Urgent Report after Inspecting the Royal Remains at Songsan松山所安。靖陵玉體奉審後馳。啓狀

When the tombs of Seonneung (宣陵) and Jeongneung (靖陵) were reverently inspected in the past days, I was ill and could not go and take part. Only on the eighteenth of this month did I at last follow behind the several high ministers and reverently inspect the royal remains laid at Songsan.

The hair of the head and face had all fallen away, and the skin clung dried to the bone; below the shins the flesh was gone and only bone remained. It is plain enough that the body is one of many years. At the chest and belly and back the skin was thick and firmly set so that the joints of the bones could not be seen, and the upper chest stood very high. On the left shoulder blade behind there were the marks of holes, one large and one small, about a pun apart from each other. This was all that could be seen; of the rest nothing could be made out.

I prostrate myself and consider that this is the uttermost of calamities. Should the discerning and distinguishing go wrong in the least, the matter does not bear speaking of. I was born in a later age and know nothing, and in a grief without bound I dare not discuss it lightly. Only if it is examined again more closely and set beside the appearance upon the tomb, and if inquiry is made in many ways whether the old graves near the tomb were broken open or not, then perhaps the spirits will help us, and there may be hope of coming at the truth, if only by one chance in ten thousand.