Requesting That Jeong Hui-hyeon and Bak Myeong-hyeon Divide Their Troops to Block the Northern Road請分遣鄭希立朴名賢等軍以防北路狀

If the enemy at Pyeongyang are swiftly swept away within a few days, then the troops must at once be divided to hold off the enemy of the northern provinces. Only, military matters are hard to know beforehand; and if, while it drags on and lasts long, the enemy in the north take the opening and cross the pass and come out into the inner country, that is a thing of the utmost peril.

Of late your servant has seen urgent report after urgent report from Hong Segong (洪世恭) saying that there are signs the enemy soldiers will all come westward. At this season, when the snow melts and the pass roads open, there is no way at all with the few troops that remain to bar and cut them off. In your servant's thought, the Ming troops having already come here, there is no fear of a want of troops in this quarter. If a thousand and more of the troops attached to Jeong Huihyeon (鄭希玄), Bak Myeonghyeon (朴名賢) and the rest were divided off, dressed up in the fashion of Ming troops, and sent to the holding places of the southern province, there would be little to fear.

In general, as to the situation of the northern provinces, at the first the prospect of recovering them was eight or nine in ten. The enemy's swift troops were all gathered at Hamheung, holding off the troops coming from the north, and at Gowon, Muncheon, Deogwon, Yeongheung and such places they had left only a hundred-odd of their remaining troops. Our people too, shrinking from going in and out among one another, had made no preparation at all; and if there an unlooked-for opening were fallen upon and the enemy's head and tail cut away, the enemy at Hamheung would surely turn back, and if the troops of Jeong Munbu (鄭文孚) in the north joined force and struck them from both sides, within ten days there could be no enemy north of Cheollyeong.

This indeed was an opportunity not to be let slip; yet no Inspector was sent out again, and the officials of the rank of Assistant Defence Commander and the like were nearly all mean men who sat looking on with folded hands, and so let the enemy's strength grow the greater. In the situation of this day, though there are Ming troops, the fear of the northern enemy boring into our inner parts is at present great. It is for this that your servant's heart turns cold. Let the court devise a plan anew, dividing and reckoning it, so that there be no care of losing the time and finding it hard to contrive.