Requesting to Be Stripped of Office for Illness以病請鐫罷職名狀

Since the fourth month I have been gravely ill, and what strength I had has broken down like a withered tree. The illness was not yet cured, but the state of the south was so urgent that I could not dare to take my ease in a far place. At last I set out in spite of it, and on the way down I heard besides that the Right Province was in peril, so I rode hard day and night and went busily to and fro between Goryeong and Chogye. Though I was not of a hair's worth of help, the sickness of this lowly body grew deeper by the day: always cold and hot by turns, with endless looseness of the bowels, craving nothing but water, oppressed, and all appetite for food quite gone. At such a time I could only set my mind on dying, and did not dare to speak of my illness.

On receiving the summons, in gratitude and awe I set out upon the road, grudging each day. Reaching the road at Wonju in Gangwon Province, I reverently received the royal command (聖旨) brought by a Royal Messenger and turned again toward Jecheon. That day wind and rain rose high and the mountain road was hard, and my illness at last grew worse. Going forward a step at a time, when I reached Chungju I could hardly move my body and stayed a day; crossing the pass to Mungyeong I stayed another day. Pressing on at the risk of death, when I came to the land of Gyeontan on the way I could not recognize anyone and fell face down in the grass. These few days the symptoms have been cold for a moment and hot the next, much like malaria. By my own reckoning the illness has entered the vitals (膏肓) and my skin clings to my bones, and everyone who sees me says there is no color of a living man in my face.

Yet the business of the state is pressing. I hear it told that Mobile Commander Wu and Regional Commander Liu have both already gone back to Sangju and have no mind at all to stay long. The army grain within the province is already at the bottom, and the grain hauled from Honam does not keep up. It is now a month and more since Yi Seongjung (李誠中), Minister of Taxation, died, and no official has come to take his place, so that the hauling of grain and the feeding of the troops grows slacker by the day and threatens to fall apart altogether.

I came late into this province and do not know the head or the tail of matters, and in going back and forth upon the road the days only slip past out of joint, so that the opportunity grows further off. My body too is sick and worn as this, so that I cannot bear riding about, and I can hardly look into things and keep them in hand as I would.

I prostrate myself and consider: the enemy troops are camped and entrenched and their cruel designs are hard to fathom, while our own case grows more perilous with each day than the last. Should the Ming army pull out on the ground that there is nothing to eat and the cold is coming on, and the enemy seize the opening and fall upon us, I do not know what we should make our plan. This is why, looking down and looking up, my heart turns cold and in the dead of night I beat my breast.

The court is far off, a thousand li away, and there will be things here that it cannot yet fully know. Let one as shallow and sick as I be allowed to be stripped of office at once, and let a senior minister of knowledge and judgment, fit to carry a great business through, be sent instead to hasten day and night like a shooting star and save the business of the state.