Letter to Gyeonggi and Hwanghae on Military Affairs移京畿黃海道軍務文

The state has been at peace a hundred years and the people have not known soldiering, so that at one meeting with the mad robbers they could not hold, and the calamity came to this. Now, to take warning from what is past and plan how to guard against trouble to come, all lies in the one business of drilling troops. Only, if in the doing of it the right way is not found and crafty clerks work their tricks in the midst of it, the people's feeling is not at ease, and then it is no plan fit to be followed. Therefore articles for military study were drawn up apart, and the order that each should drill in his own ward as suits him was made known by official letter; and when the Gyeonggi Defense Commander went down, this intent was raised with him and he was charged with it again.

In general the great net-cord of military administration under our ancestral court lay wholly in setting up the garrison commands, so that there should be a leading and a belonging. But since the long peace this institution has fallen in ruin: military administration has no leading and the troops have no ranks, so that when a sudden change comes the commander comes out of the court and the soldiers come out of the fields, in disorder and without order — it is like driving a flock of sheep to stand against a field where arrows and stones fly. What is there to wait for but defeat?

Now the court, taking deep warning from this evil, has set the law of the garrison commands forth again and again, and yet in the outer counties the rules for drilling troops are still much confused and out of their order, which is truly pitiable. Not long ago the drilling of troops in Chungcheong was carried out by a censor the court sent down apart for it, and he did it following in every point the directions of the Military Training Directorate; and so the law of the company officers and of the banner chiefs and squad chiefs there is clear and plain, and may be understood at one looking. To divide the ranks and reckon them is the vital law of the masters of war; only when that is clear can drilling be done and commands be issued.

In Gyeonggi there are the four garrison commands of Suwon, Gwangju, Yangju, and Jangdan; and Ganghwa and Gyodong, being in the midst of the sea, were not attached to the land forces but made a garrison apart; and in Hwanghae there are the two garrison commands of Haeju and Hwangju. This was our ancestors' far-seeing care. The rules for drilling troops can now be sought nowhere else than here. Gyeonggi is to make a register apart of the troops belonging to each garrison command, and, following their number, is to report the company officers and the banner chiefs and squad chiefs of each ward along with it; and Hwanghae likewise is to make such a register and report it with haste.

The several harbors along the sea in Hwanghae belong to Sogang (所江), and the garrison commander (僉使) there is their garrison command; for since Hwanghae has no naval commander, the garrison commander was made the garrison command, so that the several harbors in their circumstances should have a leading and a belonging. The root intent in setting up the law was truly no chance thing. Yet now the garrison commander does not know that he is himself a garrison command, and the harbors that belong to him do not know that they belong to Sogang, so that the business has no leading. With what, then, shall the enemy be held off? Hereafter the garrison commander of Sogang shall take charge of the affairs of the harbors belonging to him, and report with the haste of a falling star the number of the naval troops who serve their turn in a year, the number of warships now on hand, the places where timber may be got when ships are repaired and built in ordinary times, and the number of soldiers that must go into them.