Chapter IV.
King Sŭn-Jo takes the throne.... a memorable reign.... reforms.... northern invasion.... a prophecy.... mourning costume.... rise of the political parties.... party strife.... literature.... border war.... condition of affairs in Korea.... charge of effeminacy untrue.... condition of Japan.... Japanese envoy.... Hideyoshi.... his demands refused.... second envoy.... delay.... Korea’s condition acceded to.... renegades executed.... conspiracy.... a coward envoy.... Hideyoshi’s ultimatum.... Korea refuses.... Tairano.... the King’s answer to Hideyoshi.... the King informs the Emperor.... preparations for war.... generals commissioned.... the army of invasion.... lands on Korean soil.... Japanese firearms.... the cowardly provincial general.... the fall of Tong-nă.... a faithful defender.... cowardly officers.... the Japanese move northward.... a martinet.
In 1568, as King Myŭng-jong lay dying, his Queen summoned the officials to consult about the succession but ere they arrived the King expired. They asked her to nominate a successor and she named Prince Hă-sŭng a youth of seventeen, second cousin to the deceased King. He is known by his posthumous title Sŭn-jo So-gyŭng Tă-wang. The Queen who nominated him acted as regent until he should reach his majority.
This reign is perhaps the most memorable of any in this dynasty, for in it occurred the great Japanese invasion which brought the land to the verge of destruction and which has ever since colored the Korean conception of the Japanese.
The first years of the reign were spent in correcting the abuses brought about by “Little Yun” and in removing from office all those who had been connected in any way with him. The whole kingdom was canvassed for wise and scholarly men to put in the places of those who had been removed. Books intended for the instruction and elevation of the people were published and distributed far and wide.
The wild Ya-in across the Ya-lu were crossing that river and taking possession of fields in Korea proper, near the town of Kang-gye. The King sent a force under Gen. Kim Tong-yung to dislodge them. The intruders were chased across the river and into a narrow defile where they turned on their pursuers. Taken thus by surprise the Korean forces were thrown into confusion and were put to flight, but not till after their general had fallen. A second expedition chased the intruders to their villages, and burned them out.
In the following year the Prime Minister Yi Chun-gyŭng died, but before he expired he gave voice to a prophecy which has become historic. He said:—“Since I have begun to examine men’s minds I find that opposing factions will arise and that in their train great evils will follow. The king should studiously avoid showing favoritism to either of these factions. The first symptom of the rise of such factions should be met with stern resistance.”
In the year 1572, the relations with the Japanese were as follows:—Since the seventh year of King Chöng-jong, when the Japanese in the three ports revolted, there had been little communication between the two countries, but a few Japanese had been allowed to live in the three settlements by sufferance. But now the Japanese sent a friendly message asking that the old relations be resumed. The prefect of Fusan added his influence in favour of granting the request, and the Japanese were allowed to resume operations at Fusan alone, three li below the prefecture, which means about half way down the bay from the present village of Fusan. From that time the former relations seem to have been renewed, but no envoys went from Korea to Japan. It was decreed by the Korean government that should a Japanese land anywhere upon the coast except at Fusan he should be dealt with as a pirate. Officials were set to watch the Japanese and see to it that they did not overstep the strict regulations.
It had not been customary for the people to assume mourning on the death of a royal personage, but when the Queen Regent died in 1575 the custom was begun, and each citizen wore a white hat, belt, and shoes.
This year, 1575, was signalized by another event of far-reaching importance and one which exerted a powerful influence over all subsequent Korean history. It was the formation of the great political parties. At first there were only two, but soon they split into four, which are known as the No-ron, So-ron, Nam-in, and Puk-in. These mean “The Old Men’s Party,” “The Young Men’s Party[Party],” “The Southerners,” and “The Northerners.” These terms are not at all descriptive of the composition of the various parties but arose from trivial circumstances. These parties have never represented any principles whatever. They have never had any “platforms,” but have been, and are, simply political clans each bent upon securing the royal favour and the offices and emoluments that go therewith. The story of their rise shows how frivolous were the causes which called them into being, and the remainder of these annals will show how they have cursed the country.
During the palmy days of the odious “Little Yun” of the preceding reign, a man by the name of Sim Eni-gyŭm happening to see a blanket in the reception room of the universally hated favorite, asked to whom it belonged. When he was told that it belonged to one Kim Hyo-wŭn, he exclaimed “He is called a good man, but if so how can he sleep in the house of such a man as Little Yun.” So he opposed this Kim with all his might and was opposed by him in like manner. The matter grew into a family feud and kept on increasing until at the time of which we are writing two hostile clans had arisen, the one called Sŭ-in or “Westerners,” because their leader lived in the western part of Seoul. The other was at first called Tong-in or “Easterners,” perhaps because their leader lived in the eastern part of the city. The two men through whom the quarrel first arose had now left the field of active politics and the Sŭ-in and Tong-in parties were led respectively by Pak Sun and Hŭ Yŭp. It is said that from this time impartiality in the distribution of offices was a thing unknown in Korea. A Sŭ-in would help a Sŭ-in and a Tong-in would help a Tong-in, right or wrong.
The long fight was immediately begun. A slave in Whang-hă province was accused of murder and was held in prison waiting the decision of Pak Sun, the leader of the party in power. He did not believe the man guilty and delay followed. Hŭ Yŭp, the leader of the opposition, took advantage of this and accused his rival of neglect of duty. Then followed a running fire of charge and counter-charge between the leaders and between their partisans. The Tong-in, or So-ron as it soon came to be called, won in this first encounter and two of the opposing faction were banished. The Prime Minister urged that this fight was utterly useless and would cause endless trouble. The king agreed and determined to stamp out the cause of the disturbance; so he banished the two men Kim and Sim who had originated the factions. This had no effect however upon the now thoroughly organized parties and affairs kept going from bad to worse.
In 1579 Păk In-gŭl said to the king, “All the people have taken sides in this senseless war and even though a man be a criminal there are plenty who will defend him. This means the ultimate destruction of the kingdom, and the King should act as a peacemaker between the factions.” Others urged the same point before the king, but they were unaware that it was beyond the power of any king to lay the evil spirit of factional strife. In the fifteenth year of his reign the king threw himself into the cause of literature. He believed that neglect of the classics was the cause of the factional strife in his kingdom. He ordered the publication of the “Religion in the Mind,” “Picture of the Good and Evil Will,” and “The Legacy of Kim Si-seup.” He called together a large congress of scholars, and in company with them threw himself into the study of the classics.
The year 1583 beheld a fierce invasion on the part of the northern savages under Pon-ho. The prefecture of Kyöng-wŭn, in Ham-gyŭng Province, was taken by them, but Sil-Yip, the prefect of On-sŭng, went to its succour, and after a desperate fight before the town, broke the back of the invasion, drove the marauders back across the Tu-man and burned their villages.
THE HAN RIVER.
A novel method was adopted for raising recruits for the army on the border[border]. A law was made that sons of concubines, who had always been excluded from official position, might again become eligible by giving a certain amount of rice or by going themselves and giving three years’ time to border guard duty along the Ya-lu or Tu-man. Two chieftains, Yul Po-ri and Yi T’ang-ga, advanced by separate roads upon Kyöng-sŭng with 10,000 mounted followers, but the little garrison of 100 men fought so stubbornly that the siege was raised and the two chieftains marched on to attack Pang-wŭn. Fortunately government troops arrived just in time to drive the invaders back.
The Minister of War was working faithfully forwarding troops as fast as they could be gotten ready, but the opposition made charges against him on the ground of the neglect of some trifling technicality and he forthwith laid down his portfolio and retired in disgust. When the king asked the Prime Minister about it, that careful individual, fearing to compromise himself, would give no definite answer and the king consequently said, “If my Prime Minister will not tell me the facts in the case it is time he retired,” so he too lost footing and fell from royal favor.
Having reached now the threshold of the great Japanese invasion of Korea it will be necessary for us to pause and examine the state of affairs in Japan and institute a comparison between that country and Korea in order to discover if possible the causes of Japan’s early success and subsequent defeat.
Korea and Japan may be said to have been at two opposite poles. Beginning with Korea, we notice, first, that her relations with the Ming dynasty were eminently peaceful. Unlike the Mongols of an earlier date and the Manchus of a later date the Mings did not have their origin in the north, and therefore were brought less into contact with Korea along her northern border. They belonged to central China and were not a horde of brutal pillagers as were the Mongols and Manchus. Hence it was that so long as Korea was friendly and held her own way quietly the Ming emperors concerned themselves very little about her. To this day Korea looks back to the Ming dynasty as her true patron and realizes that the Manchu supremacy is an alien one. Korea had been strongly unified by the statesmanship of the first kings of the Cho-sŭn dynasty, the present one, and had been ruled so well as a general thing that there was no sense of insecurity and no particular fear from the outside except such as arose from the occasional irruption of a northern tribe or a piratical raid of a few boatloads of Japanese. The only need of a standing army was to guard herself from such attacks. The arts of peace flourished, the country was peaceful, there is little reason to believe that she was sunken, as many have averred, into a state of shameful effeminacy. In fact there is much to indicate the opposite, for almost up to the very year in which the invasion occurred the policy of reform instituted by king Se-jong was adhered to and the rulers, however unwarlike they may have been, surely did much for the sake of literature, art and public morals. You will scarcely find in the annals of history that the kings who ruled during times of great public degeneracy, when luxury sapped the vital power of the nation, spent their time in giving to the people treatises on moral, scientific, social and literary topics as these kings unquestionably did even up to the day when the Japanese cataclysm swept the country. It had not been a hundred years since an unworthy king had been driven from the throne by his disgusted people and been refused the posthumous title. That king was succeeded by one who made the land even puritanic in the severity of its morals, who fostered the arts and sciences as hardly any other had done and who crowned his work by publishing the Ok-pyŭn, which marked an era in the literary life of the people. He had been followed in turn by a king who continued the work of progress and among other things caused the construction of a complicated astronomical instrument. The following reign was the one in which the invasion occurred. No candid reader can believe that the country was steeped in such absolute degeneracy as the Japanese annalists would have us believe, and which other writers who had not access to the Korean annals have described. But some may say that the good work of Korean kings does not necessarily argue a good people. This again is a mistake, for there could scarcely be found a people that has taken their cue more directly from the court than have the Korean people. When the kings have been lax the people have followed the example and when the kings have been true men the people have been brought back to honest living. The refutation of this calumny then needs but a careful perusal of the Korean annals; not those which have been written under government sanction and are therefore unreliable but those which, like these, have been drawn from the private and popular histories of the dynasty and are presumably reliable. For centuries Korea had been at peace, except for insignificant uprisings on the border, and the arts of peace had gradually taken the place of martial prowess. A man is not an object of contempt simply because he is not a warrior. If he is, then let us go back to the peat-smoke of our ancestral hovels.
Having shown this reason for Korea’s inability to hold the[the] Japanese in check to have been a false one it will be necessary to account for it in some other way. This can easily be done. The reason was three-fold. In the first place the Korean people, having no use for a large standing army, had not been trained in large numbers to military life. Secondly the Japanese were armed with firearms while the Koreans had absolutely none. The first firearm that was ever seen in Korea was given the king by a Japanese envoy just at the outbreak of the invasion, as we shall see. This alone would account for Korea’s inability to cope with the islanders. In the third place the rise of the political parties had brought in a spirit of jealousy which made it impossible for any man to reach celebrity without calling down upon himself the hatred of the opposing party and his consequent ruin. This we deem the main cause of Korea’s weakness. The following pages will show whether this view is upheld by facts or not. It was the mutual jealousies of opposing parties that proved the bane of the land and not the supineness and effeminacy of the people.
We must now glance at Japan and see of what stuff the invaders were made. Unlike the Korean people, the Japanese had never been welded into a homogeneous mass. Feudalism was the most marked feature of Japanese life. It has been but thirty years since Japan became a unit. It was feudalism and its consequent spirit of liberty (for feudalism is liberty in embryo) that made possible Japan’s phenomenal development during the past three decades. Her feudalism is therefore not to be decried, but one of its necessary evils was a state of almost continual civil war. For two centuries preceding the invasion of Korea Japan had been one great battlefield. War was the great occupation of the people. While Korea had been busy producing Japan had been busy destroying and when at last Hideyoshi, the great Shogun, found himself the virtual ruler of a temporarily quiet kingdom he had on hand an enormous army which must either be given occupation or must be disbanded. The latter he dared not do and the former he could not do without finding a field[a field] of operation abroad. But we are anticipating.
It is well known that the government[government] of Japan was not administered by the emperor in person but by an official called the Taiko, or Kwan-băk as the Koreans say. For about two centuries this office had been in the hands of a family named Wŭn. Hideyoshi had been a retainer in the family of the Taiko. Being a bold and successful fighter he won his way to a generalship and from this point[point] of vantage killed the Taiko and assumed that title himself. It had been the dream of his life to strike at China. He had tried it once unsuccessfully by boat, attacking her at Chŭl-gang. He now changed his plan and decided to make Korea a stepping stone to the conquest of the Ming empire. His initial move was based on his statement “Year after year our envoys have gone to Korea but they never send one in return.”
In pursuance of this policy a Japanese envoy named Yasuhiro appeared at the Korean court in 1587 bearing a harshly worded and insulting letter demanding that the king send an envoy to Japan. The only notice[an envoy to Japan. The only notice] taken of this demand was a polite note in which the king stated that as the journey by sea was a long one and the Koreans were not good sailors he would have to be excused from complying with the demand. When[When] Yasuhiro placed this missive in the hands of his master he was promptly ordered into the hands of the executioner.
The opening of the year 1588 found Korea still suffering from outbreaks of the far northern[northern] border and Gen. Yi Il took a small force of men, crossed the Tu-man River on the ice and attacked the Chin-do tribe. Being successful in this he[he] took 2000 men, crossed the same river at four different points simultaneously[simultaneously] and attacked the Si-jun tribe by night, burning 200 houses and killing 300 people.
In the spring of this year there arrived from Japan a second envoy, or rather three envoys, Yoshitoshi, Tairano Tsuginobu and a monk Gensho. Of these Yoshitoshi was the chief. He is described by the Koreans as being a young man, but coarse and violent and of such a fierce nature that the other members of his suite dared come into his presence only on their knees. They dared not look him in the face. Yoshitoshi and his suite were comfortably quartered at the Tong-p‘ŭng-gwan near the present Japanese settlement in Seoul, and having renewed the demand that Korea send an envoy to Japan, he waited month after month hoping that the king would accede to the demand and fearing to go back without success lest he should meet the same fate that Yasuhiro the former envoy had suffered.
At last the king announced that he would send an envoy to Japan on one condition, namely that the Japanese government seize and send back to Korea a number of Korean renegades who, under the leadership of one Sa Wha-dong, had run away to Japan and had since led marauding bands of Japanese against the southern seaboard of Korea. To this condition the Japanese envoy gladly consented and Tairano was despatched to Japan to carry it out. But it was not till the seventh moon of the following year, 1589, that the pirate Sa Wha-dong and three Japanese freebooters together with certain other Koreans were brought back from Japan and delivered up to justice. With them came a letter from the Japanese government saying “We are not responsible for the evil deeds of these men. The Korean Sa Wha-dong is the cause of this trouble; so we send them all to you and you must mete out to them such punishment as you see fit.” The culprits were immediately decapitated outside the West Gate. This seems to have thawed somewhat the reserve of the king and Yoshitoshi was called to the palace for the first time, where he was presented by the king with a handsome steed while he in turn gave the king a peacock and some firearms, the first that had ever been seen in Korea.
Late in the year a dangerous conspiracy was discovered, the prime mover being Chöng Yo-rip of Chŭl-la Province. He had arranged a plan by which he and several friends of his in Whang-hă Province should rise simultaneously and overthrow the government. A certain monk in Ku wŭl mountain in Whang-hă Province discovered that a certain man, Cho Ku, was working diligently among the people, taking names, sending numerous letters and in other ways acting in a suspicious manner. He believed the man was a traitor and told the prefect of An-ak to be on the lookout. The latter arrested the man and examined him. It was then elicited that a widespread rebellion was being gotten up. When the news was told the king secretly he called together his officials and asked “What sort of a man is this Chöng Yo-rip?” Some said they did not know but the Prime Minister said that he was a good scholar and an exemplary[exemplary] man. The king then[then] threw upon the floor the letter telling about the plot and exclaimed “Read that and see what sort of a man he is.”
The traitor Chöng had gotten wind of the discovery and had fled with his son to Chi-nan Mountain in Chŭl-la Province but he was pursued and surrounded. Rather than be taken he cut his own throat and expired. His son and his nephew were taken back to Seoul and executed. The nephew under torture affirmed that the Prime Minister and a large number of other officials were privy to the plot. This was the more easily believed because the Prime Minister had insisted that Chöng was a good man. So he and two others were banished. It is affirmed on good authority that the Prime Minister and the other who suffered were innocent of the charge, and that it was simply one of the deplorable results of party jealousy and strife. We here have a striking instance of the cause of Korea’s weakness.
All momentous events in Korea are believed to be foretold in some way. It is said that in this year 1589 a good man named Cho Hön went to the monastery at Kom-san and when rice was set before him said “Whoever eats with me will die next year, for the Japanese are coming with 200,000 men. Those here who do not eat with me will live.” Three only are said to have taken up the challenge and eaten with him.
In the third moon of the following year 1590 the king redeemed his promise by sending to Japan three envoys, Whang Yun-gil, Kim Sŭng-il and Ho Sŭng. They were accompanied by the Japanese envoy who had waited a year for them. Whang Yun-gil[Yun-gil] was chief of the Korean embassy, but he was a weak, timid man who hardly dared speak when a Japanese addressed him. The other members of the embassy realizing how[how] such action would bring Korea into contempt at the Japanese court, tried to stir him up and make him speak out fearlessly, but to no avail. After wasting a year at the Japanese court the embassy returned, accompanied by Tairano who was charged with an important mission to the king but the minute this embassy landed at Tong-ăn Whang Yun-gil the cowardly envoy sent a letter post haste to Seoul saying that war with Japan was certain. When they all arrived at Seoul the king called them into audience and questioned them about their experiences in Japan. His first question was “Did you see Hideyoshi? How did he look?” Whang replied “His eyes flashed fire. He is a fearsome man.” but Kim Sŭng il said “There is nothing fearsome about him. His eyes are like rats’ eyes.”
The important letter of which Tairano was the bearer was now handed to the King and it lay bare the mind of Hideyoshi. It read as follows:—
“Our country consists of sixty-six kingdoms. They all revolted from the Emperor but for four years I fought them and succeeded in bringing them all to their knees until even the remote islands lay mastered in my hand. When my mother conceived me it was by a beam of sunlight that entered her bosom in a dream. After my birth a fortune teller said that all the land the sun shone on would be mine when I became a man, and that my fame would spread beyond the four seas. I have never fought without conquering and when I strike I always win. Man cannot outlive his hundred years, so why should I sit chafing on this island? I will make a leap and land in China and lay my laws upon her. I shall go by way of Korea and if your soldiers will join me in this invasion you will have shown your neighborly spirit. I am determined that my name shall pervade the three kingdoms.”
At a feast given in honor of the Japanese embassy, Hyŭn So, the Japanese monk who seems to have accompanied Tairano to the Korean court, whispered to Whang Yun-gil and said, “The reason why Hideyoshi wants to attack China is because the Emperor refuses to receive a Japanese envoy. If Korea leaves us but a clear road to China we will ask nothing else. No troops need be given.” To this Whang replied. “That can never be. China is our Mother Country and we cannot so desert her as to give a road to an invading army.” The monk returned to the attack but this time from another standpoint. “Long ago the Mongol hordes desired to invade Japan and you gave them a road through Korea for that purpose. Now when we seek revenge you should do the same by us.” This was considered too preposterous a thing to be even discussed and the matter suddenly dropped and the Japanese envoys started straight back to their own country. It was this envoy Tairano who while on his way up from Fusan insulted the aged governor of Tă-gu by saying, “For ten years I have followed war and thus my beard is gray; why should you grow old?” Also calling for a Korean spear he said, “Your spears are too long,” meaning that only cowards use long spears. He it was also who threw the basket of oranges to the dancing girls and, when they scrambled for them, uttered his ironical criticism. “Your nation is doomed. You have no manners.”
When this embassy went back to Japan he carried an answer to Hideyoshi’s letter, in which the King said:—
“Two letters have already passed between us and the matter has been sufficiently discussed. What talk is this of our joining you against China? From the earliest times we have followed law and right. From within and from without all lands are subject to China. If you have desired to send your envoys to China how much more should we. When we have been fortunate China has rejoiced and when we have been unfortunate she has helped us. The relations which subsist between us are those of parent and child. This you well know. Can we desert both emperor and parent and join with you? You doubtless[doubtless] will be angry at this and it is because you have not been admitted to the court of China. Why is it that you are not willing to admit the suzerainty of the emperor instead of harboring such hostile intents against him? This truly passes our comprehension.”
The emperor hearing a rumor of a Korean Japanese alliance sent and enquired about it but the king replied through an envoy telling the facts of the case exactly as they had occurred. It was well understood in Korea that an invasion was all but inevitable and active preparations were going on all the year in view of this contingency. Three able men were sent as the governors of Kyŭng-sang, Chŭl-la and Ch‘ung-chŭng Provinces respectively, namely Kim Su, Yi Kwang, and Yun Sŭng-gak. They were so energetic in repairing fortresses and accumulating arms that the people complained loudly. Someone told the king that Yi Sun-sin, a man as yet unknown, had in him the making of the greatest general in the world, and for this reason the king made him admiral of all the naval forces of the kingdom.