Heavy tax remitted.... a tendens novel.... the wheel of fortune turns.... the queen restored..... sorcery.... Puk-han built.... mourning.... a weak king.... a lucid interval.... terrible reprisals.... a desecrated tomb.... contact with the West.... king’s suspicious death.... enemies killed.... party strife put down.... seals for Japanese.... prohibition of manufacture and sale of wine.... a powerful conspiracy.... preparations for defense.... Ch’ung-ju falls.... rebellion put down with a heavy hand.... honors distributed.... mining prohibited.... incipient rebellion.... reforms.... reservoirs.... use of wine interdicted.... bureau of agriculture.... important secret service.... dress reform.... cruel punishments stopped.... a new war vessel.... honest measurement.... imperial tombs.... monument to the dead political parties.... musical instruments.

Each year a large Chinese embassy visited Seoul, and it was customary to feed them from silver dishes, which were given them as presents when they returned to their own land. This expense was met by a tax on the people of Song-do. While the king was making a small tour in the country he arrived at Song-do and there he asked about this tax. The people replied that they had to sell their very children to meet it, for it amounted to 1,200 bags of rice, 900,000 cash, 3,000 bags of other grain, 3,000 pieces of cloth as well as other things. The king listened to their petition and remitted the tax.

Only five years elapse before we find the king making another complete change in his household, by driving out the new queen, who had been the concubine Chang, and reinstating the old queen in her rightful place again. These sudden and complete changes of face in the king would have been amusing had they not been accompanied by the shedding of so much innocent blood. The king had tired of his new queen. He seems to have been one of those men who require a periodical outbreak of some kind, but who in the intervals are perfectly quiet. The time had come for such an outbreak and Kim Ch‘un-t‘ak was the instrument by which it was brought about. He had bought himself into the good graces of the palace women, and as a first step toward the accomplishment of his plans he wrote a book in which was illustrated, in romance form, the evils of putting away the true wife for a concubine. The copy of this book which was given to the king materially hastened the catastrophe. The Nam-in were in power but they looked with concern upon the king’s growing antipathy toward them and they urged him to put the too bold novelist out of the way; but the leaders of the No-ron party, knowing that all depended on a quick, decisive blow, went in a body to the king at night and urged him to follow the evident bent of his inclinations. This he proceeded to do by banishing the brother of queen Chang, and with him the leaders of the Nam-in party. Then once more the No-ron stepped to the front and prepared to enjoy the good things. High posthumous honors were given to Song Si-ryul and to the deposed queen’s father and to many others of the No-rons who had perished during the last outbreak. The king, to save his “face,” called the deposed queen back little by little. He first put her in a little palace in An-dong; then he transferred her to the “Mulberry Palace,” and finally brought her to the palace proper. The woman Chang was again reduced to her former place and a stringent law was made that henceforth no royal concubine should ever be raised to the position of queen. The martyr Pak T‘a-bo was given posthumously the title of Prime Minister. The reinstated party tried to induce the king to kill the concubine, but, as she was the mother of the heir apparent to the throne, he could not consent. A slave of this concubine’s resorted to a clever trick in order to turn the tables on the No-ron party. Enticing to his house a slave of one of the leaders of the No-ron party, he got him intoxicated and then stole from him his name tag, a piece of wood which each person was supposed to carry and on which his name was written. This he took and dropped beside the grave of the father of the concubineconcubine where it was discovered that a fetich had been buried. This was to show that a No-ron leader had resorted to the black art to win back his way to power. The king, however, looked into the matter, discovered the fraud and killed the prime mover in the plot, a Nam-in leader. Many others were also banished.

Four years passed without any events of importance, and then the queen became afflicted with boils and expired. The records tell us that that night the king dreamed that the dead queen came to him with her garments covered with blood. To his enquiries she made no answer except to point toward the apartments of the concubine Chang. The king arose and went in that direction, and his ears were greeted with the sound of laughter and merriment. Wetting his finger in his mouth he applied it to the paper window and soon made a peep-hole. There he beheld the concubine and a large company of sorceresses engaged in shooting arrows into an effigy of the queen and making merry over having done her to death by placing a fetich under her room. This was the signal for another of the king’s periodical outbreaks. In spite of her being the mother of the Crown Prince, he poisoned her and killed all her sorceress companions. A host of the Nam-in party also met their death. The almost incredible number of 1,700 people are said to have met their death as a result of this disturbance. There must have been in connection with it a sort of “star chamber,” or secret tribunal where many went in but none came out, for we are told that a few years later a secret prison in the palace was abolished.

The year 1711 was marked by the building of the great mountain fortress of Puk-han among the mountains immediately behind Seoul. There had been a fortress there in the ancient days of Pak-je. It is an almost ideal place for a place of retreat, being surrounded with very steep mountains.

When this king died in 1720 the custom was first inaugurated of having the whole people put on mourning clothes, and wearing them for three years in honor of the dead king.

The new king, known by his posthumous title of KyÖng-jong Ta-wang, was the son of the disgraced and executed concubine Chang. By this time the so-called Nam-in party had practically passed off the stage of history; its leading men had all been killed and it had left the field to its two great rivals the No-ron and So-ron, although as we have before said the No-ron was overwhelmingly predominant.

King KyÖng-jong was a man of feeble intellect and he took no interest in the affairs of government. He merely served as a center about which factional fights went on. It is said that his mother, the concubine Chang, when about to be led to execution, said to him, “If I am to die you must die with me,” and at that she struck at him with an improvised weapon, a piece of wood. She succeeded only in wounding him, but it was in a portion of the body that rendered it impossible for him ever to have an heir. He swung like a pendulum back and forth between the Noron and Soron parties, agreeing with whichever happened for the moment to gain his ear. This caused the Noron party some uneasiness and they desired to see the reins of government in more responsible hands. They warmly favored the king’s brother as a candidate for the throne. The king was always ailing, for he never thoroughly recovered from the wound which his mother had inflicted, and he was unable to perform the ancestral rites. He was also afflicted with sores on his head, so that for months at a time he was unable to wear the headband which is such a distinctive mark of the Korean. The Noron leaders induced someone to memorialize the king asking him to make his brother his heir. They all added their advice of the same tenor, and finally induced him to consult the Queen Mother about it. She entered heartily into the plan and the decree went forth that the king’s brother was heir apparent. This was like a thunder-bolt among the Soron ranks. The whole transaction had been carefully concealed from them, and now a man who could not, under the circumstances, be other than a warm friend of the Noron party was heir to the throne, and every Soron was in danger. They stormed and protested and memorialized but to no avail. The appointment of an heir was like the laws of the Medes and Persians, unalterable. But the Noron people knew the weakness of the king and they feared what might take place in some unguarded hour when the enemy might get the king’s ear, and so they played a bolder game still. They asked the king to resign in favor of the heir. He promised to do so, but the unguarded hour which the Norons feared came, and the promise was not kept. Not only so, but when it was whispered in the king’s ear that the Norons were trying to usurp the power the worst fears of that party were realized. They were driven from power and the Sorons came up smiling. But the king who liked quiet and repose had one lucid interval when he said, “There is no love of country in all this; it is simple party prejudice and thirst for blood.”

At the head of the triumphant party were Cho T’a gu, Ch’oÉ Kyu-su and Ch’oÉ Suk-hang. They began the performance of their official duties by bribing the palace women and eunuchs to kill the heir to the throne. The plan was to shoot him “by mistake” while pretending to hunt for a white fox which they said was haunting the palace. The heir was informed however and took measures to insure his own safety. He asked to have two of the palace women killed and two of the eunuchs, but the king himself was in mortal fear of the Sorons, whom he had brought back to power, and he dared not do so. Thereupon the heir said “I will resign and go out from the palace and become one of the common people.”

The Noron party were not idle. They knew that the Sorons would soon be hunting their heads, and so they attempted to take the offensive by assassinating the king; but, as usually happened, they were betrayed, and terrible reprisals followed. Twelve of the Noron leaders were beheaded and hundreds were beaten to death or banished. It is gravely stated that in this one connection eighteen hundred men lost their lives.

The close of the king’s second year witnessed a severe famine on the island of Quelpart and the king sent thither 7,000 bags of grain and remitted the tax of horses, for which that island has been from time immemorial celebrated.

The desperate state of affairs at this juncture is well illustrated by two incidents. First, the king was so enamored of the Soron party that he took Mok Ho-ryong, their leader, outside the gate one night and sacrificed a white horse and, tasting its blood, swore that until time’s end Mok Ho-ryong’s descendants should hold high office under the government. Second, the Soron officials went to the shrine of the great Song Si-ryul and tearing the tablet from its place, dragged it through the filth of a dung-hill. Meanwhile we hear nothing about the people and the country. The government was not for them and they probably cared as little for it as it did for them.

But even these sanguinary scenes could not entirely stop the march of enlightenment, for we learn that at this very time foreign clocks, barometers and water-hose were being brought into Korea from Peking where they had been introduced by foreigners. This was done by the envoy Yi I-myung who met missionaries in Peking. He had a conversation with them on the subject of religion and professed to find great similarity between Christian doctrines and those of the Chinese classics.

The fourth year of this unfortunate king, 17241724, opened with a reform that augured well. It consisted in the destruction of all the convents outside the city gates, especially outside the West Gate which was at that time about half a mile west of the present New Gate. The reasons are not specifically given, but these convents had obviously become dangerous to the morals of the people, and hot-beds of sedition. But the king was not permitted to continue his reforms, for he died in the eighth moon, of poison, it is said, administered in a shrimp salad. It is further alleged that it was the work of his brother, probably on the principle that he was the one to gain most by the king’s death. But we may well doubt the truth of the rumor, for nothing that is told of that brother indicates that he would commit such an act, and in the second place a man who will eat shrimps in mid-summer, that have been brought thirty miles from the sea without ice might expect to die. Of course all the Soron officials were willing to believe the heir did it and one of them advised that a silver knife be stuck into the king’s dead body, for it is popularly believed that poison in the system will tarnish silver; but it was not done. There was no way to prevent the hated heir assuming his royal prerogative, which he did the same year, 1724.

The new king, known by his posthumous title of Yung-jong Ta-wang, now entered upon the longest and one of the most brilliant reigns in the annals of the present dynasty; a reign which proves, so far as circumstantial evidence can prove, that he was not guilty of the murder of his brother. As may be surmised, his deadly enemies, the Sorons, were driven from office and the Norons reinstated. It is probable that the king found it impossible to restrain the Norons from taking revenge upon their enemies and we are told that a thousand men were killed each year for some years. That this was done in spite of the king, rather than by him, will be seen from the strenuous efforts which he made to destroy the lines of party demarcation.

He began his reign with a statement of his inability to rule the people rightly, and blaming himself for the sufferings of the people from famine and plague. He immediately proclaimed his son crown prince, so that from the very first there might be no question as to the succession. He had to give way to the importunities of his councillors and decapitate Kim Il-gyung who had charged him with the murder of his brother.

On the very first day of the new year he proclaimed that all party strife must cease; that men must think and plan for the good of the whole country rather than for a particular party. As he was returning one day from a royal tomb a man beside the road shouted “There goes the man who poisoned his predecessor with shrimps.” Recognizing in this nothing but an attempt to keep open the old party sore, the king handled the man severely together with certain others of the Soron party who had instigated him to the outrage.

From that day to this the Noron party has been uniformly in power. Party strife practically ceased, not by the dissolution of the other parties but because one party obtained such an overwhelming ascendency that the others died of starvation. Several things led to this result. A series of unsuccessful conspiracies on the part of the Soron party, each of which weakened it to the point of exhaustion; and secondly the extreme length of the reign, during which, with one short interval, the king held firmly to the Noron party. The closing act of his first year was a reform which he forced in the government dispensary. It had long been a rich morsel for conscienceless officials to fatten upon, but now the whole personnel of the institution was changed and it again performed its normal function of dispensing medicines for the public health. The king’s forbearance is seen in the fact that when a thief was caught, bearing upon his person a letter from two of the palace women asking him to procure for them a deadly poison, the king executed the thief but refused to proceed against the women, on the ground that they had no possible cause for wishing his death.

We here meet the curious statement, not mentioned heretofore, that from the earliest times the Lords of Tsushima received seals from the king of Korea. At this time the daimyo of that island sent and asked the king to renew the custom, which had probably been discontinued for a short space of time. The king complied with the request and had the seal cut and sent. It is not possible to conclude from this that the daimyo of Tsushima considered himself a vassal of Korea, for it is not mentioned elsewhere in the Korean annals. We can form but one theory that will account for it. This seal may have been only for the purpose of identification to vouch for the authenticity of letters that might pass between Korea and Tsushima. The time may come when, in the light of facts not yet discovered, this incident may throw light on the early relations between Korea and Japan.

A striking feature of this king’s reign was the promulgation and enforcement of the principle of the prohibition of the manufacture and use of spirituous liquors. We venture to affirm that this king was the first in history, if not the only one, to boldly assert and rigidly enforce the principle of total abstinence from the use of wines and liquors. His three commands were (1) Party strife must cease. (2) Luxury must be curtailed. (3) The making, selling or drinking of fermented wines or distilled liquors is a capital offense.

But this and other reforms were about to be eclipsed by the great upheaval of 1727, after the relation of which we will return to them. The Norons made such desperate attempts to induce the king to continue the persecution of the Soron party that he underwent a revulsion of feeling and for a short time punished the Norons by calling back into power many of the opposition. It may be that this short respite awoke the slumbering ambition of the Soron party so that when they found it was but partial and temporary their chagrin drove them into sedition. There appeared at Nam-wun in Chul-la Province an insulting circular asserting that the king had killed his brother and that the whole Noron party were traitors. It called upon all good men to oppose the government in every way possible. The governor sent a copy to the king who simply said “Burn it up.” But he greatly miscalculated the amount of sentiment that lay behind that circular, and his enemies took advantage of his unsuspiciousness to work up a wide-spread and powerful conspiracy against the government. It was headed by Kim Yung-ha.

This conspiracy was headed by the son of the executed Kim Il-gyung, by Mok Si-ryung the brother of Mok Ho-ryung and by the sons and other near relatives of the killed and banished leaders of the Soron party. A large force was collected in Kyung-sang Province and Yi In-jwa and ChÖng Heui-ryang were put in command. The conspiracy honeycombed the whole country, for we are told that in P‘yung-an Province Yi Sa-sung took charge of an insurrectionary force, while at the capital Kim Chung-geui and Nam T‘a-jung worked in its interests. It was agreed that on the twentieth of the third moon Seoul should be entered and that Prince Mil-wha be put on the throne. But there was a weak point in this as in all such ventures. One of the leaders in the south, An Pak, had a friend living at Yong-ju, in the direct line of the approach to Seoul and he warned him to move, as something was about to happen. The friend coaxed him into telling him the whole affair, and then brought the story straight to Seoul. This informer was ChoÉ Kyo-su. Immediately the king sent out a heavy guard to the river and also manned the wall of the capital. Troops were thrown into Yang-sung, Chin-wi, Su-wun, Yong-in, Chuk-san and Ch‘un-ch‘un, and were told to seize anyone who made the least disturbance. The brother of An Pak being caught, he gave the details of the position of the rebel troops and other important particulars. The king appointed O Myung-hang of the Soron party as general-in-chief of an expedition against the seditious people of the south. He took with him 2,000 soldiers, but gathered more as he proceeded south. Strong bodies of troops were also sent north along the Peking road and to Puk-pawi outside the East Gate, to guard the approaches to the city. In the south loyal troops were in force at Mun-gyung Fortress near Cho-ryung Pass and the governor of Whang-ha Province also took soldiers and stationed himself at Whang-ju, near P’yung-yang. Others were stationed in the defiles of the mountains just beyond Song-do. It is quite evident from these extensive precautions that the plot was a wide-spread and dangerous one and that it had powerful leaders, not only in the country but at the capital itself.

In the south, the great rebel leader, Yi In-jwa, with banners flying, led his powerful army northward to the town of ChÖng-juChÖng-ju. Here was stored a large amount of government provisions and arms. It was taken not by storm but by strategemstrategem. Arms were sent into the city on litters covered with vegetables and other things and soldiers went in, disguised as coolies. Once inside, they soon put the small garrison out of the way and killed the commandant. Yi then resumed the march on Seoul, appointing prefects in the districts through which he passed and assuming the title “Great General-in-Chief.” The claim was that the uprising was in behalf of the dead king. All the soldiers were in mourning for him and they carried in their ranks a shrine to his memory, before which they offered sacrifices.

The road from the south coming up to Seoul divides at Mok-ch‘un, one branch proceeding by way of Chik-san and the other by An-sung, but they unite again at Su-wun. The rebels arrived at Mok-ch‘un just as the royal troops arrived at Su-wun. It was of prime importance to the rebels to know by which road the royal army, under O Myung hang, were coming. Whichever way they came the rebels must take the other road and so evade an action. Gen. O was astute enough to surmise this but he did not propose to let the rebels steal a march on him in this way; so he sent forward a small part of his force toward Chik-san, but with the main body of his troops he took the road by way of An-sung. His calculations were correct, and when he neared An-sung he found that the enemy were encamped there in fancied security. Taking a picked band of 700 men Gen. O made a detour and came around the hill on whose slope the rebels were encamped. In the night he made a wild charge down from its summit into the camp. The effect was instantaneous. A moment later the whole rebel force was in full flight, racing for their lives, while the pursuers cut them down at pleasure. Yi In-jwa was captured and brought to Seoul. Meanwhile Pak P‘il-pÖn the prefect of SÖn-san opposed the remaining rebels in Kyung-sang Province, capturing and killing a great number of them, especially the leaders Ung Po and Heui Ryang, whose heads he sent to Seoul in a box.

When Gen O Myung-hang returned in triumph to Seoul the king went out to meet him, and after the traitors’ heads had been impaled on high, they all adjourned to the palace where a great feast was spread, at which the king gave Gen. O a sounding title and to Ch‘oÉ Kyo-su, who betrayed the plot he gave the house near the present English Church, which has in connection with it a memorial shrine. The king had a book printed giving in details the evil deeds of the Soron party. Since that time there have been no great party struggles. Sacrifices were offered for all who had been killed by the rebels. The king showed his clemency by liberating the five-year-old son of one of the traitors. He had been imprisoned according to the law of the country, to be kept until his fifteenth year, and then he would be led out to execution.

Hand in hand with the king’s prejudice against the use of wine went a similar prejudice against mining, so that not only did he peremptorily forbid the mining of silver at Au-byun but hearing that copper was being mined near the same place he sent and put a stop to it.

In 1727 the heir apparent died and was given the posthumous title of Hyo-jang Se-ja. Two years later another incipient rebellion broke out in the south having as its object the placing of Ha Keui, a relative of the king, on the throne. It is said that with him died several hundred more of the doomed Soron party.

The next thirty-two years were crowded full of reforms and their mere enumeration throws much light on the social and economic conditions of the time.

A map was made of the northern boundary and a fortress was built at Un-du; the law was promulgated that the grandson of a slave woman should be free; on account of drought the king ordered the making of numerous reservoirs in which to store water for irrigation, and a commission was appointed with headquarters at Seoul, under whose supervision these reservoirs were built; the king had a new model of the solar system made, to replace the one destroyed by the Japanese during the invasion; at last China amended that clause in her history which stated that Kwang-ha was a good man and that In-jong Ta-wang had usurped the throne, and the king presented one of the corrected copies at the ancestral temple; the cruel form of torture, which consisted in tying the ankles together and then twisting a stout stick between the bones, was done away; a granary was built on the eastern coast, to be stocked with grain each year by the people of Kyung-sang Province, for use in case of famine in the northern province of Ham-gyung; the king claimed that the scarcity of rice was due to the fact that so much of it was used in the making of wine and again threatened to kill anyone who should make, sell or use that beverage; in fact he placed detectives all about Seoul, along the main roads, whose business it was to smell of the breath of everyone whose face or gait indicated indulgence in the flowing bowl!

A boatload of men belonging to the overthrown Ming dynasty appeared on the southern coast and asked aid in an attempt to wrest again the scepter from the Manchus, but they were politely refused; the king abolished that form of punishment which consisted in applying red hot irons to the limbs; he built the Chung-sung, or inner wall at P’yung-yang in order to cut off the view of a kyu-bong or “spying peak,” which in Korea is supposed to bring bad luck. Any place from which may be seen the top of a mountain peak just peeping above the summit of a nearer mountain is considered unfit for a burial or building site.

About the year 1733 famines were so frequent that the king appointed a bureau of agriculture and appointed inspectors for each of the provinces to help in securing good irrigation; a man named Yi Keui-ha invented a war chariot with swords or spears extending out from the hubs of the wheels on either side. He was rewarded with a generalship. The king established a special detective force differing from the ordinary detective force in being more secret in its operations and in holding greater powers. The rules for its guidance were as follows, and they throw light upon existing conditions.

(1) After careful investigation they may close up any prefectural office and send the prefect to Seoul for trial.

(2) This does not apply to prefectures where animals are being reared for use in ancestral sacrifices.

(3) In order to maintain their incognito they shall not demand food for nothing at the country inns but shall pay the regular prices.

(4) For the same reason they shall not stop long in the same place.

(5) They must look sharply after the district constables and thief-catchers and see that they are diligent and effective.

(6) They must put a stop to the pernicious custom of prefects’ servants taking money in advance from farmers as a bribe to remit in part future government dues.

(7) They shall prevent the sending in of incorrect estimates of the area of taxable land.

(8) They shall see to it that prefects do not receive extra interest on government seed loaned to the people and payable in the autumn after the crop is harvested.

(9) They shall prevent prefects appropriating ginseng which they confiscate from illegal sellers.

(10) They shall prevent the king’s relatives and friends seizing people’s land.

(11) They shall stop the evil custom of prefects withholding the certificate of release from pardoned exiles until they have paid a certain sum of money.

(12) They shall prevent the enlistment of too many men, who thereby claim their living from the governmentgovernment granaries.

(13) They shall see to it that the prefects do not keep the good cloth paid by the people for soldiers’ clothes, and hand over to the soldiers a poorer quality.

(14) They shall prevent creditors compounding interest if a debtor fails to pay on time.

(15) They shall stop the making of poor gun-powder and of muskets with too small a bore.

(16) They shall enforce the law that the grandson of a slave is free.

(17) They shall see to it that the prefects in P‘yung-an Province do not receive revenue above the legal amount.

Each of these specifications might be made the heading of a long chapter in Korean history. We have here in epitome the causes of Korea’s condition to-day.

The governor of Kang-wun Province stated that on account of the frequent famines he could not send three men annually as heretofore to the island of Ul-leung (Dagelet), but the king replied that as the Japanese had asked for that island, it would be necessary to make the annual inspection as heretofore.

In the year 1734 the king made his second son heir to the throne; he did away with the punishment of men who sold goods in competition with the guilds or monopolies established at Chong-no, the center of the capital. There had been so many royal deaths that the people had become accustomed to the use of white clothes, and had forgotten all other customcustom. But the king now declared that white was the worst of colors because it soiled so easily, and he ordered the use of blue, red or black, but giving the preference to the first as being the color that corresponds with east. In the early years of the dynasty King Se-jong had made a gauge of the size of whipping rods. It was shaped like a gun barrel, and no one was to be whipped with a rod that could not be put into this gauge like a ramrod. The king revived this law and had many gauges made and sent all about the country to the different prefectures. He also forbade anyone but a properly authorised official to administer a whipping, and he abrogated the law by which thieves were branded by being struck in the forehead and on each cheek with a great bunch of needles after which ink was rubbed into the wounds. He next did away with the clumsy three-decked war-vessels which were slow and unseaworthy and in place of them substituted what he called the “Sea Falcon Boat” which had sails extending from the sides like wings, and which combined both speed and safety. These he stationed all along the coast.

While on a trip to Song-do the king paid a compliment to the people of Pu-jo-ga, the ward in that city where dwell the descendants of the men of the former dynasty, who do not acknowledge the present dynasty, and thus show their loyalty to their ancient master. At the same time he, for the first time, inclosed in a fence the celebrated SÖn-juk Bridge, where still shows the blood of the murdered statesman ChÖng Mong-ju.

Since the days of King Se-jong, who determined the length of the Korean yard-stick, that useful instrument had shrunken in some measure and its length differed in different localities. So now again the king gave strict orders about it and required all yard-sticks to be made to conform to a pattern which he gave. Previous to the days of King Myung-jong men of the literary degrees dressed in red, but white had gradually taken its place; and now the king ordered them to go back to the good old custom. The official grade called Halyim became such an object of strife among the officials that the king was constrained to abolish it, though it has since been revived. Two of the emperors of the Sung dynasty in China have their graves on Korean soil in the vicinity of Kap-san. The duty of keeping these graves in order was now placed in the hands of the governor of Ham-gyung Province. The king anticipated the death of all party strife by setting up a monument at the Song-gyun-gwan in memory thereof and he ordered the people of different parties to intermarry and become good friends. During the Manchu and Japanese invasions all the musical instruments had been either destroyed or stolen, and as yet they had not been wholly replaced, but now there were found in a well at the palace a set of twenty-four metal pendants which, when struck with a hammer, gave four various musical notes. The inscriptions on them indicated that they had come down from the time of King Se-jong. This aroused the king’s interest and he set skillful men at work making various instruments, notably a small chime of bells to be used at the royal ancestral worship.