Rescript Not Allowing Choe Sukpil (崔叔必), Deputy Prefect of Jaju, to Decline the Command to Return to Office while in Mourning慈州副使崔叔必讓起復不允批答
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 111 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 33 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
The three years' mourning is an institution that runs through all the world. Yet that in middle antiquity men were made to follow what the time required and to put on the auspicious dress was from the first because of the business of war. I have already given you the charge of taking a share in the cares of the northern land.
Now the northern land borders upon the country of strong barbarians and is a place where soldiers are used even in time of peace. And now the barbarian horsemen go about as they please, coming of a sudden and going of a sudden. Therefore among the magistrates of the frontier walls there is none who casts away his spear and puts off his armour; it is just now the time to keep watch strictly by day and by night.
Will you at such a time make your parent's mourning your excuse, and not exert yourself in the policy of forgetting one's house and following the state?