Letter Sent to the Officer Salitai (撒里打)送撒里打官人書

I report. It is the beginning of summer. Respectfully I think of your esteemed person as being in good health and in every happiness, and I do not cease to look up to you.

As to the matter you instructed us of on a former occasion, that among the goods to be offered to the Emperor we send a thousand good otter skins: our country never used to take this creature before. It was only after your country asked for them that we began to catch them by every sort of contrivance, and even so we have not got many. For that reason it is hard to make up the tribute each time it is to be presented. Now the number you ask for is far too great, and seek as we may they are hard to come by, so we cannot supply it. Still, we have searched to the far places on every side, gathering them month by month and heaping them up day by day; and as we have not yet filled out the number, we present in round sum nine hundred and seventy-seven skins. I beg you to look into it.

Further, you said that five hundred boys and five hundred girls of the king, of the several princes, of the princesses and the lesser princesses, and of the great officials must without fail be sent. As was set down in our earlier letter, the law of our country is that even one who stands above as sovereign takes only a single principal wife and has no concubines besides. For that reason the branches of the royal house are as a rule not luxuriant. Also, the country being small, the ministers who hold office are not many either, and the wives they have got are no more than one apiece. So some have borne no children and some have, and those who have, have not many. If we were to send them all to your state, who would succeed to the throne and to the offices of the court and uphold and serve the great state? If your country would soothe our district and have us on good terms for ten thousand ages, we ask that you remit such things as this remote and small land cannot bear, and so show the righteousness of cherishing a small country and upholding the weak. It would be fortunate indeed.

Further, the matter of sending the various artisans. The artisans of our country have been few from of old, and many of them besides have died of failed harvests and epidemics. Moreover, as your country's troops passed through, not a few were harmed and driven out from the fortresses and ramparts great and small. Since then they have been scattered, and there is none who stays fixed in one place and keeps wholly to his trade. For that reason we have not been able to send them on in order and answer your command. All this is reported just as it stands, and I beg you respectfully to weigh the circumstances and look on us with pity.

Further, the matter of investigating the goods of the people of Uiju (義州) that are attached to the place where Jo (趙), the military commissioner, is stationed. We have already sent the matter down to the military commissioner of that region to probe and make clear. Thereupon he reported that those who had held that fortress, and the people, fled aboard rafts and were lost in the wind and drowned, so that it could not be made clear in the open. I ask you to look into it. As for the rest of what you spoke of in your letter, we shall comply in every particular.

Further, as to the lean horses left behind when your country turned its troops homeward: we have searched them out and gathered them from place to place, fifteen head in all, and have at once had them taken in and fed. We send and present them together with this embassy. And so forth.