The Ming Attack on Pyongyang, and Replacing the Magistrate of Anju馳。啓天兵進攻平壤形止及請罷安州牧使李民覺代以林仲樑狀

Yesterday the Ming troops advanced together with our own and encamped ten li outside the wall of Pyeongyang, and towards nightfall brought the troops forward under the wall. In the early evening the enemy sent out troops from Mildeok (密德) and came to fight, and as the Ming troops fired many cannon the enemy could not hold and withdrew inside the wall. The Ming troops meant to enter the wall at dawn today, and our troops took along the long ladders made at Sunan (順安) the day before. How the victory or defeat stands is not yet known in detail.

If it drags on and lasts long, the supplying of provisions and fodder is most pressing. As for shipping in the Ming provisions, let it be urgently disposed of as in the report submitted the other day, so as to make the term.

At a time when matters are as urgent as this, the district magistrates along the road are in many places not fit men, and so nothing at all is disposed of. Yi Mingak (李民覺), Prefect of Anju, is by nature slack and weak, dull and feeble, and besides much given to illness, so that he cannot govern the district and his orders are not carried out by those below him. Your servant has always meant to report and have him changed, but at a time of much business he did not wish to change a magistrate anew, and feared besides that no fit man might be found to take his place; and so he has put it off until now. Now he can by no means be left as he is.

Let a man be specially chosen from among the civil and military officials who has judgement and is diligent and fit to be entrusted, and sent galloping without regard to night or day. Yesterday your servant called in Im Jungnyang (林仲樑) and asked him about the business of Junghwa (中和); and seeing the sort of man he is, he is fit to be entrusted with affairs. If this man were appointed for the present and set to govern, holding the defence of the wall together with it, it would seem convenient and fitting.