Urgent Report on the Ills of the Post Roads, and Requesting That Mountain Fortresses Be Rebuilt to Hold馳。啓驛路之弊且請修葺山城以爲保守狀

Concerning the affairs of this one route, though it be not your servant's charge, it bears on gain and loss, and so he cannot but report it. Of late the withering and ruin of each post station has already been severe, and since the war broke out they have fallen further into ruin. The station hands have nearly all fled, and the post horses now left do not exceed a few head at each station, at most.

Yet reports from every border, the coming and going of generals and troops, tribute goods and royal missions follow one on another day and night without cease, and the driving on with the whip is more than men can bear. Even court officials going in and out to escape the war never fail to travel under cover of public business and to ride the post horses; and when a station's horses fall short, swaemal are levied in addition and ridden on past the next stage, so that at the least occasion whole days are spent. Some treat them as their own and do not send them back for many days.

Now the post roads fall more into ruin by the day and there is no way to hold them up, so that even when there is urgent word it will not be passed on in time, which is bitterly disheartening. Even in ordinary times, if the one route of Gyeonggi met with the least lean year, the court would be concerned and take measures, and by forbidding the riding of post horses altogether would bring the post roads back to life. Now the business of all eight quarters is gathered on this one route, and the case is a hundred times more urgent than a lean year; let the office concerned be made to take measures in haste.

Your servant has read the histories of our country, and whenever there was war, the mountain fortresses were without fail rebuilt, the people gathered and set within to hold them, and grain stored inside as a plan for holding fast. Hence, though brigands overran the land, the districts left whole within a province were still many. Of late no thought at all is given to such things: though there be ground made rugged by Heaven itself, it is all abandoned and not held; the grain of the storehouses and the arms are all given over to the enemy; and the people, having all fled into the mountain valleys to hide, fold their hands and suffer the slaughter — which is truly galling.

Now the enemy at Pyongyang are close at hand, but a stage or two away, while each district is pressing on with the gathering of the autumn tax. Should an unlooked-for trouble arise, there will again be the worry of supplying the brigands with food.

Your servant hears quietly that among the mountain fortresses of the province, Yeongyu (永柔), Yonggang (龍岡) and Jasan (慈山) are all rugged and cut off and fit to hold, and that the districts north of Anju (安州), such as Gwaksan (郭山) and Guseong (龜城), all have mountain fortresses as well. If the hwanja (還上) of those districts were gathered first at the mountain fortresses, to provide against what lies far ahead, and the people led within to hold them should anything urgent arise, that too would be convenient and fitting.

Let the court also be made to weigh it and act with all haste; and if word were given alike, not to this province only but to such ground as Seoheung (瑞興) in Hwanghae Province and to the places fit to hold in the other provinces, and the thing carried out, it would truly be the urgent business of today.