Gen. Ya Gol-dă now sent a messenger to the King purporting to be from the Emperor saying “I have begun from the rising sun and I will conquer to its going down. All people rejoice but you, who do not listen. I now send Gen. Ya Gol-dă. If you receive him well, I will leave you in peace; if not, I will never forgive the offense.” Immediately putting his troops in motion the redoubtable general approached[approached] the strongest fortress in Whang-ha Province. It was surrounded by almost perpendicular precipices. The commandant laughed at[laughed at] the Mongols and defied them, and feasted in their sight. But the Mongols, directing all their energy at a single point, soon battered down a portion of the wall[wall], set fire to the buildings with fire arrows, and with scaling ladders effected an entrance. The commandant hanged himself, and 4,700 of the garrison were put to the sword. All children above ten years old were killed and all the women were ravished.
Gen. Ya Gol-dă, being at To-san in Whang-ha Province, received a plaintive letter from the king asking him to retire from the country. He told the bearer of this missive “The Emperor says the king is too old to bow. I am going to find out whether this is true. I will give him just six days[days] to get here.” The messenger argued the dangerous condition of the road and said it could not be done in that time. Then the Mongol forces turned eastward[eastward] and began to destroy the fortresses and loot the store-houses, at the same time sending to the king saying “If every prefect in the land will send in a written surrender I will retire.” This was impossible in the present state of turmoil, and it probably was a mere pleasantry on the part of the Mongols.
The town of Ch‘un-ch‘ŭn was a rather formidable place and its siege and fall offer some interesting indications of the method of Mongol warfare. First a double fence or stockade was built around the town and outside this a bank six feet high and a ditch correspondingly deep. Ere long the supply of water in the town gave out and the people killed their cattle and drank the blood. The distress was terrible. Cho Hyo-ip, a leading man, seeing that there was no escape, first burned up his family and then killed himself. The prefect fought until he was exhausted and then threw himself into a burning house and perished. A party of the strongest of the remaining soldiers made a fierce attack upon one portion of the stockade and succeeded in breaking through, but they could not force the bank and trench beyond. The enemy entered, razed the town and burned the grain, and the women were carried away. During this time the king was using the only means left for turning the tide of war. He was worshipping every spirit that he could think of, and before every large boulder. He raised all his ancestors several rounds in the ladder of apotheosis; but it all seemed to have little effect upon the progress of events. Another renegade, Yi Hyŭn, arose in the north and forced many districts into his following.
In the course of time Gen. Ya Gol-dă arrived before the town of Ch‘ung-ju in Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province, but being unable to reduce it without a regular siege, he left his main army there and came north to the vicinity of Kang-wha. He then announced, “If the King will come out and meet me here I will take my forces back across the Yalu.” With this message he sent ten Mongol generals to the king. The latter complied, and with a heavy guard came across the straits and met Ya Gol-dă at Seung-ch‘ŭn-bu. Gen. Mong Go-dă was present with Ya Gol-dă at the interview which followed. The Mongol general said “After we crossed the Yalu into Koryŭ, thousands of your people fell every day. Why should you think only of your own comfort while your people are dying thus by tens of thousands? If you had consented to come out sooner, many lives would have been saved. We now ought to make a firm treaty.” He added that Mongol prefects must be placed in each district and that a force of ten thousand in all must be quartered upon Koryŭ. To this the king replied that with such conditions it would be extremely difficult for him to return to Song-do. In spite of this the Mongol leader placed one of his men in each of the prefectures. The only question which was discussed in the royal councils was how to get rid of the Mongols. One man dared to suggest that the Crown Prince be sent to intercede with the emperor. The king flew into a rage at this but soon he was so far mollified as to consent to sending his second son, Chang, with rich gifts to the Mongol court, a course of procedure which once more drained the royal coffers to the last farthing. The king had promised the Mongols to go back to Song-do “gradually” as fast as preparations could be made, and also to destroy the palaces in Kang-wha. The Mongols kept their word and retired but as they went they plundered and ravaged. When they had gone the king caught the renegade Yi Hyŭn and killed him and his son, and banished all his adherents. This was a dangerous course, for this man had acted as guide to the Mongols and the latter were more than likely to resent his death. So it turned out, for an envoy came post from the Mongol court complaining that only the king alone had come out from Kang-wha, and that a man who had helped the Mongols had been slain for it. Whether the king answered these complaints satisfactorily we do not know, but soon the emperor developed a new plan. He sent Gen. Cha Ra-dă with 5,000 troops to become governor-general of Koryŭ. The emperor little knew what sort of a man he was letting loose upon Koryŭ. No sooner had this beast in human shape crossed the frontier than he began a systematic course of extermination. He killed right and left, every living thing. The king hastened to remonstrate but he answered “Unless all the people have their hair cut I shall continue to kill.” The records say that he carried into captivity the enormous number of 206,800 souls, both men and women, and that of the dead he left behind no estimate was ever made. When the emperor heard of this, even his fierce heart was touched, and the next year, 1255, he recalled the monster. The latter obeyed but on his way north he built fortified camps along the way, for future use.
In spite of the thanks which the Koryŭ king sent to the emperor for this deliverance, the latter allowed this same general to come back with a powerful force, and accompanied by the same former envoy, Sun, who had married the Mongol princess. The king had to go out and meet them and waste his remaining treasure in useless presents. So thoroughly was his exchequer depleted that his own table was but ill supplied.
The two countries were now nominally at peace, but as Gen. Cha seemed bent on fighting, there seemed to be nothing to do but to fight. Some of his soldiers were roughly handled at Chung-ju where a thousand were killed. Again in the east a large detachment of his troops were heavily defeated.
At last Gen. Cha came, in his sanguinary wanderings, to the vicinity of Kang-wha and displayed his banners in sight of that island, to the great uneasiness of its occupants. Sun, the renegade, was now a Mongol general and was as bitter against Koryŭ; as any of the northern savages.
The king, in despair, sent Kim Su-gan to the emperor to make a last appeal to his clemency, but the emperor replied “I cannot recall my troops, for your king will not come out from his retreat”. To this the envoy made the beautiful reply, “The frightened quarry will not come forth from its hole till the hunter has departed. The flower cannot spring from the frozen sod”. Upon hearing this the emperor immediately gave orders for the recall of the ruthless Gen. Cha.
Ch‘oe Hang the son of Ch‘oe U, had held the position of viceroy for eight years. His course had been one of utter selfishness and oppression. Many honorable men had met their death at his hands. He now died, leaving a son, Ch‘oe Chung, a young man of considerable power. When the viceroy died his retainers did not announce the fact until the household had been put in readiness for any emergency and a strong armed guard had been stationed at every approach. We can argue from this fact that the viceroyalty was anything but pleasing to the king and that in case the viceroy died the king would be glad of an opportunity to abolish the office altogether. Subsequent events proved the truth of this supposition. When everything was in readiness the death was announced and the young man Ch‘oe Chung was put forward as viceroy. The king was obliged to confirm him in the office. He had no power to refuse. Ch‘oe Jung was a son by a concubine and from this time the annals contain no mention of men’s birth on the mother’s side. This was because Ch‘oe Jung killed everybody who was heard speaking slightingly of his birth. If anyone had a spite against another he could always effectually vent it by charging him with having said that Ch’oe Chung was of common birth.
Disaster and distress followed each other thick and fast in these days. An insurrection arose in Kang-wŭn Province under the leadership of one An Yul, but was put down. A famine wasted the country and the poor were fed out of the government supplies. The Mongols though nominally at peace with Koryŭ seemed to consider the territory as their legitimate foraging ground, and now they came walking through the land, coming even to the gates of Song-do. The king sent Gen. Yi Eung and feasted the unwelcome guests in the hope of inducing them to leave the unhappy country. It was a vain hope. They turned southward and continued their thieving across the Han River even to Chik-san. The king feasted them again and asked them to desist. The leader replied that he would do so if the king would come out of Kang-wha and send the Crown Prince to the Mongol court. As this leader was that same Gen. Cha who had once been recalled by the emperor for cruelty, we may easily understand how anxious the king was to be rid of him, at any cost. He therefore consented to the conditions, and Gen. Cha retired as far as Yŭn-ju and ordered all the detachments of his army to desist from plundering. The king kept his word, in part at least, for he sent not the Crown Prince but his second son together with Ch’oe Chung.