It is apparent that the Korean court was well awake to the dangers confronting them, for we learn that in the seventh moon of this year 1626 the wall of Nam-han was completed. This is the great mountain fortress about twenty miles to the south-east of Seoul. It was formerly the site of one of the capitals of Păkje.
The year 1627 no sooner opened that the long dreaded event took place. On the fifth moon 30,000 Manchu soldiers crossed the Yalu River and a few days later stood before the city of Eui-ju. Approaching the gate a herald cried, “The second king of the great Golden Kingdom is now laying his heavy hand on Korea. If you do not come out and surrender we will raze your town to the level of the ground.” Unfortunately for the good name of Korea the prefect[prefect] was at that moment sleeping off the effects of a drunken debauch in the house of a dancing girl. He came forth and tried to get the garrison together, but it was too late, for already the traitor Han Yun had entered the town in Korean clothes and had thrown the gates open to the ruthless invaders. The prefect and his whole garrison were set up in line and shot down by the savage Manchus, after which they boiled the body of the prefect in a kettle and sacrificed to heaven with the flesh. They then sent a letter to the king couched in the following terms: “You have committed four crimes. (1) You did not send an envoy to commiserate with us on the death of the great Norach’i. (2) You have never thanked us for sparing your army when we beat you and the Chinese together. (3) You afforded asylum to our enemy, Mo Mun-nyŏng. (4) Your people have killed many of the residents of Liao-tung in cold blood. It is for these reasons that our wrath is kindled against you.” And so the invading army moved southward, forcing the Koreans to cut their hair and compelling them to act as guides. But they did not come unopposed. They were met at Yong-ch’ŭn by its prefect at the head of 2,000 men, but a small official turned traitor and opened the gates to the Manchus. On the seventeenth they arrived at Kwak-san where they were told by the Korean garrison that death was preferable to surrender; the Koreans found it so, for they were soon overpowered and massacred. Two prefects whose wives had been confiscated by the Manchus[Manchus] thought to save themselves and recover their wives by going over to the enemy but when they did so they found their wives still held as concubines while they themselves were compelled to hold the bridles of the men who brutally refused to give back the women.
Seoul was meanwhile going through one of those periodical eruptions which she was destined to suffer for many years to come. Gen. Chang Man became general-in-chief, with Chöng Ch’ung Sin as second They immediately took all the available forces and marched northward. Gen. Sin was placed at the Im-jin River to block the approach of the enemy Gen. Kim went south to collect troops in Ch’ung-ch’ŭng Province, and others went in other directions. A call was made to all the eight provinces for men. Gen. Yi Sö was put in command of Nam-han. The king recalled many men from banishment, probably with a view to bringing into harmony all the different elements and securing unanimity among all classes.
On the twenty-first the Manchus arrived before Au-ju. They cried, “Come out and surrender,” and received the answer, “We are here to fight and not to surrender.” The next day at dawn in a heavy fog they approached the wall. They had an enormous ladder mounted in some way on the backs of camels. This was placed against the wall and the enemy swarmed over, armed only with short swords and knives; but these they used with such good effect that they soon gained a foothold. The commandant of the town, Nam Yi-heung, stood by the gate and shot many of the Manchus with his good bow and when his arrows were all gone he ordered bags of powder to be brought, and by exploding these he killed many of the enemy but was himself killed in the process.
P’yŭng-yang now being practically without defense, the prefect fled southward to the capital and told the king what had happened. The Crown Prince was immediately sent into the south for safety and the king himself with the ancestral tablets and with his court hastened to the island of Kang-wha, leaving the city of Seoul in a condition better imagined than described.
One of Gen. Kang’s grievances against Korea was that he thought the king had killed his son, but when he learned that this was not only not true but that the king had sent that son as envoy, though unsuccessfully, to the Manchus, there was a strong revulsion of feeling in his mind and he expressed his sorrow at the invasion but said that it was now too late to stop it. He however advised the king to send gifts to the Manchu chief and sue for peace.
When the Manchus arrived at Whang-ju they sent a letter forward to the king on Kang-wha saying, “There are three conditions on which we will conclude a peace with you. (1) You must hand over to us the person of Mo Mun-nyŭng. (2) You must give us 10,000 soldiers to help invade China. (3) You must give up the two northern provinces of P’yŭng-an and Ham-gyŭng.” On the ninth of the moon the envoy bearing this letter, accompanied by the Korean renegade Gen. Kang, took boat from Song-do for Kang-wha. The next day the king gave them audience and the envoy bowed before him, but the king did not bow in return. This made the envoy very angry, but the king said through an interpreter, “Tell him not to be angry, for I did not know the custom.”
The king sent one Kang-In to Whang-ju ostensibly to sue for peace but in reality to find out what the Manchus were doing there. Not long after this the Manchu envoy returned to the same place but Gen. Kang remained on Kang-wha. When the enemy had advanced as far as P’yŭng-san, only a hundred li from Kang-wha, the whole court urged the king to make peace on any terms, as all the soldiers had run away and the enemy were so near. When Gen. Kim, who had been left to guard Seoul, learned of the proximity of the Manchus, he fired all the government treasure and provisions and made good his escape. This was the signal for a general exodus of the people who swarmed out of the city and scattered in all directions seeking safety among the mountains or in remote provinces.
Yun Hŭn had been imprisoned for having fled from P’yŭng-yang without so much as attempting its defense, and many of the officials begged the king to pardon him; but they overdid it, and so many petitions came in that the king thought he was dangerously popular and ordered his execution. When the messenger of death reached the doomed man he found him playing a game of chess. The man with whom he was playing burst out crying, but he said, “What are you crying about? I am the man who am going to die, not you. Let us finish the game.” So they finished the game, after which Yun Hŭn quietly submitted to his fate. This is a sample of sang froid which never fails to elicit the applause of the Korean.
On the twentieth the Manchu general Yu Hă left P’yŭng-san and went to Kang-wha to have an audience with the king. He advised the king to discard the Chinese calendar and use the Manchu one instead and he also said[said] the king must send his son to the north as hostage. The king answered that his son was too young, but that he would send his younger brother. Accordingly he sent Wŭn Ch’ang-yŭng, not his brother but a distant relative. At the same time he sent 30,000 pieces of cotton, 300 pieces of white linen, 100 tiger skins and 100 leopard skins. Gen. Yu Hă was pleased at this and said that he wished to have Korea at peace but that it would first be absolutely necessary for the king to take a solemn oath of fealty to the Manchus. And he said it must be done immediately, before the Manchus should enter Seoul.