These were but the beginning of his reforms. He punished at one time over a hundred prefects who had been oppressing the people. The palace inclosure was sown with grain when there was prospect of scarcity. In this reign we find the first reference to the Kuk-cho Po-gam or the official annals of the dynasty. The great bell which hangs in the center of the city of Seoul today was cast in his reign and hung at first outside the South Gate. A medical government bureau was founded and medical works were published. The king was actively interested in military matters and called together all the soldiers who could wield a bow of 120 pounds weight. This was with a view to the invasion of the territory of the troublesome wild tribes of the north. A census of the people was taken for the purpose of making army estimates, and during the whole reign the soldiers were practiced in sham fights both in the palace enclosure and outside the city walls. His attitude toward Buddhism was one of distinct hostility. One of his earliest edicts was that no monk should attend or pray at a funeral. He invented the use of the split bamboo as a sign between himself and the general upon the field. He kept half and the general kept the other half and if it was necessary to send a messenger he would take the piece of wood, which, if it fitted the piece in the hands of the receiver of the message, showed that the messenger was properly accredited. He seems to have been much concerned for the welfare of the people for we find that in the fourth year of his reign he caused the publication of a book on weaving and had it extensively distributed among the people, together with another on military matters and another still on women’s manners.
King Se-jo was the first of the descendants of the great T‘ă-jo[T‘ă-jo] to observe carefully the precept laid down by the founder of the dynasty—namely, to take good care of the army; this is evinced by the fact that at one time[time] he distributed large quantities of medicine among the soldiers on the northern[northern] border and made generous gifts of land to the troops, thus fostering the military spirit among the people. As a result we see them successful on every side. The tribe of Ol-yang-hap was destroyed, the tribes of I-man-ju, Ol-jok-heup and Yan-ba-a-gan came and swore allegiance.
In his fifth year[year] he codified the laws and published them. He also extended his medical work and published a book on veterinary surgery, and he published works on astronomy, geology, music, writing, the signs of the times, agriculture, live-stock, foreign relations and arithmetic. In other words this versatile man was actively interested in military, political, social, scientific and artistic matters and caused books to be written about these subjects for the enlightenment of the people.
It is said that in 1465 he caused the erection of a monastery in Seoul but he made the Buddha a standing one rather than a sitting one. Evidently he had little faith in the inanity of the sleepy sitting Buddha, who with folded hands let the years slip by unheeded. He wanted something more lifelike. So he set the Buddha on his legs. This image was carried through the streets at periodic intervals accompanied by a crowd of musicians and monks. A Japanese envoy was horrified at what he called sacrilege and foretold that it could not endure. He was right, not because the Buddha had gotten on its feet but because the people of Korea had begun to cast off the shackles of Buddhism and, following in the wake of the court, were learning to take advantage of their emancipation. This making of a standing Buddha and the occasional festivals seem to have been more by way of sport than through any serious intentions on the king and this in itself accounts for the speedy downfall of the custom. Its novelty, which was all it had to recommend it, soon wore off.
In 1467 he ordered the two monks Sin Mi and Chuk Hŭn to cut wooden blocks for a book to be called the Tă-jang-gyŭng. The love of exaggeration in the Korean temperament finds play in the statement that this book contained 8,888,900 pages. The historian evidently did not have his abacus at hand, for he continues by saying that each of the fifty volumes contained 7,078 pages, while the above figure would require 167,778 pages to the volume.
The last year of King Se-jo’s reign, 1468, witnessed a serious disturbance in Ham-gyŭng Province. A man named Yi Si-ă gathered about him a strong body of soldiers and sent word to Seoul that it was simply with a view to defending his district from the incursions of the northern barbarians. The provincial general went in person to investigate, but he was murdered by the followers of Yi Si-ă who were aided by a courtezan who occupied the general’s room with him and who at dead of night opened the window and gave ingress to the revolutionists. A messenger, Sŭl Kyŭng-sin was then sent to Seoul to say that the general had been killed because he had been conspiring against the king. At the same time the king was asked to make Yi Si-ă the general of the northeast. This man told the king that the three Prime Ministers were implicated in the plot against him. The king was suspicious but did not dare to let matters progress without investigation. He put the Prime Ministers in prison and at the same time raised a large army to go and oppose the too ambitious Yi. Generals Yi Chun, Cho Sŭk-mun and Hŭ Chŭng were put in charge. The last of these three was one of the great soldiers of Korea. Tradition says that he was of gigantic stature, that he ate a bag of rice a day and drank wine by the bucketful. A doughty man indeed, at least by the trencher. But his feats on the battlefield were commensurate with his gastronomic prowess for we are told that the sight of his face struck fear into the stoutest enemy.
This army found the enemy before Ham-heung whose governor they had killed. The royal forces soon had the enemy on the run and at last brought them to bay on Man-nyang Mountain which projects into the sea and is impregnable from the land side. The royal forces took boat and stormed it from the sea while part of the force engaged the enemy from the landward side. The head of Yi Si-ă was taken and forwarded to Seoul. In this fight it is said that Gen. Hŭ Chŭng found his sword too small, so throwing it aside he tore up by the roots a pine tree twelve inches in girth (?) and swept all before him with this titanic weapon. Of course the king then set free the three Prime Ministers and confessed his mistake.
The emperor called upon Korea to help in the castigation of the Keum-ju tribe beyond the Ya-lu, so the king sent a large force and accomplished it without the help of Chinese arms. Having destroyed the tribe the Korean general cut a broad space on the side of a great pine and there inscribed the fact of the victory. The emperor was highly pleased and sent handsome presents to the generals engaged.
This same year the king resigned in favor of his son and retired to a separate palace to prosecute a line of study in which he was greatly interested, namely the art of estimating distances by the eye, a subject of importance to all military engineers and one in which Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have been an adept. But before the end of the year he died.
His successor, Prince Hă-yang, is known by his posthumous title Ye-jong Yang-do Tă-wang. He was so young at the time that his mother acted as regent. During the single year 1469 that this king reigned the Great Bell was brought into the city and hung at the central spot called Chong-no or “Bell Street.” He also made the law that the palace gates should never be opened at night unless the one so ordering showed the royal signet or token, called the su-gŭl. This was a round piece of ivory half an inch thick and three inches in diameter with the word sun-jun on one side and the king’s private mark on the other. To it are appended straps of deer skin and it is used when the king wishes to accredit a man to a certain work. The mere showing of this is accepted as the royal command. It is commonly called also the pyo-sin “The Sign to be Believed.”