Choe Chiwon崔致遠

Choe Chiwon's courtesy name was Goun, and he was a man of Saryangbu in the royal capital. The records of history have been lost, and his line is not known.

When Chiwon was young he was sharp and quick and loved to learn. When he was twelve he was about to follow a sea ship into the Tang to seek learning, and his father said to him, "If in ten years you do not pass the examination, then you are no son of mine. Go, and work hard."

Chiwon reached the Tang and followed a master and did not slacken in his study. In the first year of Qianfu, a gabo year, he passed at the first try under Pei Zan, the vice minister of rites, and he was appointed sheriff of Lishui county in Xuanzhou. By his record in office he became chengwulang and attending censor in inner service, and he was given the purple and gold fish pouch.

At that time Huang Chao rebelled, and Gao Pian was made commander in chief of the horse and foot of the field offices of all the circuits and struck at him. He called Chiwon to serve on his staff and put the work of secretary in his hands, and the memorials and reports and letters he wrote are handed down to this day.

When he was twenty-eight he had a mind to go home and see his parents, and Xizong knew of it, and in the first year of Guangqi he sent him back with an imperial letter as an envoy. He was kept at court as reader in attendance, and at the same time academician of the Hallim, acting vice minister of the board of war, and director of the Seoseogam.

Chiwon held that he had gained much from his study in the west, and when he came back he meant to carry out what was in his own mind. But it was a worn and failing age, full of doubt and envy, and he was not received, and he went out to be governor of a hill commandery.

In the second year of Jingfu of Zhaozong of the Tang, Kim Cheohoe, the vice minister of war, who was going to present the token of office, drowned in the sea, and so they chose Kim Jun, the governor of Chuseong commandery, to be the envoy to report to the throne.

At that time Chiwon was governor of Buseong commandery, and the king called him to be the envoy of the new year greeting. But there was famine year after year, and because of it robbers rose up on every side, and the roads were blocked, and he did not get to go.

Afterward Chiwon too did once go to the Tang bearing an embassy, but the year and the month of it are not known. So in his collected writings there is a letter sent up to the grand preceptor and attendant in chief, and it says this.

"I have heard that beyond the eastern sea there are three states, and their names are Mahan, Byeonhan and Jinhan. Mahan is Goguryeo, Byeonhan is Baekje, and Jinhan is Silla.

When Goguryeo and Baekje were at their full strength, their strong soldiers were a million. In the south they raided Wu and Yue, and in the north they troubled You and Yan and Qi and Lu, and they were a great worm eating at China. The emperor of the Sui lost his grip on the reins, and it came of his campaign against Liaodong.

In the years of Zhenguan our Tang emperor Taizong led the six armies himself and crossed the sea and reverently carried out the punishment of Heaven. Goguryeo feared his power and asked for peace, and the Emperor Wen received their surrender and turned his carriage back.

At this time our great king Muyeol asked, with the loyalty of a dog or a horse, to help settle the trouble of this one quarter, and he went into the Tang to attend at court. From this it began.

Afterward, because Goguryeo and Baekje went on doing the evil they had done before, Muyeol went to court and asked to be the guide. In the fifth year of Xianqing of the emperor Gaozong, the throne commanded Su Dingfang to lead the strong soldiers of ten circuits and ten thousand tower ships, and he broke Baekje utterly. Then in that land they set up the Buyeo dodokbu, gathered in the people who were left, and set Han officers over them. But their smell and their taste were not the same, and again and again word came that the people were breaking away, and at last they moved those people to Henan.

In the first year of Zongzhang the throne ordered Li Ji, the duke of Ying, to break Goguryeo, and the Andong dodokbu was set up. By the third year of Yifeng those people were moved to Henan and Longyou.

The remnant of Goguryeo gathered together and went north and leaned on the foot of Taebaeksan, and they named their country Balhae.

In the twentieth year of Kaiyuan they bore a grudge against the court of Heaven, and they led troops and fell suddenly on Dengzhou and killed the governor Wei Jun. At this the emperor Ming was greatly angered, and he ordered the inner secretary Gao Pin, and He Xingcheng, and the grand coachman Kim Saran to raise troops and cross the sea and strike at them, and at the same time he added to our king Kim, such and such, the titles of upright grand commandant, bearer of the staff of authority, commissioner for the military affairs of Yeonghae, and daedodok of Gyerimju. But the winter was deep and the snow thick, and the tribesmen and the Han men suffered from the cold, and the throne ordered the army back.

For more than three hundred years to this day this quarter has been without trouble and the blue sea has been at peace, and this is the merit of our great king Muyeol.

Now I am a last learner at the gate of the Confucians, common stuff from a village beyond the sea, and I have wrongly been given a memorial to carry, and I have come to this happy land to attend at court. Whenever there is anything sincere and earnest, propriety holds that it should be spread out and set forth.

I have looked and seen this. In the twelfth year of Yuanhe, Kim Jangnyeom, a prince of our own country, was driven by the wind and came ashore at Mingzhou, and a certain officer of Zhedong sent him on into the capital. In the second year of Zhonghe, Kim Jingnyang, the envoy going to court, found the roads closed because a rebel officer had risen in revolt, and so he came ashore at Chuzhou, and going on by stages he reached Yangzhou, and there he learned that the sacred carriage had gone to Shu,

and the grand commandant Gao chose Zhang Jian, a company head, to escort him under guard as far as Xichuan. The earlier cases are plain.

I bow and beg that the grand preceptor and attendant in chief bend down his great kindness and grant me a special warrant for water and land, so that in every place I pass they may supply boat and ship, cooked food, and the donkeys and horses and fodder for a long road, and that a military officer be chosen to escort me under guard as far as the imperial carriage."

The man here called the grand preceptor and attendant in chief, his name too is not known.

Chiwon served the great Tang in the west and came home to his old country in the east, and in both he met a world in disorder. He stumbled and was hemmed in, and whenever he moved he was blamed, and he grieved that his time had not come, and he had no further mind to go on in office. He wandered where he pleased and let himself go, under the mountains and woods and by the rivers and the sea, and he built terraces and pavilions and planted pines and bamboo, and pillowed himself on books and histories, and whistled and sang of the wind and the moon.

Namsan in Gyeongju, Bingsan in Gangju, Cheongnyangsa in Hapju, Ssanggyesa on Jirisan, and the country house in Happo county, all these are places where he wandered.

Last of all he took his family and hid himself at Haeinsa on Gayasan, and with his own elder brother, the monk Hyeonjun, and with the master Jeonghyeon he made a bond as friends in the way, and he rested there at ease and grew old and ended his days.

When he first went west he came to know Luo Yin, a poet of Jiangdong. Luo Yin trusted in his own talent and held himself high and did not lightly approve of anyone, and he showed the five scrolls of songs and poems that Chiwon had made.

He was also on good terms with Gu Yun, who passed in the same year, and when he was about to go home Gu Yun sent him off with a poem. Roughly it says this.

"I have heard that on the sea there are three golden turtles, and the golden turtles bear mountains on their heads, and the mountains are high, high.

Above the mountain, a palace of pearl, a gate tower of shell, a hall of gold, below the mountain, great waves of a thousand li and ten thousand li. Beside them one point of Gyerim is green, and the turtle mountain held beauty within and bore a remarkable man. At twelve he took ship and crossed the sea and came, and his writing moved the middle kingdom. At eighteen he ranged across and fought in the garden of letters, and with a single arrow he shot through the examination of the golden gate."

The treatise on arts and letters in the New Book of Tang says, "Choe Chiwon, the Saryuk jip in one scroll, the Gyewon pilgyeong in twenty scrolls," and the note says, "Choe Chiwon was a man of Goryeo. He passed as a guest candidate and served on the staff of Gao Pian." So far was his name heard in the country above. There is also the Munjip in thirty scrolls, which goes about in the world.

At the first, when our Taejo rose up, Chiwon knew he was no ordinary man and would surely receive the mandate and open a dynasty, and so he sent him a letter of greeting, and in it was the line, "Gyerim is a yellow leaf, Gongnyeong is a green pine."

His disciples came to court at the beginning of the dynasty, and more than one of them rose in office to high rank.

While Hyeonjong was on the throne, because Chiwon had secretly helped the work of the ancestors and his merit could not be forgotten, the king sent down an order and gave him the office of naesaryeong after his death, and in the fourteenth year, the second year of Taiping, a gyehae year, in the second month, he was given the posthumous title of marquis Munchang.