Urgent Report: Gyeongsang's Troops, and Renaming Yu Yeong-gyeong's Post to the Branch Ministry of Taxation馳。啓慶尙道軍兵事及柳永慶改稱分戶曹狀

I have just now gone upon the report of Seong Yunmun (成允文), Left Army Commander of Gyeongsang, which says: "More than half of the sogo troops of each district have been taken in rice instead, so that there is no way to make up the appointed three thousand men. To make those who have already paid in rice serve in the army as well brings the people's resentment to its height, and they scatter one after another, so that I do not know what to do."

In general the enemy's posture appears and vanishes here and there and is not fixed; and though our country's troops are said to be soft and weak and hard to use, yet to dismiss them all and leave the several commanders sitting empty-handed in country without men is already a mistaken plan. Even the scouting and watching and the passing on of news from the border have all fallen in and come loose. Since your servant entered the borders of Gyeongsang seven or eight days have gone by, and news of the border to left and right is far off. I have heard it told that in Aneum, Geochang, Hapcheon and those parts of the Right Province the enemy's posture has risen strongly and they have even seized the place where the Ming army had stored its grain, yet of this too there is nothing passed on to us. Beyond that, the raising of troops and the barring and holding have no shape at all, and every matter is utterly pitiable. A great business is upon us, and all our country's meeting of demands and acting in concert is thus loose and thin.

Your servant has sent letters by divided roads charging them over again with the utmost strictness, and has given notice that if any fail and do not meet the term, the commanders and officers and those below them will one and all be dealt with under military law. Yet it is hard to make a plan of mustering troops already scattered within a few days and going forward to attack, and the cares are ten thousandfold.

For the Ming army's grain, the stores of the government offices and of the people have all been gathered up, and barely seventy or eighty thousand seok have been made ready. Only, the officials who have come down into the province under commission are exceedingly many. The Director-General Yun Seunghun (尹承勳), Yu Yeonggyeong (柳永慶) of the Border Defense Council, and Seong Yeong (成泳) of the Branch Ministry of Taxation are all offices of equal standing, and each issues his own commands, so there is no little fear of their crossing one another. The grain of a single district is now ordered moved to Sangju, now to Gyeongju, now to Daegu; and because of this the magistrates cannot tell which order to follow and obey, and the worn-out people grow daily more exhausted and spent and cannot reach the one nor the other. This is the more worrying.

In all business, where commands come out mixed together there is no way for anything to be accomplished. At the outset the Superintendent had already set Yun Seunghun to take general charge of the way of supplying grain and fodder, and afterward, though the orders were divided and each governs his own, the title of Director-General still stands. It would seem fitting that the postures of the three branches be weighed together and that they consult with one another and dispose of matters in common. And it would seem fitting that Yu Yeonggyeong be styled not of the Border Defense Council but, together with Seong Yeong, of the Branch Ministry of Taxation, so that authority over the work returns to one place and their deliberations run together. Let the court dispose of this with urgency.