Asking That Another Minister Receive the Ming Generals得病請姑使他大臣料理接待天將事。啓

Your servant fell ill on the road, and within these few days it has grown worse. At first there was only looseness of the bowels; then it turned to dysentery mixed with blood, with pain in the belly and swollen piles besides, so that several ailments take turns rising in him as his strength fails. For several nights he has not closed his eyes, and food and drink are wholly cut off, so that he is spent and without strength and cannot even rise and sit. In this perilous and hard time he can lend not the least strength and is like to fade sooner than the morning dew; truly he grieves for himself without end.

What the country trusts in now is the Ming troops alone; yet because our country has not gathered its strength to supply them, the troops have grown old by the riverside without advancing a single step, and the enemy have been let make Pyeongyang their lair and nurse their strength there, so that it becomes a calamity without end. The matter is urgent: your servant ought to meet the Ming generals day by day and weigh the business of war, and in supplying grain along the road he ought also to run about in person, see with his own eyes what is full and what is empty, and provide with all his mind — only then can the term be met. But unhappily his illness is such as this, and fearing that the great work will be spoiled he cannot but report it.

Your servant prostrates himself and begs that Your Majesty keep this in mind: if, while your servant treats his illness, another minister be made to weigh and handle it, there will be no regret of coming too late for the work. Should your servant by good fortune live, he will not shrink from hardship so far as his strength reaches. In fear and awe he ventures to report.