He began his reign with a statement of his inability to rule the people rightly, and blaming himself for the sufferings of the people from famine and plague. He immediately proclaimed his son crown prince, so that from the very first there might be no question as to the succession. He had to give way to the importunities of his councillors and decapitate Kim Il-gyŭng who had charged him with the murder of his brother.
On the very first day of the new year he proclaimed that all party strife must cease; that men must think and plan for the good of the whole country rather than for a particular party. As he was returning one day from a royal tomb a man beside the road shouted “There goes the man who poisoned his predecessor with shrimps.” Recognizing in this nothing but an attempt to keep open the old party sore, the king handled the man severely together with certain others of the Soron party who had instigated him to the outrage.
From that day to this the Noron party has been uniformly in power. Party strife practically ceased, not by the dissolution of the other parties but because one party obtained such an overwhelming ascendency that the others died of starvation. Several things led to this result. A series of unsuccessful conspiracies on the part of the Soron party, each of which weakened it to the point of exhaustion; and secondly the extreme length of the reign, during which, with one short interval, the king held firmly to the Noron party. The closing act of his first year was a reform which he forced in the government dispensary. It had long been a rich morsel for conscienceless officials to fatten upon, but now the whole personnel of the institution was changed and it again performed its normal function of dispensing medicines for the public health. The king’s forbearance is seen in the fact that when a thief was caught, bearing upon his person a letter from two of the palace women asking him to procure for them a deadly poison, the king executed the thief but refused to proceed against the women, on the ground that they had no possible cause for wishing his death.
We here meet the curious statement, not mentioned heretofore, that from the earliest times the Lords of Tsushima received seals from the king of Korea. At this time the daimyo of that island sent and asked the king to renew the custom, which had probably been discontinued for a short space of time. The king complied with the request and had the seal cut and sent. It is not possible to conclude from this that the daimyo of Tsushima considered himself a vassal of Korea, for it is not mentioned elsewhere in the Korean annals. We can form but one theory that will account for it. This seal may have been only for the purpose of identification to vouch for the authenticity of letters that might pass between Korea and Tsushima. The time may come when, in the light of facts not yet discovered, this incident may throw light on the early relations between Korea and Japan.
A striking feature of this king’s reign was the promulgation and enforcement of the principle of the prohibition of the manufacture and use of spirituous liquors. We venture to affirm that this king was the first in history, if not the only one, to boldly assert and rigidly enforce the principle of total abstinence from the use of wines and liquors. His three commands were (1) Party strife must cease. (2) Luxury must be curtailed. (3) The making, selling or drinking of fermented wines or distilled liquors is a capital offense.
But this and other reforms were about to be eclipsed by the great upheaval of 1727, after the relation of which we will return to them. The Norons made such desperate attempts to induce the king to continue the persecution of the Soron party that he underwent a revulsion of feeling and for a short time punished the Norons by calling back into power many of the opposition. It may be that this short respite awoke the slumbering ambition of the Soron party so that when they found it was but partial and temporary their chagrin drove them into sedition. There appeared at Nam-wŭn in Chŭl-la Province an insulting circular asserting that the king had killed his brother and that the whole Noron party were traitors. It called upon all good men to oppose the government in every way possible. The governor sent a copy to the king who simply said “Burn it up.” But he greatly miscalculated the amount of sentiment that lay behind that circular, and his enemies took advantage of his unsuspiciousness to work up a wide-spread and powerful conspiracy against the government. It was headed by Kim Yŭng-hă.
This conspiracy was headed by the son of the executed Kim Il-gyŭng, by Mok Si-ryŭng the brother of Mok Ho-ryŭng and by the sons and other near relatives of the killed and banished leaders of the Soron party. A large force was collected in Kyŭng-sang Province and Yi In-jwa and Chöng Heui-ryang were put in command. The conspiracy honeycombed the whole country, for we are told that in P‘yŭng-an Province Yi Sa-sŭng took charge of an insurrectionary force, while at the capital Kim Chung-geui and Nam T‘ă-jung worked in its interests. It was agreed that on the twentieth of the third moon Seoul should be entered and that Prince Mil-wha be put on the throne. But there was a weak point in this as in all such ventures. One of the leaders in the south, An Pak, had a friend living at Yong-ju, in the direct line of the approach to Seoul and he warned him to move, as something was about to happen. The friend coaxed him into telling him the whole affair, and then brought the story straight to Seoul. This informer was Choé Kyo-sŭ. Immediately the king sent out a heavy guard to the river and also manned the wall of the capital. Troops were thrown into Yang-sŭng, Chin-wi, Su-wŭn, Yong-in, Chuk-san and Ch‘un-ch‘ŭn, and were told to seize anyone who made the least disturbance. The brother of An Pak being caught, he gave the details of the position of the rebel troops and other important particulars. The king appointed O Myŭng-hang of the Soron party as general-in-chief of an expedition against the seditious people of the south. He took with him 2,000 soldiers, but gathered more as he proceeded south. Strong bodies of troops were also sent north along the Peking road and to Puk-pawi outside the East Gate, to guard the approaches to the city. In the south loyal troops were in force at Mun-gyŭng Fortress near Cho-ryŭng Pass and the governor of Whang-hă Province also took soldiers and stationed himself at Whang-ju, near P’yŭng-yang. Others were stationed in the defiles of the mountains just beyond Song-do. It is quite evident from these extensive precautions that the plot was a wide-spread and dangerous one and that it had powerful leaders, not only in the country but at the capital itself.
In the south, the great rebel leader, Yi In-jwa, with banners flying, led his powerful army northward to the town of Chöng-ju[Chöng-ju]. Here was stored a large amount of government provisions and arms. It was taken not by storm but by strategem[strategem]. Arms were sent into the city on litters covered with vegetables and other things and soldiers went in, disguised as coolies. Once inside, they soon put the small garrison out of the way and killed the commandant. Yi then resumed the march on Seoul, appointing prefects in the districts through which he passed and assuming the title “Great General-in-Chief.” The claim was that the uprising was in behalf of the dead king. All the soldiers were in mourning for him and they carried in their ranks a shrine to his memory, before which they offered sacrifices.
The road from the south coming up to Seoul divides at Mok-ch‘ŭn, one branch proceeding by way of Chik-san and the other by An-sŭng, but they unite again at Su-wŭn. The rebels arrived at Mok-ch‘ŭn just as the royal troops arrived at Su-wŭn. It was of prime importance to the rebels to know by which road the royal army, under O Myŭng hang, were coming. Whichever way they came the rebels must take the other road and so evade an action. Gen. O was astute enough to surmise this but he did not propose to let the rebels steal a march on him in this way; so he sent forward a small part of his force toward Chik-san, but with the main body of his troops he took the road by way of An-sung. His calculations were correct, and when he neared An-sŭng he found that the enemy were encamped there in fancied security. Taking a picked band of 700 men Gen. O made a detour and came around the hill on whose slope the rebels were encamped. In the night he made a wild charge down from its summit into the camp. The effect was instantaneous. A moment later the whole rebel force was in full flight, racing for their lives, while the pursuers cut them down at pleasure. Yi In-jwa was captured and brought to Seoul. Meanwhile Pak P‘il-pön the prefect of Sön-san opposed the remaining rebels in Kyŭng-sang Province, capturing and killing a great number of them, especially the leaders Ung Po and Heui Ryang, whose heads he sent to Seoul in a box.
When Gen O Myŭng-hang returned in triumph to Seoul the king went out to meet him, and after the traitors’ heads had been impaled on high, they all adjourned to the palace where a great feast was spread, at which the king gave Gen. O a sounding title and to Ch‘oé Kyo-sŭ, who betrayed the plot he gave the house near the present English Church, which has in connection with it a memorial shrine. The king had a book printed giving in details the evil deeds of the Soron party. Since that time there have been no great party struggles. Sacrifices were offered for all who had been killed by the rebels. The king showed his clemency by liberating the five-year-old son of one of the traitors. He had been imprisoned according to the law of the country, to be kept until his fifteenth year, and then he would be led out to execution.