Memorial on Present Affairs陳時務箚

Your servant reports with respect. The situation of today grows more perilous and pressing by the day. Before, we always hoped the enemy troops would withdraw of themselves; but now autumn is spent and winter has come, and there is no more hoping that they will withdraw of themselves. The districts on every side look at one another and draw in their necks; it is truly a thing to grieve over. And before long the rivers will freeze and the Daedong, the Cheongcheon, and the Bakcheon will all become level ground, so that if the enemy troops scatter and cross the rivers there will be no way to hold them back.

Had the Ming court truly meant to send troops they should have come long since, yet to this day there is no word. Watching quietly how Skirmish Commander Shen (沈遊擊) handles matters, your servant thinks his great purpose goes no further than to bring the fighting to a stop by some lucky turn. The Japanese are crafty, and their deceits are a hundredfold. If they speak of peace on the face of it and hang back until the winter is past, and then the next year gather their hosts again, rest their soldiers and sharpen their weapons, and come rolling up the land, can covenants and good faith hold down their violence? This savage enemy spied out their chance for ten years before raising this affair, and their blade has not once been broken; how should there be any reason for them to go home of themselves? For the Ming generals to mistake their plan is the greatest misfortune of all for our country, and your servant beats his breast and cannot master his anguish and does not sleep at night. Now this state of things should be reported clearly and quickly, and their swift coming asked again, before even one chance in ten thousand can be saved.

Your servant also hears quietly that there is talk of the barbarians of the Jianzhou Guard (建州衛) coming to our relief as well, which is a grievous thing. In the time of Tang the An–Shi (安史) rebellion was not put down, and troops were borrowed from the Uighur (回紇) and from Tibet (吐蕃), and generation after generation suffered the harm of it; and the present affair is not even to be compared with that. Yet the northern barbarians have of late borne us a heavy grudge because of those of their people who were seized and beheaded while digging ginseng, and now they have come, for all that, with fair words to sound us out; so we too should meet them with fair words, and must not cut them off with harsh words and add to their anger. Only let a frontier commander say this to them: "Our country and yours have been neighboring lands for generations. Now, hearing that the Japanese have raised a disturbance, you would come to our relief, and your intent is very fine. When the court hears of it, it will surely think it remarkable and bestow a reward. Only, the trouble of the Japanese is now all but settled, and it has not come to putting you to the labor of a long journey."

In asking the Ming court to have it stopped as well, there is no need to speak out loudly of cutting them off altogether, as though facing a foe of generations. It should be done with mild words that firmly turn them away, and the fear that the harm will be no light one should be made known in secret, but their words must not come out to those ears and so add one enemy more. Our situation is at its most pressing, and whether they come forward or draw back is not ours to settle; if they should raise many horsemen and come and stay beyond the river, calling it relief while their inward purpose is hard to reckon, how should we then meet them? The court will surely answer this matter fittingly, but your servant, being here and not hearing it in detail, cannot bear his excess of worry and ventures to report thus presumptuously.

Again, your servant, being here, has met those who come and go from every quarter and has heard in outline the state of the several provinces, and the affairs of Ganghwa (江華) are most worrying. The troops are many but there is nowhere that leads them as one, so that commands are tangled, and there is no able commander either. Lately it is heard that at Hwajangpo (華藏浦) they again failed to win, and that boats too were taken by the enemy. What can tolerably be trusted in now is the troops of Ganghwa, and it is also the road by which word from the south comes through; so if unhappily the enemy enter Ganghwa, the great work is at an end. Now let Kim Cheonil (金千鎰), Choe Won (崔遠), and Byeon Yangjun (邊良俊) gather many naval troops and hold that ground firmly and move as they see the time, not falling into the enemy's schemes but seeking what is wholly safe.

Again, among the several commanders of the Gyeonggi region Go Eonbaek (高彥伯) is the most fit to be charged with it, yet the charge given him is not single, and the troops he leads are only the people of the one district of Yangju (楊州), so that the work cannot be accomplished. In your servant's thought, let the troops of Yangju, Pocheon, Jeokseong, Gapyeong, Yeongpyeong, and such districts all be attached to Go Eonbaek to block the eastern road and strike the enemy troops; let the troops of Goyang, Gyoha, Ganghwa, and Gyodong, west of the capital, be attached to another commander; and let the troops of Gwangju, Gwacheon, Suwon, Ansan, Geumcheon, and such districts be led by yet another commander, so that the three quarters join their strength and make it their plan to retake the capital; and let a great minister who has reckoning and is loyal and brave lead them all. Do this, and the work will find its thread, and the keeping of order and the commands will all have somewhere to return to, and the work can be saved.

From of old, the falling of a country is not the piling of a single day nor the fault of a single thing, but commonly begins with the breaking down of the heart of the gentry. There is no leisure to discuss other things, but in this perilous time that malady is the greater. Hence the governors and magistrates all flee, cherishing the thought of saving their own bodies alone: before the enemy comes they take their households about the several districts demanding entertainment, so burdening the clerks and the people, and when the enemy comes they see only the wind of it and flee first. The worst of them pick out all the swift and brave soldiers to guard their own bodies, and hide deep and flee far, fearing only to see the enemy. So those who in former days shot down and took the scattered enemy in their own districts and saved them are now all become an idle crowd in the commanders' quarters; men all think it shameful and sigh over it without end. It is only that the court does not know of it.

As for Gangwon Province, its hills and woods are deep and closed in and its roads steep, and here and there are places where few troops could hold back many. Truly, had men who live by hunting in the mountains (山尺) and the huntsmen been picked at the first and heavy rewards set out, with ambushes laid everywhere, and had all the enemy's goods taken been given to those men so that they should wish to follow, the one province could tolerably have held out. But now it has already become the enemy's ground, and they have made it a lair together with the enemy of the northern province, and their strength grows by the day and will spread even to the left and right circuits of Gyeongsang, so that your servant does not know what land will be left to the country again. To speak of it is a thing to wail over. Now something must be done, and it must be gathered up in haste before it can be mended. Again, within the one province those who have come forward with a name are very many, but there is not one place where the enemy was taken; they are only in vain disorder and a burden to the districts, and should not this too be cut down a little?

Again, Chungcheong and Jeolla are the root of our country. With the enemy at their height, if the governors of both provinces leave their own provinces to go to the aid of the sovereign, there will surely be the trouble of falling short on both sides. If Chungcheong and Jeolla break down, then Yeongnam too will be hard to hold, and in the eight provinces there will be no sound ground left. Here too it seems handy and fitting to have one commander pick the best troops and lead them to the aid of the court, while the governor stays to ward off the enemy of his own province.

Your servant has one further worry. Looking at the strength of this enemy, when it will be put down cannot be divined. Even should the enemy troops happily withdraw, the stores of the districts far and near are all spent, so that next year there will be nowhere for seed to come from and the people will all fill the ditches; who then will save them? This is no small worry. Now, while the enemy troops are still here, besides the army grain there is much unhulled grain stored up in the districts, and it is to be feared that something unlooked for may happen to it.

Your servant hears that Sinmido (身彌島) off Seoncheon (宣川) is broad in land and no different from such a place as Ganghwa, and only that on the western road the sea is not guarded, so no garrison (鎭) was set there. In your servant's thought, if the unhulled grain of Seoncheon, Jeongju, and Gasan, and below them of Gwaksan, Yongcheon, Cheolsan, and the several districts, were moved there by sea boat and a single military officer set to guard it with naval troops, and many thatched houses built to make a plan for passing the winter, and then, when the enemy is put down, it were carried out by the land road to serve as the next year's seed, that would truly be looking far ahead. If Chodo (椒島) off Pungcheon (豐川) in Hwanghae Province and the other islands were all dealt with in this way, it would neither be lost to the enemy nor fail to be ready for the next year's use, and the thing would be most convenient; and as the sea road runs west of Ganghwa, there would be no blockage either. Your servant ventures to report this together with the rest; whether his mistaken view is fit for use he does not know, but he could not fail to give his whole earnest heart. He begs that a disposition be handed down as to what should be done.