In accordance with the demands of the Manchus, the king sent 5,000 troops to accompany them in their invasion of China, but as they arrived a month later than the set time they were sent back home by the angry Manchus. Early in the following year, however, Generals Yi Wan and Im Kyöng-ŭp started with 5,000 troops and joined the Manchu army. The plan was to attack Teung-nă on the Shantung promontory; whether by land or sea is not clear, but probably by land. This being known to the Koreans, three boats were secretly despatched to the threatened place, giving warning of the attack, and stating that the Koreans joined in the attack with the Manchus because forced to do so. It was suggested that whenever feasibly the Chinese and Korean forces should use only blank charges against each other. This was gladly agreed to and in a battle at Puk-sin-gu, which followed, not one man was killed among the Chinese forces that were brought in contact with the Korean contingent, and the latter suffered as little. The Chinese general managed to get a letter to the Koreans saying “The emperor reminds you of the vital aid he gave Korea at the time of the Japanese invasion and he now offers the half of his kingdom to anyone who will seize and deliver to him the Manchu general in command.” This reveals in a striking manner the desperate straits to which the Chinese had been brought by the Manchus. The Korean generals did not see their way to accede to this but they kept the Chinese informed of every movement of the Manchus, where they were weak and where they were strong, where they were likely to attack and where they might be successfully attacked. In this way the Manchus were continually thwarted and the Chinese encouraged.
It was proposed that there be a combined Manchu and Korean attack upon Kon-ju-wi near the point of the Shantung promontory, the Manchus to attack by land and the Koreans by sea; but the latter said they had no provisions and their boats were in very bad order. The Manchus replied “Then you had better go home,” an injunction that they were by no means loath to obey.
Meanwhile the king had been doing what he could to mitigate[mitigate] the sufferings consequent upon the invasion. He ordered all the eight provinces to give rice to help the poor, the widows and the orphans, and to provide proper burial for those who had no near relatives who could afford the expense. He likewise gave strong encouragement to the Confucian School in the capital. He sent spies throughout the land to discover whether the prefects were attending to their duties well. Fearing that the guard along the Tu-man River might be suffering, he made them a grant of 4,000 pieces of cotton. He likewise gave money to repair the ancient altar on the top of Ma-ri-san (Mountain) on the island of Kang-wha. This altar is said to have been used by the Tan-gun two thousand years before Christ, and may well be believed it to be the oldest monument in Korea.
This period of rest and recuperation was broken in upon by the appearance, on the northern border, of Manchu troops under Yonggoldă and Omokdo. Rumors had again reached Manchuria that certain Korean officials had been advising against the Manchu power. As a result of this, four prominent officials were sent captive to the north. Early the following year King Chilga, the emperor’s brother, came to try these men[men], and held a proper court at which the Korean Crown Prince was present. Each of the accused men was brought in turn and questioned, and each had some plausible excuse to give. The result was sure from the beginning. They were all condemned and were thrown into a dungeon with a door in the top, a sort of Black Hole of Calcutta, where they all languished with cold, hunger and disease. They even excited the pity of their jailors, and when the Crown Prince plead[plead] for them before the emperor, they were ordered sent to Eui-ju, but heavily guarded.
In 1640 the Japanese who had settled at Fusan complained that the harbor was too small, for it did not include the whole bay, but only that part directly in front of the settlement, which was about half way between the present Japanese town and the Korean town of Pu-san. The harbor was called Tu-mo Harbor. Consent to the enlargement of the harbor was refused.
In 1641 Prince Kwang-hă, the deposed and banished wretch, died on the island of Quelpart. So great is the respect for royalty in the abstract, in Korea, that the king fasted four days, had the body brought up to Yang-ju and buried it with royal honors. To the one surviving daughter the king gave a comfortable house and an annuity.
The next year a seditious movement was made by Ch‘oé Hyo-il of P‘yŭng-an Province, and two accomplices. They took boat for China, being provided with funds by the prefect of Eui-ju. Arriving at Teung-nă they joined the Chinese forces, received commissions in the Chinese army and despatched a letter to the prefect of Eui-ju asking him to gather a force and with them make a combined attack upon the Manchus. As fate would have it the Manchu Yonggoldă was at Eui-ju when this letter arrived, and it fell into his hands. He immediately sent to the king demanding the seizure and execution of all the men implicated in the plot. In spite of the expostulations of the Prime Minister, who wished to see only the prime movers punished, eleven men in Eui-ju and elsewhere[elsewhere] were seized and met their fate before the palace gate in Seoul.
That Japan and Korea had not forgotten each other is evinced by the fact that the Japanese emperor sent to the king asking him to suggest a name for an ancestral temple that he was erecting. The king declined but allowed his uncle to do it. The name suggested was “The Illustrious Place at Il-gwang Mountain.”
One more sacrifice was necessary before the last remnant of opposition to the Manchus should be extinguished. It was now six years since the surrender. Soon after that surrender the king had sent to China explaining that it was a hard fate and not his own inclination which had forced the surrender from him. Not knowing whether the letter had ever reached the Chinese capital he sent another letter two years later by a monk, Tok-po, who had come from China to ascertain whether Korea had really surrendered or not. Arriving at P’yŭng-yang he had been received by Gen. Im Kyŭng-ŭp who sent him on to Ch‘oé[Ch‘oé] Myŭng-gil the Prime Minister. He was handsomely treated and was provided with a new vessel and a complete outfit of clothes and provisions for the return journey. He carried a letter from the king stating his excuses as above narrated. Four years passed and at last in the year under review the emperor’s answer was forwarded by way of Chefoo. In it he exhonerates[exhonerates] Korea from all blame and mourns the fact that he cannot come to her aid as when the Japanese invaded the peninsula. The bearer of this missive was feasted and treated with the most flattering attentions by the governor of P‘yŭng-an. This would have amounted to nothing had it not been known to Yi Kyu the prefect of Sŭn-ch‘ŭn who was carrying on trade with China by junk across the Yellow Sea. He was seized by the Manchus and carried north. Fearing the worst, he offered to tell his captors an important secret as the price of his life. He thereupon unfolded the whole transaction between Seoul and Nanking. The Manchus were furious and sent a demand to the king for the persons of Ch‘oé[Ch‘oé] Myŭng-gil, Im Kyöng-ŭp, Yi Kyöng-yo and Yi Myŭng-han, all leading men. There was nothing to do but comply, and as these men went the king wept and gave Ch‘oé Myŭng-gil 500 ounces of silver for traveling expenses. Arriving at Pong-whang Fortress beyond the Yalu they were taken in hand by Generals Yonggoldă and Mabudă. Ch‘oé asserted strongly that he alone was to blame for the whole transaction. When the emperor had looked over the evidence he sent word that fines should be accepted from the others, but that Ch‘oé be sent in a cangue and hand-cuffs to Puk-kwan goal[goal]. And there he leaves the stage of history, on which he had played no mean part. The traitor Yi Kyu plumed himself on his newly acquired Manchu citizenship and presumed on his services to write the emperor a memorial under twelve heads; but the emperor in fine contempt exclaimed that a man who was not true to his own king must be a rascal at heart and ordered him bound and sent back to Korea where we may well believe the axe did its work without delay.
The next few years of the reign witnessed the return of many captives taken by the Japanese during the years of the invasion; they beheld the promulgation of the law that no one could marry during the three years of mourning for a parent; also a scourge of cholera so terrible as to cause the king to send and sacrifice upon the eight high mountains of Korea. A powerful conspiracy, led by the prime minister, Sim Keui-wŭn, came near overthrowing the dynasty, but the alarm was given in the very nick of time and he and his fellow conspirators were seized and executed.