Many of the present customs of Korea date from this reign. The king first made the law that after the closing of the gates, they could not be opened except by special permission from himself.
It was in his first year that the scholar Kwŭn Chŭl-sin gathered about him a company of disciples and went to a mountain retreat to study. They possessed one copy of a Christian work. This they diligently studied, and one and all determined to adopt the belief there inculcated. So far as they understood it, they practiced its teachings in secret.
Two years later the king took as a second concubine the daughter of Yun Ch‘ang-yun, and Hong the father of the first concubine, because of his opposition to it, was banished. Up to this time very few officials had been drawn from the northern provinces or from Song-do, but now the king decreed that they were as worthy to receive office as any others and said that they should share in the gifts of the government. He ordered that, a record be kept of all the decisions in council and that they be preserved in a book called the Il-deuk-rok. Those were days of severe famine in the land and the king did all in his power to relieve the distress, giving from his private treasure large quantities of silver bullion, black pepper and dyewood, things of great value in Korea.
In the year 1783 strange rumors were afloat. It was said that war had been declared against Korea by some foreign power which was about to throw an immense army into the peninsula. No one knew where it was to come from, but many believed it was Japan. The excitement grew so strong that crowds of people fled to the country, and so great was the influx into the southern provinces that real estate rose rapidly in value. Such was the haste of these deluded people that on the road families became separated and children were lost. Out of pity for the latter the king founded an asylum in Seoul for their maintenance.
Yi Tŭk-cho of Kyöng-ju was one of the men who had accepted the teachings of the Roman Catholic books and in this year he induced a young attaché of the embassy to Peking to look up the missionaries there and get such light as he could on the subject. This young man, Yi Sŭng-hun, met at Peking the Portugese Alexandré de Govea of the Franciscan order. He accepted Christianity and was baptized under the name of Pierre. He brought back with him many books, crosses, images and other religious emblems. Some of these he gave to Yi Tŭk-cho who redoubled his studies and at the same time began to do some proselyting. Two of his most celebrated converts were two brothers Kwŭn Ch‘ul-sin and Kwŭn Il-sin of Yang-geun, thirty miles from Seoul. This town is called the birth-place of Roman Catholicism in Korea. Yi Tŭk-cho took the baptismal name of Jean Baptiste and Kwŭn Il-sin that of Francois Xavier. The propagation of the Christian faith soon began in Seoul and from there rapidly spread in the south.
In 1785 the Minister of Justice began active operations against the new faith and in the third moon of that year a courtier memorialized the king on the subject. This caused the defection of many of the converts.
In 1786 Kim Yi-so informed the king that when envoys came back from China they brought in their train many Catholic books, which caused a “conflagration” in the country, and he denounced it as a bad religion. He said the books were flooding the land and that the only way to stop it was to make Eui-ju, on the border, a customs port and have all baggage strictly examined before being allowed to pass.
Many Chinese had settled on Sin Island off Eui-ju but the Koreans on the adjacent mainland resented it. They collected a considerable band of men and crossed to the island where they burned all the houses of the settlers and destroyed all their property. When the king heard of it he condemned it as a brutal outrage. This year was marked by one of the most destructive scourges that ever visited the country. Cholera swept the land from end to end. It is asserted that 370,979 people perished, among whom was the infant Crown Prince. The government found it necessary to undertake the work of interment.[interment.] The king gave out from the dispensary 29,000 pills, and in Seoul alone there were 8,149 recoveries. Knowing as we do the frightful ravages of this disease when it takes a virulent turn, the fact that there were over 8,000 recoveries in Seoul indicates that there must have been at least 60,000 deaths. Probably this was more than half the population of the city at that time. It was during this same year that the great mound in Kang-dong, P‘yŭng-an Province, was found. It is some 680 feet in circumference. It was called, from the first, the grave of the Tan-gun, though there is of course no evidence to show that this is more than the merest fancy.
The king had a half brother named Prince Eun-ön for whom he had a great affection; but Hong Kuk-Yŭng whose daughter had been the king’s first concubine and had violently opposed a second union, now conspired with two other choice spirits with a view to putting Prince Eun-ön on the throne. The vigilant Queen Mother discovered the plot and the conspirators were executed. All likewise demanded the death of the young prince but to this the king would not listen. He was forced to banish him to Quelpart, but a short time after had him brought back as far as Kang-wha, where comfortable quarters were provided for him.
The king interdicted the use of silk excepting by very high officials and by very old people. He set up stones to mark the place where the great-grandfather of T’ă-jo Tă-wang had lived, where his grandfather had fished and where that king himself had once lived, in Ham-gyŭng Province. Someone found in P’yŭng ch’ang, Ham-gyŭng Province, the grave of T’ă-jo Tă-wang’s great-grandmother and the king had it repaired and guarded.