In 1521 a Japanese So I-jön sent an envoy named Song-gong Pu-su-choa with a curious gift of three stones that resembled mirrors. The king, however, declined to accept them. The following year a Japanese named Teung Wŭn-jung went to the Chinese district of Yŭng-p’a and ravaged, and on his way home landed with his booty on the coast of Whang-hă Province in Korea. He was there captured by a Korean and his whole company were sent to China much to the delight of the Emperor.
In 1524 P‘yŭng-yang was decimated by the cholera. It is said that there were 7700 deaths. The following year the envoy to Nanking, Yi Sun, brought back with him the first compass ever seen in Korea. In 1532 a royal concubine desired to have her son become king instead of the Crown Prince. In order to accomplish the destruction of the latter she took a dead rat, wrote his name on its belly and put it under the Prince’s room. This is a common way of attempting to do an enemy to death by witchery. She was discovered in the act and she and her son were put to death. Some three years later a great mock naval battle was fought on the river and the king went out and witnessed it.
The year 1536 beheld an important event in the bringing of the official history of the dynasty up to date. In the next year an important law was made, the one which commanded that the people of the upper class should be distinguished from the lower class by a difference in the clothes. Heretofore the style had been the same for both classes, but from this time on the lower class was not allowed to wear the long flowing sleeves which until recent years have distinguished the Korean gentleman.
In 1541 Chu Se-bung a noted scholar of Kyŭng-sang Province founded a school at P‘ung-geui in honor of a noted sage An Yu who had lived there during the Koryŭ dynasty. In digging the foundations he had found a bar of copper of three hundred pounds weight. With the profits of the sale he bought books for the school library.
The last recorded act of this monarch casts into the shade all his other work and tells us more by implication about the condition of the people than any other words could do. That act was the making of the Ok-pyŭn or Korean-Chinese dictionary, arranged in the order of the Chinese radicals. This important publication shows first a great advance all along the line of literature. The demand for such a work argues a constant pressure along literary lines that finally made it an absolute necessity. In the second place it showed that the native character, whatever may be said to the contrary, had taken a firm hold upon the people and had begun to bring forth substantial fruit. A standard for transliterating Chinese characters was demanded and the demand could have sprung from nothing less than a large and constant use of the native character. The publication of this work marks an era in the literary life of the peninsula. It fixed the native character firmly upon the people and made it a factor that can neither be ignored nor evaded. The Chinese character is still a favorite in Korea but it will go out before the native phonetic character as surely as the Latin tongue went out from England before the English.
It was in 1544 that King Chung-jong closed his long and eventful career. Forty years upon the throne had seen the country lifted out of the mire into which it had been trodden by his predecessor, and brought to the highest point of morals, of literature and of general culture that it has ever reached. He was succeeded by his son Yi-ho who is known by his posthumous[posthumous] title In-jong Yŭng-jŭng Tă-wang.
The career of this monarch affords another illustration of what Confucianism in its extremer moods can do. When his father died he fasted six days and became so weak that he could hardly stand even with the aid of a staff. He continued to refuse sufficient food and mourned continually for his father. He would sit on the bare ground all night long even in winter, asking Heaven to kill him or else give him back his father. He refused medicine saying that his trouble was one that drugs could not reach. Seeing that his end was approaching he asked that his half brother Prince Kyön-wŭn be made king after him. When he died the whole land resounded with wailing. It is said that in a single day the news travelled by the sound of wailing caught up from village to village, even to the limits of the kingdom. The new king is called Myŭng-jong Kong-hön Tă-wang.
This king at his accession was a lad twelve years old and consequently the regency devolved upon his mother. This was most unfortunate for she was a wholly unscrupulous woman and ere the king was old enough to assume the duties of his high office inflicted serious injuries upon the state. She had a brother, Yun Wŭn-hyŭng, who was her equal in daring and intrigue. Yun Im the uncle of the deceased king In-jong was holding office at this time. He was a faithful and honest man. Being the brother of the late king’s mother he formed a natural as well as moral antithesis to the brother of the new king’s mother. Yun Wŭn-hyŭng had a younger brother Yun Wŭn-no who was his equal in chicanery. They could not but be enemies and so the elder banished the younger to Hă-nam in the south.
From the time when King Chung-jong died the two rival leaders Yun Wŭn-hyŭng and Yun Im, the trickster and the statesman, had been wooing fortune for the premiership. The people called Yun Im the “Big Yun” and Yun Wŭn-hyŭng the “Little Yun.” The people are not seldom the best judges of their rulers. During the short reign of King In-jong the friends of Yun Im had been in power and they had sedulously kept all evil-minded men, including Yun Wŭn-hyŭng, out of office. For this reason it was that when the latter came into power he found himself at the head of a crowd of malcontents who thirsted first for the sweets of office and secondly for the sweets of revenge. Before King In-jong died “Little Yun” had poisoned the mind of the incoming king’s mother against “Big Yun” by asserting that he and his friends were conspiring to prevent the accession of her son. The Queen Mother, as soon as she came to the regency sent word to “Little Yun” to put “Big Yun” and his associates to death. He called the Chief of Police and gave orders to that effect but that careful individual said that the men he was ordered to kill were honest men and that he would have nothing to do with it. “Little Yun” then sought audience with the boy king and urged the matter, the Queen Mother adding her voice to his arguments. The courtiers said that it was mere hearsay[hearsay] and so long as the new king had ascended the throne without any attempt at sedition the matter ought to be dropped; whereupon the Queen Mother flew into a passion and screamed, “Do you want my son to sit here and be murdered? I will have those men killed like snakes in the fire.” She then ordered the courtiers to retire, and the bowl of poison was sent to “Big Yun” and his friends. A relative of the king, whom the Regent believed they intended to make king instead of her son, fled to Sŭ-gwang Monastery and hid in a cave behind it, but he was tracked down and seized. They brought him to Seoul and killed him by searing his body all over with red hot irons. “Little Yun” was now the royal favorite, or at least the Regent’s favorite, and the men who had opposed the appointment of himself and his friends to official position were banished right and left or else killed.
We will remember that the Japanese settlers had been driven from the three southern ports during the reign of King Chung-jong. An envoy now came saying that the Japanese settlers were not to blame for that uprising but that it was done by a band of ruffians from the islands, and they asked to be allowed to resume the old friendly relations. Consent was given but on condition that twice a year tribute should be brought to Fusan from Tsushima. The Japanese who headed this embassy was called So-i Jön-sa. This occurred in the year 1548. The same year saw the famous books Kang-mok Chŭn-p‘yŭng and Sok-kang-mok, dealing with Chinese history, and the military works Pal-myŭng Kang-eui, and Mu-gyŭng Ch‘ong-yo copied in Korea and disseminated throughout the country. These are among the best known works in Korea today. The common people execrated the favorite Yun Wŭn-kyŭng and chafed under the regency of the Queen Mother. They went so far as to put out posters stating that “We are ruled by a woman, and her creatures are fattening off the revenues of the land. It means the destruction of the kingdom.” So far from learning a lesson from this, the Regent said, “It is because we did not make thorough work with the followers of ‘Big Yun’.” She therefore seized and killed above seventy more of them, all good and honest men.