The king in his flight carried terror with him, for the people thought the enemy would be in hot pursuit; so they scattered in every direction. This displeased the king so much that when he arrived at the capital of Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province he imprisoned the governor. From that point he hurried southward as far as Pak-ju, now An-dong, in Kyŭng-sang Province.
Day by day the horrible orgies of the savages in Song-do increased in barbarity. It is said that they cooked and ate little children and that they cut off the breasts of women and fed on them.
In the midst of these vicissitudes the king appointed Chöng Se-un as general-in-chief of all the Koryŭ forces. He was a wise and loyal man and was ever thinking of ways and means of checkmating the invaders. He advised the king to send out a general letter encouraging the people and calling all the soldiers to rally to the defense of the country. The officials were also encouraged and made to feel that their utmost endeavors must be put forth in the good cause. The generals were all exhorted to do their best and were threatened with death in case they proved unfaithful. So the campaign was opened. The savages had looted all the towns about Song-do and had taken Wŭn-ju and killed its prefect. They also went north to An-byŭn in Ham-gyŭng Province where the people pretended to surrender, but, having gotten their conquerors intoxicated, they fell upon and killed them. The same tactics were tried in Kang-wha with equal success.
Gen. Chöng Se-un now appeared before Song-do with 200,000 troops. These figures must surely be an exaggeration for we can hardly suppose Koryŭ able at that time to put that number of men in the field. Snow and rain added to the difficulties of the situation. A spy returned and said that the troops of the enemy were massed inside the South Gate and that if a picked body of men could gain entrance somewhere and attack them from behind they could be easily overcome. At the dead of night a picked body of horsemen gained admittance somewhere in the rear of the city and fell with fury upon the garrison. At the same time the main body advanced to attack the South Gate. The savages, not knowing the size of the attacking force and being surprised from behind were thrown into confusion and attempted to run away. Gen. Yi T‘ă-jo distinguished himself by pursuing and capturing Kwan Sŭn-săng the leader of the hostile force. In this stampede the routed savages trod on and killed each other by hundreds. In the center of Song-do the dead were piled in heaps. It is said, though it must be an exaggeration, that 100,000 men perished miserably on that night. As a result of this battle several Mongol seals which the savages had taken in previous fights with the imperial armies, were recovered.
Some of the generals advised that a remnant of the enemy be spared; so the Sung-in and T‘an-hyŭng gates were thrown open and Pa Tu-ban and his remaining followers hastened out and made for the Yalu River.
It is related that during the fight on that eventful night a body of Koryŭ troops collided with a company of the enemy and a melée ensued near the East Gate, where the soldiers trod on each other. Gen. Yi T‘ă-jo was there and was stabbed in the back with a spear. Finding himself in extremely narrow quarters he drew his sword and, hewing a path through the enemy, leaped the wall, horse and all, for he was in the saddle. The spectators thought he was a spirit. A volume might be filled with the stories of the wonderful achievements of this man, but most of them are figments of the imagination, invented at a later period to add lustre to the name of the founder of the dynasty.
The capable leader Gen. Chöng Se-un, met the fate which has been the curse of Korean history from the beginning to the present time. Kim Yong-an, a jealous official, forged a royal order for his execution and sent it to Gen. An U who promptly carried it out. When the king learned of this he thought it was an incipient revolution but soon the other generals joined in a letter to His Majesty saying that it had been done because the murdered man was a traitor. The king accepted this as true and rewarded the murderers.
The fortress of Sang-sŭng near the Tu-man River had long been under Mongol control and was governed by a Koryŭ renegade Cho Whi and afterwards by his descendants as a hereditary fief. Now when Koryŭ once more assumed control, Cho So-săng, the then chief of this anomalous settlement, fled to Mukden where he joined the banners of a wild tribe under the lead of Nap-t‘ap-chul, and proposed to them to make a raid into Koryŭ. This they did, crossing the Yalu and ravaging as far as Puk-ch‘ung and Hong-wŭn. This promised to become a serious matter, but the difficulty of the situation for Koryŭ was increased tenfold by a fresh invasion of the south by Japanese. The king was on his way back to Song-do when news of these two disasters reached him. Things looked desperate, but to add to the hopelessness of the situation the same Kim Yong-an who had murdered Gen. Chöng now compelled the king to kill Gen. An U on the ground that it was he who had killed Gen Chöng. The monster then proceeded to killed his own brother, and induced the king to put to death generals Yi Pang-sil and Kim Teuk-pă, two of the best surviving generals. It is a wonder that Gen. Yi T‘ă-jo was spared. Song-do had been so roughly handled that the king feared the historical records would be lost or destroyed; so he now sent men to look them up and put them in a place of safety.
The wild Nap-t‘ap-chul having been so successful in their first venture, now once more entered Koryŭ territory and as the general sent against them was not able to check their advance Gen. Yi T‘ă-jo was appointed to this place. The enemy was encamped in Hong-wŭn in Ham-gyŭng Province. Gen. Yi attacked them there and routed them with a loss of 1,000 men. Near Ham-hung they made a stand and defended themselves desperately, but he soon had them in full flight once more. Taking 600 picked cavalrymen he pursued them to Ch‘a-ryăng Pass and secured another victory. Only one of the enemy fought well. This man fought aways[aways] in front of Gen. Yi. The latter feigned flight to draw him on and then suddenly turning attacked his pursuer and laid him low with an arrow from his unerring bow. The women who followed the camp of the invading army came out and taunted the men saying “You have overcome everyone but these Koryŭ people; them you cannot conquer. You had better retreat and make for home.” The enemy called a truce and told Gen. Yi that they had come not to attack Koryŭ but the “Red Heads.” This was a mere ruse to save time. Gen. Yi knew this and drawing an arrow to the head shot one of the leaders of the enemy through the body. At last he gave orders to his archers to shoot the horses from under the enemy. This decided the battle and the Nap-t‘al-chul sued for peace. In recognition of these services the king appointed him general of all the forces in the north. The general then proceeded to annihilate all the colonies and settlements of the obnoxious Nap-t‘ap-chul throughout the entire north, and having placed them where they belonged, showed them that their only hope was in making a lasting treaty with Koryŭ. This they were quite willing to do.
As the king came slowly north toward the capital the officials urged that Song-do was too small for the capital and too near the sea to be well protected from the Japanese corsairs. They therefore urged him to remain for a time at Ch‘ŭng-ju, and he gave consent.