The Manchu tablet.... the inscription.... the Manchu claim to suzerainty valid.... Japanese proposition.... a contumacious Korean.... other victims.... spirits of the dead.... Chinese Emperor commiserates with the king.... introduction of tobacco.... Korean contingent for the Manchu army.... Koreans secretly aid the Chinese.... Koreans sent home.... reconstruction.... a Manchu court of inquiry.... Japanese ask for the enlargement of settlement at Fusan.... Prince Kwang-hă dies.... a plotter punished.... Japanese ancestral temple.... a Korean betrays to the Manchus the king’s dealings with China.... the Manchus take revenge.... The Ming dynasty falls.... a Korean adventurer.... royal hostages return.... quarrel over the succession.... a curious custom.... palace intrigue.... the new king.... Korea accused of disloyalty.... the death fetich.... wise legislation.... Westerners in China.... Hendrik Hamel.... preparations for war.... dress reform
It was during the year 1637 that the stone tablet was set up beside the road to Nam-han, commemorating the Manchu victory. It had been sent thither by the Emperor, but was not immediately set up. A Manchu envoy came to superintend its erection. It is said that there were two stones, one of which was set up; the other, remaining on the bank of the river, was finally washed into the stream. The envoy announced that he had come to erect the monument at the point where the surrender had taken place. A solid foundation was built, with an ascent of several steps. The stone was put in place and over it a pavilion was built to protect it from the weather. On one side the inscription was in Chinese and on the other side in Manchu. The inscription is as follows:
“The Emperor Ch‘ung Té’ of the Great Ch‘ing Empire, in the twelfth year of his reign, learned that we had broken our treaty with him and he was angry. He gathered his forces and entered our territory. He marched through it, for there was none to say him nay. We, a weak and insignificant king, fled perforce to Nam-han. Our fear was like that of one who walks on ice in spring-time. We sojourned there fifty days. Our soldiers from the east and south fled before the Emperor’s troops. Those of the north and west hid among their mountains and could lift neither hand not foot. Famine stared us in the face. If the Emperor had stormed our fortress then we would have been like the leaves in autumn, or like hair in flames. But the Emperor did not wish to destroy us. He said ‘Come out and I will be your helper. If not I will destroy you.’ Generals[Generals] Yonggoldă and Mabudă and other great men were in constant communication with us. Our councillors, civil and military, assembled, and we said to them ‘For ten years have we been at peace, and now we have been blind and foolish to bring all this upon ourselves. Our people have become like meat or fish beneath the chopping-knife. We alone are to blame for it all’. The Emperor was patient and did not destroy us utterly but told us to surrender. How could we refuse, for by so doing we saved our people. All the courtiers were agreed. With a score of horsemen we went forth from the fortress to the Emperor’s camp and there confessed our faults. He treated us with kindness and by his goodness calmed our agitated minds. When we beheld him our heart went out to him. The Emperor’s goodness extended even to our courtiers. He then sent us back to the capital and recalled the Manchu cavalry who were scouring the south. Our people, who had been scattered like pheasants, now returned. All things became as they had been. Snow and frost were gone and spring smiled forth again. After the drought showers fell. All that had been destroyed revived again. Things that had been broken grew together. Here beside the Han at San-jun-do where the great Emperor rested, here is the altar and the enclosure. Here we, a weak king, through our Minister of Public Works, have made the altar higher and broader than before and have placed this monument to keep alive in the minds of generations yet unborn the memory of these events, to show that the goodness of the Emperor is as high as heaven itself. Not that we alone have seen it, for all Manchuria as well was witness to it. Throughout the world that gracious voice cannot be resisted. Though we write with characters as broad as the very earth and as clear as the sun and moon we could never describe his greatness and his glory. For such cause is it written here. Frost and dew are both from heaven. One kills the other vivifies. Thus it is that the Emperor shows goodness in the midst of terror. The Emperor came with over 100,000 soldiers. Many of them were like the tiger and the dragon. Before them, brandishing their spears, went the savages from the far north and the distant west. Fearsome men! But the Emperor’s gracious words came down in a letter in ten lines clear and beautiful, whereby our blinded minds were enlightened. The Emperor’s words are luminous and precise, and we, a small king, confessed and surrendered; not so much because we feared his terror as because we delighted in his graciousness. He treated us kindly, paying all attention to the ceremonies and the rites. Then we were glad and laughed, and every weapon sought its sheath. Then we donned the garment of peace. The people of Seoul, both men and women, burst into singing and said that the Emperor had given us back to our palace. The Emperor pitied the distress of the people and encouraged them to till the fields again. To the dead roots of the tree was brought back spring-time. This stone is lofty and it stands here at the head of the river to show forth the Emperor’s goodness to the Sam-han.”
Such was the statement that the Manchus put into the mouth of Korea and until recent years they have claimed Korea as their vassal state. The claim originally was perfectly good. Never did a country make herself more abject in her acceptance of a vassal’s position. And the only line of argument that can be used to prove that that condition did not hold till the treaty of Shimonoseki was signed in 1895, is in China’s occasional disavowal of it, to shield herself from responsibility for Korea’s acts.
The Japanese had been keeping watch of events that were transpiring during these troublesome times, and at this juncture an envoy came from the island empire announcing, as between friends, the name of the new Japanese year. This letter was not received by the king, who asked what use it would be to him. The Japanese replied, “You have given up China and are now a masterless dog. Why is our name not good as any?” It shows how pride had been crushed out of the Koreans to find that Ch‘oé Myŭng-gil himself said, “We have done wrong to surrender to the Manchus. Now let us make friendly advances toward Japan.” From that time on it was customary to receive politely the annual message from Japan, but there seems to have been no more rapport between the two countries than this.
As the Manchu emperor passed north through P‘yŭng-an province he gave orders to the prefect of Cheung-san to seize and deliver up to him the person of Hong Ik-han who had been especially virulent in his opposition to the Manchus. It was done, and the man was carried captive to the Manchu capital at Sim-yang (Mukden). There he was decently lodged in a house of detention called the Pyŭl-gwan, until a certain day when he was called before the emperor, who sat in state surrounded by soldiery. Being asked why he had opposed the Manchu influence he replied in writing. “All men within the four seas are brothers but there can be but one father. From the first the king of Korea acted uprightly and mannerly. In Korea we have censors who chide and correct him. Last year, being censor, I heard that you, who held to us the relation of elder brother, had styled yourself emperor and by so doing had ruptured the actual relations subsisting between us. From the earliest times we have owed allegience to China and how could we then advise the king to hold to a false relation? This is the reason I advised the king to stand out against you. This war and all its attendant miseries are my work alone and I would that you might decapitate me ten thousand times.” The emperor, who seems to have cherished the idea that he had overawed the man, was thrown into a great rage by this brave avowal and instantly threw the man into a dismal dungeon where he doubtless starved to death, for nothing more is heard of him.
The two men who had been delivered up by the king in Nam-han were also carried north. They were also arraigned before the dreaded chieftain Yonggoldă who attempted to flatter them into making a complete surrender to the Manchus and taking up their abode permanently in Manchuria; but they utterly refused and asked to be killed at once. The Manchu chief argued, urged and threatened, but the men were not to be moved. Being ordered to execution they looked the chieftain in the face and cursed him. Chöng No-gyŭng, an attendant of the Crown Prince, begged for their bodies that he might carry them back and bury them on Korean soil, but the favor was not granted.
That summer the people of Seoul and of the country immediately to the south, were thrown into a panic by the antics of what they call ch‘ăk-ch‘ăk, a species of imp or demon which appeared nightly in various places and terrified the people. The Koreans are peculiarly subject to such hallucinations. They said they were the spirits of those who had died at the hands of the Manchus and the popular fears were not alleviated until the king had ordered a monstrous sacrifice in their behalf at two places near Nam-han, called Ma-heui-ch‘ŭn and Sang-nyŭng.
The king despatched an envoy to China in the ninth moon to inform the Chinese emperor that he had been forced to surrender, but he assured his former suzerain that the act was by no means voluntary. To this the emperor replied in a tone of commiseration, attaching no blame to the king’s enforced allegiance to the Manchus. He himself was destined ere long to feel the full weight of the Manchu arm.
We have at this point an account of the first general use of tobacco in Korea. It is stated that tobacco was first brought to Japan by the Nam-man or “southern barbarians” and from there was brought to Korea, thirty years before the date of which we are now writing. It was first used by a man named Chang Yu who was closely connected with the royal family, being the father of a Crown Princess. It was called tam-p‘agwe which is the Korean pronunciation of certain Chinese characters which were used to translate into Chinese the Japanese words for tobacco, which is ta-ba-ko. It is commonly supposed that the Japanese took their word from the occidentals, but we here have the word embedded in Korean history back in the very first years of the seventeenth century before it had even yet firmly established itself in European countries. It seems almost incredible that the spread of its use should have been so rapid as to have arrived in Korea within ten years of the beginning of its common use in Europe, but it may have been so. Portugese traders came in large numbers to Japan and the fragrant weed was probably brought by them. At the time of which we are writing, namely the end of the Manchu invasion, its use had become common. It was supposed to possess valuable peptic qualities and was recommended especially to those who ate much meat. The Manchus had become much addicted to the habit, but so many conflagrations were the result that the Manchu emperor attempted to interdict[interdict] its use. It is needless to say that he failed. When first introduced, it cost ten thousand cash for half a pound but merchants obtained seed and it soon became common.