Upon hearing the welcome news the Prince Kwang-hă hastened to assume the position he had coveted so long. His first act was to send the Prime Minister Yu Yöng-gyŭng into banishment. Then he sent an embassy to China to announce his accession to the throne. The Emperor replied, “Why is not the elder son, Prince Im-hă, made king?” and sent a commission to inquire into the matter. Prince Im was brought from Kyo-dong Island to which place he had been banished. One of the creatures of the newly crowned king advised that the head only of Prince Im be brought, but the aged Yi Hang-bok opposed it so strongly that the king dare not follow his inclination; but when Prince Im was brought he was “made up” for the occasion. He was unkempt and filthy, his clothes were in rags and the very sight of him decided the unsuspicious commissioner and he ordered the wretched man to be sent back to his place of banishment at once. For fear of further complications and to satisfy his vengeful nature, the king sent a secret messenger to the prefect of Kyo-dong and had Prince Im poisoned in prison. He next proceeded to kill the banished Prime Minister, and then had his body brought to the center of the capital and cut in half lengthwise.
The Japanese had for several years been pressing for the resumption of the old-time relations, half diplomatic and half commercial, which had been carried on through the southern port of Fusan. Now in the first year of the reign of Kwang-hă, consent was gained and Yi Chi-wan for Korea and Gensho and Yoshinao for Japan met and worked out a plan for a treaty. The Japanese insisted that all three of the ports which had formerly been open should again be opened, but this was peremptorily refused and only Fusan was opened. The number of boats that could come annually was reduced to twenty. Great diplomatic agents from the Shogun were allowed to stay in Korea one hundred and ten days. The agents from any daimyo of Japan could stay eighty-five days and special agents could stay fifty-five days. The strictness with which the Koreans bound down the Japanese as to number[number] of ships and men and length of stay, and the refusal to open three ports, show that Korea was doing this all more as a favor than by demand, and history shows that at any time she felt at liberty to withdraw support from them. The amount of rice and other food that Korea granted was hardly more than enough to support the embassy when it came.
It will be remembered that the king was the son of a concubine and not of the queen. He now went to work to depose the queen and set up his mother, though now dead, as real queen. He gave his mother the posthumous title of Kong-söng Wang-ho and sent the deposed queen into semi-banishment to the Myŭng-ye Palace in Chong-dong, where the king now resides. This act was looked upon as utterly unfilial and godless by the officials, and they almost unanimously censured his harsh treatment of this woman.
The next three years were spent in killing off all who had been specially favored under the last king, excepting the venerable Yi Hang-bok, who stood so high in the esteem of the people that even the wicked king did not dare to lay hands upon him. One method of getting rid of objectionable people was to promise release to some criminal if he would swear that he had heard the men conspiring against the king; but the king’s thirst for blood could not be quenched so long as the young prince was living. The latter was now six or seven years old. No one dared to make a move against him openly, but the officials knew that if they wanted to become favorites with the king it could be done only by suggesting some plan whereby the boy could be killed without bringing on a general insurrection. It was accomplished as follows. Pak Eung-sŭ, a well-known resident of Yŭ-ju became a highwayman. He was captured and taken to Seoul for trial. After he had been condemned, Yi I-ch‘ŭm the court favorite sent to him in prison and said, “You are to die to-morrow, but if you will declare that you and several other men have conspired to depose the king and place the young prince on the throne you will not only be released but rewarded as well.” When therefore the king received the written confession of the wretch he feigned surprise but instantly caught and executed the principals named. His satellites also urged that he must kill the young prince and his mother, for they must surely be privy to the plot. And her father too must be beheaded. The king did not dare to go to these lengths all at once, but he began by beheading the queen’s father, and banishing the boy to Kang-wha. When the men came to take him he hid beneath his mother’s skirt but the brutal captors pushed her over and dragged the lad away. These acts enraged the people almost beyond endurance and memorials poured in upon the king from people who preferred death itself to permitting such acts to go unchallenged. The king however answered them one and all by killing the writers or stripping them of rank and banishing them.
As the boy had been separated from his mother and banished to Kang-wha, he could be dealt with at pleasure. His death would remain unknown for a time, and the matter would pass by unnoticed. So in the following year, at the instigation of Yi I-ch’ŭm, the magistrate of Kang wha put the boy in a small room, built a roaring fire under it and suffocated him, an extreme of barbarity which the world can hardly parallel. The news soon spread among the officials. Scores of memorials poured in upon the king who answered them as before by banishment and death.
Chapter IV.
The king insulted.... the “Mulberry Palace”.... plot against the Queen Dowager.... her indictment.... she is degraded.... inception of the Manchu power.... China summons Korea to her aid.... troops despatched.... first battle with the Manchus.... Korean treachery.... Koreans make friends with the Manchus.... the Manchu court.... a Manchu letter to the king.... its answer.... Manchu rejoinder.... message to Nanking.... Chinese refugees.... a Korean renegade.... the Queen intercedes for China.... Chinese victory.... Manchu cruelty.... offices sold.... plot against the king.... king dethroned.... Queen Dowager reinstated.... reforms.... a thorough cleaning out.
With the opening of the year 1615 the king further revealed his hatred of the deposed and degraded queen by publishing broadcast the statement that she had gone to the grave of his mother and there, by practicing sorcery against him, had tried to bring evil upon him. This also brought out a loud protest from all honest men, and banishment followed. Even the children on the street spoke insultingly of the tyrant saying that he was afraid of the imps at the Myŭng-ye Palace, but had let his mother stay there with them though he himself would not go near the place. The king feared everyone that was honest and upright even though they had nothing to say. His own cousin, Prince Neung-ch’ang, whose younger brother afterward became king, was a perfectly peaceable and harmless man, but the king feared him and could not rest satisfied until he had gotten his satellites to accuse him of sedition and had suffocated him in a heated chamber on Kyo-dong Island. About this time a monk, named Seung-ji; gained the confidence of the superstitious king and induced him to build the In-gyŭng Palace which is commonly known among foreigners as the “Mulberry Palace.” To do this, thousands of the houses of the common people were razed and heavy taxes were levied throughout the country; and yet there was not enough money. So the king began to sell the public offices. Some were paid for in gold, others in silver, others in iron, and still others in wood, stone or salt. The people derisively called it the O-hăng, referring to the “Five Rules of Conduct” of the Confucian Code. The boys also made up a popular song which ran as follows, “Did you give gold, or silver, or wood for yours?” and they put the officials to shame by shouting it at them as they passed along the street.
Yi I-ch’ŭm, the favorite, could not rest until he had carried out his master’s wish and had invented some way to destroy the degraded Queen. Finding no other way to accomplish this, he at last descended to the following trick. He instructed a man named Hŭ Kyun to write a letter to the imprisoned queen purporting to be from some party in the country, proposing a scheme for deposing the king. This letter was thrown over the wall of the queen’s enclosure and there found by the servants of the crafty plotter. The king was ready to believe anything against her and this letter fanned his hatred into flame. Yi I-ch’ŭm followed it up by joining with scores of others in memorials urging the king to put to death the hated Queen Dowager. The Prime Minister, Keui Cha-hön, stood in the way, however, and it became necessary to banish him to the far north. In the eleventh moon the king finally decided to drive the woman from Seoul, and made all the officials give their opinion about it in writing. Nine hundred and thirty officials and a hundred and seventy of the king’s relatives advised to do so, but the aged Yi Hang-bok with eight others utterly refused their sanction of the iniquitous plan; and so these nine men, the last of those upright men who had stood about the late king, were sent into banishment.
The year thus closed in gloom and the new one opened with a memorial from the Prime Minister Ha Hyo-san enumerating ten charges against the Queen Dowager: (1) that she had had the officials do obeisance to the young prince although the successor to the throne had already been appointed; (2) when the king was dying she asked him to set aside Prince Kwang-hă in favor of the young prince; (3) she prevented, as long as possible, the king from handing over the scepter to Prince Kwang-hă; (4) she wrote the letters purporting to be from the dying king asking that the young prince be carefully nurtured; (5) she instigated her father to conspire against the king; (6) she sacrificed in the palace and prayed for the death of Prince Kwang-hă; (7) she prayed for the same at the grave of his mother; (8) she corresponded with outside parties with a view to raising an insurrection; (9) she sent to the Emperor asking to have Prince Kwang-ă set aside, (10) she sent to Japan asking that an army be sent to overthrow the government.