In 1472 all the sorceresses, fortune-tellers and Buddhist monks were driven from Seoul and forbidden to enter it again. In the following year an envoy arrived from Japan saying “When Se-jo was king I painted his portrait and carried it to Japan, but at night a great light would stream from the picture’s face. So I brought it back and have left it at Che-p‘o in Chŭl-la Province.” The king immediately sent word to the governor to build an altar and burn the picture thereon, as it had been defiled by being carried to Japan. Special attention was given by King Sŭng-jong to the matter of government examinations. He sent to the provinces and commanded the governors to hold preliminary examinations and to send the successful men up to Seoul to attend the grand examinations held on the third day of the third moon and the ninth of the ninth moon. Three men were to be sent up from each of the provinces except Kyŭng-sang, Chŭl-la and Ch‘ung-ch‘ŭng Provinces from which five each were allowed to come. This shows that then as today the largest part of the population of Korea was in the south. An important change was effected in the matter of criminal procedure. The king commanded that all men of scholarly rank who offended against the laws should be arraigned not before the common tribunal of justice but before the college of scholars. Thus another barrier was built up between the common people and the nobility. King Sŭng-jong was also a patron of letters, for besides publishing a work called Che-wang Myŭng-gan or “The King’s clear Mirror,” and the O-ye-eui or “Five Rules of Conduct,” he also built a library and collected in it all the different books that could be found. He was the determined foe of Buddhism and, having driven out the monks, he now proceeded against the Buddhist convents in Seoul. He broke them up and made them remove to the country. There were twenty-three of these convents in Seoul at the time. The Queen Mother retired from the regency in 1477 and the king, assuming his full authority, continued the work of demolishing Buddhistic influence. He sequestered a monastery at Yong-san and made a school of it, after throwing out the image of Buddha. He seems to have been also a moral reformer, for he made a law against dancing-girls and commanded that boys be taught to dance and to take the place of those unfortunate women. It had been the custom on the king’s birth-day to have prayers offered in Buddhist temples for the safety and peace of the kingdom, but now this was abrogated, for the king said, “What does Buddha know? It is a worthless custom and must be stopped.” More than this, he compelled the monks in the country to refund to a man large sums of money which had been paid for prayers which were intended to ward off harm from the man’s son. The boy died and the father sued the monks for breach of contract, and the king upheld the claim.