Letter to the Pyeongan Inspector移平安道巡察使文

If the number of soldiers of this one province is reckoned altogether by the military quota entered in the registers in ordinary times, it comes to more than ten thousand men. If households and support-families are added in, the number must be double that. Now, even with public and private slaves and men of mixed status all drawn in, the number stops here, and the reason cannot be understood. Though it is said that in soldiers one should strive for picked quality, if they are too few I fear they will not suffice to hold off an enemy in great force. There must surely be no proper method in the levying of soldiers, so that men are left out on either side. Look into it again carefully and then carry it out.

The power of Noeulgajeok grows stronger by the day, and the calamity to come may be reckoned. In all affairs, to act before a thing has grown grave makes the course easy; to act after it has already grown grave makes the course hard. Take this season, when the ice has broken and garrison duty rests: repair the walls of the forts and posts along the river where they have fallen in; build beacon mounds wherever a place is fit for raising a signal fire; make up what is short in the army's grain; furnish what is lacking in weapons; and replace those border officers who are inept and feeble. First make ready the ground on which the enemy cannot defeat us, and then wait for the moment when the enemy may be defeated; then, though trouble arise later, it will not be worth worrying over.

Since these are instructions given from afar, I raise only the main threads and cannot speak in detail. Let this province spur on the Army Commander and the border officers, admonish them with all sincerity, and make it their pledge to cross through the state's hardship together.