Goryeo 4 — The Southern Song and the customs of Goryeo高麗 四

In the tenth month of the first year of Shaoxing, Goryeo was about to come with tribute. Liu Yue, vice minister of Rites, said, "Siming, that is Mingzhou, is lately broken and laid waste, and it is barren and weak. I fear it may rouse thoughts of war in them, and heavy troops should be stationed there to wait for their coming." In the eleventh month an edict named Liu Yue to go as envoy to Goryeo, but in the end he did not go.

In the intercalary fourth month of the second year Hae sent Choe Yucheong, vice director in the Ministry of Rites, and Sim Gi, gatekeeper in waiting, with tribute of a hundred taels of gold, a thousand taels of silver, two hundred bolts of fine silk, and five hundred catties of ginseng, and what Yucheong himself presented came to a third as much. The emperor received them in the rear hall, gave Yucheong and Gi two gold belts, answered with a kindly edict, and sent them home. In this month Dinghai county reported that some eighty of the people who had fled into Goryeo wished to send up a memorial and return to their country, and by edict it was ordered that when the day came, Tak Yeong and the other Goryeo shipmasters (綱首) should be shown favour in due measure. In the twelfth month it was heard that Goryeo was sending sixty-five men with tribute, Hong Iseo, manager of the Bureau of Military Affairs, and the rest, and it was proposed to lodge the envoys in the prefectural school of Lin'an. Those who spoke against it said that even in a time of war there must be schools, and that they feared being spied upon, so by edict the Fahui Temple was made the Tongwen Hostel and they were to be received there. In the end they did not come.

In the sixth year Kim Chigyu, the dispatch-bearing officer of Goryeo, came to Mingzhou. Silver and silk were bestowed on him and he was sent away, for they feared he might be a spy for the Jin.

In the third month of the thirty-second year Seo Deogyeong, a Goryeo shipmaster, came to Mingzhou and said that his country wished to send an envoy of congratulation. Han Zhongtong, the prefect, reported it, and Wu Fu, attendant censor of the Palace, memorialized: "Goryeo shares a border with the men of Jin. In past days, when Chigyu came, the court feared he was a spy and sent him back in haste. Now that the two countries are at war, how can Deogyeong's request not be doubted? If they do come, there is still cause to fear what cannot be foreseen, and if by any chance they do not come, we shall be left a laughingstock to a distant land." By edict it was stopped.

In the fourth month of the second year of Longxing, Mingzhou reported that Goryeo was coming with tribute. The histories do not record the day of the audience, so it was probably the same deceit as in Hong Iseo's time. After that the exchange of envoys was cut off for good.

In the Qingyuan years an edict forbade merchants to carry copper coin into Goryeo, which in effect broke off relations with them.

In earlier days, when Goryeo envoys came in, Mingzhou and Yuezhou were worn out with providing for them, and what the court spent on hostels, on feasts, and on gifts was counted in tens of thousands (鉅萬), and what was sent to their king was not even reckoned in that. The journeys of the Song envoys too took two Divine Ships each time, and the cost of that was not small either, and the ranks and stipends of the officials of the three sections (三節) of the mission all leaned on the public treasury. When Su Shi said to the former court that the tribute of Goryeo carried five harms, this was why. Only, the state now stands in Wuhui (吳會), and matters are not as they were at the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng. In earlier days the Goryeo envoys came by way of Dengzhou and Laizhou, and the barrier of mountains and rivers was very long; now they come straight to Siming, and between Siming and the temporary capital, Lin'an, there is only the water of the Zhe.

Going as envoy to Goryeo by the sea road, the water spreads out wide and far and the islands and shoals are dangerous, and if a black wind is met and the ship strikes a rock it is broken at once. Only after passing out of Geupsumun and reaching Gunsando can one say that one has come through safely, and it takes not less than several tens of days. When the ship runs north or south and meets a fair wind, it passes the dangerous places as though they were level ground and arrives in a few days. That country is two thousand li from east to west and five hundred li from north to south. To the northwest it borders on the Khitan, and it trusts to the Amnok River for its defence, the river being three hundred paces wide. The sea that lies along its east is clear and pure, and one can see ten fathoms down, and looking southeast toward Mingzhou the water is all blue.

The king lives in Chongmak commandery of Gaeju, which is called Gaeseong prefecture. Leaning on a great mountain he has set his palace buildings and raised city walls, and the mountain is named Sinsung. The houses of the people are all thatched, and the largest do not go beyond two rafters, and barely two in ten are roofed with tile. Silla is made Nangnang prefecture of Dongju and is called the Eastern Capital; Baekje is made Geumma commandery of Geumju and is called the Southern Capital; Pyeongyang is made Jinju and is called the Western Capital, and the Western Capital is the most flourishing. All together there are three capitals, four prefectures, and eight districts, a hundred and eighteen commanderies, three hundred and ninety counties and garrisons, and three thousand seven hundred islands. The smallest commandery towns have no more than a hundred households. Of men and women there are two million one hundred thousand, and soldiers, common people, and monks each make up a third. The land is cold and full of mountains, and the soil suits pine and nut pine. There is non-glutinous rice, millet, hemp, and barley, but no glutinous rice, so they make their liquor from the non-glutinous rice. Silk and silkworms are few, and a bolt of fine silk is worth ten taels of silver, so most of them wear hemp and ramie.

When the king goes out he rides a carriage drawn by an ox, and only where the mountains are steep does he ride a horse. Men in purple go before him, carrying the Hoguk inwang gyeong to lead the way. His commands are called gyo and seon. Subjects and people call him Seongsang, the Holy One, and in private Eomgong, the stern lord, and the consorts are called gungju, palace mistresses. The names of the hundred offices, and the grades, the merit ranks, the titles of meritorious subjects, and the honorary posts, are much like those of the Central Court. Passing the Censorate one dismounts, and whoever fails in this is impeached. Scholars rank one another by the standing of their clans, and the four surnames Yu, Choe, Kim, and Yi are the noble stocks. There are no eunuchs, and sons of the great clans are made palace attendants and men of the Six Guards. On the first day of the twelfth month each year the king sits in the small hall at the Purple Gate and assigns the offices, while the posts outside the capital he leaves to the chief minister (國相). There are the Gukjagam and the Samun School, where six thousand men study. Candidates for office are of three grades: those of the royal city are called togong, those of the commandery towns hyanggong, and men of other countries bingong. Every second year they are tested by the office they belong to and tested again at the state school, and those taken are not more than thirty or forty; after that the king himself tests them on three subjects, poem, rhapsody, and essay, which is called the second test before the curtain (簾前重試). There are also the categories of jegwa and goengsa, but these are mere show. The scholars honour the rules of sound and rhyme, and few of them are versed in the classics.

In the royal city there are several hundred Chinese, most of them men of Min (閩) who came by merchant ship. Their abilities are quietly tested and they are tempted with office and stipend, and some are held there by force for the rest of their lives. When an envoy of the court arrives and one of them sends up a plea, he is taken home again.

The hundred offices take rice for their salary, and all are given fields; the salary is paid by half, and at death it is taken back. There is no private land in the country, and the people are given their living by the count of their households. From sixteen years and up a man fills the ranks, and the Six Armies and Three Guards are always kept at the offices of state, and every three years men are chosen to garrison the northwest and are relieved after half a year. When there is an alarm they take up arms; when they are given work they labour at it; and when the business is done they go back to their fields. The king too has an allotted domain (分地) to meet his private needs, and the king's mother, the consorts and princesses, and the heir apparent all receive tangmok lands set aside for their upkeep.

High and low alike make their business of the profits of trade. At midday they open the market, and they trade with rice and cloth. Copper is found in the ground, but they did not know how to cast coin, and the coin China gave them they stored in their treasuries and now and then brought out to pass around and look at, and no more. After the Chongning era they began to learn casting, and there came to be three kinds of coin, the Haedong tongbo, the Haedong jungbo, and the Samhan tongbo, but they did not sit well with the customs of the country. Their weapons are coarse and simple, and they have no strong crossbows or great swords.

They honour the teaching of the Buddha, and even among the king's sons and younger brothers there is always one who becomes a monk. They believe in spirits and are bound by the yin and the yang, so that when a man is ill they do not look on one another, and when they shroud the dead they do not lay hands on the coffin. When a poor man dies they leave him out in the open fields. Each year in the eleventh month they sacrifice to Heaven. In the east of the country there is a cave called Susin (禭神), and they always welcome the spirit and sacrifice on the fifteenth day of the tenth month, which is called the Palgwanjae (八關齋), and the ceremony is very grand. The king and his consorts climb a tower, and there is great music and feasting and drinking, and the merchants stretch out silk for awnings, joining as many as a hundred bolts together to show their wealth. Every three years a great sacrifice is held throughout the land within their borders, and on this pretext they gather the goods of the people, and the king and his officials divide them among themselves. The ancestral shrine is outside the gate of the capital, and at the great sacrifice the king comes with carriage and robe and crown and tablet and offers in person. In the royal city there are seventy Buddhist temple grounds and no Daoist halls, but in the Daguan era, when the court sent Daoists there, they set up the Bogwon Cloister and put more than ten Daoists in it. The people did not know medicine, and only after King U asked for physicians were there any who had learned that art.

The people have no ridge to the back of the head (枕骨), and their backs are flat. The men's kerchiefs are like the dress of Tang, and the women let a braided knot hang over the right shoulder with the rest of the hair falling below, bound with crimson gauze and pinned through. They wear wrapped skirts one over another, and count many of them the finer thing. Men and women who make themselves husband and wife are not forbidden, and in summer they bathe in the same stream. Women, monks, and nuns all bow as the men do. Their music is very low and has no sound of metal or stone, but after music was bestowed on them they divided it into a left and a right part: the left is called Tang music (唐樂), the music of China, and the right native music (鄉樂), their own old practice. They spread mats in the hall and must take off their shoes to go up, and before an elder they go on their knees and must kneel, and must answer, "Yes." No bow of theirs goes unanswered, and when a son bows his father still answers him with half a bow. They are gentle and kindly by nature and hate killing, and they do not slaughter beasts; when they would eat mutton or pork they wrap it in mugwort and burn it.

In their punishments there is no cruel article. Only those guilty of heinous rebellion and those who curse their parents are beheaded, and all the rest are beaten on the ribs. Death sentences in the outer commanderies are all sent up to the royal city, and every year in the eighth month they go over the prisoners, lessening the capital sentences and sending the condemned in exile to the islands, and they pardon often, weighing the heavy and the light and forgiving them.

From Dinghai in Mingzhou, meeting a fair wind, one enters the open sea in three days, and in five days more reaches Muksan and enters their borders. From Muksan, passing the islands and winding among the rocks, the ship runs very fast, and in seven days one comes to the Yeseong River. The river lies between two mountains, bound in by a stone gorge, and the rapids rush down; this is what is called Geupsumun, and it is the most dangerous place of all. Three days more and one reaches the shore, where there is a hostel called the Byeongnanjeong, and from there the envoys go up on land, and after forty li and more of winding mountain valleys they come to the capital of that country.