An interesting story is told of a dancing-girl of this town. When the Japanese took possession of the place she was appropriated by one of the Japanese generals. One day while they were feasting in a summer-house on the wall overlooking the river, she began to weep. He asked her the reason and she replied, “You have come here and driven away our people and our king. I do not know whether my sovereign is living, and yet I sit here and feast. I can hardly claim to be better than the beasts, to sit here and make merry. I must put an end to my life.” Thereupon she threw her arms about her paramour and flung herself and him over the edge, thus ending her weary life and helping to avenge her native land at the same time. For this reason she was canonized at a later date and her spirit was worshiped at this place each year by royal edict.
All this time the great Admiral Yi was in camp at Han-san Island off the coast of Kyŭng-sang Province. His force was not large, but during his enforced idleness he prepared for future work. He set all his men to work making salt by evaporating sea water, and by this means he got together a great store of provisions. Needing barracks for the soldiers, he offered to the carpenters and workmen about a bag of salt for a day’s work. His energy and patriotism were so contagious that many worked for nothing, and the barracks were soon built. At this point the king conferred upon him the admiralty of the three provinces of Ch’ung-ch’ŭng, Chŭl-la and Kyŭng-sang.
In the ninth moon the Commissioner Song Eung-ch’ang and Gen Yi Yŭ-song collected their forces and started back for China. They evidently considered the back bone of the invasion broken, and so it was; but like most spinal diseases it was destined to linger on for years before it came to an end. When these generals set out on their homeward way they left 10,000 Chinese soldiers in the hands of the Korean generals[generals] Yu Chŭng and O Yu-ch’ang to act as a bodyguard for the king. In spite of their suspicions of the corruptibility of Gen. Yi Yŭ-song, the Koreans speak in high terms of him. They describe him as a young man of thirty, of handsome person, broad mind and possessed of great skill in the art of war. When he was on the eve of returning to China he bared his head and showed the Koreans that his hair was already turning gray. He told them it was because he had worked so hard for them, which piece of bathos seems to have impressed them deeply.
Chapter I-A.
The King re-enters Seoul.... temporary palace.... a royal lament.... a profligate prince.... imperial rebuke.... “The Flying General”.... uneasiness in Seoul.... revenue reform.... reforms in the army.... King refuses to make peace with the Japanese.... the Chinese retire.... plot against Konishi.... Japanese envoy in Nanking.... robbers put down.... a good man ruined.... Japanese trickery.... a patient envoy.... he absconds.... his flight covered by his second.... home-sick Japanese.... Konishi sarcastic.... Chinese envoy in Japan.... Korean envoy.... Japanese army leaves Korea.... prince refuses the crown.... rebellion.... death of a loyal general.... envoys ill-treated in Japan.... return.... a new invasion determined upon.... comparison of Japan and Korea.... Japanese scheme to get Admiral Yi into trouble.... Admiral Yi degraded.... second invasion.... Cho-ryŭng pass fortified.... Chinese give aid.... Admiral Yi’s successor a failure.... great naval victory for the Japanese.
It was on the fourth day of the tenth moon of the year 1593 that the king reentered the gates of Seoul after his long hard exile in the north. But he found the city almost a desert. The palaces were burnt and the ancestral temple was level with the ground. Under the circumstances he decided to stop for some time in that part of the city which is called Chong-dong, the present foreign quarter, near the West Gate. Here there had been the grave of one of the wives of the founder of the dynasty, but her body had long ago been disinterred and removed to a place outside the Northeast Gate. So the king took up his quarters at the Myŭng-ye-gung. It is the exact spot where the King of Korea lives today. A considerable tract of land about it was surrounded by a stake fence with a gate at the east and at the west. This royal residence was named the Si-ö-sa or “Temporary Residence.” Here the king lived thirteen years while the palace now known as “The Old Palace” was being built. The king was desirous of rebuilding on the spot where his palace had stood before, the Kyöng-bok-kung, but he was told by the geomancers that that would be an unpropitious site. In order to build the new palace a tax of half a piece of cotton cloth was levied upon each man throughout the country. In some cases rice was accepted as a substitute.
After the king had entered the city, one of his first acts was to go to the site of the ancient Confucian Temple and, standing on the melancholy spot, utter the following lament: “The spirit of Confucius permeates space as water permeates the soil beneath our feet. If my faithfulness is great enough, let the spirit of Confucius rest down upon this spot.” He noticed that none of the people were in mourning and so ordered that all those who had lost parents in the war should assume the mourner’s garb.
At this time a strong faction arose whose wish was to see the king lay aside his royal prerogative in favor of his son. This prince was a son by a concubine, for the queen had no children. He was an ambitious but profligate fellow and had in his heart no loyalty for his father. Some of the courtiers went so far as to memorialize the King to the effect that it might add to the contentment of the people if the king should put the reins of government into the hands of his son. He hesitated to do this, for he knew the young man and how unfit he was to rule. At the suggestion of Song Eung-ch‘ang, the emperor sent to the king appointing the Crown Prince to the governorship of the southern provinces in conjunction with the Chinese general, Yu Chung. The prince was delighted at this and hastened to his post at Chŭn-ju. He practically took the whole jurisdiction of the south out of the hands of the king and even held the competitive examinations for literary degrees, which was an exclusively royal prerogative.
Another of the Chinese generals accused the king before the emperor of effeminacy and love of luxury and suggested that one of the best of the Korean generals be elevated to the throne in his place, but Gen. Suk Sŭng, who was very loyal to Korea, induced the emperor merely to send a letter upbraiding the king for his love of luxury and claiming that this was the cause of Japanese successes in the peninsula. The letter ended with an exhortation to arouse himself, work up a competent army, and complete the work of driving out the Japanese. The envoy bearing this missive was met at P‘a-ju by Gen. Yu Sŭng-nyong and an escort. The Chinaman told him that his arrival in Seoul would be the signal for some very important disclosures. General Yu and Gen. Chŭk conferred together about this matter and decided that the king must in any event be prevented from abdicating, for their official heads depended upon his retention of the reins of power. They also persuaded the envoy to their view, so that when the king read the letter and declared his intention to abdicate, the envoy objected that this could not be done until he had sent a letter to the emperor and obtained his consent.
Meanwhile there was going on in the south a sort of geurilla warfare against the Japanese. It was led principally by Kim Tŭk-nyŭng, a self-made man who had the confidence of the prince. This man had put his whole fortune into the cause and had himself fitted out 5,000 men. His method was to pass from place to place with great rapidity and strike the enemy when they were least expecting attack. In this way he earned from the Japanese the name “The Flying General.” He is said to have been uniformly successful.