One of his most statesmanlike acts was to decree that every man charged with a capital offense should have three trials and that detailed accounts of each of these should be furnished for the royal inspection. Following out the policy of a gradual suppression of Buddhism, he interdicted the observance of the festival called the To-ak.
In the fourth year of his reign, his father died. It is said that at the time of his death there was a severe drought, and on his deathbed he said, “When I die I will go and ask Heaven to send rain,” and the story goes that on the very day he died the welcome rain came. To this day it is said that it is sure to rain on the tenth day of the fifth moon, and this is called the “T‘ă-jong rain.” We see that under that father’s tutelage he had continued the policy of reform, but what he had done was only the beginning. The law was made that if a prefect died the prefects along the road should furnish transport for his body up to the capital. The eunuchs were enjoined not to interfere in any way with the affairs of state. The term of office of the country prefects was lengthened, owing to the expense entailed upon the people by frequent changes. It was made a crime to delay the interment of a corpse simply because the geomancers could not find an auspicious spot for the burial, and all geomancers’ books were ordered burned. Every adult male was required to carry on his person a wooden tag bearing his name. This was for the purpose of identification to prevent the evasion of taxes and of military service. It is but right to say that this law was never strictly carried out. Korea has always suffered from the existence of armies on paper. The king edited a book on agriculture telling in what districts and in what kinds of soil different species of grains and vegetables would thrive best. He paid attention to penal laws as well. Beating was to be administered on the legs rather than on the back; no murderers were to be bound in prison who were under fifteen years or over seventy; no prisoner under ten or over eighty was to suffer under the rod; even the king’s relatives, if guilty of crime, were not to be exempt from punishment.
These important reforms occupied the attention of the king up to the year 1432, the fourteenth of his reign, but now the border wars in the north claimed his attention. At this time the wild tribes across the Ya-lu were known under the collective name of Ya-in. These savages were ravaging back and forth across the border, now successful and now defeated. King Se-jong decided that the peace of the north was worth the outlay of some life and treasure; so, early in the year 1433 an expedition under Gen. Ch’oé Yun-dok crossed the Ya-lu in six divisions, each consisting of a thousand men or more. These had agreed to make a common attack on Ta-ram-no, the stronghold of the robbers, on the nineteenth of the fourth moon. This was successfully done with the result that 176 of the enemy were left dead, and 236 captives and 270 head of cattle were taken. All of this was at the cost of just four men.
The northern portion of Ham-gyŭng province was as yet but sparsely settled, and reports came in that the Ming people were coming in great numbers and settling there; so the king felt it necessary to do something to assert his rights. A great scheme for colonization was made and people from the southern part of the province were sent north to occupy the land. But there were two powerful Yŭ-jin chiefs across the Tu-man river who were constantly crossing and harrying the people along that border line. These were Ol-yang-t’ap and Hol-ja-on. It was not until the year 1436 that they were really silenced and then only after repeated and overwhelming victories on the part of the Korean forces. During these years thousands of people from the southern provinces were brought north by the government and given land in this border country.
About this time a Japanese named Chŭng Seung was Daimyo of Tsushima. He sent fifty boats across to the Korean shore and the trade relations were revived which we may feel sure had been sadly interrupted by the long period of piratical raids. The government made these people a present of 200 bags of rice and beans. Sixty “houses” of people also came from that island and asked to be allowed to live in the three ports, Ch’ep’o, Yŭm-p’o and Pu-san-p’o. The king gave his assent and from that time until about the present day, with only temporary intermissions, the Japanese have resided in one or other of these three places, although Pu-san (Fusan) has always been the most important of them. In the year 1443 the custom of giving the Daimyo of Tsushima a bonus of 200 bags of grain a year was instituted. The number of trading boats that could come was strictly limited by the Korean government[government] to fifty, but in extreme cases where sudden need arose through piratical raids or other cause the number could be increased. This custom continued without interruption until 1510.
The most striking feat that King Se-jong accomplished and the one that had the most far-reaching and lasting effect upon the people was the invention of a pure phonetic alphabet. This alphabet scarcely has its equal in the world for simplicity and phonetic power. He was not the first one to see the vast disadvantage under which the people labored in being obliged to master the Chinese character before being able to read. We will remember that in the days of Sil-la the scholar Sŭl-chong had invented a rough way of indicating the grammatical endings in a Chinese text by inserting certain diacritical marks, but this had of course been very cumbersome and only the ajuns or “clerks” were acquainted with it. Another similar attempt had been made near the end of the Koryŭ dynasty but it too had proved a failure so far as general use by the people was concerned. King Se-jong was the first man to dare to face the difficulty and overcome it by the use not of modifications of the Chinese characters but by an entirely new and different system, a phonetic alphabet. It can scarcely be said that he had the genius of a Cadmus, for he probably knew of the existence of phonetic alphabets, but when we remember that the Chinese character is considered in a sense sacred and that it had been in use in the peninsula exclusively for more than two thousand years we can place him but little lower than the great Phoenician.
Korean histories are almost a unit in affirming that the alphabet is drawn from the Sanscrit and from the ancient seal character of China. Where then did King Se-jong have access to the Sanscrit? Some have argued that his envoys came in contact with it at the court of the Emperor at Nanking. This is possible but it is extremely unlikely that they gained such a knowledge of it in this way to make it of use in evolving their own alphabet. On the other hand it is well known that the monasteries of Korea were filled with books written in the Sanscrit or the Thibetan (which is an offshoot of the Sanscrit) character. It is believed by some that Buddhism was entirely crushed in the very first years of the dynasty, but this is a great blunder. Buddhism had begun to wane, but long after the end of King Se-jong’s reign it was still the predominant religion in Korea. Most of the officials, following the lead of royalty, had given it up, but the masses were as good Buddhists as ever. The probabilities are therefore overwhelming that when the histories refer to the Sanscrit they mean the Sanscrit contained in these Buddhist books and which had been a common feature of Korean religious life for centuries.
Comparison reveals the fact that the Korean consonants are mere simplifications of the Sanscrit consonants. On the other hand there are no similarities between the Korean and Sanscrit vowels. King Se-jong’s genius lay in his recognition of the fact that the vowel lies at the basis of articulate speech, and in this he was in advance of every other purely Asiatic alphabet. Each syllable was made up of the “mother and child” the mother being the vowel and the child being the consonant. If we examine the ancient seal character of China with a view to ascertaining the source from which the Koreans drew their symbols for the vowels we shall find at a glance that they consist in the simplest strokes of those ideographs. Every Korean vowel is found among the simpler radicals of the Chinese. What more need be added to prove that the statements of the Korean histories are correct?
In this work the king made use of the two distinguished scholars Sin Suk-ju and Sŭng Sam-mun. Thirteen times the latter was sent with others to Liao-tung to consult with a celebrated Chinese scholar Whang Ch’an, who was in banishment in that place. For the prosecution of this literary plan and the work growing out of it the king erected a separate building in the palace enclosure. There he caused to be compiled and printed the dictionary of the Korean language in the new alphabet which was called the ön-mun. This celebrated dictionary is called the Hun-min Chöng-eum.
King Se-jong died in 1450 and was succeeded by his son Hyŭn whose posthumous title is Mun-jong Kong-sun Tă-wang. His brief reign of two years is a good sample of what Confucianism will do for a man if carried to excess. Upon his father’s death he refused to be comforted and neglected the necessary precautions for preserving his health. Long nights he lay out in the cold thinking that by so doing he was showing respect for the memory of his father. Such excesses joined with the lack of a proper diet soon made it clear that his health was permanently undermined. This was a source of great anxiety to the officials and to the people, for the heir to the throne was a young boy, and the king’s brother, Prince Su-yang, was a powerful and ambitious man. The king himself entertained grave fears for his son and shortly before he died he called together the leading officials and made them solemnly promise to uphold the boy through every vicissitude. Then he turned to the wall and died.