In 1301 an envoy was sent to Peking to make the audacious proposal that the crown prince’s wife should be made the wife of a Korean official named Chong. This was because the Koryŭ officials believed she had been criminally intimate with him and they were anxious to get the prince back on the throne. An official originated the scheme of having this Chong take the prince’s wife and ascend the throne himself, but the emperor ordered him thrown into prison. When this had been done the aged king sent an envoy pleading that the prince be sent back to him. As this was not granted the king himself went to Peking where he lodged at first at his son’s house, but after a quarrel with him moved to the house of the discarded princess, his daughter-in-law[daughter-in-law]. The emperor tried to mediate between father and son but without effect. Then he tried to send the old man back to Koryŭ; but rather than go back the aged king took medicine to make himself ill and so incapable of travel. He was fearful that he would be assassinated on the way by his son’s orders.
The emperor died in 1308 and was succeeded by Guluk Khan. This young man was the friend of the prince, and as a consequence the old king was thrown into prison, his nearest friends killed or banished and the young man was raised to a high position under the Chinese government and his friends, to the number of a hundred and eighty, were made officials. But it was the old man that the emperor finally sent back to Koryŭ to rule at the same time he making the prince king of Mukden. Though so far away from the capital of Koryŭ the prince was the one who really ruled Koryŭ, so the records say. The father soon died and the prince immediately proceeded to Song-do and assumed the throne in this same year 1308. His posthumous title was Ch‘ung-sŭn.
He had been kept out of his own so long that he now proceeded to make up for lost time, and vied with his father’s record in revelry and debauchery. It is said that a courtier took an axe and went to the palace, where he asked the king to decapitate him as the sight of these excesses made him hate life. The king was ashamed, though we are not told that he mended his ways.
In his second year he revived the government salt monopoly and put the money into his private purse. Heretofore it had been divided between certain monasteries and officials. The Mongol empress made him furnish large quantities of timber from Păk-tu Mountain, floating it down the Yalu. It was used in the building of monasteries. The whole expense was borne by the king. The latter was now spending most of his time in Peking. The Koryŭ officials earnestly desired him to come back to Song-do, but he refused. There was a constant flow of eunuchs and courtesans from Koryŭ to Peking and it would be difficult to imagine a more desperate condition of affairs in the king-deserted country. How it was being governed we do not know. It was probably governing itself. The rural districts, which had been laid waste by the Mongol armies and which had been deserted by their occupants, were probably being gradually occupied again and the less they heard of Song-do the better they liked it.
In the third year of his reign the king killed his son because some busybodies told him that the young man was conspiring to drive him from the throne. This shows the depths to which the court had sunk, when kings were not sure but that their own sons were their worst enemies. Orders kept coming from Peking to make certain eunuchs Princes. These orders could not be disregarded. These eunuchs had doubtless been in Peking and were known to be devoted to Mongol interests. All this time the king was in Peking where his presence began to be something of a bore. The mother of the Emperor urged him to go back to Koryŭ. He promised to go in the following autumn, but when the time came he changed his mind and abdicated in favor of his second son.
The new king, named To, posthumous title Ch‘ung-suk, came to the throne in 1314. One of his first acts was to take a thorough census of the people. Unfortunately the result is not recorded. The revenue laws were also changed and a new measurement of the fields was ordered with a view to a more effective collection of the revenue. The king likewise had ambitions along religious lines, for he sent 150 pounds of silver to Nanking to purchase books; and 10,800 were secured. The emperor also gave 4,070 volumes. These were doubtless Buddhist books and it is more than likely that many of the books in the Sanscrit or Thibetan character, still found in the monasteries in Korea, are copies of the works introduced into Koryŭ during these times.
The king who had abdicated was sent back with his son, though he had abdicated solely for the purpose of being able to live permanently in Peking. He spent his time in attending Buddhist festivals, but when he saw into what ruins the palaces in Song-do had fallen he said, “If my father had feasted less I should have had better palaces.” He soon returned to[to] China where he devoted himself to letters. The emperor offered to make him his Prime Minister but he declined the honor. He mourned over the lack of letters in Koryŭ and came to realise that it was Buddhism that[that] had proved the curse of the dynasty. He accepted the post of King of Mukden and later became Prime Minister to the emperor.
The young king went to Peking in 1317 to marry a Mongol Princess, and like his father was very loath to come back. We infer that the position of king in Song-do was so hedged about by priestcraft that it was[it was] much pleasanter for the king to reside at the Chinese court. Koryŭ must have been exceedingly poor after the desperate struggles she had been through and life in Peking with his hand in the imperial exchequer must have had its attractions.
At the end of a year however the king and his bride came back to Song-do. The records say that in order to induce him to come they had to bribe the soothsayers to tell him that if he did not come he would be involved in war. As soon as he arrived he began to search for unmarried women to send to Peking. He had turned pander to the Mongol court. The men of the upper classes hid their daughters and denied their existence for fear they would be seized and sent to Peking. He himself put in practice the principles he had imbibed at the Mongol court, and spent his days in hunting and his nights in high revelry.
The king’s father who had been made king of Mukden, made a trip into southern China, or at least as far south as Chŭl-gang and Po-ta San where he engaged in Buddhist worship. Two years later he asked permission to repeat the visit and the emperor consented. But he was suddenly called back to Peking and ordered to go straight to Koryŭ. He refused and the emperor compelled him to cut his hair and to become a monk. He was banished to T‘o-bŭn or San-sa-gyŭl in the extreme north. This was because one of the Peking eunuchs, who had formerly been a Koryŭ man and hated the king, told the emperor that the ex-king had on foot a scheme to raise a revolt in China.