The History of Korea (vol. 1 of 2)Hulbert, Homer B. (Homer Bezaleel)
History
The History of Korea (vol. 1 of 2)
Hulbert, Homer B. (Homer Bezaleel)
Korea -- History
(4) Do not make friends with Kitan.
(5) Do honor to P‘yŭng-yang, the ancient capital.
(6) Establish an annual Buddhist festival.
(7) Listen to good men and banish bad ones.
(8) As the south is disaffected towards us do not marry from among
the people of that section.
(9) Look after the interests of the army.
(10) Be always ready for emergencies.
After urging his son to lock all these precepts in his heart the aged
king turned to the wall and died. These ten laws are typical of the man.
They inculcated reverence for the best religion that had come under his
notice, but in the same breath forbade the disproportionate growth of
priest-craft, for he had seen what a seductive influence lay hidden
within the arcana of this most mystical of all heathen cults. He advised
temperance in religion. He forbade the throning of a man simply because
he was the king’s firstborn. By so doing he really proclaimed that the
king was for the people and not the people for the king. He hated
treachery and forbade making alliances with the forsworn. He believed in
doing honor to the best of the old traditions and ordered that the
ancient city of P‘yŭng-yang be remembered. He believed in loving his
friends and hating his enemies and forbade descendants taking a wife
from among the people of the south who had so desperately supported the
claims of Kyŭn-whŭn, the one-time bandit. He was a military man and
believed in having a strong army and in treating it in such a way as to
insure its perfect loyalty. It was in the last injunction, however, that
he struck the key-note of his character. Be always ready for
emergencies. Reading his character in the light of his actions we can
well imagine one more precept that would have been characteristic of
him; namely, that it is better to make a friend of an honest enemy than
to kill him. And so in the year 942 the great general, reformer, king
and administrator was laid to his fathers and his son Mu reigned in his
stead. The latter’s posthumous title is Hye-jong.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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