In 1799 a peculiar plague broke out in P’yŭng-yang[P’yŭng-yang] and spread with great rapidity. It began with fever and ague, accompanied by a cough, and death was very sudden. The king decided that if people so afflicted should eat beef they would recover. So he ordered cattle to be killed and the beef to be distributed among the people. The plague suddenly ceased and the people have always believed that it was the marvelous acumen of the king that enabled him to see the remedy and stop the ravages of the disease.
Early in 1800 he made his son heir to the throne, and none too soon, for in the sixth moon he sickened and died. It is said that his death was caused by his mourning over the terrible fate of his father, whose cruel and untimely death preyed upon his mind. Others say that the cause of his death was a malignant boil.
The infant king, known by his posthumous title of Sun-jo Tă-wang, was of too tender an age to undertake the duties of royalty and so the government was administered during his minority by his grandmother, the woman who had wielded such a strong influence over his father. She began by instituting various reforms. Outside the West Gate, which was then some distance to the west of the present New Gate, there was a monastery where sorceresses and fortune-tellers congregated. The Queen Mother drove them all out and razed the monastery to the ground. The tax by which the palace body-guard was kept up was very distasteful to the people and it was now remitted. Up to this time the government medical dispensary had been supported by revenue in money or herbs from the country, but this tax was also remitted. If we may believe the records when they say that she freed all the government slaves, we can not but confess that in some directions at least this Queen Regent was of exceeding liberal mind.
It is from the year 1801 that we may date the determined and systematic opposition on the part of the government against the Roman Catholic propaganda in the peninsula. Two other factions had grown up in Seoul, the Si and the Pyŭk. The latter were violent opponents of the new religion but they had been held in check by the neutral attitude of the late king. But now he was dead, and the Queen Regent, being a member of that faction, determined to give full rein to the anti-Christian prejudices of her partisans. It must be remembered that the Koreans were extremely sensitive to outside influences. The terrible invasion of the Japanese on the one hand and of the Manchus on the other had made the Koreans hate all suggestions of commerce with the outside world, and they sedulously avoided every possible contact with foreigners. This is one of the main causes of the opposition to Christianity. But besides this, they had been told that Roman Catholicism struck at the very foundation of the state and was more than likely to assume a political aspect, a charge which, from the very claims which it puts forth to universal temporal as well as spiritual sovereignty, would be somewhat hard to refute. We can scarcely wonder then that there was severe opposition to it. It was looked upon as a danger which menaced the state. It is said that Roman Catholicism had assumed large proportions in Korea. Many were now seized and put to death. Among them were eleven high officials. Release was granted in case the accused would consent to curse Christ. The agents of this persecution went everywhere haling forth believers from city and village. Soon the prisons were running over. Eleven men were executed in April and fourteen in the following month. It is said that two princesses who had adopted the foreign faith were put to death. It was at this time that Tsiou, the Chinese evangelist, whom the Koreans call Chu Mun-mo, was seized and put to death outside the Little West Gate. He had at first fled north to the Yalu and was on the point of crossing, when he suddenly thought better of it, turned back, gave himself up and heroically met his death.
A Korean named Whang Sa-yong had been instrumental in bringing this Chinaman to preach the faith to his fellow-countrymen. Now that the evangelist was executed this Whang sent out a letter to the European residents of China asking that a military expedition be gotten up to come to the shores of Korea, overthrow the dynasty and set up another in sympathy with the Christian faith. This letter was intercepted, the man seized and cruelly torn to pieces. As to the accuracy of these statements it would be rash to vouch. The contents of that letter may or may not have been what is generally believed by the Koreans, but judging from the active interest which European governments rightly take in missionaries from their shores, it is not unlikely that the letter contained substantially what is here stated. The persecution terminated the following year when the government ordered the execution of those already apprehended but ordered that no more Christians be proceeded against. Between three and four hundred people had perished and the church seemed to have been crushed.
It was in this year 1803 that a terrible conflagration swept P‘yŭng-yang, and a thousand houses were destroyed. It was repeated the following year, and it is asserted that almost the entire city was destroyed.
Upon the death of the Queen Regent in 1805 the last remnant of persecution ceased and even the law which prohibited the import of books was allowed to remain a dead letter. Corruption in government circles ran riot. The state of things is well epitomized in a memorial which was sent in at this time. (1) The Ministers spend all their time reading books. (2) Nepotism and bribery are the rule rather than the exception. (3) The judges sit and wait for bribes. (4) The examiners of the candidates’ papers receive money in advance, and merit can make no headway against cupidity. (5) The censors have been struck dumb. (6) The prefects do nothing but extort money from the people. (7) Luxury saps the strength and wealth of the land. (8) The whole commonwealth is diseased and rotten to the core.
The year 1811 is marked by an uprising in the north, where Hong Kyöng nă attempted to set up a kingdom of his own. He was a resident of P‘yŭng-an Province and was a man of enormous wealth. He was disaffected against the government because the men of his section were discriminated against in the distribution of offices; so he conferred with the miners who were engaged in digging gold in various places, and he told them an exaggerated story of how ill they were being treated by the government. He ended by proposing that, as he had enough money for them all, they set up a kingdom of their own. The hardy miners, 5,000 in number, accepted the proposal with alacrity and war was on foot. This company of undrilled but hardy miners were formidable and at first carried everything before them. They first took the town of Chöng-ju, putting to death the prefect and his whole family. When news of this reached Seoul the king appointed Yi Yo-hön as general-in-chief against the rebels. Five thousand soldiers were given him with which to do the work. He acted in a characteristic manner, settled himself comfortably at the governor’s house outside the New Gate and called it the headquarters. From that point he sent to the front Generals Sŭ Kum-bo, Kim Kye-on and Pak Keui-p‘ung. Meanwhile the rebels were carrying everything before them. Ch‘ŭl-san, Ka-san, Song-ch‘ŭn, Yong ch‘ŭn, Pak-ch‘ŭn and Son-ch‘ŭn fell in quick succession. All the government provisions and arms fell into their hands. The main camp of the rebels was in the vicinity of An-ju and they wished to take that place. Here they met with strenuous opposition and it was only after a desperate struggle that they ever took the town. It took ten days to reduce the place; but the back bone of the revolt was broken before the government troops from Seoul arrived on the scene. The various captains and local commanders joined their forces, and by the time the government troops had collected in P’yŭng-yang the rebels had been driven into their last remaining fortress, Chöng-ju, and were being held in siege. During the retreat of the rebels four of Hong’s lieutenants were captured and, being sent to Seoul, were there summarily executed. The reduction of Chöng-ju by siege was a work of some time, and the king becoming impatient, supplanted Gen. Pak Kye-p‘ung and put Gen. Yu Hyo-wŭn in his place. The latter immediately decided to attempt to blow up the town of Chöng-ju. Constructing a fence, or barrier of some kind, a hundred and fifty paces from the wall, he began, under cover of this, to mine the wall, supporting the passage with beams of wood. When he had extended the passage well under the wall he placed a large amount of powder in it and attached a long fuse. After igniting the fuse the soldiers all hastened out of the mine. No explosion followed. No one dared to go in, for fear that the fuse might be burning slowly and that the mine might explode while they were within. After waiting two days, and finding no one who would venture in, Gen. Yu himself entered and found that the fuse had become wet. He remedied the difficulty and soon there was a tremendous explosion that tore down a long stretch of the wall and buried many of the garrison in the debris. The place was soon taken. Hong was caught, “The Man who Would be King,” and his head was sent to Seoul.
The Christians had now begun to recover in some measure from the terrible persecution of 1801 and a man was sent to Peking to urge that a qualified priest be sent to Korea, but the Peking church itself was in great vicissitudes and no help could be promised.
From this time on the reign was one long list of calamities which followed thick and fast upon each other. In 1813 there was a serious rebellion on the island of Quelpart; in 1814 occurred one of those fearful famines that sometimes happen in the southern provinces; this was followed by a flood in Kyŭng-sang Province which wrecked thousands of houses and cost many lives; Seoul was without rice and the government had to open its granaries and sell at starvation rates; 414,000 bags of grain were distributed to the sufferers in the country and 15,000,000 cash, 5,000 pounds of dye-wood and 500 pounds of black pepper were donated toward relief. The next year thousands who had been made destitute by the famine flocked to Seoul and the government had to feed them till the barley crop was harvested; then the native fever, a kind of typhus, broke out and mowed the people down, and the government had to erect pest houses for their accommodation. In 1816 two thousand houses fell in a freshet in Ch’ung-ch’ŭng Province and the government gave timber to help the people rebuild. The year 1821 beheld one of the most terrible scourges of cholera that the country ever experienced. It began in the north, and sweeping southward soon involved the capital. Ten thousand people died in Seoul in ten days. In the south it was equally destructive. The government was obliged to appoint a commission to attend to the interment of the dead bodies along the road. The following year it broke out again with unbated fury. Houses were built at intervals along the roads, by the government, for the sake of those who might be struck down with the plague while traveling and gangs of men were kept busy along the main road burying the dead. It even crossed to the island of Quelpart where two thousand people died. In 1824 the government had to remit 69,300 bags of revenue grain in the north because of the depredations of robber bands.