According to unwritten law, with the beginning of a new dynasty a new capital must be founded, and king T‘ă-jo began to look about for a new site. At first he determined to build his capital at Kye-ryŭng Mountain in Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Province, and he went so far as to begin work on it; but it was found that in the days of Sil-la a celebrated priest, To-sŭn, had prophesied that in the days to come Yi would found a capital at Han-yang, and one of the Koryŭ kings had planted many plum trees at that place and as fast as they matured had them mutilated, hoping thus to harm the fortunes of the Yi family; for the Chinese character for Yi is the same as that for plum. Tradition also says that the king had a dream in which a spirit came and told him that Kye-ryŭng San was reserved for the capital of a future kingdom which should be founded by a member of the Chöng family. Two commissioners were thereupon sent to Han-yang to make surveys for a palace site. It is said that a monk, Mu-hak, met them at Ha-yang and told them that the palace should face toward Pă-gak Mountain and Mong-myŭk Mountain (the present Nam-san,) but they persisted in making it face the south. “Very well” the monk replied, “If you do not listen to my advice you will have cause to remember it two hundred years from now.” His words were unheeded but precisely two hundred years later, in the year 1592, the Japanese hordes of Hideyoshi landed on the shores of southern Korea. This is a fair sample of Korean _ex post facto_ prophecy. The courtiers urged the king to destroy the remaining relatives of the last Koryŭ kings that there might be no danger of an attempt at revolt. The royal consent was given and a considerable number of those unfortunates were put in a boat, taken out to sea and abandoned, their boat being first scuttled. The king thought better of this, however, before it had gone far and ordered this man-hunt to be stopped. As the emperor still seemed to entertain suspicions concerning the new kingdom the king was fain to send his eldest son as envoy to the Chinese court where he carefully explained the whole situation to the satisfaction of his suzerain. An interesting prophecy is said to have been current at the time. The king dreamed that he saw a hen swallow a silk-worm. No one could explain the meaning of the dream until at last an official more imaginative than discreet averred that it meant that Kye-ryŭng would swallow Cham-du. Kye means “hen” and Cham-du means “silk-worm’s head.” But Kye-ryong was the site of the future capital of the next kingdom according to prophecy, while “silk-worm’s head” is the name of one of the spurs of Nam-san in Seoul. So the interpretation was that the new dynasty would fall before another founded at Kye-ryong, by Chöng. The poor fellow paid for this bright forecast with his life.