Granting Gwon Eung-won Office to Take Charge of Namhansanseong往見南漢山城後仍請權應元除授實職使之勾管山城事。啓

Your servants went and looked at Namhansanseong, and the lie of the ground is very good. The host of hills rises as though bound together, so that the wall stands in mid-air and from outside one does not know there is a wall there, while within there are level fields and farmland and houses where people live. The wall was built all of dressed stone, but now the places fallen down are very many. Climbing to the highest point, one has below the foot of Dokseong (禿城) in Gyeonggi and Mount Mari (摩利山) at Ganghwa all beneath the eye with nothing further to screen them, and above there is a beacon that answers to Namsan. If it were put in repair as is convenient and grain stored and a garrison plan for holding it made, the profit would be lasting.

In the Imjin year Gwon Eung-won (權應元) and others of that county led local troops at Gwangju, and when the enemy came they shot down many of them. By the seventh month Byeon Eon-su (邊彥璲) came, gathered those troops and camped on level ground; Gwon Eung-won urged him to go into the mountain fortress and hold it, but Byeon Eon-su feared that once in the mountain fortress it would be hard to flee. Before long they were fallen upon by the enemy, the whole force was broken, and Gwangju could not be held; so that to this day there is not one of the people of that county who, speaking of Byeon Eon-su, does not sigh and resent it bitterly.

Gwon Eung-won is now in that place overseeing the building of the mountain granary (山倉), so your servant called him and saw him and asked about the matters of when the upheaval first broke out. The man is quite nimble and hardy and without fear; he says that he once met the enemy single-handed and shot down a great many, so that they did not dare come near, and many of the people of Gwangju say the same. The memorials reporting the war merits of that time were much blocked on the road and did not arrive, so that he became no more than a supernumerary director of army provisions (軍資正) and lies cast aside in the countryside. Meeting such a time as this, a soldier who has fought with such strength ought to be taken up and held in readiness where he can be employed.

Your servant has made him commandant of the mountain fortress, to live on there within the wall and call together the few who are left of the righteous troops of days past and drill them by degrees. If real office (實職) of the sixth rank or above were granted him, to honor his old merit and hold him responsible for new merit besides, and the business of the mountain fortress were entrusted to him, so that the people might be gathered in to live there, and next year a little garrison farming were set out on the rich ground of Jeonggeumpyeong (定金坪) below the mountain, then within a few years it would be brought on and take shape by degrees, and the profit would surely be great. Only, the granting of office your servant does not dare to do of himself, and so he ventures to ask.