Letter to the Hwanghae Governor移黃海道巡察使文

What is planned day and night today lies only in the two courses of fighting and of holding. Yet one holds first and fights after; there is no man who can fight while unable to hold. The way of holding lies solely in gaining the lie of the ground. In general a realm has the lie of a realm, a province the lie of a province, a district the lie of a district. What is called the lie of the ground is land that I must hold and the enemy must contest.

The lie of this province runs, in the main, in two roads. One road goes by way of Gaeseong Prefecture and reaches Pyeongsan; the other goes by way of Tosan and Singye and reaches Seongcheon. Between them are slender byways that run off to the side, but these two roads are the vital arteries of the province. The Tosan and Singye road, however, is a mountain way, steep and narrow, hard for the enemy to advance by and easy for us to hold; so last year the Japanese too never once passed by this road, and their intent may be seen from that.

Now, speaking of the straight road, Gangeum alone is the most vital ground. It sits above the country below Jeotan, where there is nowhere that boats do not pass; it also lies close to the straight road to Pyeongsan, and Baecheon, Yeonan and Haeju all stand behind it. If a heavy camp is set here, the enemy will not dare cut straight along the road and fall upon Pyeongsan, and Baecheon, Yeonan and Haeju will all come within the collar and the bosom. This is the throat of the province.

Just because it is so, when the Japanese came down westward in the imjin year they set a camp at Heungui to block the high road and the Ojocheon road, and set another camp at Gangeum to make of it a gateway, and only then went down west as they pleased. A thousand li lay linked one to another, yet we could not block their waist and flank; that the enemy had crafty designs and a seeing eye and knew the lie of the ground well may be known from this too.

When Gangeum was merged the other day I happened to think of this intent, and now it has been set back as it was. But the intent in first wishing to restore it did not lie merely in restoring the district's name. It was to manage garrison fields little by little and store up grain, and to choose ground and hold it fast, so that it might become a fence for Yeonan, Baecheon, Pyeongsan and Haeju. Herein lies the great plan for the province.

Let this province reckon the matter once more: how the army's grain is to be stored up, how the people are to be gathered in numbers, in what place walls and ramparts may be set. Remit every levy that is not urgent; first set the scale of the work and fix the years for it, build it anew and bring it to pass little by little, and make of it a far design. Give your mind also to managing such vital places as Pyeongsan, Seoheung, Bongsan, Hwangju and Jaeryeong; and first report, one by one, the plans that may be carried out, and then put them in hand.