At this time the Mongol empire was on the verge of its fall and Koryŭ envoys found it impossible to force their way through to Peking and so were compelled to desist. It is a noteworthy fact that though Koryŭ hated the Mongols she nevertheless held fast to them till the very last moment. At this time it happened that the king was without an heir and both he and the court were anxious about the succession. The records say that he was so anxious to have a son that he committed an act almost if not quite unparalleled in the history of any land, civilized or savage. Having become prematurely old by his terrible excesses, he introduced a number of young men into the palace and gave them the _entre_ into the queen’s apartments, hoping thereby that his hopes might be realised. In this he was disappointed. One day while passing an hour in the apartments of his favorite, Sin-don, he noticed there a new-born babe, the son of one of Sin-don’s concubines. He seemed pleased with the child and Sin-don asked him to adopt it as his own. The king laughed but did not seem averse to the proposition. Returning to the palace he summoned the officials and told them that for some time he had been frequenting the apartments of Sin-don and that he had gotten a son by one of the women there. He knew well enough that if he proposed to adopt Sin-don’s son the opposition would be overwhelming, so he took this means of carrying out the plan. Of course it is impossible to verify the truth of this statement. It may have been a fabrication of the historians of the following dynasty in order to justify the founder of the new dynasty in overthrowing Koryŭ. The annals of the Ming dynasty say that it was the king’s son and not Sin-don’s. In 1366 the opposition to the favorite increased in intensity and the king was almost buried beneath petitions for his banishment or death. These the king answered by banishing or killing the senders and by this means the open opposition was put an end to. The wily monk knew that he needed more than the king’s favor in order to maintain his position of honor, and so he began to take away the fields and other property of high officials and distribute them among the people in order to curry favor with them. This brought from the officials a new and fiercer protest and they told the king that these acts would make his reign a subject of ridicule to future generations. While this did not move the king to active steps against Sin-don it caused a coolness to spring up between them. The favorite saw that he had been going too far and he tried to smooth the matter over by returning the property that had been sequestered. At the same time he secured the liberation of many slaves. Here, too, he was [...]