Rebuilding the Mountain Fortresses, Clearing the Fields, and Moving the Coastal Grain to Mongmido at Seoncheon請修葺山城淸野入保且移置海邊列邑之糓於宣川木彌島以備不虞狀

In an earlier report your servant set out the matter of the mountain fortresses in outline, and it came of what cannot be left undone. In general, the enemy troops have come a thousand ri and have already passed half a year; how should they have carried their own provisions? In truth they have got all their food from us. Had there been no grain stored at Pyongyang, then though there were walls a hundred gil high, how could the enemy have held fast there?

Now the enemy troops, long without coming out, show signs only in the deep of autumn of gathering their host and coming down westward. Who knows but their cruel design is to wait until our autumn grain is all gathered and the stores of public and private hands grow a little fuller, and then to beat the drum and advance again?

The plan for keeping off an enemy holds the clearing of the fields first of all, yet our country does not know how to do this. By report, in Gyeonggi and those parts the grain that filled the fields was all carried off to the enemy, and it is so in place after place. Within some tens of ri on every side of Pyongyang the ripe grain could not all be gathered, and how much the enemy plunder day by day is not known; they load up their fill as they please. Even had the village people been scattered and unable to gather it in time, if the troops and the people could still have set ambushes on the roads the enemy travel and joined their strength to cut and gather it, the supplying of the brigands with food would not have been as bad as this; which is truly to be regretted.

Yet this is still a small matter. Sunan (順安) and Sukcheon (肅川), very near Pyongyang, and three districts besides, and each district north of Anju, are now pressing on with the gathering of the hwanja (還上), which is little by little all going into the government storehouses; but seek for the preparations to guard and hold it, and there is not one place to be relied on. If unhappily there should again be an unlooked-for turn, as on a former day, this would be to fill the enemy's spirit the fuller, so that their sweep onward from afar could no longer be stopped; which is bitterly disheartening.

In your servant's foolish view, we should in haste choose the firm places among the province's mountain fortresses, gather there the grain and the people of the district itself and of the districts near, appoint swift generals apart, and make of this a plan for holding fast; and where there is no fortress, the grain should likewise be moved near the sea, or a temporary storehouse built for the time being at some place fit for hiding on a sea island, the grain set there and taken out for use when the time comes. This both provides against unlooked-for trouble and straitens the enemy's strength; and it is the most urgent business of today.

Your servant hears that Mongmido (木彌島) at Seoncheon (宣川) is not far from the mainland, that the island is broad within, and that there is a temple on its hill besides. Had this island lain to the south, a camp would surely have been set there to hold it; only, because the western side has not been furnished with sea routes, it has merely been made a pasture. The grain of the several places along the coast should likewise be moved and kept here; then, if there be urgency, the people can be sent in to hold it, and when the enemy withdraw it can be carried out by boat — convenient in both ways.

Quietly considering, since the case of today is perilous and pressing as this, truly if there be even one plan worth carrying out it should all be carried out with all haste, and we must not let our hands fall because the matter is already urgent. Therefore your servant has not shrunk from troubling you with repeated reports; and coming to have troubled you so many times, he is filled with awe beyond measure.