The following year, 1283, changed the emperor’s purpose. He had time to hear the whole story of the sufferings of his army in the last invasion; the impossibility of squeezing anything more out of Koryŭ and the delicate condition of home affairs united in causing him to give up the project of conquering Japan, and he countermanded the order for the building of boats and the storing of grain.
The record of the next few years is hardly worth writing. The royal family went to Peking with 1,200 men as escort and remained there six months. Returning, they spent their time in trampling down good rice-fields in the pleasures of the chase and in seeking ways and means of making government monopolies of various important commodities, especially salt. On a single hunting expedition 1,500 soldiers accompanied the royal party afield. The queen developed a strange propensity for catching young women and sending them to her people in Peking. A law was promulgated that before a young man married he must notify the government. This was done for the purpose of finding out where marriageable girls lived so that they could be the more easily seized and sent to China. One official cut off his daughter’s hair when he found that she was to be sent to China. The king banished him for this and beat the girl severely. It is said that these girls upon arriving in China became wives, not concubines.
In 1289 a famine in China resulted in a demand for 100,000 bags of rice from Koryŭ. The king was at his wits end but by great exertion and self-sacrifice on the part of the officials 60,000 bags were collected. They were sent by boat, but 6000 were destroyed in a storm and 300 men were lost.
But now in 1290 a new element of danger appeared in the shape of the wild tribe of T‘ap-dan across the northern border who began to ravage the outlying Koryŭ towns. When they had penetrated the country as far as Kil-ju the king sent an army against them, but more than 20,000 came swarming down from the north and seized two districts in Ham-gyŭng Province. They ate the flesh of men and dried the flesh of women for future consumption. The Koryŭ troops held them in check at first. The emperor sent 13,000 troops to reinforce the Koryŭ army. In spite of this, however, the king felt obliged to take refuge in Kang-wha for fear of surprise. The following year the T‘ap-dan savages came as far south as Kyŭng-geui Province and all the officials and many of the people fled before them. It was a literary man of Wŭn-ju who was destined to be the first to bring them to a halt. Wŭn Ch‘ung-gap gathered about him all the strong men of the neighborhood and drove back the van of the invading force. Then the great body of the savage horde came and surrounded the town. Wŭn killed the messengers they sent demanding surrender, and sent back the heads as answer. A desperate attack was made but the little garrison held firm till by a lucky chance a rumor of some kind caused a panic among the attacking forces and in the stampede that followed every man’s sword was at his neighbor’s throat. While this was going on Wŭn and his fellows made a sudden sally and captured the savage chief To Cha-do, and sixty of his attendants were cut down. The rabble then took to their heels and from that day never dared to attack any considerable town. The spell of terror which had held the people of Koryŭ was now broken and they found no more difficulty in keeping these savages at arm’s length. Ten thousand Mongol troops arrived and began a campaign against these freebooters and in Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province had a splendid victory over them, leaving, it is said, a line of thirty li of dead as they pursued the flying enemy. When the Mongol troops went back home, their general told the emperor that the war had destroyed the crops of Koryŭ and that 100,000 bags of rice must be sent. The emperor consented, but when the rice arrived the officials and men of influence divided the rice among themselves, while the people went without.
All this time the crown prince was suffering a lively feeling of disgust at the sporting propensities of his father, and now that he was about to return from Peking he wrote his father a very sarcastic letter saying, “As all the public money has been used up in hunting tournaments you must not lay an extra expense upon the treasury by coming out to meet me.” The king was ashamed and angry but went as far as P‘yŭng-ju to meet his son and took advantage of the occasion to hunt along the way.
That Kublai Khan harbored no ill-will against the Japanese on account of his failure to conquer them is shown by his sending back to their country several Japanese whom the Koreans had caught and carried to Peking. Two Koryŭ men carried them back to Japan; but the Japanese did not return the courtesy, for the two Koryŭ messengers were never seen again.
The king and queen were both in China when the emperor Kublai died and they took part in the funeral rites, although the Mongol law forbade any outsider to participate in them. Timur Khan succeeded Kublai. He apparently had no intention of invading Japan, for of 100,000 bags of rice which had been stored in Koryŭ for that purpose, he sent 50,000 to the north to relieve a famine-stricken district. He also gave back to Koryŭ the island of Quelpart which had been in Mongol hands since the time when the Mongol and Koryŭ soldiers had put down the rebellion. From this time dates the use of the name Ché-ju, which means “District across the water,” and by which the island has ever since been known.
The king had now completed his cycle of sixty-one years and the soothsayers were appealed to to read the future. They said evils were in store and he was advised to give amnesty to all but capital criminals, repair the tombs of celebrated men, give rice to the poor and remit three years’ revenue. But gray hairs had not brought wisdom to the king. His time was spent in frivolity and sensuality. The crown prince looked with unfriendly eye on these unseemly revels and when, in the following year, 1297, his mother, the Mongol princess, died, he claimed that her death was due to one of the favorite concubines, and as a consequence the suspected woman was killed. The prince had married a Mongol princess in China and now at her summons he went back to China. The old man, bereft of both wife and concubine, wrote the emperor that he wished to surrender the reins of power into the hands of his son. The emperor consented and in the following year the prince was invested with the royal insignia, while his father was honored with the title “High King.” The new queen was a Mongol and as she came to the Koryŭ capital a new palace was constructed for her. But her royal husband saw fit to follow the example of his forebears[forebears] and take to himself a concubine. The queen, by her frequent exhibitions of jealousy, lost what little love her lord had ever felt for her. She was not long in letting the state of affairs be known at Peking and soon an imperial mandate arrived consigning the concubine and her father to prison. Then another came remanding both to China. Then a high monk came to mediate between the king and queen. This proved ineffectual and the emperor commanded both king and queen to appear before him in Peking. It was done and the royal seals were put back into the hands of the aged king. The prince and his unhappy queen were kept in China ten years.
The close of the century beheld an old dotard on the throne of Koryŭ, so incapable of performing the duties of his high office that the emperor was obliged to send a man to act as viceroy while the old man spent his time trifling with mountebanks and courtesans. The records state that he had lost all semblance to a king.
The viceroy whom the emperor had sent was named Whal-yi Gil-sa, and one of his first proposals was to do away with slavery; but objection was raised that then a slave might become an official and use his influence to wreak vengeance upon his former master. So a law was made that only the eighth generation of a manumitted slave could hold office.