The king gave up entirely the wild project of assaulting China, which had been a pet scheme of his father, and he likewise found no cause for supporting such a large military[military] retinue about his person, and they were discharged.
There was a flourishing Buddhist convent just west of the Kyöng-bok Palace, in Chá-kol. The king wished to do away with it, but some objected on the ground that it formed an asylum for aged palace women, and because there were many royal tablets stored there. We may well imagine the consternation of these objectors when the king said concerning the tablets, “Well, dig a hole and bury the whole lot.”
The useless custom of having masked dancers accompany the royal procession when returning from the ancestral temple was done away. The king put an end to the custom of taking girls by force and compelling them to become palace women. It must be only with the free consent of the girl’s father. He consented to send men to various places where sulphur was mined to see that the people of the surrounding country were not ill-used. At the same time he ordered that no more sulphur should be dug at Tal-sŭng-wi-gung inside the South Gate. He ordered that the tombs of the king of Koryŭ should be kept in good repair. He quelled a great popular excitement in the south, which arose from the rumor that various Buddhas in the monasteries were sweating, by showing that it was caused by the frost bringing out the moisture which had been absorbed during the rainy season. The rumor was probably false, but how politic it was to take it for granted and turn it off by giving some natural cause rather than merely to deny the rumor. He added however the command that as these Buddhas had caused such a disturbance they must be burned.
At that time the province of Chŭl-la contained about 190,855 kyul of land, a kyul being supposed to produce forty bags of rice. The revenue was set at thirteen pecks of rice from each kyul. The revenue from 24,084 kyul was set aside for the support of the king’s relatives, royal grave-keepers and for men whom the king particularly desired to honor because of distinguished services. The revenue from the remaining 169,771[169,771] kyul, amounted to 147,134 bags of rice, 69,280 of which came up to the capital and 85,916 were stored for use by officials in the country. A certain amount of forest land was customarily set aside for fuel supply for the different palaces, but through maladministration these palaces each had much more forest land that it was entitled to, and as a consequence the people had to suffer. So the king ordered a redistribution of the forest lands and a correction of the fuel bill. He sent twenty bags of cotton seed into Ham-gyŭng Province, for he desired to see this useful plant grown in every one of the eight provinces. The island of Quelpart being still very wild and the people uncultivated, the king, for the first time in the history of the peninsula, made an attempt to civilize them, by offering them government offices and by establishing schools for them. He also did the same for the river towns along the Yalu. As the wild tribes of Sŏl-han and Pyŭl-hă frequently came across the border and looted the people’s houses at and near Chang-jin, a general was sent to take care of Korean interests. When 1403 scholars from the country came to the capital and memorialized the king against Song Si-ryŭl they were told that they were engaged in a mere party strife and had not the interests of the country at heart, and that if scholars meddled with the affairs of government they would be severely handled. Along the Tuman River the people were utterly ignorant, and scarcely knew whether there was a king at all; so men were sent to found schools among them and teach. Nepotism existed to such an extent, especially in connection with the government examinations, that the king decided that no relative of any of the examiners should be a candidate for honors. He established a criminal court in Seoul and took all criminal cases out of the hands of the prefects, as they often judged from prejudice rather than from the facts. He lessened by half the tax that had been levied for the making of arms. The government seized all common prostitutes and made them government slaves. Being a devout Confucianist the king commanded that the names of Confucius’ four disciples be never pronounced aloud. He diminished the garrison of Su-wŭn from 6000 to 4000 on the plea of economy. He gave presents of money to all unmarried women over thirty years of age, as some compensation for what, in Korea, is considered the hardest of hard lots. He was so affected by distress which he saw in the country during one of his frequent trips to the hot springs, that when he returned to the capital he laid aside many of the luxuries both of his wardrobe and his table. He made camps for the poor who flocked to Seoul because of utter want in the east country. One was outside the Water Mouth Gate, and the other at A-o-gă. He likewise furnished them food and medicine. When a boatload of Chinese belonging to the Ming dynasty, which had fled southward, was driven by a storm on Quelpart the king promptly forwarded them to Peking rather than lay himself open to any possible charge of bad faith toward the Manchu power.
When some one tried to evade the payment of revenue by claiming that the boat that was bringing it was wrecked, he decided that if this happened again the owner should be decapitated. The king restored the copper types which had been destroyed at the time of the Japanese occupation of Seoul. He built a shrine to the unfortunate Tan-jong Tă-wang. He remeasured the lands in the southern provinces for a proper adjustment of revenue. He decreed that though a traitor’s family must be punished with him, married daughters should be exempt from punishment. He acquiesced in the suggestion of the minister of war that the scaling of the city wall be made a capital offense, but when the courtiers represented that if such a small crime deserved death everybody would be a candidate for the executioner’s sword, he recalled the edict.
One of this king’s most interesting edicts was in connection with the census. Having ordered a numbering of the people, he found that objections were raised, because it would mean a more systematic and thorough collection of taxes. So he put forth the edict that whenever murder occurred, if the murdered man’s name was not on the list of tax payers, the murderer would be immediately pardoned. Of course everybody hastened to get their names on the books and to let it be known.
He forbade marriage between people of the same family name. A commission was appointed to go and break off the point of dangerous rocks that obstructed the channels along the coast and among the islands. No governor was allowed to appoint any relative of his own to any position in the province. A man who came up from the south and charged Song Si-ryŭl with treason, but could give no evidence to substantiate the charge, was put to death.
It was customary to expose infants born of incest, and they were allowed to die in the streets. The king ordered that the government pay the expense of the rearing of such unfortunates. He gave decent burial to those who died in the mat sheds outside the wall, where contagious cases were carried and left to die. He named nine kinds of men who would make good prefects. (1) Men of good life and conduct. (2) Good scholars. (3) Skillful men and those who fostered trade. (4) Natural leaders. (5) Fearless men. (6) Students of human nature. (7) Men without an itching palm. (8) Men renowned for filial piety. (9) Good authors.
In the fifteenth year of his reign, 1674, he was taken ill. The death of his mother worked upon his spirits and aggravated his disease, and death ensued. He needs no encomiums except the bare list of the great things that were done during his reign. They will go down to posterity as his lasting monument. His genius coupled with that of his great adviser, Song Si-ryŭl, ranged through every phase of political and social life, revenue, finance, political economy, agriculture, mining, official rectitude, civil service, social ethics, sanitation, education, internal improvement, the army, popular superstition, slavery, penalties, foreign relations, border police, famine relief, consanguineous marriage, publication; these and many other important topics demanded and secured from him careful attention. He put down party strife with a heavy hand, and only once or twice during the whole period of his reign does it raise its malignant head.
His son succeeded to the throne, known by his posthumous title Suk-jŏng Tă-wang. Party spirit had not been dead but only in abeyance during his father’s strong reign. It now broke out again. Memorials poured in upon the young king urging the evil practices of Song Si-ryŭl, and the young king thought there must be some truth in them because of their very numbers. He became the center of a very storm of charge and counter-charge, of attack and defense. Being but fourteen years old and of a naturally vacillating temperament, he was first the tool of one party and then of another. His whole reign, which covered a period of forty-six years, was one maelstrom of party strife and was fruitful of more startling than useful events. His leading characteristic was capriciousness. Again and again he turned from one party to another, each turn being accompanied by numberless deaths. But we must not anticipate.