t'au ford and found it guarded by a royal force under Yi Chung-ho and Yi Tuk-bu. Yi Kwal forced the passage and put the government troops to flight, taking the heads of both the generals. A day or so later, being met by more loyal troops, he sent them the two heads as warning. They did not heed it and in the fight that followed their leaders too lost their heads.
Meanwhile interesting events were happening in Seoul. The king put to death forty-nine men who were suspected of being privy to the plot, though many of them were doubtless innocent. Yi Kwi begged him to spare some of them, but he was obdurate. Gen. Yi So took 2,000 men and went to the gate on the main road a few miles beyond Song-do and tried
MODKKN k;ok?:a. 77
to hold it ag^ainst the in.sur<<ent army. Vi Kwal attacked at nio^ht and found little difficulty in breaking throusjh the bar- rier. But instead of advancing on Song-do he made a circuit and thereby avoided both vSong-do and the force which wa.s set to guard the passage of the Ini-jin River. He effected a crossing by a ford higlicr up that stream. Learning of this, Pak Hyo-rip who was holding the ferry hastened back to Seoul where he arrived at dusk and announced that the king had not a moment to lose but must take to flight that very night. Without an hour's delay the king mounted his steed and fled by way of the South Gate, leaving the city in a perfect frenzy of fear. He arrived at Han-gang in the dark and found that the ferrymen had taken all their boats to the other side for safety. They peremptorily refused to obey any summons, and at last U Sang-jung was obliged to throw off his clothes and swim the stream. He succeeded in getting six boats. It took all the rest of the night to get the royal cavalcade across the river. It was on the ninth of the moon when the king arrived at Sa-p'yung just beyond the river. He had nothing to eat till noon that day, when Sin Chun brought him a bowl of gruel and a few dried persimmons. Night found him at Su-wun completely tired out After a rest of a few days he passed on to Kong-ju the provincial capital and there he was made comfortable for the first time since his flight from the capital. The governors of Ch'ung ch'ung and Chul la Provinces met him there. A strong guard was placed along the southern bank of the Keum River.
At noon of the day following the king's flight, thirty fol- lowers of Yi Kwal entered the city and announced that there was no need for fear, as a new king had arisen. The next day Vi Kwal entered the town. Many small officials and a great crowd of people went out to meet him and scattered red earth along the road in front of him, which is a special pre- rogative of royalty. Pintering the city he pitched his camp where the Ky<")ug-bok Palace now stands. Even the king's own uncle went over to Yi Kwal, perhaps through fear, or perhaps because the revolution was a success. This uncle was proclaimed king and posters were sent out to quiet the people. Thousands of adventurers and low fellows sought and obtained official appointments under the new regime.
7<^ KOKKA.N IIISTOKV.
Rut what liad been going' on in tlie north ? Cliano; Man, arriving at l"a-ju, learned that the king had fled, and im- mediately called a council of war. It was decided that, as the people of Seoul were not largely in favor of Yi Kwal, it would be a good thing to make a demonstration at once lest the people should com^ to recognize the government. So one body of troops was sent to watch the road outside the East Gate and to cut off supplies. Another guarded the roads outside the South Gate. Gen. Chong Ch'ung-sin said that they must encamp on the hills immediately outside the West Gate and then Yi Kwal would be forced to fight. In order to do this Kim Yang-nn took cavalry and surprised the signal fire sta- tion beside the Peking Pass and so prevented any signal being given. That night Chang Man and all his forces came around the hills and stationed themselves behind the hill just back of Mo-vvha-gwan. This movement was further favored by a strong east wind that carried the sound away so that all Seou^ was ignorant of the extreme proximity of the enemy. At the same time Yi Whak with two hundred troops secreted him- self outside the Northwest Gate, to enter the city when the insurgent troops should go out the West Gate to attack Chang Man's forces. The latter also sent thousands of slips of paper into the city and had them distributed among the people say- ing, "Tomorrow, anyone who refuses to stand by Yi Kwal and remains loyal to the king, let him present one of these slips and he small receive a reward."
In the morning Yi Kwal spied a small band of soldiers on the hill outside the gate, for most of the force was con- cealed behind it, in order to deceive the rebels. Some of Yi Kwal's followers said, "They are so few we had better go out- side the Northwest Gate and so surround them ; but the enemy seemed so insignificant that Yi Kwal marched straight at them. All Seoul was on the walls watching the fight with breathless interest. Han Myiing-yun, Yi Kwal's right hand man, took the Japanese contingent and moved up the steep hillside, and Yi followed with the main body. The strong east wind that was blowing materially aided the attacking force, for it lent speed to their arrows and they had the wind at their backs instead of in their faces. The loyal forces were forced to give way a little ai;d their leaders had to stike down
MODERN KORKA. 79
some in order to prevent a general stampede. At this criti- cal juncture the wind suddenly veered to the west and drove the sand and dust into the eyes of the attacking party. This was the turning point in the battle. Yi Kwal was forced to give ground. Han Myuug-yun himself was wounded by an ar- row. Gen. Chang Man fought fiercely for two hours, gain- ing ground all the time. At this time the standard-bearer of Yi Kwal turned and fled. The cry arose, "Yi Kwal is on the run," and in less that a minute the whole force was thrown into confusion and every man took to his heels, including Yi Kwal himself, who hastened back toward the West Gate. But the citizens on the wall had not been idle, and he found the gate locked and barred. Turning aside he hastened along under the wall till he reached the South Gate which he entered. Gen. Chang Man said, "Let us not chase him, for his men might turn on us and beat us after all. Let him go ; the people will bring his head in soon enough." So Yi Kwal with a small band of followers fled out the Water Mouth Gate, crossed the Han at Song-p'a, killed the prefect of Kwang-ju, scaled Yi-bu-j3 Pass and fled away eastward. Gen. Chong Ch'ung-sin chased him as far as Kyong-an. By that time the traitor's band had dwindled to twenty-eight men. He fled by night as far as Muk-pangi in the prefecture of 1-ch'un and there two of his followers, seeing that the game had been played to a finish and hoping to save their own lives, went into his room by night and severed his head from the bod3^ His son was treated in the same way, as were also Han Myuug-yiin and six others. They carried the heads to Kong- ju and laid them before the king. The king's uncle who had been set up as king fled to Kwang-ju, where he was caught and turned over to Gen. Chang Man, who imprisoned him and waited the orders of the king. But another man, Sim Keui-wiin, said, "No, he is a traitor," and slew him with his own hand. When the king returned to Seoul this man Sim was imprisoned for a few days as nominal punishment for having killed a relative of the king.
On the twenty-second of the month the king returned to Seoul. Gen. Chang Man went to the river and escorted him in with a large letinue, but Gen. Chong Ch'ung-sin did not go and bow before the king, for he said, "T did not stop
So KOKKAN HISTOKY.
the traitor, but let him drive the kiii<j from the capital." So he weut up to P'ynn.8;-yang without seeing the king. When the latter heard of this he sent for him and gave him a pres- ent of gold and made him governor of P'3'nng an. It is said h)^ some, in extenuation of Yi Kwal's conduct, that he under- stood that the king had driven the former king from the throne and was a usurper. This xuust be false, for Yi Kvval was one of the principal actors in those events and must have known the truth about them. He was simph' jealous and, having a strong force, thought to avenge himself. However that may be, the report was spread that it was patriotism that prompted the revolt, and to dispel any such idea the king made proclamation saying, "Kwang-hri. the former ruler, was a wicked and undutiful man. He killed his father and elder brother and imprisoned his mother. The countr\' was on the verge of destruction and so I could* not but attempt to drive him out. It was not because I wanted Lo usurp the royal honors, but it was for the sake of the line. Yi Kwal's raid was prompted Vjy idle rumors gotten up by certain of Kwang- ha's men, but let all the people know surely that I have done this for the sole purpose of saving the kingdom."
In the ninth moon another revolt was. attempted, with the object of putting Prince In-sung, the king's younger brother, on the throne. It was discovered in time and the principal movers were killed and the prince was banished to Kan-sung in Kang-wun Province.
On account of the frequent conflagrations in the city of P'yung-yang, the governor petitioned the king to promulgate a law requiring all houses in that town to be tiled instead of thatched. The king not only complied but gave money for the purchase- of tiles. That law has not been abrogated to this day.
The year 1625 opened with warlike preparations. Gen. Yj Sn collected a band of strong, stalwart men, the pick of the land, formed them into companies and regiments and drilled them at- the Hun-yun-wun, inside the East Gate, and also at Mo-wha-kwan outside the West Gate. Near the close of the year the king promulgated a most important law, sweeping away the disabilities of sons by concubines and giving them the right to become officials. One must know the prev-
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MODKRN KOREA. Si
'aleiice of concubinage in Korea in order to understand how vitally this law must have affected the whole body of the peo- ple, of all ranks and classes. This was the more true from the fact that concubines are commonly taken because of the lack of an heir. Eligibility to office on the part of sons of ot concubines worked therefore in two directions. It elevated the position of the concubine and at the same time made the position of the barren wife more endurable.
We have already given a sketch of the beginnings of the Manchu convulsion which was about to shake the whole of eastern Asia. During the interval occupied by the events narrated above, the Manchus were quietly preparing for the future. Gen. Kang Hong-rip, the Korean renegade, was still with them. Another Korean went over to the Manchus. It was Han Yun who fied to Kwi-sung in northern P'yung- an, from which place he crossed the Ya-lu and found Gen. Kang among the Manchus. To him he said, "My relatives have now all been destroyed by the king and I am an outcast. Let us get an array together and go and be avenged on the Koreans." Gen. Kang gave his hearty consent and together they sought the throne of the Manchu chief to lay their plan before him.
So U-sin, the Ming governor of Liao-tung, heard of this plan and despatched a messenger to the King of Korea set- ting him on his guard against these two men. The king did not believe that Gen. Kang was irrecoverably lost, for he ap- pointed his son to go to the Manchus as envoy. Had this young man succeeded in reaching his destination he might have induced his father to remain faithful to Korea, but just beyond the border he encountered Manchu soldiers who did not understand him and would not let him pass. So he was compelled to return with his mission unaccomplished. It is probable that there would have been an invasion of Korea by the Manchus at that time had it not been for the arrival in Liao-tung of the great Chinese general WQn Sung-whan. He was so skillful in the handling of soldiers that superhu- man powers were ascribed to him. The Manchus could make no headway against him, and it is said that Norach'i's chagrin at having failed to storm a town held b>- this famous general aggravated an illness caused by a carbuncle on his
8 3 KOREAN HISTORY.
back and brought about his death. Upon his decease his second son Hongt'asi took the reins of government^ and car- ried to completion the ambitious plans made by his illustrious father.
It is apparent that the Korean court was well awake to the dangers confronting them, for we learn that in the sev- enth moon of this year 1626 the wall of Nam-han was com- pleted. This is the great mountain fortress about twenty miles to the south-east of Seoul. It was formerly the site of one of the capitals of Pakje.
The year 1627 no sooner opened that the long dreaded event took place. On the fifth moon 30,000 Manchu sol- diers crossed the Yalu River and a few days later stood be- fore the city of Eui-ju. Approaching the gate a herald cried, **The second king of the great Golden Kingdom is now lay- ing his heavy hand on Korea. If you do not come out and sur- render we will raze your town to the level of the ground." Unfortunately for the good name of Korea the perfect was at that moment sleeping off the effects of a drunken debauch in the house of a dancing girl. He came forth and tried to get the garrison together, but it was too late, for already the traitor Han Yun had entered the town in Korean clothes and had thrown the gates open to the ruthless invaders. The prefect and his whole garrison were set up in line and shot down by the savage Manchus, after which they boiled the body of the prefect in a kettle and sacrificed to heaven with the flesh. They then sent a letter to the king couched in the following terms : "You have committed four crimes, (i) You did not send an envoy to commiserate with us on the death of the great Norach'i. (2) You have never thanked us for sparing your army when we beat you and the Chinese to- gether. (3) You afforded asylum to our enemj', Mo Mun- nyong. (4) Your people have killed many of the residents of Liao-tung in cold blood. It is for these reasons that our wrath is kindled against you." And so the invading army moved southward, forcing the Koreans to cut their hair and compelling them to act as guides. But they did not come unopposed. They were met at Yong-ch'Cn by its prefect at the head of 2,000 men, but a small official turned traitor and opened the gates to the Manchus. On the seventeenth tbey
MODKRX K.OKEA. S3
arrived at Kwak-san wlu-re they were told bj- the Korean garrison tliat death was j)referable to surrender ; the Koreans found it so, for they were soon overpowered and massacred. Two prefects whose wives had been confiscated by the Mancus thought to save themselves and recover their wives by going over to the enemy but when tliey did so they found their wives still held as concubines while they theniselves were compelled, to hold the bridles of the men who brutally refused to give back the women.
vSeoul was meanwhile going through one of those period- ical eruptions which she was destined to sufTer for many years to come. Gen. Chang Man became general-in-chief, with Chong Ch'ung Sin as second. They immediately took all the available forces and marched northward. Gen. Sin was plac- ed at the Im-jin River to block the approach of the enemy Gen. Kim went south to collect troops in Ch'ung-ch'ung Province, and others went in other directions. A call was made to all the eight provinces for men. Gen. Yi So was put in command of Nam-ban. The king recalled many men from banishment, probably with a view to bringing into har- mony all the different elements and securing unanimity among all classes.
On the twenty- first the Manchus arrived before Au-ju. They cried. "Come out and surrender," and received the answer, "We are here to fight and not to surrender." The next day at dawn in a heavy fog they approached the wall. They had an enormous ladder mounted in some way on the backs of camels. This was placed against the wall and the enemy swarmed over, armed only with short swords and knive.-. ; but these they used with such good effect that they soon gained a foothold The commandant of the town. Nam Yi-heung, stood by the gate and shot many of the Manchus with his good bow and when his arrows were all gone he ordered bags of powder to be brought, and by exploding these he killed many of the enemy but was himself killed in the process.
P'yung-yang now being practically without defense, the l)refect fled southward to the capital and told the king what had happened. The Crown Prince was immediately sent into- the south for safety and the king himself with the ancestral
84 KORKAN HlSTOKY.
tablets and with liis court hastened to the island of Kang-wha, leaving the city of Seoul in a condition better imagined than described.
One of Gen. Kang's grievances against Korea was that he thought the king had killed his son, but when he learned that this was not only not true but that the king had sent that son as envoy, though unsuccessfully, to the Manchus, there was a strong revulsion of feeling in his mind and he ex- pressed his sorrow at the invasion but said that it was now too late to stop it. He however advised the king to send gifts to the Manchu chief and sue for peace.
When the Manchus arrived at Whang-ju they sent a letter forward to the king on Kang-wha saying, "There are three conditions on which we will conclude a peace with you. (i) You must hand over to us the person of Mo Mun-nyi3ng. (2) You must give us 10,000 soldiers to help invade China. (3) You must giv'e up the two northern provinces of P'yung-an and Ham-g3'Gng." On the ninth of the moon the envoy bear- ing this letter, accompanied bj'^ the Korean renegade Gen. Kang, took boat from Song-do for Kang-wha. The next day the king gave them audience and the envoy bowed before him, but the king did not bow in return. This made the envoy very angrj', but the king said through an interpreter, "Tell him not to be angry, for I did not know the custom."
The king sent one Kang-In to Whaug-ju ostensibly to sue for peace but in reality to find out what the Manchus were doing there. Not long after this the Manchu envoy returned to the same place but Gen. Kang remained on Kang-wha, When the enemy had advanced as far as P'yfing-san, only a hundred //from Kang-wha, the whole court urged the king to make peace on any terms, as all the soldiers had run away and the enem\ were so near. When Gen. Kim, who had been left to guard Seoul, learned of the proximity of the Manchus, he fired all the government treasure and provisions and made good his escape. This was the signal for a general exodus of the people who swarmed out of the city and scattered in all directions seeking safety among the mountains or in remote provinces.
Yun Hiin had been imprisoned for having fled from P'y^'ug-yaiig without so much as attempting its defense, and
MODERN KOREA. 85
many of the officials begged the king to pardon him ; but they overdid it, and so many petitions came in that the king thought he was dangerously popular and ordered his execution. When the messenger of death reached the doomed man he found him playing a game of chess. The man with whom he was playing burst out crying, but he said. "What are you crying about? I am the man who am going to die, not yon. Let us hnisli the game." So they finished the game, after which Vun Hiln quietly submitted to his fate. This is a sample of sa?fQ- /)wV/ which never fails to elicit the appUuse of the Korean.
On the twentieth the Manchu general Yu Ha left P'yfmg- .san and went to Kang-wha to have an audience with the king. He advised the king to discard the Chinese calendar and use the Manchu one instead and he also s.-iid said the king must send his son to the north as hostage. The king answered that his son was too young, but that he would send his young- er brother. Accordingly he sent Wun Ch'ang-yiing. not his brother but a distant relative. At the same time he sent 30,000 pieces of cotton. 300 pieces of white linen, 100 tiger skins and 100 leopard skins. Gen. Yu Ha was pleased at this and said that he wished to have Korea at peace but that it would first be absolutely necessary for the king to take a solemn oath of fealty