Letter in Reply to a Mongol Officer答蒙古官人書

I report. On a certain day of this month I all at once received your honored will. Respectfully, that your headquarters did not count a thousand li far but crossed over and came to our borders, and gave us words of instruction first of all, is a gladness and a kindness. Only, the several heads on which you questioned us are truly not the real mind of our country, and we dread this greatly. I make bold to spread out my inmost heart; let your great magnanimity alone take pity on us.

You said, "You got us to withdraw with artful words, and then turned your hearts about and went to live in the midst of the sea." And you said, "Two worthless men, Song Ipjang (宋立章) and Heo Gongjae (許公才), came and told lies and ran off, and you believed what those men said and turned your backs on us."

It is long that our country has been on good terms with the Emperor's court. On a former occasion a man called Song Ipjang came and said that the great state was about to raise a great army and come to attack our district. There was that in his words which could not but be believed, and the people, hearing it, were startled out of their wits and more than half of them fled, so that the fortresses and districts were all but empty. For as a rule, when the thunder cracks once, all under Heaven is startled together; and for this reason I too could not be without fear. Further, I was anxious that if the people who are left, and they are not many, should all flee in one morning as though swept away, we should be unable to present tribute year by year and serve the great state for ever. So it is only that, together with the remaining people, who are not many, we have come into a low and damp land where the airs of sickness hang, and seek to live out a shift of a life; how should we have any other mind? Heaven and Earth will truly be looking down upon it.

Further, the matter of which you said, "It was left that the darughachi should be killed if you would kill them and kept if you would keep them, and now you have seized and bound them." Of the darughachi, those who are in the capital have been treated with the greatest care, and never in the least have we crossed their wishes; how should the great state not have heard of it? To the several fortresses too we committed the charge, commanding that they be treated generously; and if among them there was any who did not do as the state instructed, neither can I know of it in every particular. Let the great state alone look into it clearly. As for seizing and binding envoys of the Emperor's court, there is no such thing, and if you investigate afterward you will know it.

Further, you said, "If your mind is truly to submit in allegiance, then come out and receive us; and if your mind is truly not to submit in allegiance, then bring out your troops and fight us." Now, hearing that a great army is out in the open fields with its body exposed, then even had the great state not said so, propriety would require that a small country go out in person to receive and feed it. But our district's removal to a deep and out-of-the-way land was not something the great state commanded, and looking back on it we cannot be without blame, so that in dread and in shame we have merely failed to come out and be received in time. The mind to submit in allegiance is all of one piece; how should there be two of it?

Further, foolish and benighted though this small country is, we already know the righteousness of standing in awe of the great state and submitting to it, and we have looked up to it these several years. How should we at this day bring forth a mind to rebel? Looking up, I beg that you will see clearly and forgive our faults, and cherish a small country, and soothe your outer hedge. That is truly my hope, and it is earnest beyond measure.