In the third year of King Ch’ŭm-hă of Sil-la, 249 A.D. the first envoy ever received from Japan arrived at the shore of Sil-la. He was met by Gen. Sŭk U-ro who addressed him in the following unaccountable manner, “It would be well if your king and queen should come and be slaves in the kitchen of the king of Sil-la”. Without a word the envoy turned about and posted back to Japan. An invasion of Korea was determined upon and soon a powerful force landed on the coast of that country. Gen. Sŭk U-ro was filled with dismay and remorse. He confessed to the king that he was the cause of this hostile display and begged to be allowed to go alone and propitiate the advancing enemy. It was granted and he walked straight into the Japanese camp and confessed his crime and asked that he alone be punished. The Japanese took him at his word, burned him alive in their camp and returned to their own land without striking a blow. The following year the same envoy came again and was well received by the king, but the widow of Gen. Sŭk U-ro desiring to avenge the blood of her husband, obtained permission to work in the kitchen of the envoy’s place of entertainment. There she found opportunity to poison his food and thus accomplish her purpose. This of course put an end to all hope of amity between the two countries and that event marks the beginning of the feud which in spite of occasional periods of apparent friendship, existed between the people of Japan and Korea until the year 1868. Hostilities did not however begin at once. The latter half of the third century beheld few events of special interest in the peninsula. During this period Păk-je seems to have made a spasmodic effort at reform, for we read that she reorganised her official system and set a heavy penalty for bribery, namely imprisonment for life. She also patched up a shallow peace with Sil-la. In Ko-gu-ryŭ a concubine of King Pong-sang tried to incense him against the queen by showing him a leathern bag which she claimed the queen had made to drown her in. The king saw through the trick and to punish the crafty concubine had her killed in the very way she had described. A chief of the Sŭn-bi tribe invaded Ko-gu-ryŭ and desecrated the grave of the king’s father. The wild men of Suk-sin attempted to overthrow Sil-la but the king’s brother drove them back and succeeded in attaching their territory to the crown of Sil-la. It is said that when Sil-la was hard pressed by a band of savages strange warriors suddenly appeared and after putting the savages to flight, as suddenly disappeared. Each of these strange warriors had ears like the leaves of the bamboo and when it was discovered next day that the ground around the king’s father’s grave was covered with bamboo leaves it was believed that he had come forth from his grave with spirit warriors to aid his son.